FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

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OgreBattle
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FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

Post by OgreBattle »

In the FFG Star Wars RPG you combine your attribute+skill scores to determine what dice you roll, but instead of just getting more dice to roll you take the smaller number of the two and turn that many d8's into d12's.

So with [Attribute3 Skill1] or [Attribute3 Skill1] you roll 3 dice, with 1 of them being upgraded so 2d8+1d12 total.

Now the FFG Star Wars dice have funky symbols on them to give you success/advantage/triumphs and I'm going to ignore that in favor of regular numbered dice, I'm just intrigued by the idea of having a pool of dice and some number of them being upgraded.

Is this method of dice rolling/upgrades an idea worth exploring for a Fantasy Heartbreaker?
A hypothetical system being...

* You roll d6's with a TN of 5+
* Depending on your attribute/skill rating some of those d6's are turned into D8's with same TN of 5+

Or

* You roll d6's with a TN of 5+
* Depending on your attribute/skill rating some of those d6's have their TN dropped to 4+

The obvious thing in this system vs one where you roll more dice is that the [Attribute5 Skill5] guy gets more successes on average than the [Attribute5 Skill1] guy, but both of them can only get 5 successes max. That seems to be good for a setting where you want to keep people from falling off the RNG to one another. Where it gets muddled is quickly calculating if rolling an extra die or upgrading a die is better.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Fri Sep 16, 2016 9:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

Do note that in FFG star wars upgraded dice have a different set of symbols from the unupgraded dice, so it's more complicated than just turning d8 into d12. For example, only upgraded dice have the critical success symbol
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Post by spongeknight »

If you like your players (and GMs) not knowing the chances of their success on any die roll, go ahead.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Longes wrote:Do note that in FFG star wars upgraded dice have a different set of symbols from the unupgraded dice, so it's more complicated than just turning d8 into d12. For example, only upgraded dice have the critical success symbol
Yeah, that's the complicated part I'd cut out and just do TN's where a success is a success and not split between success/triumph/advantage.
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Post by momothefiddler »

The interchangeable nature of Attributes and Skills seems like it'd be problematic there, at least if you had Attributes/Skills remotely resembling D&D or many fantasy heartbreakers. If one is cheaper than the other/easier to get higher/whatever, but it doesn't matter which one is higher, then there's a right choice and a wrong choice betwenn 2/4 and 4/2. Not an inherent flaw, just something to keep in mind. (Also, "Attributes are more expensive, but they affect more rolls" sure but then you have to be careful or generalizing is the wrong choice, and you should just stack the one skill and find ways to only roll that one skill, etc).

Anyway!
* You roll d6's with a TN of 5+
* Depending on your attribute/skill rating some of those d6's are turned into D8's with same TN of 5+
So your default die has a success rate of 1/3, while your upgraded dice have a success rate of 1/2. This means raising the higher of the two numbers grants you 1/3 of a success and increases your cap by one, while raising the lower grants you 1/6 of a success and leaves your cap where it is. The correct choice, barring differing costs, is to max out your high number first and only then bother with the low one. Even with different costs, that's the correct choice unless the high number is more than twice as expensive as the low one, at which point it becomes a tradeoff depending on whether you care more about potential (increased cap per dollar) or consistency (increased successes within cap per dollar).
* You roll d6's with a TN of 5+
* Depending on your attribute/skill rating some of those d6's have their TN dropped to 4+
Does this make you roll two sets of d6s and keep them separately while counting the 5s and 6s on one group and the 4s, 5s, and 6s on the other? Because don't do that.
Alternatively, does this let you count 4s as hits up to the low number? (That is, if I rolled 1,3,4,4,5,6 and my skill rating is 1, that's 3 hits because one of the 4s counts). That's more elegant, but it ends up being... well, not very powerful. It varies based on the size of your pool compared to your rating, though - going from 1/0 to 1/1 gives you the 1/6 increase from above, but going from 2/0 to 2/1 gives you 11/36 of a success while going from 2/1 to 2/2 gives you 1/36. I'm cautiously positive about this idea, but it very much has trap options.
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Post by Longes »

momothefiddler wrote:The interchangeable nature of Attributes and Skills seems like it'd be problematic there, at least if you had Attributes/Skills remotely resembling D&D or many fantasy heartbreakers. If one is cheaper than the other/easier to get higher/whatever, but it doesn't matter which one is higher, then there's a right choice and a wrong choice betwenn 2/4 and 4/2. Not an inherent flaw, just something to keep in mind. (Also, "Attributes are more expensive, but they affect more rolls" sure but then you have to be careful or generalizing is the wrong choice, and you should just stack the one skill and find ways to only roll that one skill, etc).
FFG SW addresses the problem by not letting you buy attributes after chargen*. What you start with is what you are stuck with.

*there are ways to increase attributes post-chargen, but they are rare and expensive
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Re: FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

Post by Chamomile »

FFG's Star Wars dice don't accomplish anything that a regular old dicepool system couldn't do. Not a dicepool with different shaped dice like you're proposing here, but just a standard Shadowrun pile of six-siders. It's a failed experiment that they shipped anyway, probably to sell the dice.
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Post by Ghremdal »

Can't you just have a normal dicepool of skill and allow up to attribute rerolls? With exploding 6's or something?

Wouldn't that be mathematically the same without all the crazyness and special dice? I know next to nothing about FFG mechanics but from what you posted that looks like the case.
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Re: FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

Post by TheFlatline »

Chamomile wrote:FFG's Star Wars dice don't accomplish anything that a regular old dicepool system couldn't do. Not a dicepool with different shaped dice like you're proposing here, but just a standard Shadowrun pile of six-siders. It's a failed experiment that they shipped anyway, probably to sell the dice.
It was an attempt to simplify the useful but incredibly overly-complicated Warhammer Fantasy RPG dice system. It managed to both fail at being useful and fail at reducing the level of complication all that much.
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Re: FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

Post by Tycho »

Chamomile wrote:FFG's Star Wars dice don't accomplish anything that a regular old dicepool system couldn't do. Not a dicepool with different shaped dice like you're proposing here, but just a standard Shadowrun pile of six-siders. It's a failed experiment that they shipped anyway, probably to sell the dice.
Please provide the your only d6 System which can provide the following possible results for a test:
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
The custom Dice of the Star Wars System are one of the greatest asset of the game.
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Post by Ghremdal »

What the fuck do those even mean?

How the fuck do you get a additional scalable success on a stealth check, or to balance on a beam? What does it even mean? What is a critical success to balance or jump?*

*I don't know if those skills exist, I'm just using them as examples.
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Post by shlominus »

that's not really a discussion i'd enjoy getting into (cause in the end the ffg-system is a matter of taste, which is something a lot of denners have a hard time getting), but i can provide the answers from the rulebook. should spark some "fun".

both coordination and stealth would gain the mechanical benefit of faster completion of the attempted task, depending on the success of the roll.

a crit on coordination provides a narrative bonus "instead of walking across the rope acorss a chasm, the character could cut the rope, swing across, and in doing so deny anyone the ability to follow him", a crit on stealth could be interpreted as "a way to completely distract the opponent for the duration of the scene. this could allow the character to drop all pretense of stealth in favor of completing a task far more swiftly."

as you can see, it's all pretty vague. these are not set results, they are suggestions of how to interpret the roll. this is a result of the system trying to include both narrative and mechanical elements in a single roll. this takes some getting used to for a lot of poeple and if you don't like the idea, you won't like the system. even if you like the idea, the system might still be too cluncky. i think it's a step into an interesting direction.

it works well with some skills and hardly at all with others, as one would expect.

but here's the thing: there's nothing to keep you from simply ignoring the narrative aspects during the game if you want to. you can use the rolls for their purely mechanical effect only. they are supposed to be used as a tool to help players to include narrative effects.

in my groups i use the following rule of thumb:
if you can't come up with a narrative effect based on your roll on the spot (or simply don't want to) that aspect is simply ignored and the game moves on.

if you try to explain every advantage you roll then the game breaks.
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Post by Username17 »

Critical success and scalable positive effect with success are not actually different things. In both cases, Mr. Cavern is tasked with making up "something good" that happens in addition to succeeding. And in both cases that imagination space might be very open (the players are "looking for information" and the MC can always just disgorge more exposition) or very constrained (the players are "escaping an explosion" and it's not super clear how you might take less than no damage out of the deal). But in either case what you get is "whatever the MC makes up on short notice," so there's no particular difference between different levels of positive side effects, critical or otherwise.

Basically, to use a TGDism, it is Bears. All of the levels of nominally "scalable" negative effects or critical failure or whatever the fuck are all collectively just Bears. You get two points of negative effect: Bears. You get Critical Failure: Bears. You get 4 points of negative effect and Critical Failure: Bears. It's all the same, because the output is always just "Bears." It's the first negative or positive thing off the top of Mr. Cavern's head as appropriate whenever the dice give any negative or positive result of any value. There's no difference between any of this shit, so all the different symbols are just so much clutter.

But honestly, if you for some reason actually did want all these nominally different results, a six sided die has six sides on it. You could have the MC stroke his chin sagely and say "well, that's a lot of fives you got there" and use that as inspiration to make something up. That wouldn't be different from what Edge of Empire is doing now, but it sure would be a lot easier to get and track the dice you were using on each roll.

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Re: FFG's Star Wars and their funky attribute+skill dice

Post by momothefiddler »

Tycho wrote: Please provide the your only d6 System which can provide the following possible results for a test:
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Failure with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable negative Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
  • scalable Success with additional scalable positive Effects and Critical Failure and Critical Success
Congratulations on your ability to enumerate the possible combinations on four binary switches.

Uh, sure. Here goes:
[*]Failure/Success is determined by number of hits (d6 pool, hit on 4+). Margin of failure or success scales. Whatever
[*]Additional effects (apparently these can't be both positive and negative or you'd have thirty-two lines instead of sixteen) based on whether you have more 2s/3s or 4s/5s. Ties are positive, whatever. Scales by total number of whichever wins.
[*]Critical Failure occurs if you have more 1s than 2s/3s.
[*]Critical Success occurs if you have more 6s than 4s/5s.

(Keep in mind I'm not claiming this is a good system, just one that satisfies all the fancy benefits of the SW dice. Of note, you Critically Succeed less often as you get more skilled. That's part of my specific implementation. You can also have a really large-scale Success and bonus large-scale positive effects at the same time you Critically Fail. That's a requested feature.)
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Post by Chamomile »

In addition to the challenge already having been met (and trivially so), I'd like to point out that attempting to meet that challenge results in a system that sucks for the same reason the FFG dice system sucks: It results in a much more complicated dice system and its biggest result is to make the GM's job significantly harder by requiring them to constantly come up with new side benefits/drawbacks, oftentimes several per roll, with several rolls per scene. Having potential additional effects on every single roll is only an impediment to using the system. Having failure, success, and critical failure/success, meanwhile, is a feature of virtually every dice system ever made.
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Post by Lokathor »

FrankTrollman wrote:Critical success and scalable positive effect with success are not actually different things.
Oh, I'm sure we'd like to live in a world where this is true, but this is not the world that FFG has made for us. You see, each skill has different effects for Success/Failure, Advantage/Disadvantage, Triumph, and Despair. And the thing is, effects off of one list can't be purchased with currency from another list unless it explicitly says so.

Also note how I listed Triumph and Despair separately instead of as a pairing like the other two. They don't get canceled when you go to compute your total, not even by each other, so you can have both a Triumph effect and a Despair effect go off on the same action. Or a Triumph despite not getting any successes or advantages at all. Or just any sort of thing.

It's totally bonkers, and it's only borderline acceptable even if everyone is onboard with the fact that it's a bonkers shitshow from the start.
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Post by shlominus »

i wonder what they were smoking when they decided that triumph and despair shouldn't cancel each other.
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Post by Pixels »

Also, some of the predefined triumph effects are totally bonkers. I personally like Coercion:
Edge of the Empire, page 106 wrote:With (triumph), the character may completely break the subject's willpower. The target's allegiance shifts to that of a subjugated ally of the acting character rather than an opponent. The newfound follower may be exploited to gain additional information, assets, or even a spy within the ranks of a former foe.
Keep in mind that your triumphs are based solely on your dice and cannot be negated by your opponent's despairs, so a 6 yellow Coercion check will do this 40% of the time to everybody and anybody. Destroy the Emperor's resolve with a few carefully chosen insults. Make Darth Vader kneel. Take over the Hutts one slug at a time. Then pour the rest of your xp into being invulnerable, because the math around soak is poorly balanced and can render you impossible to kill short of nuking you from orbit.

I honestly think Edge of the Empire is the worst game system that I've been convinced to actually sit down and play. A non-trivial part of that is the needlessly complex dice that have outputs that range from the completely undefined to the lunatic. It's fine to salvage from the wreckage, but you should ask yourself what exactly you want to accomplish, and then ask if the additional complexity is worth the result.
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Post by Tycho »

Well it is a narrative system, you can also use a Triumph to upgrade the next dice-roll, if it does not fit your campaign that Darth Vader switches sides...

also Darth Vader kinda switched sides in the movies... sooo
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Being a narrative game is not an excuse for screwy mechanics here (as opposed to pretty much everywhere else), especially if they're used to sell funny dice.
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Post by Username17 »

Narrative in this case just means "there are bears."

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