Dice mechanic

[womble]

In a fit of general ennui with the shortcomings of various RPG systems, I was undertaking one of my periodic tinkerings with a homebrew rule set. Then I meandered back into thinking about using Hero. The one thing that makes me wince, though, is the "roll low" dice mechanic. I very much prefer the "roll and add; get a high number" way of doing things; it just seems more intuitive that "higher is better". It doesn't seem too taxing to translate "fixed" dice rolls into their inverse (8- becomes 13+, 11- goes to 10+ etc) and just add the stat/5 or CV as a modifier to a roll. I'm leaning towards giving everything a "target number" of 10 and applying difficulty modifiers to the total rolled, with higher margins of success, as usual, providing greater effect as appropriate. The roles of the rolls of 3 and 18 would, of course, be reversed.

 

Has anyone else taken this approach? It seems to me that introducing a bunch of new players to the Joy of Hero, as I'm going to have to, would be assisted, if only in a minor way, by this change. Is there any statistical reason not to do it this way (I don't think there is)? Does the dice mechanic have any thematic or "feel" benefits (other than simple familiarity and nostalgia) for you that would be lost with "roll and add"?

[Hyper-Man]

I'm not sure but it seems like some of the optional 'critical success' rules don't work so well in a roll over system.

 

They usually work like a Limbo dance.

 

[Scott Baker]

There are a lot of threads about this topic. Try searching on google using:

     site:herogames.com roll high versus roll low

 

I seem to remember there's a thread that went into the math quite a bit, but don't ask me which one(s).

 

Non-statistical reasons to not do this:

• Now you have to translate everything in every book, so it makes it much harder for players to just look something up (even if you can do it yourself). If you're teaching the system to new players, this isn't just a simple house rule.
• Hero Designer doesn't work this way (shameless plug for Hero Designer--no I didn't write it and get no financial gain from it)

[Lucius]

 

I'm not sure what you mean by a statistical reason.

 

I have not had much difficulty teaching anyone to low roll for success. In my experience people don't have a problem with that but do have an issue with the character creation.

 

Something to bear in mind is that Hero success rolls are built around a bell curve in a way that D&D for example is not. If my chance to succeed is 8 or less that "looks like" about a 40% chance but is closer to 25%.If it's 12 or less, that looks like only 60% but is actually closer to 75%. If you will only fail on an 18, that's not a 5% chance of failure, it's not a 1% chance of failure, it is less than one half of one percent chance to fail.

 

Another result of this is that bonuses and penalties, whether from Skill Levels, circumstances, or what have you, count for a lot if you're near the middle of the bell curve but much less if you're towards the extremes.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary predicts the mathematicians will be here soon enough.

[Hugh Neilson]

it just seems more intuitive that "higher is better". It doesn't seem too taxing to translate "fixed" dice rolls into their inverse

I found the close proximity of the bolded items entertaining. Ask a fellow filling out his tax return how intuitive "higher is always better" is.

 

Or ask a golfer. Or a runner, swimmer, speed skater, etc. Of course, the lowest non-zero whole number is 1 - no one ever wants to be in first place, as a higher number is intuitively better, right?

 

Has anyone else taken this approach? It seems to me that introducing a bunch of new players to the Joy of Hero, as I'm going to have to, would be assisted, if only in a minor way, by this change. Is there any statistical reason not to do it this way (I don't think there is)? Does the dice mechanic have any thematic or "feel" benefits (other than simple familiarity and nostalgia) for you that would be lost with "roll and add"?

I think a lot of people have tried this approach, some loving it, others not. "Rolling half" is not practical, so any such subsystem needs to be revisited. Scott Baker's and Lucius' comment that it makes the rules tough to read is dead on accurate. So are the comments on the bell curve, but that exists with Roll High or Roll Low.

 

Can't find the older threads on a quick search, but the probabilities work out the same. Scott's search from Google pulls up lots of old threads on this topic.

[Scott Baker]

I think a lot of people have tried this approach, some loving it, others not. "Rolling half" is not practical, so any such subsystem needs to be revisited. Lucius' comment that it makes the rules tough to read is dead on accurate. So are his comments on the bell curve, but that exists with Roll High or Roll Low.

Or my comment.

[Agent333]

Womble, I've played Hero the way you describe for over a decade now. The idea is "Beat Ten" with your 3D6 roll and modifier derived from your skill number. Your modifier is simply your skill roll minus eleven [8- becomes -3 modifier, 11- becomes +0 modifier, 13- becomes +2 modifier, etc]. Critical rolls are made on natural 16, 17, or 18 and only with skills with +0 or higher level. If the skill is performed under difficult circumstances, I usually just subtract the negative modifier from the dice roll and skill bonus total. [player rolls 11, +2 for skill, -3 for difficult circumstance = 10, a barely failed attempt]

 

In combat, I usually go with Attacker's OCV +3D6 > Defender's DCV +10. It's quick and easy to introduce to new players and it doesn't change the basic math in any way. I still allow crits on natural 16,17, or 18 and critical hits do full damage rather than double of what is rolled.

 

I like to keep low rolls in the case of Disadvantages. Example: an Enraged roll might have 11- to activate, but I will usually reverse the recovery roll to an inverted bonus, going from 11- to recover into +0 roll to recover.

 

I like this method and it's served me well. YMMV

[Doc Democracy]

This is a pretty old, mature (in the age sense) discussion board and most things have been mooted and chewed over with many of them resolved to the way it is done. There are however renegades and individuals that insist on doing things differently. Both they and everyone else will tell you how you can go about doing it that way and why most of the folk on the boards tend not to.

 

That doesn't mean most of them think you are doing it wrong, just doing it strange. :-)

 

I think, if introducing others is the key feature of the change, that you also need to think a lot about character sheets. Re-skinning the fame is a big deal and, as part of that, you can make it look pretty much like a D20 game. I ran a game, low powered, that I presented to the players in custom designed character sheets, all rolls succeeded if, after modifications, they exceeded 10. All the skills were presented as pluses to the roll, all difficulties as negatives. It ran well, and some of them never really recognised it as HERO as I changed the names of stats etc to reflect the flavour of the background.

[Lucius]

Scott Baker's and Lucius' comment that it makes the rules tough to read is dead on accurate. So are the comments on the bell curve, but that exists with Roll High or Roll Low.

 

 

Or my comment.

 

It's an excellent point, and I only wish I had made it.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Rolling low to get to the other side of the palindromedary

[womble]

I think, if introducing others is the key feature of the change, that you also need to think a lot about character sheets. Re-skinning the fame is a big deal and, as part of that, you can make it look pretty much like a D20 game. I ran a game, low powered, that I presented to the players in custom designed character sheets, all rolls succeeded if, after modifications, they exceeded 10. All the skills were presented as pluses to the roll, all difficulties as negatives. It ran well, and some of them never really recognised it as HERO as I changed the names of stats etc to reflect the flavour of the background.

Aye. At least ab initio I'll be doing most of the heavy lifting, and having the character sheets reflect the dice-plus-modifiers system would be part of the project. As has been said, it's the character generation that's probably the most intimidating part of the process of introducing new folk to the fold, and many of the "11-" flat chances are set (potentially for the lifetime of the character) at that stage, so I can gloss them out of ever existing.

 

I found the close proximity of the bolded items entertaining.

There's a big difference between a task to be done and a constant nagging jarr.

 

Or ask a golfer. Or a runner, swimmer, speed skater, etc. Of course, the lowest non-zero whole number is 1 - no one ever wants to be in first place, as a higher number is intuitively better, right?

Or keep the context? Damage is "high-is-good" (both in total and in 6s scoring you Body damage); positive modifiers are good (and the higher the better); high stats or high numbers of dice are better. In the context of the game.

 

 

"Rolling half" is not practical...

Pardon the brainfart on my behalf, but what's this referring to? I know that there are states in which characters are at "half DCV" (or the like), but isn't that the CV (or whatever) modifier that's halved, rather than any roll?

 

 

...the probabilities work out the same. Scott's search from Google pulls up lots of old threads on this topic.

Thought so. Thanks for confirming.

[zslane]

I personally don't see any value in going to all that trouble just to install a "higher is better" meme. But I come from the perspective of someone who played the Hero System, as written, on and off for over 30 years, and so just about everything about the game system as written feels right and proper to me.

[Lucius]

Non-statistical reasons to not do this:

• Now you have to translate everything in every book, so it makes it much harder for players to just look something up (even if you can do it yourself). If you're teaching the system to new players, this isn't just a simple house rule.
• Hero Designer doesn't work this way (shameless plug for Hero Designer--no I didn't write it and get no financial gain from it)

 

I didn't make these two excellent points, but I will elaborate on them. But first, I acknowledge this great post from an intelligent Agent: 

 

Womble, I've played Hero the way you describe for over a decade now. The idea is "Beat Ten" with your 3D6 roll and modifier derived from your skill number. Your modifier is simply your skill roll minus eleven [8- becomes -3 modifier, 11- becomes +0 modifier, 13- becomes +2 modifier, etc]. Critical rolls are made on natural 16, 17, or 18 and only with skills with +0 or higher level. If the skill is performed under difficult circumstances, I usually just subtract the negative modifier from the dice roll and skill bonus total. [player rolls 11, +2 for skill, -3 for difficult circumstance = 10, a barely failed attempt]

 

In combat, I usually go with Attacker's OCV +3D6 > Defender's DCV +10. It's quick and easy to introduce to new players and it doesn't change the basic math in any way. I still allow crits on natural 16,17, or 18 and critical hits do full damage rather than double of what is rolled.

 

I like to keep low rolls in the case of Disadvantages. Example: an Enraged roll might have 11- to activate, but I will usually reverse the recovery roll to an inverted bonus, going from 11- to recover into +0 roll to recover.

 

I like this method and it's served me well. YMMV

 

That does look to me like it might work, BUT:

 

I think if your goal is to teach new people to play Hero, it creates worse issues than it solves. You create a lot of work for yourself, you render the entire Hero library from rulebooks to bestiaries unintelligible to your players, you probably make Hero Designer useless or have to do a lot of work to use it (you'd have to heavily manually modify all of your character sheets) etc.

 

And rolling low for task resolution has been around since 1st edition AD&D introduced thieves with percentile skills. It's not a difficult concept to grasp and I haven't known it to cause problems for gamers new to Hero.

edit: or in any of the other games that use it for that matter.

 

In other words, I think you're trading what is a small potential problem for a big guaranteed problem.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

A big guaranteed palindromedary tagline

[Doc Democracy]

Actually for a first time Champions campaigns he big thing that GMs don't do is spend enough time thinking through all the detail. To change the system will require that thought to be done. If the GM is also going to customise character sheets, even more thought.

 

I reckon all new GMs should be made to change something fundamental! :-)

[mhd]

Has anyone else taken this approach?

That's the way Fuzion did it (mostly because the other parent system already had a roll-high system). I prefer roll-high for margin-based systems, and that applies to HERO quite often (as opposed to e.g. GURPS or RuneQuest).

 

I introduced my current group to HERO using this as a house-rule, too. Works out well enough for us. Yes, it makes re-using some of the material a teeny bit harder, but that's a pretty minor factor compared to all the other stuff you have to adapt to, as HERO tends to be really tinted by campaign assumptions (if you're not playing a default Champions game).

 

HERO Designer can be a bit of a problem. You can just change the base of the roll from 9 to 0, so you'll get a "3-" and interpret that as a bonus. But that still means you'll end up with "8-" for familiarities… In the end, I let HD do its job as usual and then just postprocess the generated sheets (I do this via embedded JavaScript in HTML output).

 

Yes, the critical hit mechanic gets a bit weird. But to be honest, it's not like the HERO version of criticals is that great or important, and I mostly ignored it even before changing the roll. These days, we're using a different rule in combat where you get a weapon-specific effect if your margin of success is 5 or greater.

 

The players seem to like it and it didn't make things much more complicated for me as a GM. Some other changes to the skill system proved to be much more troublesome…

[Tasha]

That's the way Fuzion did it (mostly because the other parent system already had a roll-high system). I prefer roll-high for margin-based systems, and that applies to HERO quite often (as opposed to e.g. GURPS or RuneQuest).

 

I introduced my current group to HERO using this as a house-rule, too. Works out well enough for us. Yes, it makes re-using some of the material a teeny bit harder, but that's a pretty minor factor compared to all the other stuff you have to adapt to, as HERO tends to be really tinted by campaign assumptions (if you're not playing a default Champions game).

 

HERO Designer can be a bit of a problem. You can just change the base of the roll from 9 to 0, so you'll get a "3-" and interpret that as a bonus. But that still means you'll end up with "8-" for familiarities… In the end, I let HD do its job as usual and then just postprocess the generated sheets (I do this via embedded JavaScript in HTML output).

 

Yes, the critical hit mechanic gets a bit weird. But to be honest, it's not like the HERO version of criticals is that great or important, and I mostly ignored it even before changing the roll. These days, we're using a different rule in combat where you get a weapon-specific effect if your margin of success is 5 or greater.

 

The players seem to like it and it didn't make things much more complicated for me as a GM. Some other changes to the skill system proved to be much more troublesome…

 

A bit of editing of one of the Hero Designer Export Formats SHOULD be able to take care of most of the Roll Low stuff. (ie have the template subtract 11 from each of the rolls that appear on the CS). I keep meaning to do this for one of my Export Formats, but haven't had the time or motivation to do so.

 

I tend to like Roll high. Mostly because the current roll low system implies that skills better than 18- are the best you can get (ie it makes the system look very closed ended). In a roll high system you just show the die modifier and add to the roll. Which makes the system look way more open ended, and makes the idea of skill vs Skill contests easier to understand. It also tends to make nearly every system easier, mostly because people can add faster than they can subtract. (ie in Combat in Roll high the Player simply rolls and adds their Skill to the roll and that is the DCV they hit (DCV is the base including all modifiers +10) this is much faster than rolling low which makes the Player take the extra step of subtracting 11 from the sum of their roll and OCV or the GM Doing something similar.

 

The Crit rules are pretty much the only things that don't work in Roll high. I would probably say that any roll that succeeds by either 5 or 6 is a critical hit/success.

[Lucius]

I don't think I realized how many people were already using a roll high system.

 

I still don't see a big problem with rolling low, but if someone does have a problem with it, sounds like the alternative really works.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

This is a palindromedary tagline, because that's how I roll

[mhd]

It's more a preference than a problem, and as I've said, I'm perfectly fine with 3d6 roll under in GURPS…

 

Actually, I think the main benefit of changing the task resolution mechanism for my players wasn't about "roll high is always good", but unifying attack and skill rolls. Whether it's a skill target number of 15 when climbing a wall or a defence of 15 (10+ 5 DCV), it's all the same.

[Christopher R Taylor]

this came up in 6th edition discussions when Steve was writing it.  I'm ambivalent; changing it doesn't really make any positive difference, but neither does it harm the system any.  Its main bonus is that some people find the concept more comfortable and it makes the entire system "bigger is better" and the main drawback is changing everything that came before and rewiring your brain for every new character.  Its sort of a push, maybe a little on the negative side for designers/writers like me.  And if its not at least mostly positive, I say don't fix what ain't broke.

[Hugh Neilson]

Aye. At least ab initio I'll be doing most of the heavy lifting, and having the character sheets reflect the dice-plus-modifiers system would be part of the project. As has been said, it's the character generation that's probably the most intimidating part of the process of introducing new folk to the fold, and many of the "11-" flat chances are set (potentially for the lifetime of the character) at that stage, so I can gloss them out of ever existing.

Assuming the players eventually want to learn the system, they will have to "un-learn" Roll High for task resolution to learn the system they read, then "re-learn" it to apply it to your game.

 

Or keep the context? Damage is "high-is-good" (both in total and in 6s scoring you Body damage);

Even that is not always good. I may not be trying to kill my target, and Knockback puts distance between me and my target that he can exploit to facilitate an escape. Examples of RPG's where "roll low is good" were set out upthread. Basic RP (the engine behind Runequest and numerous other games) had roll low (%) for success and roll high for damage, to pick another example.

 

Pardon the brainfart on my behalf, but what's this referring to? I know that there are states in which characters are at "half DCV" (or the like), but isn't that the CV (or whatever) modifier that's halved, rather than any roll?

A number of critical success systems like to use making the roll by half as their margin. I`m not sure if anything is left in the official (or quasi-official) rules set.

 

Ultimately, I agree with a lot of the posters above - not a big deal either way, but then why rock the boat.

 

An advantage to roll low is that it clearly shows the mechanics differ from d20, and the bell curve is a significant difference - you don`t need a +5 bonus to significantly change the odds of success when rolling 3d6.

[Hyper-Man]

Here's an example of rolling half that is in the core rules.

 

from 6e1 page 112:
 

Effects Of Danger Sense
Normally, Danger Sense just gives a character the “feeling” of being in danger; it doesn’t tell him exactly what danger he’s exposed to or exactly where it’s located. If he reacts, he’s allowed his full DCV against an attack (and may, if he wishes, Abort to a defensive Action such as Dodge). If he rolls less than or equal to half his Danger Sense roll, he can ascertain the true position and type of danger well enough to launch an attack at full OCV.

 

[Arcangle]

There's something about rolling three 6's that makes me think AWESOME, and rolling three 1's that makes me cringe. My first game of Champions was in the mid-80's, and I still can't get change that feeling.

[LouGoncey]

This really falls into "whatever floats you boat."

 

I don't see the need to roll high on skills because Hero Designer gives you the skill numbers as #- already.

 

But I have used 3D6+OCV vs 10+DCV for combat since the beginning because that just makes sense to me and my players...

[Hugh Neilson]

There's something about rolling three 6's that makes me think AWESOME, and rolling three 1's that makes me cringe. My first game of Champions was in the mid-80's, and I still can't get change that feeling.

This is where it really falls into personal feel. If one's only RP experience is d20, the mind may be trained to "higher is better in RPG's". However " 6's- YAY" seems like "rolled stats learned experience", so if you always used point buy (from D&D 3e and up), I don't know that you'd ever get that same feeling.

 

I started playing Hero in high school/early university, and my group had played a lot of other games (mainly 1e AD&D, some Chaosium Basic Role Playing games, a few others I've likely forgotten) and owned/read a lot more, with a wide variety of mechanics, so roll low or roll high weren't nearly as ingrained.

[Wardsman]

This really falls into "whatever floats you boat."

 

I don't see the need to roll high on skills because Hero Designer gives you the skill numbers as #- already.

 

But I have used 3D6+OCV vs 10+DCV for combat since the beginning because that just makes sense to me and my players...

I don't get the problem. RQ is roll less. WoD is dice pool that you roll under. Every game does different.

Deadlands you play poker. 

 

Other than D&D who uses roll high?

[Tasha]

I don't get the problem. RQ is roll less. WoD is dice pool that you roll under. Every game does different.

Deadlands you play poker. 

 

Other than D&D who uses roll high?

Savage Worlds, Fate, the Gajillion games that are clones of or use a version fo the D&D rules, Numenera (AKA Cypher System), Cortex, Traveller (all versions), FFG Star Wars, FFG Warhammer 40k RPGs, Ars Magica, Shadowrun, Fuzion, Pretty much every other system ex Hero and GURPS.  Also the original World of Darkness is Roll high on both dice and number of successes to succeed.