Resolution Mechanics

What do you believe is the best dice resolution mechanic in tabletop games?

>Hard mode
Do not talk about the specific system you are referencing, simply the resolution mechanics- do not mention classes, magic, or setting details.

There isn't one. Different resolution mechanics have different traits that make them appropriate for different games. The 'Best' resolution mechanic is the one most suitable for the system you're trying to make.

opposed rolls with scaling die (ie my d8 vs your d6+1)

Roll X dice and keep the highest Y. L5R, Chronicle System, etcetera.

I have to agree with this. It's makes it so you can pull punches when you need to, but it also makes the game (at least in L5R's case) way more lethal because it's not hard to start throwing tons of dice and everyone is squishy.

It depends on what were using it for. Consider if the party decides to use a slot machine in whatever game were playing. How can this possibly be decided reasonably other than using a die? To a lesser extent, in combat what should determine whether or not an arrow hits its target? Should it always hit? What about at extreme range? Should it simply have a hard limit on jts range? Perhaps there shouls be a pool of "hitting mana" drawn from to hit the target but this, in my opinion, takes much of the excitement away from combat though seems to be the only alternative.
Equally, there exist totally opposite scenarioes. To me, if the players are confronted with, say, a mathematical puzzle then they should not be ablr to simply roll a die to determine whether or not they ca. solve it. Similarly, when trying to argue with a character often, in my opinion, it should be based on their actual argument and they should not be able to say "give me all your money because poo poo", roll a 20 and walk away with someones money. Though, naturally, for something like bluffing an element of probability must enter because there is no way that the gm, who knows that the player is bluffing, can make a fair appraisal. Again, the only alternative seems to me to be using some sort of mana for this purpose

Let's go with "Generic fantasy adventure" then.

I like this because it's simple, but I somewhat question the logic of having multiple sizes of die with multiple modifiers of die instead of just using the sizes of the die to represent the challenge or power rating.

Mechanically, how does it benefit more from being Roll X die and keep highest Y then just Roll a smaller number of X dice?

2d6 or a single d10/d12 (possibly advantage mechanic for both).

I find that dicepools, and other "roll lots of dice" mechanics (ORE dice pairs) detract from being "in" the game, and I prefer gameplay to revolve around effects instead of shifting numbers around. d10 is about as granular I like my games to get, anything above that is just wankery.

Percentile with appropriate modifiers.

To clarify, in L5R you don't have to take the highest on any roll. If I roll ten dice, but can only keep four, that's still ten chances to build enough numbers to succeed. By rolling less dice you have less potential results. Also rolling a bunch of dice is fun

For many years now, I've been partial to 2d6, roll skill or less, higher (still under or equal to skill) is better.

Blades system is super neat and tidy.

1-3 bad
4-5 success with a but
6 success with no bs
6x2 Critical

50% chance to succeed on one die, 50% of a 6 with four die.

System is set up to make 4 die dice pools hard to get until the 'late game' (as much as Blades has that)

Achieves what the FFG system wants to achieve without thirty novel symbols and handfuls of dice.

I don't know the real name but what I call Blackjack. It is d100 based. When doing opposed rolls you want to roll as high as you can without going over your skill.
For example, if both characters have a skill at 50 and one rolls a 10 while the other rolls 25 then then one that rolled 25 wins.

How does Veeky Forums feel about exploding dice?

Fun in cinematic or pulpy games, not so much in games that want to be more realistic and gritty.

Best IMO is d10 dice pool with scalable targets. Simple, clean, effective. Naturally this requires a gradiation of success and failure. Boolean outcomes are wasted on this.

My most favorite though is 3-15 d6s, based on some combat number.
Roll them vs a target to hit (my favorite is distance / perception. Lower distance or higher perception gives better targets)
Take the successes and re-roll them, using the new results as damage, ignoring any results under the target's "armor" stat (usually 0-5). Like a damage threshhold.

Requires vitality points somewhere around 20-50 to start.

Why wouldn't they work in realistic gritty games? If things will dies in a few hits anyway then having them go down in a single hit is hardly inappropriate.

What games were you thinking of?

Nothing specific, just the tone. Big, cinematic, explodey hits doesn't seem that realistic. If things need to go down in one or two hits, they should be squishy.
To be fair, I'm not as opposed to it in skill checks. Sometimes you just get lucky when you try something. Combat exploding dice seems off to be, personally. It's an opinion, though.

Super interesting. Only problem I can see with it is it seems armor would be very strong; each point of armor both blocks more 'hits' AND more damage from hits. Maybe armor could work by reducing X number of the highest dice whenever you are hit. Or is each dice tgat 'hits' just count as 1 damage? Because that makes perfect sense too.

What game does the system you described? It sounds similar to something like a war game.

Because inevitably some faggot will punch a dragon and deal a billion damage and we'll need to see a post of the greenest story every thread for 5 years.

Here's an image to help illustrate how rolling a larger number of dice while keeping the same amount affects the result.

It allows you to improve your chances of rolling above a certain number, without increasing the maximum number that the roll can achieve.

Just damage. You use maneuvering for minor dodge bonuses.

It's from my homebrew space wargame but I've also changed the distance/perception (for ranged) to athletics/technique for melee.

Using the same type of dice but adding/subtracting skills, advantage, etc.

Also FUCK roll-under

And better math.

Fixed TN roll over is my favorite, ideally with a robust partial and critical system at least for combat.

Opposed rolls should be resolved by comparing successes and not by who happens to roll best.

roll a d10. Get x or less to succeed. No twiddly scaling difficulties or anything, hard tasks are 'roll twice take the worse result', and easy tasks are 'roll twice take the better result'.
>why d10?
because having 'X-in-10' chance is easy to eyeball.
>why no scaling DCs?
because that introduces mechanical fidliness, which is bad. the rules want to be as simple as possible.
>why roll-under?
then you can take the number rolled as your amount of success if you succeed. This might be how much damage you do if you were rolling for an attack, or whatever. 1-in-10 only lets you have a result of 1, whilst 9-in-10 goes all the way up to 9.

The important thing is that the rules should be dirt-simple and take as little mental effort to resolve as possible. The fiction is what matters, and you only pull out dice resolution occasionally.

Blades? In the Dark? Or??

Your character has traits rated in dice. Assemble a pool based on the traits that are contributing to an action you're attempting. But, of all the dice you roll, choose two to become the 'total' (the number that goes up against an opposed roll's total to see if you pull it off) as well as one to be the 'effect', based on the size.
Rolling a 1 creates 'opportunities' for enemies, and players if the GM is rolling 1s, and you can't use them for the total or effect.

The way it all shakes out is that you can have a demigod on the same team as a secret agent and they can still all contribute effectively because they have different ability and skill traits and different special abilities that let them do their own little sorts of exploits. Having big pools with big dice often just makes you more accurate at what you're good at and everybody's going to have different ways to contribute unless you went out of your way to make a quite similar character.

Everything about your system does the opposite of what you want it to do, with sole exception to the "x-in-10 change" bit, the rest of your system is bad.

Roll under is NOT as easy to understand as big numbers = better. Addition is always easier then subtraction.

>Hard tasks are roll twice take worse/easy is roll twice take better
You already fucked up here. While you did say "better"- some people will misread this and assume to mean larger or bigger. This would fuck up the game, as any time they think the roll should be easier they'd be going for the bigger number, when it actively is the worse number. Plus granting advantage/disadvantage is a BIG statistic difference then just adding or subtracting a single +/-1

>Why no scaling DCs? No mechanical fidliness
>I want the rules to be as simple as possible
The rules are not simple. You've assigned every value to be a hidden number, arbitrated by the GM. You still have DCs- but now they are just invisible.

Example; In your game sometimes a player is rolling to pick a shitty lock and they have a 6 in 10 to succeed. Sometimes they are trying to pick a master lock and have a 4 in 10. These are mechanically identical rolls to just having a +2, which can stay on the sheet and look nice.

>1 in 10 lets you have a result of 1... 9-in-10 goes all the way up to 9
This was the passage that truly showed you have no fucking idea what you're doing. Not only does each point or increase in this ability increase the chance of success, but also the DEGREE of success. This fucks up the entire game's combat system and health system if enemy's of higher level can randomly do 2 or 3 times the damage you can in a single roll. Plus, you are confusing your players now as they've been trained thus far in your game to want small numbers, but now they want the biggest number without going over?

It's not intuitive at all. It's complete shit. Don't ever talk to me about game design ever again.

This is why my homebrew is roll over d20, with progression lowering target numbers. Sort of like basic D&D roll under for skills, but you stats are subtracted from 20 instead of being the target number and is clearly listed on your character sheet.

Subtract once, not hundreds of times on rolls.

Roll under self-tests vs. a target number

It's nice being able to say that I have a 65% chance to hit a guy and then being able to have a metric to compare myself against other people with.

>least possible consistency
>1d8 and 1d6+1 are statistically equal, there is no reason to differentiate between the too.
I hate it.

I'd rather have both sides place [skill+attribute] tokens on a roulette table and whoever would win more wins.

>What do you believe is the best dice resolution mechanic in tabletop games?

One Roll Engine

I'm partial to systems with a universal target number and partial success. I'm not sure which specific one I like best, but lately I'm into Blades In The Dark since it makes it easy for me decide some rolls are harder or easier when I want to.

Yahtzee. Whoever rolls the highest hand wins.

I'm partial to 2dX keep lowest.

I believe that suicide is the best resolution for your issues, OP

s'ok

O.R.E

d100, roll under
Percentage rolls are very instinctive, elegant, easy to modify and allow you to instantly and most comfortably assess how big your chances of passing the test are(since you literally have a given %).

2D6, with a normal target of 9. I could go on for about 30 minutes about why this works REALLY well in light-medium weight games. Its more than one die. It gives a good curve, ensuring that you dont have proportionally diminishing returns with each additional bonus point to the roll. Its got clear and infrequent crits on both the fail and success ends. Its also easy to modify the curve in a number of ways that quickly give you the distribution you want either by rolling an extra die and dropping the highest or lowest.

3d6 vs

Easily avoidable with a monstrous quality or other damage limiting mechanic. A dragon is fuck you huge, so you could easily say that at most you can only do X damage in a single round (preferably more than a single explosion, but less than a dragon's health, hell you could just say damage only explodes once against dragons because of their scales). You could get fiddly and apply this to size categories, or change the exact amount of damage around.

I like percentile role under, but in opposed checks you want to roll higher without going over your skill. And each double number is a crit, either negative or positive based on your skill.

Iam also partial to those systems were your stat and skill are both die sizes that you roll then add together.

So, like old school saves?

Depends.
Generic adventure, fantasy, whatevs: 1-2 dice vs difficulty, or 1-2 dice vs skill
Horror themed: add insanity mechanics.
Superheroics: dicepool vs difficulty.

How about a WW2 naval combat simulation where you have a German Uboat (Submarine) vs. British Merchant Ship?

If you're the UBoat, you win.

Okay then a Uboat vs. Destroyer

Why not just "exploding dice cap 2" or something, or just add an extra d6

Im working on my own system with 1d6 + att (-5=>+5) + skill (-5=>+5) + misc environment mods (-3=>+3), which i admit may be kinda swingy (though the mods for both skill and attribute go from -5 => +5, so collective -10 => 10). I havent decided if i want to keep that as-is, or switch to 2d6 since i have no experience with a 2d6 system. Any good resource you could point me to?

That's nice, but without knowing what you are rolling against it's hard to tell.

Oh, sorry
Average is 4, hard is 6, very hard is 8, hardest is 10+. So 1d6 is pretty big compared to the low figures, hence players will have a big focus on mods. The same difficulties apply to combat, so hitting at medium range is 4, etc, with cover and concealment modifying damage soak and difficulty to hit.

Dice pool! #+ = 1 success

Very easy to understand, fast resolution, feels nice to throw a handful of tiny dice when youre doing something you're powered with.

I will also add, attributes rnt easy to raise compared to skills. The highest to start is +2, and they only get 2 places to get attribute raises as they level. So getting to the extreme end of the (attribute + skill) isnt very easy, and essentially requires you to be at the endgame

No, there isn't. That doesn't mean one cannot have a favorite. Mine is the d100. My fave game systems are almost exclusively d100 based: CoC/Runequest, WFRP/40K RPGs, Harnmaster, MERP, even the old Marvel Super Heroes. I should add at this point that I am a simulationist, it's probably related.

Beyond the d100, I unironically like Shadowrun, even though I recognize its multiple flaws. Rolling a fistful of exploding dice can be fun.

No, FUCK you, you D&D-pleb.

3dX. Your skill, talent, power, whatever defines what X is. You want it low, because low sums are more successful than high sums. The goal is to roll less than or equal to a difficulty number. If you do, you accomplish your task. Critical hits can only occur if you're successful, and are defined as having rolled 1, 2 or 3 ones on the three dice you're rolling. Critical failures are also possible when you fail to roll lower than or equal to the difficulty. Crit failures then occur when you roll the maximum value on one, two, or three of the dice.

This system also supports a D&D 5e advantage/disadvantage type system. If you have advantage, you gain an extra die to roll and get to ignore the highest rolled in the group. Disadvantage gives you an extra die to roll but requires you to drop the lowest die you roll. You can even have multiple advantage and disadvantage dice, and it all still works out because you'll end up with three dice still in the roll when you are done. The result of a regular roll without advantage and disadvantage is a standard bell curve. Gaining advantage only skews that curve lower. Disadvantage skews it higher. Gaining both on a single roll tends to pinch the bell curve to the center, making average rolls more likely.

This mechanic also supports an "aid another" system: when you aid another person's task, you simply donate some of your dice to the other person's roll as advantage dice. This is the only situation where the dice rolled for a single task may be different.

(contd.)

I've playtested the system, and I think the best set of dice to use are as follows: 3d4 (master), 3d8 (expert) 3d12 (professional) 3d16 (skilled) and 3d20 (unskilled). This set gives enough distance between skill levels to differentiate the skill levels, and also gives a standard progression of range, mean, and mu of the statistics of each roll. Everyone has a chance to succeed at any task by rolling a 3. Individuals with skill will have a range of difficulties that they cannot fail. This set of dice also has the advantage that you can buy physical dice of the given sizes, though d16s are potentially special order items, if your local gaming store doesn't carry them. Chessex makes them, iirc.

Also, contested rolls are possible. Just have everybody in a contest roll what is relevant to the task, and the lowest roll wins. I also use this for initiative in my games: you roll your initiative and that determines on what second in the first minute of combat you get to act. Each action takes a certain number of seconds, after which you can act again. It simplifies things extensively. Ties occur simultaneously.

>Any good resource you could point me to?
2d6 systems are strong for many reasons; you can tailor tables based on likely or unlikely outcomes. Just keep the attached pic in mind whenever you are throwing 2d6 for percentage allocation purposes.

There was a decimal error on #6, please forgive my lack of attention to detail and refer to this attached pic for the corrected version lol

Seconded.
It just gives so many options to players.

vump

>What do you believe is the best dice resolution mechanic in tabletop games?
There cannot be one, in fact, OP. Your preference will be guided by whether you're gamist, simulationist or narrativist.

If I have to use special dice, I like those that put several factors on each side. For example, pic related has numbers for range, hearts for damage, and bolts to activate special options, all in one roll. (X is instafail.)

The percentile dice. There's nothing that is more intuitive than the percentile dice.

3d6 + attribute/skill vs TN.

FPBP

>Let's go with "Generic fantasy adventure" then.
Really doesn't narrow things down too much. It's more a matter of tone than setting/genre. For example, linear distributions (as produced by a single die, such as 1d20 or d%) are swingy, with extreme results on both ends happening fairly frequently, and thus lend themselves more to more dramatic, high-flying action type games. Conversely, bell curves (eg, 3d6) are more consistent, clustering results around the average with extreme outcomes being much rarer, and so lend themselves better to grittier, more "realistic" systems.