Mods to dice

[hcobb]

Protect your players from the three eyed snake by replacing every -4 DX modifier with an additional die to roll.

So mookgoblin is at -6 DX (from his DX 8) to hit your invisible PC? Replace this with -2 DX on four dice. This will greatly reduce his chance of getting a triple damage hit that kills the PC.

[JimmyPlenty]

I was thinking this in general as well.

I feel the detail of the "tweaks" (-1, +2, -1...etc) is good for the tactical combat area. But I feel the whole "roll an extra dice" thing gets lost if you start using +1 for this -2 for.

I'm pretty much for just adding or subtracting dice for difficulty only. If it doesn't justify a die, it is not strong enough of an bonus or penalty.

This might lead to players only doing outlandish things for ideas however.

[Skarg]

+/- 2 or even 1 can be a significant effect, especially for figures with lower adjDX. If you ignore effects such as injury (-2), side facing (+2), range out to 6 megahexes (-2), or standing on broken ground or bodies, or height advantage, you'd be essentially throwing out all those tactical elements of play.

[JimmyPlenty]

I was only specifically talking about anything outside of combat. Yeah, those matter for combat.

[Skarg]

As for Henry's original point, I think it makes most sense if combined with carefully-chosen auto-hit, double, triple, auto-miss, drop and break result numbers. It means that difficult conditions apply to the chances of random success or failure, not just to skillful attempts.

I'd probably convert -4 to +1 die, -7 to +2 dice, -11 to +3 dice, -14 to +4 dice...

[hcobb]

Note that double and triple damage chances go down a lot when dice are added on, but autohits remain a problem. (Auto hits are more likely when rolling 9 dice instead of 3 for example.)

A full fix would be:

1. Reduce heavy crossbows to 2d with other missile weapons reduced to fit. (Or drop crossbow damage at range much more sharply than bow reach.)
2. Double effectiveness of armor against missile weapons.
3. And apply mods to dice to limit the double and triple damage rolls.

Another thing that would help would be to advance auto-success at 2 points per die instead of three points.
3 dice rolling 5 or less: 4.63%
4 dice rolling 7 or less: 2.7%
5 dice rolling 9 or less: 1.62%
6 dice rolling 11 or less: 0.99%

And so on.

[Skarg]

I usually don't even allow auto-success on difficult rolls over 3 dice, with double damage raising by 2 per die, like:

4 dice: 4 triple, 5 double
5 dice: 5-6 triple, 7 double
6 dice: 6-8 triple, 9 double

And there's also the suggestion I posted on the other thread, where if someone rolls an auto-success or double/triple damage result but the number rolled is higher than their adjDX for the task, then I roll again to confirm that result at +4 (possibly more than once if they have a really low adjDX).

e.g. Clem has DX 9, and fires in conditions giving total -8 to hit, so adj DX 1. He rolls a 4 on 3 dice (double damage), but since 4 is greater than his adj DX, he has to roll to confirm it at DX +4, or 5. i.e. he needs to roll a 5 or less on the second roll to actually have hit, because his adj DX was crap and he really shouldn't have much chance of hitting.

[TippetsTX]

Speaking of dice mechanics, has anyone played around with the auto success/failure thresholds?

For example, how radically would the game change if you auto-succeed on a 3 or 4 rather than any roll 5 or less on 3 dice?

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Speaking of dice mechanics, has anyone played around with the auto success/failure thresholds?

For example, how radically would the game change if you auto-succeed on a 3 or 4 rather than any roll 5 or less on 3 dice?

Yes. One main thing I have noticed has been that my sense of what the "critical" results should be like varies with what's happening, and so the answer to what those chances should be seems to me should be based on the situation.

For example, I like to have a very low (or non-existant) chance for things I think should be less likely than the 4.6% that a 5 or less on 3d6 represents. So for these cases of wild shots at great range, or when someone's ignoring penalties and trying to get lucky with very low adj DX - that's where my "confirmation roll" suggestion came from.

For an example of the other sort, when there's something more like a blur spell or a roll to miss or unaimed shot that happens to go through the right hexes - it's a shot in the dark but the right hex is being attacked and the attacker can tell the target is standing in there somewhere, then I tend to like a higher chance of an auto-hit, and I think it can call for different mechanics if you want to represent it well. (I also often want a maximum adjDX to hit in such cases - i.e. these are all comptetent attacks but the knowledge of where the target is, is missing, so it's about whether the target happens to be where the attack goes or not.)

[hcobb]

If you do reduce auto-success at higher numbers of dice then you do away with the requirement for wizards to wear Stone Flesh to protect against auto-success. (Expert or Master parries will eliminate the chance of going down from a double or triple damage roll, so they just need to block ordinary success.)

Heroic fencers have to defend until they force a drop weapon, then follow this up with a shrewd stab when the enemy shows his back when kneeling to retrieve.