Someone elsewhere pointed this out and I thought they were wrong, but I can't find it in the book or in forums.

My players have been playing for a year now and have assembled quite the dice pool when they roll, but I'm wondering if we've been upgrading properly.

I thought that if you train a skill, it adds a green dice or upgrades a green to a yellow, in order.

So for example - if a player has Agility 2 and started with Ranged: (Light) skill of 2, he would have a pool of YY.

The first time he ups his skill to rank 3 by spending 15xp (it's a career skill), he adds 1 green dice - YYG. The NEXT time he ups his skill to rank 4 he spends 20xp and upgrades the green dice to a yellow - YYY, correct? And then so on and so forth, next rank would be YYYG, then YYYY.

But someone else stated you can't move beyond your base characteristic, you just keep adding green's to the pool - at skill rank 4 he would be YYGG, then at rank 5 he would be YYGGG...

This doesn't seem right to me (and would have made the last year of upgrades, battles and skill checks very different), can someone verify?

Short answer: yes

Long answer: Your base (green) dice pool for a given skill is determined by the higher of your relevant Characteristic and Skill. The lower of the two is what upgrades the ability of your pool.

I thought that if you train a skill, it adds a green dice or upgrades a green to a yellow, in order.

Not exactly. Awayputurwpn explained it pretty well. Also it's explained pretty clearly on p. 19.

So for example - if a player has Agility 2 and started with Ranged: (Light) skill of 2, he would have a pool of YY.

This is correct.

The first time he ups his skill to rank 3 by spending 15xp (it's a career skill), he adds 1 green dice - YYG.

Also correct.

The NEXT time he ups his skill to rank 4 he spends 20xp and upgrades the green dice to a yellow - YYY, correct?

No, he would have YYGG.

And then so on and so forth, next rank would be YYYG, then YYYY.

No. If you have Agility 2 and Skill 5, your pool is YYGGG.

Those Gs aren't going to turn into Ys unless Agility is increased OR you have some other way ability to upgrade your pool (e.g. spending a Destiny or certain applications of the Sense power).

Oooooh man.

This, uh, this actually explains a lot - including why our mechanic is rolling like 4 yellow's.

Now, do I retcon everyone's skills and replace yellow's with green's, or just keep playing things as-is?

The odd thing is they still find skill and combat checks pretty challenging, so I'd be hesitant to change it at this point.

I blame this on starting with the beginner set and never really consolidating the characters properly.

Though if I make these changes it's not the worst thing ever, since in some cases they'll be rolling more dice...so less chance of triumph but other than that, skill level should remain fairly close.

For example, right now say a hired gun has an Agility of 3 and Ranged: Light of 5, in my system he was rolling YYYY, whereas in the 'right' way of rolling it would be YYYGG - correct?

So yes they're losing the ability to triumph more, but it's not a huge percentage loss of 'success'. In fact they might gain some.

To be honest, it's not going to make that big a difference in results. Your characters will have slightly bigger dice pools, but more dice will have fewer sides. The largest change will likely be generating fewer Triumphs, and probably more Sux/Advantages (simply because more dice) but the fewer sides on G dice and chance to roll a blank face probably balances it out as well.

Up to you if you want to switch at this point. The most important things are consistency between player and GM rolls, and if you bring a new player into the group you'd need to explain the "house rule" and how it differs from the book.

Oooooh man.

This, uh, this actually explains a lot - including why our mechanic is rolling like 4 yellow's.

Now, do I retcon everyone's skills and replace yellow's with green's, or just keep playing things as-is?

The odd thing is they still find skill and combat checks pretty challenging, so I'd be hesitant to change it at this point.

I blame this on starting with the beginner set and never really consolidating the characters properly.

Explain the goof to your players, and ask them if they're comfortable changing things.

If its not breaking your game, it may not be worth the effort until your current campaign ends and you start the next (If that ever happens).

In terms of your checks still being difficult; More dice can make things easier, rather than just having several 'big' dice. More chances of adding success. After all, the Ability dice still have the chance for double success/advantage. So, by limiting them to mostly upgrading die, things may actually have been harder earlier on.

I think as long as they really hate the idea I'm going to change - it's ok for now, but as they continue to progress it's going to break the game (rolling YYYYYY for example - why bother?). It's already almost a factor for the mechanic who is rolling YYYYG if he spends a destiny token, on a hard check even if I upgrade it, he's going to roll at least 1 triumph.

Six months from now I think we'd regret not changing - also it makes some of the talents (like upgrading characteristics) useless.

Uh shoot - does this mean I've been upgrading minion groups incorrectly as well?

If you have 4 storm troopers with an agility of 3 and ranged: heavy skill, what's the dice pool?

I think I was just upgrading the same way as skills - so upgrading/adding 1 per each extra storm trooper.

My previous method was 4 stormtroopers = firing with YYY...I'm guessing it's not supposed to be added on as YGGGG?

The minion skills always confused me...

I think as long as they really hate the idea I'm going to change - it's ok for now, but as they continue to progress it's going to break the game (rolling YYYYYY for example - why bother?). It's already almost a factor for the mechanic who is rolling YYYYG if he spends a destiny token, on a hard check even if I upgrade it, he's going to roll at least 1 triumph.

Six months from now I think we'd regret not changing - also it makes some of the talents (like upgrading characteristics) useless.

Not entirely useless. Say you have YYY as a pool and you use an upgrading talent or power - your pool becomes YYYG.

But I think you're right - going back to the RAW means you won't have any compatibility problems or confusion with new Talents or powers that upgrade pools coming out in future books. It may be a bit of a change but imo the biggest deal will be having players go over their character sheet and revamp their pools properly. That shouldn't take more than 20 minutes, really. The thing to remember will be when they apply upgrades on the fly with Talents, powers, or Destiny.

Yep, them too. It messed up a lot of us. The whole Y+G->Y is for when you've got multiple upgrades from specific effects, like a player uses a Triumph to upgrade the next player's check, and the next player also uses a Destiny point to upgrade again. Anytime there's 2 numbers it's high number base, low number upgrades.

For what it's worth remember that for Successes someone ran the numbers and found that 2Gs will be more likely to generate successes then 1Y, so int he case of your players they might find they actually do better if they run it properly.

Thanks guys - yeah I think my players will be fine changing. A lot of them took high characteristics when able for their characters area of expertise, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Can someone lay out how the minion dice pool upgrade works though? Still confused about that...

For what it's worth remember that for Successes someone ran the numbers and found that 2Gs will be more likely to generate successes then 1Y, so int he case of your players they might find they actually do better if they run it properly.

2 Green dice generates at least one success about 75% of the time. 1 yellow dice generates at least one success 66.6% of the time.

Now that's assuming no difficulty or challenge dice... that's straight rolling those dice unopposed.

So if you have a choice between rolling 2 green vs. 1 yellow. Take the 2 green... BUT you won't get any triumph out of it.

Interesting to note. If your dice pool has one of each dice type, your likelyhood of a single success is about 45%. I have no idea how advantage would shake out though.

I think as long as they really hate the idea I'm going to change - it's ok for now, but as they continue to progress it's going to break the game (rolling YYYYYY for example - why bother?). It's already almost a factor for the mechanic who is rolling YYYYG if he spends a destiny token, on a hard check even if I upgrade it, he's going to roll at least 1 triumph.

Six months from now I think we'd regret not changing - also it makes some of the talents (like upgrading characteristics) useless.

Upgrading characteristics is definitely not a useless choice, even the way that you've been upgrading the dice. Keep in mind that a skill can only be trained naturally up to 5. At a certain point, your player's dice pools will be capped unless they upgrade characteristics.

If you have 4 storm troopers with an agility of 3 and ranged: heavy skill, what's the dice pool?

I think I was just upgrading the same way as skills - so upgrading/adding 1 per each extra storm trooper.

My previous method was 4 stormtroopers = firing with YYY...I'm guessing it's not supposed to be added on as YGGGG?

The minion skills always confused me...

Minion groups basically treat (# of minions in group - 1) = (# of ranks in relevant Skill) (per p. 390). So a group of 4 would effectively have Ranged: Heavy 3. When 1 dies, it goes down to Ranged: Heavy 2, etc. One minion remaining just rolls straight Characteristic as Gs (treated as Skill 0).

4 Stormies with Agility 3 and Ranged: Heavy would be treated as having Ranged Heavy 3 and roll YYY. After one dies, they roll YYG. After 2 dies they roll YGG. After 3 dies, there's no more "group" and the sole survivor rolls GGG.

If you have 4 storm troopers with an agility of 3 and ranged: heavy skill, what's the dice pool?

I think I was just upgrading the same way as skills - so upgrading/adding 1 per each extra storm trooper.

My previous method was 4 stormtroopers = firing with YYY...I'm guessing it's not supposed to be added on as YGGGG?

The minion skills always confused me...

Minion groups basically treat (# of minions in group - 1) = (# of ranks in relevant Skill) (per p. 390). So a group of 4 would effectively have Ranged: Heavy 3. When 1 dies, it goes down to Ranged: Heavy 2, etc. One minion remaining just rolls straight Characteristic as Gs (treated as Skill 0).

4 Stormies with Agility 3 and Ranged: Heavy would be treated as having Ranged Heavy 3 and roll YYY. After one dies, they roll YYG. After 2 dies they roll YGG. After 3 dies, there's no more "group" and the sole survivor rolls GGG.

Thank you. This is such a straightforward explanation, and yet it's incredibly unclear in the book.

I've probably been closer with this than with upgrading skills (and in fact is probably how I confused it in the first place), though I might have been giving them 1 more upgrade than they were supposed to (forgetting the -1).

You're welcome, I had to think about how to phrase that as I referred to the book, which was really terribly described and, worse, laid out even worse - in a tight column almost like a sidebar. You'd think they'd make that a little more repvalent or provide an example.

In any case, as you can see upgrading minion rolls is slightly different than upgrading PC/Rival/Nemesis rolls because of that -1 thing that doesn't even apply to "solo units" (PCs/Rival/Nemesis).

Basically minions who are grouped can have a Skill that appears in their statblock, but if they're not grouped, they can't. Hence why 1 minion whose write-up has a Skill is treated as Skill 0 (because there are no groups of 1 ).

(because there are no groups of 1 ).

I'm Tracy Jordan! When I am by myself, I count as a group, because I am important.