Has anyone pieced together enough information from our various pics and notes to get a feel for what the general dice probabilities are? I'm specifically curious about the Stance dice. And please, I'd really rather not get into our individual views on the merits of the Stance mechanic. But I am wondering what exactly happens. I have my assumptions for how I think they may or should work. I'd expect to see the red dice have a slightly decreased chance of success but the added possibility of great success. I'd expect to see the Cautious dice have a slightly increased chance of success, and of course we know that there's the time penalty there. Do we know?

And what of the others, do we have enough for general ideas yet?

If you're asking about what symbols and how many appear on each die face, I don't think that has been revealed yet.

If you're asking if anyone has crunched the numbers to see what the actual probability distributions are, that won't be possible until we know what each die has on each face. Even then, it will be rather complex due to all the different die types interacting. I think the easiest way would be to just write a simulator and let it roll various combinations a few thousand times and log the results.

Nah, definitely not looking for exact probabilities, just the symbols and how many on each die. I'm just wondering what the general probability is. When I roll a red die in place of a blue is it more or less likely to succeed? Same for green. Is yellow more likely to succed than blue, etc.

The stance dice are d8's, correct?

Hmmm... Perhaps instead of blanks, you get bad symbols (regular attribute dice have blanks... like... three, right?)

...

OH I'M JUST SO CURIOUS I CAN'T WAIT ANYMORE IT'S KILLING MEEEE

Necrozius said:

From the images, it seems the stance dice are 10 sided. I'm running a couple of RtL Descent campaigns while waiting for the new edition of WFRP to come out... and you also have 2nd edition which is still great.

Ok, from looking at the pictures here's some facts/assumptions..

the fortune/misfortune dice are both 6 sided, you would expect to be "opposite" in effect, half of them are blank and they contain successes/challenges and boons/banes respectively.

As the boons/banes are the special effects, i would go with 2 successes/challenges and 1 boon/bane per die the other 3 sides being blank.

The expertise dice are again 6 sided and i think are "quite rare" in the pool and would represent a high level of ability with the relevant task, as they contain boons,successes and righteous successes from the picture, i would think they perhaps only have one or maybe 2 sides blank at most, with perhaps 2-3 success side, 1 righteous success side and 1 boon side?

It also possible that these dice could have a sigmars comet on them instead of one of the blank sides or a success?

conservative/reckless dice are more tricky..

the reckless dice obvious have single successes with an exertion, double successes and some blanks, and possible just simple successes (although perosnally I'd doubt that, as i think they will have one of three effects "super success", "success with exertion" or "no success")

Its debatable whether they have an exertion only sides?

Conservative will have a high number of boons, a high number of single success with delay, and possibly just some regular successes (but again the boons have probably been used instead for this dice).. i doubt they have many/any blank sides

challenge dice have challenges, banes, the chaos star and a blank or 2. As they are 8 sided, i'd pobalby go with somehing like 3 challenges, 2 banes, 2 chaos and 1 blank (or maybe 2 blank and 1 chaos... depends on how rare this chaos symbol really is..It only seems to appear on these dice?)

characteristic dice (8 sided) will be a lot of successes and boons, maybe a simgars comet and a couple of blanks, something like 3 successes 3 boons, 1 comet and 1blank?

pumpkin said:

Blue dice seem to be 4 successes, 2 boons, 2 blanks.

I've speculated on this too, as I have a great deal of interest in making an electronic dice roller to play 3rd edition online. To be more precise, I'm hoping some Java-literate WFRPer can make one that I can use, as I'm not much of a wiz at these things.

Ye Ancient One said:

Something like this would make a great iPhone app. Good player aid.

Necrozius said:

We expect to see it from you in the App Store soon.

Totally man.

Imagine it: you'll be able to shake your iPhone to simulate rolling dice... anywhere.... ANYTIME.

No matter HOW socially awkward.

It'll be just like that episode of Futurama in which Fry meets Gary Gygax.

He's like... rolling dice to determine casual daily responses.

So gloriously geeky. R.I.P. Gary...

macd21 said:

That being the case, it doesn't leave much room on the various dice for the comet to appear, still think it could be on the expertise dice and maybe on one of the reckless faces?

I figured out some speculative values the other day while bored at work - informed guesswork more than anything else, and only rough numbers. Counting only successes and challenges, the notions I came up with (we know a 50% success rate for the Ability Dice), so assuming a greater-than-50% success rate (but with chance of delay) from the cautious stance dice and a less-than-50% success rate (but also a chance of double success - a face with two hammers on, as we've already seen) for reckless stance dice, then the following trends seem to be true.

The basic ability dice have a 50% chance of a success each, so the chances of getting at least one success increase quite swiftly with multiple ability dice (the chance of failure is halved each time). The system would allow for essentially automatic success for a character rolling nothing but his ability dice... so it's fortunate that the system appears to require at least one challenge die for any task worth talking about (which by itself could negate one or two of those successes - we've seen both single-challenge and double-challenge faces on the challenge dice - and bring the odds down noticeably as more successes are needed to overcome the challenges rolled). Just from my own speculative ideas as to what each die could produce (which have already been proven wrong, but it seems appropriately illustrative), two challenge dice and a misfortune dice added to a roll of 1 cautious, 4 ability and 1 skill dice dropped the chances of success from almost 100% to a little below 50%, which seems instinctively about right.

Moving in cautious stance dice increases overall chance of success by a reasonable amount - which seems appropriate, given their purpose (you're being careful to try and succeed - low risk, low but consistent reward), but you might take too long with the task. For those familiar with WFRP2, Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader, it's like getting a bonus on a test, but having the test take longer and losing out on some of your degrees of success.

Moving in reckless stance dice (as far as I can tell and from my own speculation) overall chance of success in a similar manner, but the successes you do produce create greater rewards - faces with multiple successes seem to pop up a couple of times, meaning that while success for the reckless is more elusive, the rewards are potentially greater. Continuing the analogy from WFRP2/DH/RT, it's like taking a penalty but getting extra degrees of success when you do pass.

The skill dice seem entirely helpful, not only in increasing the chances of at least 1 success, but also in the chances of increasing the number rolled (the Righteous Success - the hammer with a + under it - allows an extra die of that type to be rolled, and we've only seen it on skill dice so far). The latter factor is an important consideration when you're rolling several challenge or misfortune dice, as multiple successes are valuable for overcoming the challenges rolled). The picture of them in the seminar video (near the beginning of part 5) shows that they have the Comet symbol as well.

Back to the Challenge Dice... there's a lot there. From the pictures in the latest designer diary , I can see 1 blank face, two Challenges (crossed swords), one Bane (skull), one Chaos Star, one 2x Bane (two skulls) and two 2x Challenge (two sets of crossed swords, which would negate two successes), which totals all eight sides. Overall per die, then, a 25% chance of negating 1 success, and a 25% chance of negating 2... a big deal, really.

The misfortune dice appear to be three blanks, two banes and a challenge - unpleasant, but nowhere near as detrimental as the challenge dice. If the fortune dice are anything like their unpleasant counterparts, then they'll have two boons and a success, so they're helpful but not as pivotal as Ability, Stance and Skill dice.

Obviously, without knowing the numbers, we can't go into any real detail, but I hope what I've pondered is helpful.

I think this could be one of the major "problems" with the new dice mechanic and that is for people to quickly work out statistically if a task is worth trying or not.

With the old percentage based system (and in fact with any "regular" dice system) it is quite easy to work out what the statistical chances are of succeeding (or not), and therefore whether to roll or not, in some cases.

I'm not sure that the new dice translate in this way so well.

Take the simple example of someone trying to jump over a pit, if this is based on agility ro something, then with a percentage roll, plus any modifiers (which the player may now exactly, or not depending on the GM), the pc knows how likely they are to succeed almost immedaitely.

When the new dice systems used, once i add in my characteristic dice, some skill dice, some stance dice and some challenge dice, my actual statisical chance of succeeding isn't that easy to figure out is it?

some people may say this is a good thing, because it means tasks are only figured in general terms, rather than exact chances, but even in general terms I'm not sure how easy it is going to be for the pcs (and gm) to work out if a task is likely to succeed or not, without rolling some dice...

pumpkin said:

Yeah, this was discussed elsewhere in another thread which prompted me to ask about the generalities of the dice here. I'm one of those that like the idea of not being able to calculate exactly, so this system will be good in that regard. Its enough for me to know that the task will involve 2 challenge dice and 1 misfortune die. I figure that after a few sessions we'll have a general feel for the difficulty involved with certain numbers of dice, and I like that.

I'll preface this by saying I'm in the "not knowing exact percentages is better since it's unrealistic" camp.

Working out your general chances of completing a task are still pretty easy. Compare how many blue and yellow (good) dice you have to the number of black and purple (bad). Many more good dice, you have a pretty good chance. Only one more or equal, not so good of a chance. More bad dice - you probably shouldn't try it.

The green and red dice can in general be included in the good category, as long as the player is aware that there can be negative side effects.