Yin-Yang Dice (or The Continuation of That Alternate Dice Pool Mechanic Thing)

devlin1 · December 29, 2005

This is an update/report regarding a wacky little dice mechanic I mentioned in another thread. I tried it out for the first time last night, and it went pretty well. Since it was for a Wuxia HERO game, and because one of my players insisted I come up with a name appropriate to the genre, I've taken to calling

it Yin-Yang Dice.

A lot of Herophiles had great suggestions in that other thread. Here's what I ended up with.

YANG DICE

The Yang Dice are a pool of dice which can be used by the entire party in a few different ways. The initial number of Yang Dice is equal to the number of PCs in the party. For every 5 points of Luck a PC has, he gains a die in his Personal Yang Dice (PCs without Luck don't have Personal Yang Dice); Personal Yang Dice can only be used by the PC to which they belong.

The ways in which the Yang Dice can be used are as follows:

1. Once per Turn, anytime a player rolls dice for anything (attack rolls, damage rolls, skill rolls, etc.), he may exchange one of the dice he's rolled with one of the Yang Dice to obtain a more favorable result. E.g., if his attack roll of 6, 6, and 2 would miss, and the Yang Dice are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, he may swap one of his 6s for the 1, giving him a final attack roll of 6, 2, and 1, or 9, which hits (hopefully, anyway). The reverse could be done for damage by another player that Turn (i.e., trade a low damage die for a high Yang Die). Note that this can only take place once per Turn for each PC, which means a player is unable to get rid of a high attack die and then trade it for a high damage die.

2. Once per Turn, anytime a PC would take damage, his player can take one of the Yang Dice, roll it, and subtract that amount from the damage the PC would've taken. The type of damage, either BODY or STUN, is chosen by the player. However, once a Yang Die is used for this purpose, it is permanently

removed from the Yang Dice.

3. Once per Turn, anytime a PC would deal damage, his player can take one (or more) of the Yang Dice, roll it, and add that amount to the damage dealt. The type of damage is determined by the type of attack: STUN for Normal Attacks, BODY for Killing Attacks. However, once a Yang Die is used for this purpose, it is permanently removed from the Yang Dice.

4. A PC with Luck may use either his Personal Yang Dice or the party's Yang Dice at will, but if a die is used in a manner which removes it from the game, as in the two items above, he must use his Personal Yang Dice first. This replaces the standard version of Luck.

5. When a PC takes an action which the GM deems heroic, in character, or simply amusing to the group as a whole (or even attempts to, in some circumstances), the GM may award that PC a Yang Point. This happens on the spot, unlike Experience Points. For every five Yang Points a PC has accumulated, he may buy a Yang Die to be added either to his Personal Yang Dice or the party's Yang Dice. He may buy this Yang Die at any time, and it is immediately added to the appropriate pool. For example, if the 8 BODY damage a PC is about to take will kill him, and he has five Yang Points, he can buy a Personal Yang Die, roll it, subtract that amount from the damage he'd take, and remove the die from the game, all before any damage is taken.

6. If a PC commits actions which are out of character, the GM has the option of penalizing the player by taking away some or all of any previously awarded Yang Points or Yang Dice, by adding a Yin Die (see below), or by permanently raising the cost of a Yang Die for that player. If the entire party behaves this way, he may do the same to the party's Yang Dice. If the players continue to behave out of character or contrary to the genre, stop the game altogether. Something's wrong.

YIN DICE

The PCs aren't the only ones with fate on their side. Important NPCs receive the same benefits in the same manner: one Yin Die per important NPC, and one die per level of Luck. Rank-and-file mooks don't get to use the Yin Dice-- only the NPCs you expect/want to stick around. Yin Dice can be used as in Options 1-4, above.

HOW IT WENT

The short version: Very well. It wasn't terribly unbalancing and the players had fun with it.

The longer version: First of all, only one of my five players was experienced with the HERO System, so when it comes to testing just how abusive the Yin/Yang Dice can, this wasn't the ideal group. However, they're all experienced gamers able to min/max with the best of them, so I think that makes up for their ignorance of the rules.

Second, I used the Hit Location Table for Killing Attacks to determine the STUN Multiplier (normally I'd use a straight x3, but I wanted the extra flavor-- things were cut off from time to time), but because I was the one making the rolls, the Yang Dice couldn't be used to modify Hit Location. Not that it

mattered much: there were several Chest and Stomach hits, a few Vitals, two severed arms (both left), and a successful Called Shot to the neck.

On more than one occasion, a player would swap for Yang Dice early in the turn and visibly chafe for the chance to do it again for damage. To me, this meant that its availability was perfect: more than once per Turn and it'd lose its allure; less than that and it wouldn't have been as fun for them. Everyone appreciated the opportunity to succeed when it mattered most, and they used Yang Dice for everything from attack rolls to PER Checks (which really reveals these guys as true gamers: "If he's asking me to make a PER Roll, it must be important!"). It also helped that it was a skill-intensive genre. PCs were routinely rolling for Acrobatics, KSs, Fast Draw, etc., and the fear that failing any one of these could put them in a tight spot (or make the difference between leaping from a tree to a rooftop and falling 30 feet) had them using it pretty casually in the beginning and carefully considering the consequences of every use later on.

It was interesting to me to track the variations in the Yang Dice. At the start of the game, we had a nice range: 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. After that, it was all over the place. Sometimes it was all 6s and 1s; other times, 3s and 4s. It didn't prove to be the instant kingmaker I'd thought it might be, as there

were a few times when a player with a lousy roll found himself unable to improve his lot via the Yang Dice.

Only one PC had an Autofire attack, and that was only AF 2, so the instant killerness of AF attacks using Yang Dice wasn't fully tested. However, it's worth noting that there were times when that AF attack missed completely due to a preponderence of high Yang Dice (and Personal Yang Dice-- that PC had 10 points of Luck, but his dice were 4 and 5 for quite a while). Another PC used a Sweep maneuver (using a statue to take out a couple guys in one go), but the beauty part of that was that while each attack suffered a penalty, only one of them could benefit from the Yang Dice.

I had two NPCs that deserved Yin Dice-- Snake-Fist Lo and Shang Qung-Fa, his right-hand man-- and used one Yin Die to reduce damage to the former. Not that it mattered in the long run: Lo was a Chinese vampire and Desolidified when the going got tough, but the fact that I could use the Yin Dice to keep him alive heightened the drama for the players (at least, it seemed that way) and gave me a very "fair" way to keep him around for a little while longer.

If I could do it again, I'd power up the OCV and DCV of just about every enemy the PCs faced. Given the high-damage attacks and low defenses inherent in the genre, I did the sensible thing and made the average mook powerful enough to be a threat, but not enough of one to seriously injure the PCs on a regular basis. I realized later that making them stronger would've encouraged using the Yang Dice to reduce damage, thus making every remaining Yang Die that much more important.

Overall, a fun, gamist addition to the standard HERO System mechanics. It worked out very well and was especially fitting for the wuxia genre. Two thumbs up.

Thanks again to all who helped with suggestions!

Hugh Neilson · December 29, 2005