Vancian Magic.  I don't get the amnesia thing.  You cast a spell, and you forget it?

Armor class.

These two things are why I was much happier playing Palladium Fantasy 1E back in high school.

I think it's weird that people conflate Advantage/Disadvantage with something akin to a "do over". And I can see why anyone who does so doesn't like the mechanic --  whenever a result is determined and then retroactively "rolled over" breaks immersion for me right quick. And it's slow.

We've always played Advantage as "roll 2 dice, keep the highest".

I agree with others that games overuse it. I like it specifically for situational bonuses only. It speeds play because (just like in combat) the player (just like the character) only has a chance to optimize so much. So players (and the DM) start trying to find one "advantage" each round, and to take away their opponent's last advantage.

We find it more dynamic (like combat) than adding everything we can think of to "stack" bonuses each round -- which feels more like a math competition.

Applying Advantage/Disadvantage to any permanent condition or repeatable (non-situational) action is terrible though. Empty of differentiation or flavor for the character. No space for situational effects on top of it. Overpowered. I cold probably go on.

So I'd say this mechanic should be more popular, but should be used a lot less.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 03, 2025, 03:23:29 AMVancian Magic.  I don't get the amnesia thing.  You cast a spell, and you forget it?

Reading Vance helps with that. (It's not actually "memorization" or "forgetting", those are just the closest words we have for it.)

Narrative Systems Defaulting to "Failing with a Complication."

It's not exactly immersion-breaking, but it sure is immersion-shaking for professionals to constantly be dealing with complications of imperfect actions, and to be blunt, this is a kind of exhausting gameplay style to play.

Random Table Oracles

There are situations which call for random tables, especially as a GM tool when the GM has all the tables immediately at hand and just picks the table and the dice. But generally random tables get in the way of the flow, especially if you have to stop the game for a moment to look one up, and it isn't like a random table result is ever high quality roleplaying game content.

D20 Core Mechanics

D20 and D100 core mechanics are quite easy to design for because you can generally do the math to create one in your head, but there are so many D20 games out there that there are almost no new things you can do with it, and the most a D20 ever gives you is a simple yes or no answer.

Dis/Advantage

The 5E Dis/Advantage mechanic has the exact reverse problem of the vanilla D20, where because the math behind how it works is actually quite difficult from a laity perspective, the fanbase almost never understands it properly. It isn't +4 or +5...it's that advantage squares the probability of failure and disadvantage squares your probability of success. As these are both numbers between 0 and 1, squaring them makes them into smaller numbers, thus making your chance of success or chance of failure higher respectively.

You would think that, for as poorly as the RPG player base is at explaining this mechanic, it would be less widely used. This is a great example of people not needing to understand a mechanic to use it.

Quote from: Nakana on May 03, 2025, 01:53:41 AMProbably gonna be some unpopular opinions but...

1. Dice pool systems where you count successes.
2. Dice pool systems where you keep the highest.
3. Yes, and; no, but resolution systems -> and this extends to all the partial success/success with a cost crap.
4. New trend where everything is "fail forward".
5. Exploding dice.
6. Wild dice.

I think 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic is fine. But, I really don't get the hype around it. It's not THAT great. I see people act like it's some kind of mind blowing game changer. It's not.

Really don't like dice pools, I see. Might I ask you why?

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 03, 2025, 03:23:29 AMVancian Magic.  I don't get the amnesia thing.  You cast a spell, and you forget it?

Armor class.

These two things are why I was much happier playing Palladium Fantasy 1E back in high school.

Basically with that system you are imprinting a spell circuit, when you cast the spell it fires off the 'whatever' that powers it and you have to re-imprint it.

Akin to how spell scrolls in D&D work. They erase or vanish on use.

Or think of it as investing your personal magic into the spell you are imprinting. Or however one wants to realize the why of it. Its explained in the AD&D book even.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 03, 2025, 08:17:14 AM

Quote from: Nakana on May 03, 2025, 01:53:41 AMProbably gonna be some unpopular opinions but...

1. Dice pool systems where you count successes.
2. Dice pool systems where you keep the highest.
3. Yes, and; no, but resolution systems -> and this extends to all the partial success/success with a cost crap.
4. New trend where everything is "fail forward".
5. Exploding dice.
6. Wild dice.

I think 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic is fine. But, I really don't get the hype around it. It's not THAT great. I see people act like it's some kind of mind blowing game changer. It's not.

Really don't like dice pools, I see. Might I ask you why?

Not them, but I'd say my issues come down to many systems; A) use far too many dice, B) require too much math at the table (sometimes because of A), and/or C) have objectively terrible math behind it.

Regarding A, provided you're adding results (ex. WEG d6) or each die is a 50% success (ex. Exalted; which is 50% in aggregate because a 10 counts as two successes), then the bell curve past about 4-5 dice is within a couple percent of rolling 4-5 dice and averaging the rest. For a 50% success per dice pool system using the average successes plus the roll of 4dF (i.e. Fudge dice -,-,0,0,+,+) will return nearly the same probability curve.

To it's credit, WEG's generic d6 System included an option for capping at 5 dice + averaging the rest, but there are way too many like Exalted that just expect you to roll 15-20 or more dice and count successes multiple times per action (once to hit, once for damage) when something like 4dF + half the dice pool would return nearly the same odds in a fraction of the time.

Then you've got the add the dice ones. Its okay when your dice pool is maybe six dice, but once you get some XP or, God forbid, The Force involved, suddenly both sides are rolling and adding buckets of d6s to hit, to defend, to do damage, and to soak... all to resolve one action. It's just a ridiculous amount of adding for the results achieved.

And then there's just the bad math... the old World of Darkness being a prime example. Sometimes you change the target number you need on the d10s (and with 1s subtracting results in an odd case at very high difficulties of more skilled people becoming MORE likely to botch than unskilled rubes). Other times you need to roll more than one success. Sometimes you add or subtract dice. There's no rhyme or reason to it and the math gets rapidly wonky and opaque.

And don't get me started on ones where the odds of a success on any die are always 50% but they insist on using something other than d6 or coins. Or FFG Star Wars with its dice pools of proprietary dice with symbols you have to interpret like you're some medieval fortune teller examining the innards of a dead chicken.

This isn't to say there aren't good dice pool systems out there. But it is a mechanic that is also super easy to badly and the math can get opaque enough that many are implemented without the slightest idea by the designer of how it will actually work.

And it's not like a lot of designers are math geniuses. I remember when the people behind the Arcanis setting decided to build their own system rather than deal with 4E (they didn't realize Pathfinder would take off and thought 3e would soon be a dead system). One of their 'genius' ideas was to replace 1d20 with 2d10, but then leave the difficulty numbers completely unchanged from the d20 because "the average of 2d10 is 11 while a d20 is 10.5 so it should be even easier for them to get a 16 on the die roll."

So, yeah. Dice pools should be much rarer than they are because the number of people who are designers who are also able to understand the underlying math of a dice pool are equally rare.

Quote from: Zalman on May 03, 2025, 07:32:47 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on May 03, 2025, 03:23:29 AMVancian Magic.  I don't get the amnesia thing.  You cast a spell, and you forget it?

Reading Vance helps with that. (It's not actually "memorization" or "forgetting", those are just the closest words we have for it.)

I've always liked the explanation, which I've seen attributed to Vance, but I don't recall actually seeing in the stories, that spells have a life of their own, and you aren't memorizing them so much as trapping them in your mind, to be released when you "cast" them.

Quote from: ForgottenF on May 03, 2025, 12:39:20 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 02, 2025, 07:00:18 PMFinally, my pet annoyance is "skills" listed with no real thought to what the game is really about--mixing heavily used ones with throw-aways for flavor with massive abstraction imbalance for no apparent reason.  Sure, if you want Skill X to be prominent while Skill Y is more subdued in the setting, by all means make Y harder to get or less valuable for the cost or whatever.

I'm a believer that skills which are core to the main activities of a game should be purchased separately from rarely used or "just for flavor" skills. Just remove the choice a player has to make between making an effective character and an interesting one.

If only real life had such a clear distinction...

Quote from: Fheredin on May 03, 2025, 08:17:14 AM

Quote from: Nakana on May 03, 2025, 01:53:41 AMProbably gonna be some unpopular opinions but...

1. Dice pool systems where you count successes.
2. Dice pool systems where you keep the highest.
3. Yes, and; no, but resolution systems -> and this extends to all the partial success/success with a cost crap.
4. New trend where everything is "fail forward".
5. Exploding dice.
6. Wild dice.

I think 5e's advantage/disadvantage mechanic is fine. But, I really don't get the hype around it. It's not THAT great. I see people act like it's some kind of mind blowing game changer. It's not.

Really don't like dice pools, I see. Might I ask you why?

We can blame World of Darkness and Mage: The Ascension. But my experience with adding dice from attribute X and dice from skill Y for your pool results in an average of Z amount of dice for every roll. If I remember correctly, it was 7d10 in my case.

So no matter what your stats are, or what you're trying to do... guess what? It's the same roll of 7d10. Almost every time.

Imagine porting that over to a d20 type system?

Fighter wants to break down the door: roll 1d20+3
Fighter wants to pick the lock: roll 1d20+3
Fighter wants to sneak past the guards: roll 1d20+3

WEG's d6 pool system doesn't bother me as much, because at least it's cumulative. I also don't mind the Tiny D6 system. I suppose it's technically a dice pool system, although it's a little hard to call a max of 3d6 dice a "pool".

I also think the pairing of attribute + skill is often arbitrary, and the process of hunting for successes in a pile of dice is slower.

On top of all that, I defer to @Chris24601 post above regarding the math and logic.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 03, 2025, 09:19:05 AMNot them, but I'd say my issues come down to many systems; A) use far too many dice, B) require too much math at the table (sometimes because of A), and/or C) have objectively terrible math behind it.

Regarding A, provided you're adding results (ex. WEG d6) or each die is a 50% success (ex. Exalted; which is 50% in aggregate because a 10 counts as two successes), then the bell curve past about 4-5 dice is within a couple percent of rolling 4-5 dice and averaging the rest. For a 50% success per dice pool system using the average successes plus the roll of 4dF (i.e. Fudge dice -,-,0,0,+,+) will return nearly the same probability curve.

To it's credit, WEG's generic d6 System included an option for capping at 5 dice + averaging the rest, but there are way too many like Exalted that just expect you to roll 15-20 or more dice and count successes multiple times per action (once to hit, once for damage) when something like 4dF + half the dice pool would return nearly the same odds in a fraction of the time.

Then you've got the add the dice ones. Its okay when your dice pool is maybe six dice, but once you get some XP or, God forbid, The Force involved, suddenly both sides are rolling and adding buckets of d6s to hit, to defend, to do damage, and to soak... all to resolve one action. It's just a ridiculous amount of adding for the results achieved.

And then there's just the bad math... the old World of Darkness being a prime example. Sometimes you change the target number you need on the d10s (and with 1s subtracting results in an odd case at very high difficulties of more skilled people becoming MORE likely to botch than unskilled rubes). Other times you need to roll more than one success. Sometimes you add or subtract dice. There's no rhyme or reason to it and the math gets rapidly wonky and opaque.

And don't get me started on ones where the odds of a success on any die are always 50% but they insist on using something other than d6 or coins. Or FFG Star Wars with its dice pools of proprietary dice with symbols you have to interpret like you're some medieval fortune teller examining the innards of a dead chicken.

This isn't to say there aren't good dice pool systems out there. But it is a mechanic that is also super easy to badly and the math can get opaque enough that many are implemented without the slightest idea by the designer of how it will actually work.

And it's not like a lot of designers are math geniuses. I remember when the people behind the Arcanis setting decided to build their own system rather than deal with 4E (they didn't realize Pathfinder would take off and thought 3e would soon be a dead system). One of their 'genius' ideas was to replace 1d20 with 2d10, but then leave the difficulty numbers completely unchanged from the d20 because "the average of 2d10 is 11 while a d20 is 10.5 so it should be even easier for them to get a 16 on the die roll."

So, yeah. Dice pools should be much rarer than they are because the number of people who are designers who are also able to understand the underlying math of a dice pool are equally rare.

I would actually say the problem is that most designers don't put the effort in to design good game foundations. It isn't like the math is difficult, but it is tedious. I would also say that the designer of Archanis was basically right with the 2d10 vs 1d20 distinction, even if it's clear they didn't pay attention to distribution. Generally, RPGs are not made in such a way that 5-10% accuracy actually matters beyond a placebo.

Quote from: Nakana on May 03, 2025, 02:13:28 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 03, 2025, 08:17:14 AMReally don't like dice pools, I see. Might I ask you why?

We can blame World of Darkness and Mage: The Ascension. But my experience with adding dice from attribute X and dice from skill Y for your pool results in an average of Z amount of dice for every roll. If I remember correctly, it was 7d10 in my case.

So no matter what your stats are, or what you're trying to do... guess what? It's the same roll of 7d10. Almost every time.

Imagine porting that over to a d20 type system?

Fighter wants to break down the door: roll 1d20+3
Fighter wants to pick the lock: roll 1d20+3
Fighter wants to sneak past the guards: roll 1d20+3

WEG's d6 pool system doesn't bother me as much, because at least it's cumulative. I also don't mind the Tiny D6 system. I suppose it's technically a dice pool system, although it's a little hard to call a max of 3d6 dice a "pool".

I also think the pairing of attribute + skill is often arbitrary, and the process of hunting for successes in a pile of dice is slower.

On top of all that, I defer to @Chris24601 post above regarding the math and logic.

Yes, but you also specifically listed roll and keep highest pools, and no one yet has listed any examples of a roll and keep pool which was significantly flawed.

That said, I do think that the standard dice pool setup has several flaws, and one of those is the tendency to produce rolls towards the center of a bell curve. However, this is the first time I've actually seen someone take issue with it because single die systems tend to have what is effectively the same issue with modifiers summing together to net the same total roll.

Quote from: bat on May 02, 2025, 06:20:01 PMI know it isn't a popular opinion, yet the Advantage/Disadvantage thing seems weird to me. Way back when the DM/GM/etcetera would consider the roll and just say, 'Roll again.' It comes out in 5e and people fall all over it like it is the 8th wonder of the world.

I agree 100%. I HATE advantage/disadvantage

the other mechanics I despise are "healing surges" or getting your HD back in HP after a long rest. My character falls into a pit of fire, has 99% of his HP burned up, but no worries mate, he just needs a good night's rest!

D20 task resolution mechanics.

Levels.

Advantage/disadvantage.

With regard to WEG and dice pools, we always let a generated total stand for the round unless there was reason not to...that is after we played it a bit, initially, yes, if you do it like dnd and roll for each hit each dodge ect it will crawl....which is a clue, really.

So once tardicus generates a parry total for the round thats the to hit until he is no longer parrying. Saves on rolling buckets of dice like you wouldn't believe.

I feel you tho dude guy above; got some players now that are having me try to lift and test the best things about D6 and transmorphicate them to 1e ad&d  while leaving as much of 1e as possible intact because they are hopeless grogs who feel their dice collections would somehow be invalidated if they didn't roll them all while playing. I of course being a dick also insist on stealing things from classic becmi and imposing them as well, i mean you cant give them everything they want, they are not paying so they are lucky to get anything.

I figure if we are gonna do this shit then weapon mastery, encounter speed, and war machine are coming along for the ride or i'm just gonna play video games instead.

Quote from: Chris24601 on May 03, 2025, 09:19:05 AMSo, yeah. Dice pools should be much rarer than they are because the number of people who are designers who are also able to understand the underlying math of a dice pool are equally rare.

VERY much this!
It. They see something new, possibly in a big game and everyone and their brother has to ape it to absolute death without ever trying to understand HOW it works.
Others look at it and just believe they can do better. 95% of the time they do not.
And then there is the fact no one can even agree what a dice pool is and some fuckwhits will inevitably stretch it to mean "everything on earth" "Well D&D's 5d6 fireball is a really real DICE POOL!!! You see? You were using dice pools ALL ALONG."