Quote:
Originally Posted by RobW
An important point is that ITL RAW do not allow triple damage on defending figures, and reduce the overall chance of critical successes from about 5% to less than .5%. That is, ITL RAW create a significant advantage to the defend option that would be lost with this new "distinct dice" rule.
THerefore, the question for the new edition is whether or not Defending should have the effects it has in ITL RAW, or should odds of critical success stay about constant regardless of the number of dice rolled.
I prefer that critical successes are still reasonably possible (ie not ITL RAW). And in that case, the "distinctive dice" rule has a lot of advantages to a lookup table.
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Yes, as I wrote to Zot, the colored dice system works great for reproducing the crit odds for a 3d roll "IF that is really what you want."
Which, you might.
But I think I would often (almost always?) want a combination of the skill and the number of dice to affect the critical result chances too.
Since when I try to do that using a table like Metagaming did, I'm not entirely happy with the available percentages (and of course needing a table isn't ideal), I think I'd go for something like:
Roll colored (or otherwise distinguished) dice as Flankspeed describes above.
If the 3 core dice indicate a critical result, then roll again to confirm.
One way* to do this is to:
Roll the same number of dice again and compare the total to the attribute being rolled against. If the result is the opposite of the crit result, adjust the crit level by one:
contradicted triple damage becomes double damage
contradicted double damage becomes an auto hit
contradicted auto hit becomes a miss
contradicted auto miss becomes a hit
contradicted auto drop becomes auto miss
contradicted break weapon become drop weapon
The reason to do that, is to NOT just reduce any number of dice to the same odds of crit results, so hard rolls aren't overpowered by automatic results, easy rolls have less chance of disaster, and ability level nicely still has an effect.
* Note that there isn't just one clear best way to do this. I've used a variety of systems for this over the years, and I think ideally it makes sense to consider different systems for different situations, but then, I am more willing than most to use crunchy mechanics when I think they make sense and add something.
e.g. Another simple thing that makes sense to do for things that should be really hard and not subject to 5% auto-successes, is just not use crit success. i.e. The almost-impossible to spot hidden door.
e.g. Another thing you can consider doing for the easy 1d and 2d rolls, where you want the chance of a crit to be more interesting and based on skill, is to re-roll the confirmation of 3d or 4d, so the bell curve hits the range of abilities where it has a good range.
etc.