Im using a heavily houseruled version of Fantasy Age for my campaign about to kick off next week. You can think what you will about the system, Ive elected to give it a try regardless but I have run into an oddity in the rules regarding die rolls I would appreciate your opinion on.

Without a lot of unnecessary detail let me just explain that you must roll 3d6 equal to or more than a target number, typically above 10. If you succeed, one of the 3 dice (of a different color) is used to both determine degree of success (1 meaning you barely made it, 6 meaning you did it with style etc.) and also generate a number of stunt points you can use to further effect your action. (obviously more points is better than fewer points)

The oddity is that as the difficulty of your test increases, so does the number you have to roll. Now as that different colored die is included in the outcome it creates this wierd situation where the higher you need to roll to succeed, the more likely you are to succeed WELL and generate MORE stunt points. One would think that exactly the opposite would be true. If I am attempting an extremely difficult task, there is a far better chance I will barely make it that killing it.

In the RAW however, if for example you need to roll a 17 or higher, there is no way to 'barely make it' as the stunt die has to be at least a 5.

Ive considered two ways of addressing this... one to simply roll a fourth dice, three of one color for the task and an odd one by itself for degree of success etc. Or, to invert the result of that stunt die (use the opposite number than the one shown) such that the trend is reversed. (The higher you have to roll, the less likely you are to do it very well with lots of stunts etc.)

Anyone understand what the hell Im talking about?  Laugh

Thoughts?

I think I get what you are saying. I have never read or played the system, so I don't know how it works in play. What you describe sounds odd though.

I understand what you are saying. For harder tasks you will have to roll increasingly more 5s and 6s. The higher the number on the die face, the more spectacular your success. Ergo, you always succeed spectacularly at difficult tasks, whereas intuitively you'd think maybe more of those should have been just scraping by with your skin intact. Seems kind of weird to me. Are there no designer's notes explaining that this was on purpose (For some reason I don't understand) and not just bad design resulting from the creator wanting the dice gimmick included no matter whether it made sense?

I like your solution of a separate 4th die.

But I haven't played or read  (or even heard of) this game, so I am assuming what you described is how it works and  you are doing it right and it's the rules that are goofy.

Yes, Im doing it right, the rules are quiet simple and very explicit... and no, they dont include any designer's notes on why. Its the same system from Green Ronin and Dragon Age so its been around a while too. Kind of odd that it hasnt been complained about all over the place. Which is why Im wondering if it wasnt done on purpose. Surely a game designer wouldnt miss this. Its simply too east to just add another die to the roll.

Quote from: rgrove0172;1012027Yes, Im doing it right, the rules are quiet simple and very explicit... and no, they dont include any designer's notes on why. Its the same system from Green Ronin and Dragon Age so its been around a while too. Kind of odd that it hasnt been complained about all over the place. Which is why Im wondering if it wasnt done on purpose. Surely a game designer wouldnt miss this. Its simply too east to just add another die to the roll.

I don't know but your solution seems to take care of the issue with no unintended consequences.

Now let's wait for the inevitable fanboy to yell at us and tell us why the game is perfect and we're stupid for thinking there is a flaw. 3...2...1...

Quote from: Dumarest;10120293...2...1...

***Chirp***Chirp***Crickets****

I would actually appreciate a fan boy. I'd like to see an explanation from anybody.

I was interested in Dragon Age but didn't like the mechanics. I don't think you need an explanation (your analysis is good), I think you need to move on to acceptance and be glad you came up with a work around.

Personally I like 3d6 and invert the action dice instead of 4d6.

[I should read the OP properly.]

Edited: Option two (reverse stunt die) is easy and effective.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1012046[I should read the OP properly.]

Edited: Option two (reverse stunt die) is easy and effective.

Yea, that's one way to do it. I've seen this kind of dual purpose thing with percentile dice and roll low to succeed, then naturally the higher number works out ok.

Now the intent might have been that if you barely have a chance of succeeding, you will succeed awesomely. I could see how that might be appropriate in a highly cinematic game.

Frank

I own the game and have read the rules in anticipation of running it.  The game never materialized, but I am pretty familiar with it. I noticed the same problem with the stunt die and high TNs, but thought little of it.  I think you are probably making it out to be a bigger problem then it actually is.  However, I also get hung up on the wonky silly math of some games (I just can't even play Savage worlds) - so I get it.   Truthfully, I think your solution works perfectly without any unintended consequences or flaws and achieves the result you are looking for.  That almost never happens with house rules so I say that with much caution and surprise, but I've put a little thought into it, and it should work fine.

I actually fought pretty hard for the first edition of Mongoose Traveller to use a similar reversed value system to clear up a similar issue. In that case, reversing the die actually increase overall complexity in other ways, so I never got my way (I did get NCO life paths introduced though, so I'm still happy with myself).

In this case, it appears there are no other complex dependencies that are affected, so I definitely say go for it.

I have never touched this game or even looked at it, but it might be designed to reward the player. If you take on a supremely difficult task, then you put your dues in when you succeeded, and now you get to look cool.

So if it is not trying to be realistic, and is instead trying to be flashy, it would make sense.

I would lean towards 4d6.

The chance of critical success still decreases with the decreasing chance of success, but it means that critical success is still possible even for difficult attempts. Even if you're shooting from a long distance, if you've got a chance to shoot them in the body, there should be a smaller chance to shoot them in the head.

I feel exactly what you mean. This "oddity" was one of the things that made me dislike the Dragon Age system, despite the fact that I wanted to like it (the modern heir of the Red Box and all that). My question was the same, "how could the the designer not catch that, or at least the playtesters?"
The others were, well, Ferelden (boy, is that a boring setting, or maybe it's just the Green Ronin presentation of the setting that falls flat; I never played the computer game) and the general Green Ronin layout (it's a purely subjective taste-thing, I don't like Green Ronin's objectively perfectly serviceable, colorful, art and layout direction).
Fantasy Age is slightly better (lack of a - boring! - setting opens up a lot of possibilities, now the game is about what you could do with it, not what the publisher wants you to do with it) but it still has that GR look and feel.

   Detour:
I had the same oddity in one of my homebrew games - a 2d6 vs. difficulty system where light weapons do damage according to the smaller die, and heavy weapons according to the higher die. But since all combat rolls were simultaneous, with the only the winner hitting, chances were that the winning roll has numbers in the higher range (say, a 4 and a 5, or a 3 and a 6). In playtest I never had a light weapon doing 1 point of damage.
I reversed the system to a 2d6 roll-under stat (+/- difficulty), but now the problem went the other way - heavy weapons very seldom did 6 damage. But here it was more palatable because I had also lowered the hit points, and the damage range was mostly between 1 and 4. It felt right that light weapons were not able to do 5+ damage.


Between your two choices I would go with the fourth die.
Rolling and reading a differently colored, extra die is always easier and faster than to do (even small) math.