Question - can dice be required on low-risk moves?

[beetle496]

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

My example absolutely DOES include the speed dice, specifically at speed 4.

Please accept my apologies for missing that! Also, I had it my head that yellow dice were 50/50 on maneuver rolls, but it it only 2/6.

What do you (and others) think of letting players have the option to pay two control before they roll to knock the maneuver down by one? (The idea, of course, being to convert a D1 to a no-roll, and avoid the speed dice.) It seems to me that would smooth out some of the discontinuity between two similar situations being either zero or many dice.

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

My rationalization for why there's such a big difference between a slight turn and a D1 is that this is a game…

The other thing which only recently occurred to me is that the 6e slight turn is the spiritual successor to the OG D0 “Evening-Out” maneuver. You even said as much with your first post to this thread, but I had not made that connection.

[Sam Mitschke]

What do you (and others) think of letting players have the option to pay two control before they roll to knock the maneuver down by one?

I mean, that's a fundamental change to how maneuvering works and therefore *I* wouldn't do it...but I've also repeatedly said that I want players to play with their game, so if this adds fun for you, try it out!

[Jumpster]

Great thread - it pointed out something I was missing from the rules.

To be clear: the rules say that you "can" roll blue dice for hazards even if there is no maneuver. I assume this actually means you "must" roll dice?

When you go out of control going straight and have excess shields, what happens to them? Tire damage?

[beetle496]

Does a Slide maneuver require a yellow speed dice control roll? We were not doing that, and some of my sense of a discontinuity comes from that mistake. I missed that from my earlier reading, and I do not see that explicit even with Sam’s (1)-(5) rewrite.

Originally Posted by Jumpster

…the rules say that you "can" roll blue dice for hazards even if there is no maneuver.

Where is that line exactly? I feel like some context is missing.

When you go out of control going straight and have excess shields, what happens to them? Tire damage?

See p. 14 Out of Control: “Sometimes a player is required to pay control when they have none available.” Yes, the next sentence says to take tire damage.

[Sam Mitschke]

p13, second paragraph, under Maneuvers:

When making a maneuver, dice are added to the driving roll. The player adds [yellow dice] equal to their speed, plus any additional dice required by the difficulty of that particular maneuver. Note that terrain and hazards may add even more dice to the driving roll.

The slide is a maneuver, but it's a D0 maneuver, so it only adds yellow dice for your speed — the difficulty does not add more. Terrain and hazards still may add more dice.

…the rules say that you "can" roll blue dice for hazards even if there is no maneuver.

I'm not sure where this language is, either. The rules say you must add any dice required by hazards to your driving roll (p12, under DRIVE) . . . but that won't always be blue dice. Terrain is the only thing that is ALWAYS blue dice. Technically, hazards CAN be blue dice, but it will sometimes NOT be blue dice. You do not have the option to ignore terrain/hazard effects unless you have equipment that says you are able to do so.

[Jumpster]

I figured out the source of my confusion in this thread and the RAW. Part of it is just because I'm usually on forums with my phone and away from the rulebook so there's that.

From the rules, some people read all the rules and learn them, and other people - like me - skim the rules and try to use them as a reference during the first few plays. Two things threw me off here.

1: The terrain rules are partially in the Movement section, but also in the Arena Setup section of the rules. I missed that part in the Arena Setup section and was going crazy to find out what the # of blue dice for terrain levels was supposed to be - it doesn't seem to be listed or repeated anywhere else. When we added terrain rules to the game - it took me a while to find in the rulebook. In any future printings, I would recommend repeating the basic terrain information in the movement section and quick reference sheets.

2: At the beginning of the "Low Risk Moves" section, the RAW states "Players do not roll dice or take <Ace Tokens> for low-risk moves." Given the skim then flip mechanism of reading the rules, this is very misleading if not just wrong. Easy fix would be "Players do not roll maneuver dice for low-risk moves" if there was a need to keep the word count down for pagination/etc, or just be more wordy ("but still roll <blue dice> based on terrain"

As for why I thought it might be optional - that was the phone and lack of rulebook access and this quote :D (my bad)

Originally Posted by PresidentTwoeagles

But you can roll for either terrain or hazards if those are applicable.

[Sam Mitschke]

You are correct about the poor wording of the low-risk moves section, and I plan to fix that if we reprint the rulebook in the future. Regarding the less-than-helpful layout of the book, I agree. The info is there, but much of it is not laid out the way I wrote it, and many of my cross-references were omitted. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[beetle496]

I had the same source of confusions as @Jumpster. I have not gone line-by-line through the the manual, and it might all be correct as written. Regardless, I was definitely conflating ‘driving roll’ with ‘maneuver roll’ (probably not actually a thing) and ‘maneuver dice’ with ‘speed dice’ (and neither of those term is technically correct, and this phrasing may be counter-productive).

@Sam_Mitschke even with your 1-5 rewrite earlier in this thread it is not explicit where the speed dice are added in! I am of the opinion that those instructions would benefit from a “step 0” which is something like: “Your driving roll is based on your speed.” Also, it could be clearer that driving straight and slight turns ‘negate the speed dice’ (again, probably not the best way to phrase the concept).

[Sam Mitschke]

@beetle496

3) Add any dice required by the difficulty of the maneuver you just completed. If your intended maneuver was shortened (by a collision, for example), only add dice for the difficulty of the maneuver you actually performed.

Note that driving straight and slight turns are not maneuvers, so they do not contribute to your driving roll.

Anything that isn't straight or a slight turn is a maneuver, and the dice required for a maneuver is always (yellow dice for speed)+(dice shown on turning key), so it's in step 3 — but I see how some folks might read this and only add the dice required by the turning key.

[beetle496]

@Sam_Mitschke — the “yellow dice for speed” is not actually explicitly included with the re-write you provided early in this thread. I have no doubt that detail is conveyed with your at-the-table instructions!

I do not see it in the Step 3 quote above, not the least because the excerpt starts with the work “add” and it is following a step which describes adding dice for hazard.

The note at the end of Step 3 hints at the concept, since it mentions “driving roll”, but if the speed dice are anywhere in your rewrite, I think it is meant to be implied just before Step 1 with “check the requirements for your driving roll.” But again, that the driving roll starts as being the yellow dice for speed, is the very thing that needs to be plainly spelled out.