Do you like or dislike "dice trick" abilities in RPGs?

Do you like or dislike "dice trick" abilities in RPGs?

"Dice tricks" are abilities that essentially say, "Instead of giving a bonus or imposing a penalty, this ability causes rerolls, makes you roll twice and take the higher/lower result, adds/subtracts automatic successes, causes different numbers on the dice to be read differently, or otherwise causes dice to be rolled in a nonstandard way."

This is very common in White Wolf/Onyx Path RPGs (half of all Exalted 3e Solar Charms are dice tricks). D&D 5e's advantage/disadvantage is founded on dice tricks. Just about every RPG with "luck" powers has it be based on dice tricks.

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anydice.com/
youtube.com/watch?v=t2JnCXvm_Qc
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

I like dice tricks. They're a bit more interesting than flat mechanical bonuses. Too many of them can be annoying, but I think a smattering of them used appropriately can definitely add to a system.

I dislike it for the same reason I dislike L5R's roll and keep: it makes calculating probabilities a bitch and makes throwing fair encounters at the party significantly harder.

I dislike them, OP, because manipulating dice is similar in effect to just adding a modifier, but takes more time to resolve.

For example, re-rolling a d20 and choosing the higher result means that your average roll would be higher, just like adding a modifier. But one requires you to roll and read two dice, which means more time is spent on the die roll rather than on the scene it is meant to affect. It gets worse for more complex dice tricks (i.e. ones that involve more dice and/or rolls), and tricks that are sequential rather than simultaneous (e.g. you can re-roll but must keep the new roll even if it is worse).

The dice are important because they provide chance and excitement. However, the excitement is strongest when the "roll" stage of the turn is completed quickly, and adding more dice does not improve it. For my own games, I house-rule out re-rolls and dice tricks whenever possible.

It's functionally close enough a standard bonus, only they the two varieties of changing rolls stack with one another. I think there's a point where if you're slowing down the game too much with dice tricks you should make more mechanics that are standard bonuses and visa versa. I don't think there's really anything inherently wrong with them

They're fine if they're the only modifier in the game. The problem is that they never are, they always come in addition to things that change the number of dice rolled, change the number of successes required, or change the target number by adding or subtracting from the results shown on the dice, leading to

Depends how frequent they are.

The "benefit" of rerolling dice, or rolling two and taking better is that you never get into a "can't fail" situation.

Going by 5e, if you always gave, say, a +5 to rolls instead of advantage, when you got the advantage you'd never fail any check below 6+ your bonuses, while with a reroll you can. This lets your bonus numbers that aren't from that particular mechanic stay low and still be relevant.

It's really up to what you are trying to design.

>it makes calculating probabilities a bitch
Here:
anydice.com/
No need to bother doing the calculations yourself in this day and age.

Can we get a list of dice tricks?

Exploding dice
Reroll ones
Roll twice, keep highest
Roll twice, keep lowest
Step up die
Step down die
Split die into two smaller
Merge two dice into one larger
Match dice into pairs/like-sets

What am I missing?

With a +5 you could also reach rolls that are above normal DCs. Impossible tasks for the PC would become possible. Rerolls make your rolls be higher on average, without making the max number bigger.

The average isn't the only thing that matters, it also effects the curve.

>Step up die
>Step down die
>Split die into two smaller
>Merge two dice into one larger

I think these are fine, as they are done before the roll.

Forced reroll -> reroll keep second roll

It also depends on how your system reads and resolves dice. What dicetricks you can use and how they apply changes dramatically from a single dice system to dicepools to something more involved like Legends of the Wulin's read and assign sets.

That helps if you take the time to learn how to use it. (How the hell would you make it show you roll-and-keep, anyway?) For most of us, actually being able to look at the roll and figure out probability is more useful. That, and it restricts you to a computer when you're getting past the concepts involved and trying to figure out encounter crunch. Thanks for the link, it's certainly interesting, but it's not actually a solution.

"Saving rolls for later"
Like you rolled a 15, and you can swap this with a single roll you get later that day

That is not in its favour.

The "game" portion of a Role Playing Game depends on the players making informed choices quickly. When you modify the curve, you make it harder for the player to make these informed decisions, because the mathematics is more complex. With a flat curve and a modifier, the player can quickly estimate his odds of success, taking into account unknown possibilities and comparing it to other things the character could be doing instead. When you change the curve, the player's decisions are less likely to be informed, and the game suffers as a result. A player has an extremely limited timespan to plan out his or her choices. Anything that is a barrier to this is detrimental, not beneficial.

Dice trick are shit in my prefered resolution mechanic, i.e., "roll-keep".
Why should I reroll my dice, when I just add MORE dice, and say "drop X highest/lowest"?

For example, I want to give a bonus to 3d6k2 roll.
No fucking problem, I make it 4d6k2 roll or 3d6k3 roll.
Or I want to impose a penalty on 3d6k2 roll.
No prob either, make it 2d6k2.

You're acting from the assumption that players should always be in maximal control, but the reason we add die rolls to games is to remove that and add unpredictability.

I use a roll lotsa d6es (d6 dice pool sys), keep the ones that you like and reroll the rest once per session, player luck.

What dice mechanics do you guys prefer for damage rolls when you want to...

Increase maximum damage without increasing minimum damage
Increase minimum damage without increasing maximum damage

pulling from those two would be
>Step up die
>Split die into two smaller

Pathfinder essentially does the same thing with "Hero Points", even going so far as to include a class of spells in the game that allows the caster to influence....Fate?

At least, that's how I saw it; a caster using metamagic would be akin to Merlin the Magician, using the Charm of Making to alter the course of history (or whatever) and bring about someone's Great Destiny. It works. So long as there is some believable or plausible means for my imagination to get around it, it works in the game.

However, an ability that constitutes a character giving a PLAYER abilities wouldn't be plausible, and I couldn't support that. I'm not aware of any games off the top of my head that do so.

>Increase maximum damage without increasing minimum damage
That's easy: critical hits. You increase the multiplier or damage on a critical.

>Increase minimum damage without increasing maximum damage
I've seen this one in 40k RPGs. I forget the name, but the attack has (some fancypants name) X, where if you roll less than X on the damage roll the roll is instead treated as X. Definitely the best way to do this that I have seen.

What's your preferred method of splitting dice if you don't want more than a +1 increase to average and no increase to maximum?

d8 splits easily enough into 2d4
d8: min. 1, max. 8, avg. 4.5
2d4; min. 2, max 8, avg. 5

Is it worth it to add d5's to your game just so you can split d10's in this way?

I like them in theory, but most systems that implement them (Savage Worlds, FATE, or Barbarians of Lemuria, for instance) make them too plentiful, and it basically just becomes "I never fail at anything" the rpg.

>How the hell would you make [anydice] show you roll-and-keep
output [highest 1 of 3d6]


you can also make it do variables. For example:

N: 1
D: 3
output [highest N of Dd6]

That tells it to do a number of six-sided dice equal to D, keep the highest N rolls, and add them all together.


>inb4 "oh my god I have to use a computer once in my life whatever shall my inferior caveman brain do"

To increase maximum damage, you need to lengthen the bell curve. Exploding dice, more effective criticals and the such do this. To increase damage without lengthening the bell curve, you want roll-and-keep type mechanics, or perhaps die rerolls. Or use different die groupings, such as 4d6 rather than 3d8.

It's not just an issue of control, it's also about knowing your limitations. Rewatch the Dirty Harry series, he'll educate you on the importance of this. youtube.com/watch?v=t2JnCXvm_Qc

But more seriously, while you don't want the game to be entirely deterministic, you do want to be able to evaluate your chances of success at a glance. It's not just about the players being in control, it's also about the DM being in control because he creates those challenges. And like the poster you reference mentions, if it doesn't speed up the game and enhance the ability to make fast, effective decisions, then it's detrimental. More die rolling just bogs shit down horribly and leads to people on ecksbawks.

Thanks! That's actually super-helpful.

I disliked white wolf's specialty bonus, because it would get real tenebrous or real redundant. Combined with the autosuccess of using willpower and some natures having the same issues with how quickly you'd regain it, it could get dumb very very fast.

The only thing it made sense for was things like craft, performance, drive, that actually make sense to have a specialization in.

Well, my experience might be atypical since I've never had an xbox problem. But while I agree that it can be overdone, I don't think it's bad to have some stuff, especially simple dice tricks. I don't think it's essential to be able to calculate exact probabilities on the fly like you can for a simple d20 roll, you still have a gut ballpark feeling for your chances, especially once you get used to a system.

Double Xs(like White Wolf's general double 10's rules, but also including Exalted 3E's sometimes double 9s, 8s, and 7s)
Add X successes for each Y your opponent rolls
Add dice to your pool for each XYZ set
Do this is you roll this specific set of results(rolling 666 for example, but not 6666)
Reroll X until X no longer appears

These are some of the dice tricks in Exalted 3E's charms.

"hunch Die" (rolls you save for later use).
Flip-Flops (where you invert the tens/units when rolling precentiles)

Roll and keep is great in practise to allow character growth and limit power at the same time, and as that anydice user showed it's easy to work out probability with computers.

Cthulhutech's poker dice, where you want to roll a straight because you can add them all together.

Damn, it sounded cool at the time, but it's a nightmare to actually play with.

barrel d4s are so based

On top of other suggestions:

Adjusted die minimums. As in, you cannot roll below 2 (or what have you), and if you do it is considered that instead.
An example of this would be the 4e weapon property, "Brutal".

>that pic
Get those abominations the fuck out of here! This is a family board!

>barrel d4s are so based
Barrel d4s are the only good ones of the batch (though d8s would probably be okay if they weren't the size of Rice Krispies) and are far superior to standard, pyramidal d4s, but they still suck compared to 12-sided d4s, which roll much better.

I'm reading about this right now.

Are there any systems that only look for straights for success?
Like, a dice pool mechanic where you get a degree of success for each different value among your results. I mean where you get a degree of success if you roll a 1 and another degree of success if you also roll a 2, but each 1 and each 2 rolled beyond the first counts for nothing. So no matter how many dice you roll, if you're rolling d6's you can only get a maximum of six degrees of success.
Anything like that?
Is it a dumb mechanic?

>12-sided d4s

You're one to talk about abominations.

No, nothing that I know of.

Though to add to the list of dice tricks, that game where you try and get width and height with your rolls. So you roll a bunch of d6 and get 3 4s, so your success is 4 and your degree of success is 3. It's the ORE system.

They require dice, and are therefore automatically bad.

Down with the dice bourgeois! Topple the rolling ruling class!

My talk of abominations relates to functionality. The crystal dice simply don't work well. With the exception of the d4s, they are all incredibly biased and/or tiny and obnoxious to roll and read. The sides are so thin on the d20 that the slightest unevenness in rounding from the tumbler (which is inevitable) will make an enormous difference, resulting in certain sides being heavily favored over others. The things will roll, and roll and roll, then wobble, rolling backwards to favor certain sides. The d12s and d10s suffer from the same problems, albeit to a lesser (though still unacceptable) degree. d10s, d8s and especially d6s are tiny little pieces of shit. Meanwhile, 12-sided d4s work great (just as long as you don't get the unreadable pieces of shit on the left, that is).

Do you like or dislike inchlings?

i like them

CoC7 and Pulp Cthulhu have bonus dice and penalty dice. These are differently colored d10s added to a d% roll. They replace the 00-90 die in the ten digit if they are lower (bonus) or higher (penalty) on special occasions and in combat events. Bonus and penalty cancel each other out and up to 2 can be stacked on one roll.

It works great! By staying reserved as a mechanic for special occasions they remain interesting to roll. And they are a very fast and very gamist way to modify d% challenges substantially. They also blend seamlessly with the new success levels, delivering an instant narrative result.

Luck is an altogether different thing and also very interesting. Each character has a random luck value determined with 3d6 x5 at chargen. This is not a max to be drained and replenished, but a moving stat which can exceed its starting value but never exceed 99. It gets rolled against like any skill at keeper's discretion to see if the train is on time or the consul is available. It's fun to check mundane and even irrelevant outcomes with a luck roll because later a character's life may depend on the same mechanic. But before that the character gets to spend their luck. It can be added to skill checks point by point after the roll. In Pulp Cthulhu a character can even be "resurrected" with 35 luck points left (optional). Spend those and you can explain how you got away from that certain oblivion in the next scene. But instead of making a new character you chose to play the old one with 35 less luck... Good luck?

I like both mechanics a lot.

I think ᵗᶦᶰʸ things are cute.

I like them.

Gives designers more tools for buffs and such.

since we use a system that is multiplication based, things like bonus dice and altering the dice roll work very well.
for example , our exhaution system is based on reducing the diceroll by exhaution points and then multiply it with skill/ stat to make a check.

i tend to put limitations on them though, like rerolling forces you to take the last roll whether it is lower or higher, or using that bonus dice skill for 3d10 weakens you for the next few turns so your check will be 1d10 instead of 2d10.

Say you want a whole bunch of d4s, d6s, d8s, d10s, and d12s, and for the purposes of dice pools, you want them to have relatively different shapes for easy sorting(barrel, cube, etc)

what shapes suit which die size the best?

I'm in the minority in liking metacurrency, so yes, I genuinely do. Especially since online rollers tend to be schizophrenic with single die rolls.

Speaking frankly, if it reached the point where I'd have to consider anything that isn't a Yahtzee cup (or any household liquid container) for storage, I'd just use d6s for resolution rather than bother to sort a million specialty dice. I just want to have something to abstract the probability of success and failure, not add micromanagement to something I break out once a week.

Rolling more dice is fun from a gamist perspective but re-rolls are often disassociated mechanics which are difficult to make sense of from a roleplaying perspective.

Time gods did it.

There we go, man this imagination thing sure is hard!

Or luck gods, or it represents having a lucky or unlucky character or situation. Man your right, imagination IS hard!

Please don't. Luck is a terrible mechanic.

How do the Tome Gods work in the world?

Can I pray to them for re-rolls? If I anger them do I lose my re-rolls? If I can re-roll once per day why not more if the Time gods will it? What is written of them in the books of knowledge in the world? If the time gods die do I lose my power of re-rolls? Is it a magical power the gods bestow ? If so can dispelagic work on it? Is it a holy power? If so do I need a clerical focus to cast it? Does it work on planes the time gods have no power over? Etc etc.

Time gods is a legitimate explanation but it raises questions that need answering.

If you have a mechanic divorced from the world then theres no way to make choices that interact with it and therefore no way to roleplay with, its just a game mechanic that your character in game has no awareness of. Too many mechanics like this and you don't feel as though you're playing a roleplaying game anymore.

I like them but within reason. The biggest criticism is that in making things luck based, when Lady Luck decides to just dump on you your character may be forced to act unnaturally or in a way that contradicts their established level of skill. Flat bonus modifiers tend to guarantee you accomplish a task with moderate confidence each time.
When rerolls for example are involved, you don't get that base safety level of competence.
I still like them for the variety though.

5e's advantage/disadvantage is quite simple and much more interesting than just flat bonuses if you look at it statistically.

If you had to roll a 20 but now have disadvantage and roll twice and take the lower result, your chances of succeeding are now 1/400.
If you had to roll 20 but you have a -1 modifier and can only roll up to 19, your chances of succeeding are 0. Absolutely nothing.

If you had to roll 20 on the die but your modifier doesn't matter because 20 is an automatic success, the modifier wouldn't matter. At all.

That sort of thing.

5e's feat, 'lucky', is pure cancer, though.
5e's divination wizard's portent (and that other other D&D versions) is actually fun.

I hate them. Absolutely. I feel like it removes tension from the die roll. Hell, the die roll is there to begin with because it was a second chance to avoid shit happening to your character as opposed to just making them eat the trap they ran into.

But I'm pretty bias. One of my group members for 5e is a hardcore munchiken who has the patience of a mountain that will attempt to break ANYTHING I put in front of him in some way. He's been getting better about detecting my annoyance about that, but he's certainly pushed me to turn off a few things that were beneficial for the party.

Examples:

>Allowed people to spend their inspiration after the die roll because I give out inspiration pretty frequently so its a way to encourage them to use it.
>Player gives his inspiration to others as soon as he can and plays me up to get more out of me
>Player then also makes halfling diviner and grabs the lucky feat, basically stacking as many rerolls as possible and making the character theoretically invincible and killing off any tension possible

>Doing character creation after I took away the rule of using inspiration after the fact
>Doing an old school type of one shot dungeon
>Tell them we're doing 3d6 down the line, HOWEVER, they can reroll as many times as they choose until they get the stats that they can live with
>Player takes out a sheet of A1 sized paper
>Begins rolling the dice down the line and jotting down his score
>Then immediately starts doing it again
>Spends a full HOUR of character creation time rerolling and jotting down stat arrays in tiny ass font on both front and back for him to choose from because he wants two 18s on Con and Int and no negatives.
>Has no intent on stopping
>Tell him that new rule: he has to use the last stat array he rerolled, he cannot use any older ones
>Immediately stops rolling and takes the new roll where he got 3 16's and 2 14s.

So, yeah, I hate rerolls and the systems that allow for them.

Exalted 3e single-handedly made me hate dice tricks.

That's basically the point of FATE - you're ridiculously competent but have to keep acting in character, even if it harms you. It's not the best of ideas, but it's useful for some games, I guess.
Savage Worlds, on the other hand, just makes everything too easy.

>>Allowed people to spend their inspiration after the die roll because I give out inspiration pretty frequently so its a way to encourage them to use it.
Fair enough, but you're complaining that your house rule encouraged powergaming. That's not the fault of dice tricks.

>>Player then also makes halfling diviner and grabs the lucky feat, basically stacking as many rerolls as possible and making the character theoretically invincible and killing off any tension possible
Advantage specifically does not stack in 5E. Even if it's something like having 1 disadvantage and 2 advantages on a roll, you'd only roll once.

>>Tell them we're doing 3d6 down the line, HOWEVER, they can reroll as many times as they choose until they get the stats that they can live with
>>Spends a full HOUR of character creation time rerolling and jotting down stat arrays in tiny ass font on both front and back for him to choose from because he wants two 18s on Con and Int and no negatives.
Rerolling stats should never be done like this for this exact reason. Usually you only have a set amount of rerolls you can take, or you can only reroll if your stats are below a certain threshold.

So basically you hate dice tricks because one of your players is a power gamer and you're bad at houserules.

>That's not the fault of dice tricks.
It's not, that was just the set up. Basically, a good-grace rule that got taken advantage of horribly.

>Advantage specifically does not stack in 5E
You're right. However, Halfling Luck and the Lucky feat DO stack with the Divine Portants feat.

>Rerolling stats should never be done like this for this exact reason.
I've done it before, and it's never been a problem.

>you're bad at houserules.
No, I just trust people to not take advantage of shit I throw out there, so I don't bother to turn every houserule into a contract to head that shit off.

Really though, I hate dice tricks because it removes tension from scenes when the player is basically invincible because they can just continually roll their way out of bad shit happening to them.