Bringing Back Dice

[sgingell]

Something that crossed my mind:

There are some things to like about dice, random chance forces people to choose between the sure thing and the risky big win, random chance also allows for freak events that neither the PC's or GM planned to get worked into the story, etc... So if you fancy hauling out your dice bag to play MURPG, here is an easy way to do it.

Any character may 'trade in' stones of effort for die rolls on the following table:

2 stones: Roll a d4
3 stones: Roll a d6
4 stones: Roll a d8
5 stones: Roll a d10
6 stones: Roll a d12
10 stones: Roll a d20

The result on the die is the number of stones of effort you get.
Example: Cyclops shifts 6 stones into Optic Blast but trades them in them for the roll of a d12. He rolls a 9 and therefore makes a 9 stone attack (had he rolled a 2 it would be a 2 stone attack).

Alternately you could trade in just some of your stones. Wolverine shifts 8 stones into defense and trades in 3 stones for a d6 and ends up with a defense of 1d6+5.

Quick, easy, and on average almost exactly as powerful as the deterministic way. A d6 averages 3.5 so is slightly better than 3 stones, but is also slightly worse in being unpredictable. If you think the chance of a high roll supports rounding up, just add one to all the stone costs in the table above.

The only last thing to consider is that the random element only would effect resistance, never difficulty. Cyclops may get lucky and slip past Wolverine's defenses with an Optic Blast, he's not going to get lucky with his Strength and lift 10 tons though...

-Stephen

[Kaimontfendo]

Hmm... Seems simple enough, at least for most things. Some actions work differently than others, though. For example, Shapeshifting. I suppose that such powers would just be unable to use dice, but I doubt there's a good way around that.

But I certainly understand the benefits of dice. I was just never able to think of a good way to incorporate them into MURPG before.

Overall, it looks decent. If my usual players actually feel like playing this weekend, I might have to try it out.

Oh, and before I forget, could a character split the stones that he gets from the die roll? For example, if Spider-Man is fighting 3 thugs, rolls a d10, and gets a 9, can he still split that 9 into 3 attacks of 3 each?

[Beacon]

Maybe I don’t really understand your pricing scheme but it looks like the idea is that you spend X number of stones for a die with twice as many sides as the number of stones spent and repeat until you’ve completely converted to dice. Wouldn’t that make 1d20 the same as 5d4, 2d6+2d4, ect? Doesn’t that mean there’s no reason someone would want large dice? Why roll 1d20 and risk getting a 1 when you can roll 5d4 and get at least a 5 on even the unluckiest turn? The averages give you even less incentive; the average of 10.5 from a d20 isn’t nearly as nice as a total average of 12.5 with five d4s. The 5d4 guy is going to average about two points more than the 1d20 guy for the same cost. Someone using 10d2 (you know, a dollars worth of dimes ) would make out like a bandit with an unlucky minimum of 10 and an overall average of 15.

Personally I’m not nuts about using dice just because the whole point of this system is to eliminate the random chance of most games and rely on effort instead.

However, if it helps any; I recall one of the game designers mentioning something about using ANd6 for all abilities and actions and assuming AN*3 for all modifiers.

[sgingell]

"Why roll 1d20 and risk getting a 1 when you can roll 5d4 and get at least a 5 on even the unluckiest turn?"

Well, one reason to roll 1d20 is that it is much more likely to come up '20' than 5d4 is. 1d20 will come up '20' 1 in 20 times, while 5d4 will come up '20' 1 in 1024 times (i.e. 1 in 4^5). The more dice you roll the more heavilly you weight the middle, you won't get the really low results, but you won't often get the really high results either.

"The averages give you even less incentive; the average of 10.5 from a d20 isn’t nearly as nice as a total average of 12.5 with five d4s."

That's a real problem. It stems from the fact that my system offers an extra .5 stones per die involved so cranking out as many dice as possible makes those add up. One way of avoiding that is to only allow people to use 1 die (so 9 stones would become 1d4+7, 1d6+6, 1d8+5 or whatever).

The other way to avoid it is work out the average for the dice the PC wants, round down if necessary, and then charge that many stones. For example to get 5d4 (with an average of 12.5) the PC would need to trade in 12 stones. Alternately if the PC wants 2d6 (average of 7) he pays 7 stones.

Use either of those methods and the PC's are never going to get more than half a stone out of the conversion (which I'm willing to let them get in exchange for the risks).

-Stephen

[techogre]

Here is a table for number of stone cost for a specific die or number of dice.

             Number of Dice
Die    1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10
----------------------------------------------
d4     2   5   7   10  12  15  17  20  22  25
d6     3   7   10  14  17  21  24  28  31  35
d8     4   9   13  18  22  27  31  36  40  45
d10    5   11  16  22  27  33  38  44  49  55
d12    6   13  19  26  32  39  45  52  58  65
d20    10  21  31  42  52  63  73  84  94  105

So, to use 1d20 would cost 10 stones, and 5d4 would cost 12 stones (less risk, more likely to get an average result).

The formula I used was:
(((# of sides * # of dice) + # of dice) / 2) - 0.5 (round off)

[quixoteles]

That chart is brilliant, I'm not going to use it, but now i can give players the ability to choose to use it; which creates consequences, which I like. If they like dice so damn bad they can sift through this monster.

I like that it is in an optional free ranging chart form. Unfortunately you can't use 8 stones. what a bummer, that's my lucky number. Do more cool math and find out how to use 8 stones!

[sgingell]

A d10 averages 5.5, a d4 averages 2.5.
Add them together and you get an average of 8.

Trading in 8 stones for the roll of a d10 + a d4 should come out pretty balanced.

-Stephen