Variation on Game Mechanics: Dice Pool

[Trebuchet]

That's the kind of thing I'm really going for, actually. I like the gamist aspect of it. I expect the players to manipulate the pool in potentially imbalancing ways, but I also expect them to have fun with it.

Have you considered some way for the players to lose dice from this system (Villain having Luck of his own or heroes acting unheroically?

[Hugh Neilson]

ne way to even things out a bit that might make it fair to all players, is to limit the number of dips per Turn to the number of dice of Luck they individually bought. That way, everyone who only bought 2d6 can dip in twice a turn, but the guy who bought 6d6 can dip in 6 times. He paid for more luck after all, and he should be able to use it more often than the others.

That seems like a very fair approach. Let each character have a base 1/turn kick at the dice pool, plus 1 per die of luck purchased. Perhaps you can also say the limit is 1 kick at the pool per phase, unless your Luck dice exceed your SPD, in which case you can have [luck +1]/SPD uses per phase, rounded up.

[devlin1]

Have you considered some way for the players to lose dice from this system (Villain having Luck of his own or heroes acting unheroically?

Well, I had the idea that if the players wanted to add or subtract damage, as appropriate, using the pool dice, they could do that, but it'd mean permanently removing those dice from the pool. But I like the idea of removing dice as a penalty or via the actions of a powerful NPC, too.

All in all, a lot of really good ideas so far. I'm going to go see King Kong now, but in the next day or two I'll post a revised mechanic that takes advantage of all this great feedback.

[prestidigitator]

I think this is an awesome idea. I would suggest two minor modifications:

1.) Instead of giving a character with Luck his/her own individual pool, have Luck Buckets. Every character contributes one die to the Luck 0 bucket, every character with a Luck of 1 or higher contributes a die to the Luck 1 bucket, every character with a Luck of 2 or higher contributes a die to the Luck 2 bucket, etc. A character can only use dice from buckets numbered less than or equal to their Luck rating (so a Luck 2 character can use buckets 0, 1 and 2, but not bucket 3). At any time a character accesses the buckets, (s)he may also swap two dice between any of the buckets to which (s)he has access (e.g. I swap a rolled 2 for a bucket-die of 4; my Luck is 3 so I may now swap a die in bucket 3 with a die in bucket 0 so my less lucky teammate can use it later).

2.) Instead of completely removing a die (which penalizes the entire team) from the pool if it is used for various purposes (e.g. adding dice to damage), simply reduce that character's Luck by one for a like duration (don't change the buckets; this would only affect which buckets the character can access, etc.). This may result in a negative Luck, which should reduce the frequency at which the character can access the buckets (maybe a character with -x Luck can only use the buckets every x+1 Turn/Phases, for example; a character with -1 Luck could only access the Luck 0 bucket every 2 Turn/Phases instead of every Turn/Phase). Refresh the character's Luck at the same rate you would have returned dice to the pool.

[devlin1]

I think this is an awesome idea. I would suggest two minor modifications:

1.) Instead of giving a character with Luck his/her own individual pool, have Luck Buckets. Every character contributes one die to the Luck 0 bucket, every character with a Luck of 1 or higher contributes a die to the Luck 1 bucket, every character with a Luck of 2 or higher contributes a die to the Luck 2 bucket, etc. A character can only use dice from buckets numbered less than or equal to their Luck rating (so a Luck 2 character can use buckets 0, 1 and 2, but not bucket 3). At any time a character accesses the buckets, (s)he may also swap two dice between any of the buckets to which (s)he has access (e.g. I swap a rolled 2 for a bucket-die of 4; my Luck is 3 so I may now swap a die in bucket 3 with a die in bucket 0 so my less lucky teammate can use it later).

This is a logical and interesting alternative, although from what I saw of the Yin-Yang Dice in practice, it would've overly complicated things with my players. Granted, almost all of them were HERO neophytes, and my somewhat simpler version slowed things down a bit. I'm sure a more experienced group wouldn't have a problem with this variation.

2.) Instead of completely removing a die (which penalizes the entire team) from the pool if it is used for various purposes (e.g. adding dice to damage), simply reduce that character's Luck by one for a like duration (don't change the buckets; this would only affect which buckets the character can access, etc.). This may result in a negative Luck, which should reduce the frequency at which the character can access the buckets (maybe a character with -x Luck can only use the buckets every x+1 Turn/Phases, for example; a character with -1 Luck could only access the Luck 0 bucket every 2 Turn/Phases instead of every Turn/Phase). Refresh the character's Luck at the same rate you would have returned dice to the pool.

Actually, penalizing the entire team by removing dice is exactly what I had in mind. Yes, you can take a die out and survive that attack-- but it means fewer resources for everyone if you do so. That's one of the advantages of having Luck: you have your own pool of dice that no one else can take. Theoretically, by having enough life-threatening situations and by giving out enough Yang Points (qv), things would balance out nicely. Unfortunately, in my one-shot I was too preoccupied with other things to include either.

For a bit on how this ended up working out in the game, see my other post.

And thanks for the feedback!