There will be 36 dice in the Corebox. Presumably those will be the 36 dice shown in part 5 of the GenConVideo, and the Box will therfore include only 4 Challenge dice.

Now, the diary tells us that we need to roll 2 Challenge dice for a test of avarage difficulty.

Thus there are not enough Challenge dice included to give a adequate set of them to every player, even if there are only 3 of them plus GM.

We will have to pass the dice around. Really nice.

Oh, and the "Dice Accessory Pack" (9.95$) will include only 1 additional Challenge die, so we have to buy a lot of them packs to get a sufficient number of dice and to avoid dicesharing.

What an awfully huge problem you have there. Congratulations. Is it really that painful passing around dice or throwing one twice? In my parties there are always a few newbies, who doesn't have any dices at all.

Ravenheart87 said:

I understand Snorri's point of view. It can be a problem for some people.

My players are strictly forbidden to even touch my dices (with heavy penalties to their characters if they try) not to mention of rolling them. I have always a few spare packs for players, but they can't use mine. So yes, sharing dices can be a problem.

But there is simple solution. Aside of selling dices in packs FFG should also sell them individually. Then you can buy as much of any dices you like/need as you want.

You will have to share dice if you only buy one box (along with other items from your box the players will be using), but you shouldn't have to roll a challenge die twice unless you lose a die. From the latest diary I gather that:

0 - Simple
1 - Easy
2 - Average
3 - Hard
4 - Daunting

So, the most you'll roll at once will be 4 (unless you come across a task you deem 'near impossible' and you may want to add a 5th - which is covered if you buy 1 dice pack).

NezziR said:

I guess that there's where the Black Misfortune dice come in to play.

4 challenge dice is the difficulty equivalent of -30 to a skill test in Dark Heresy or WFRP v2, I think.

I'm a hundred percent behind this game, but the dice pack they are selling seems a little lacking right now. I'mgoing to have to play it to see if we have enough dice.

Just looked at the contents of the dice pack... I have to wonder, why so many fortune dice?

NewTroski said:

In case your players stole them, and kept hidden to add them to the pool when you won't pay attention .

Seriously, I REALLY hope they start selling dices individually. No player will use MY dices! EVER!!

I'm not trying to be "that guy", but it's not "dices"... Seriously, I really like this concept and I besides, if you're willing to pay 100 bucks, what's 10 more?

TalkingMuffin said:

then dont be that guy. there may be people on here in which English isnt a first language. or, like to say dices instead of die, or dice. big stinkin deal. if I had to have good grammar and punctuation and spelling, and actually articulate a complicated point in a few sentences I would never post a thing. I have really enjoyed the civil nature of our discussions and speculations the last few days. lets keep it fun and interesting.

cheers

The stance dice seem to be lacking as well. After looking at some of the sample stance bars for PC on the website, you may need up to three reckless red dice or up to three conservative green dice for higher level PCs. Only one red and only one green die come in each extra dice pack.

Hmm.

OK, to answer my own question: I think there are more Fortune dice than others so they can be used as fortune counters on the fortune pool. Then, when a player uses one, he takes it out of the fortune pool and rolls it.

I am not 100% sold that this new iteration is for the best; but I like a lot of what I see, and I am willing to pony up the ducats for the corebook and toolkit to try it out with my players.

My biggest issues are:

1. The dice. A dice pack should include enough dice for a single player to roll any and all general skills/tests. It will be easier to share misfortune and fortune dice (and similar) out of the GMs pool, but there should be enough core dice to roll them individually.

2. Can you play without the skill/talent cards? It should be possible to ignore the specialty rolls and just focus on successes and failures outright with the GM interpreting misfortune and the like on a whim. i.e. if a GM doesn't want to us the cards to determine extra damage, etc. the contents of the skills/talents (like Aim, dodge, etc.) should be explicit in the rule set. If they are only present on the cards, that will be a problem affecting adoption.

HedgeWizard said:

I would think that after several plays some of the more basic action cards would become second nature. the deal is that the symbol dice allow a lot more things to go on. i don't now why you would play this version of the game if you just wanted to do success and failure. although, i read somewhere that for time saving purposes you have the option of just being straight up success and failure.

axe

multiple axes

birds

skulls

comet

chaos

thats six possiblities(did i miss any?) from one roll, hence the need for reference cards I suppose. I hope each card has its own personaity and things dont get redunant like in 4e D&D

Sunatet said:

Yes! The unwritten law for every true roleplayer: DON'T TOUCH ANOTHER PLAYER'S DICE!!! *

As far as I understood, the dice will be available separately, so everyone can buy their own set and must not contaminate the GM's dice with bad luck. Good for us old school superstitious gamers

* For further information on this topic (and many other RPG-related) I recommend the "Knights of the Dinner Table" comics

chojun said:

What I was trying to allude to with point #2 is that if that content (i.e. the skills/spell/whatever cards) isn't required but are instead merely play-aids, it would then be possible to create a light rule set for people to check out the game. FFG could put together a simple "starter" core book pdf (something akin to what GreenRonin did with the Song of Ice and Fire RPG quickstart guide) and sell that with a pack of dice. This would allow people to try the new system without the massive overhead. The pdf could contain rules on magic, 1 or 2 sets of spells, rules on combat, a handful of things from the bestiary, a couple of the careers and a printable character sheet.

It would also allay the fears of those who keep screaming "But what if I lose the dice/cards/etc?!!?"

PzVIE said:

LOL

You realize that KotDT makes fun of the overbearing and often bad manners of tabletop gamers, right? That the, "Don't tocuh my dice!" rule is now considered just as rude as touching another person's dice?

I used to have some real anal, paranoid people in my group like that until I instituted the, "If you roll a 20, everyone passes their d20s to the right to share the luck." I mean, that behavior often times ruins the sense of goodwill and teamwork in a game.

I welcome new dice. I also welcome new dice that I can interpret as close to the rules as I see fit and stare down the player who always bickers about margins of success/error in die rolls.

I would love to see two dice packs:

• the current one we have now
• A player oriented pack that includes 4 challenge dice, 2 misfortune, 2 fortune, and 2 expertise.

I wonder if there is a misprint on the dice pack - maybe they meant to say 4 characteristic dice, 2 misfortune and 2 fortunes?

HedgeWizard said:

Surely a player-oriented pack shouldn't contain any challenge or misfortune dice at all? Afterall, those are the ones a GM hands out when he determines the difficulty of a test (and thus be available in abundance within a hypothetical GM's dice pack). The ones a player most frequently determines would be the Ability, Conservative, Reckless, Fortune and Expertise dice.

McClaud said:

Can't agree more!

And, regarding the new dice in v3, rolling a twin-tailed comet or a mark of Chaos surely creates more tension than rolling 97...

If you look at the most recent diary about challenges, you'll see that while the basic dice remain fairly low/static, Fortune and Misfortune dice have no real limit to the number that may be added to a roll. Thus, more of those dice will be needed.

Red/Green can only be used to replace the blue attribute dice, so even if you have a 4 Reckless(red) stance, if your attribute is only 2 you are only rolling 2 red dice (if you choose to).

From what I've seen, it looks like attribute dice will range from 0-4 (and therefore stance dice), skill dice 0-4, and challenge 0-4 per roll.

That's likely why the additional dice packs are weighted with additional Fortune and Misfortune dice.

dvang said:

Sorry to disagree, but according to some simulations I made using the script I wrote, there is no way that attribute dice for player character could be less than 3 without any additional skill profficiency, or high amount of luck. So attribute dice will more likely range 3-6 (with 2 you fail most of the tests on average level, and even 3 does not give you much chance).

Sunatet said:

You're right that I might be slightly mistaken about the number of attribute dice. I rechecked and the core set comes with 8 attribute dice, so I think that chances are good that v3 follows closely to the current versions of attributes, where 3 is average for a stat, and a 4 isn't uncommon. So it's probably more likely a typical 1-5 range for attribute dice. I expect the stances are limited to 4 dice, because that's likely the maximum (at least to start) for stances in a particular direction. Most PCs will/should typically have at least a single skill die to add (unless they don't expect to succeed, since they are doing something they aren't trained in). Don't forget, though, that skill and stance dice have greater chances to roll successes than attribute dice do. Remember, it *shouldn't* be easy for an unskilled character to perform anything other than a Simple or Easy task unless they throw Fortune dice to improve their chances.

An Easy test gives 1 challenge die: Using 2 attribute dice and a single skill die, and perhaps a stance die or two instead of attribute dice, and you've got a really good chance of success. (Of course, this completely ignores Fortune and Misfortune dice). Even unskilled, using just 2 attribute dice, or better yet stance dice, against an Easy (1 challenge die) test and you've still got a reasonable chance to succeed (considering you're unskilled). So, I'm not sure why you think that an unskilled character should have a good chance of succeeding in an Average test? 2 Attribute dice alone *should* fail an Average test most of the time. That's why adding skill dice (and Fortune dice) are important, as are using stance dice. Unless a character has an amazing attribute, they should not be able to easily pass Average or harder checks unless skilled or lucky.

So, I think you are mistaken that PC attribute dice can't realistically be less than 3, although I do think my initial estimates were low. I think it's closer to numbers in v2 WFRP, ie 20%-49% for starting stats, and which equals 2-4 attribute dice in v3, seems more likely. The occasional 1 die (dwarf Fel, for example) or 5 (Elf BS for example) might happen too. IMO of course.

Edit:

I used your tool (pretty nice, btw!) and rolled 100 times using 2 challenge dice and 2 attribute dice. A 'Win' is more successes (hammers) than failures (swords), and 'Lose' is more swords than hammers, and neither means a tie of swords/hammers or no swords or hammers on any dice.

Wins: 37

Losses: 40

Neither: 23

I'm sure this could be run more, but this is a reasonable sample. Thus, it seems like about 37% of the time an UNSKILLED character, not using stances, can succeed in an Average test. v2 players routinely rolled against 30-40% chances/stats, so this appears to be about right, if a bit high for a '2' value in a stat. In DH/RT, unskilled attempts are at half your characteristic so are typically rolling against a 15-20% chance. Only 40% are outright failed attempts (although possibly with boons) ... and 23% are ... well, who knows how the GM is supposed to handle those cases since they aren't really Failures but aren't successes either. And this example isn't taking into consideration the increased success rate that stance dice will provide; and every character will have access to at least a few stance dice if they desire to increase their chance of success.

Not to rain on the parade of people loving/hating the dice, but wouldn't it be possible to assign the outcomes to numbers on regular dice? Like for the fortune dice 4-5 is a success and a 6 is a boon? Would this really be a huge problem?

Gorehammer said:

Of course it's not a problem in so far as having to create a table to memorize or refer-to during gameplay isn't a problem. Particularly if you are substituting all of the dice in one go (the various 8-sided and 6-sided dice of various colors which can have drastically different effects). But if all you're doing is adding an additional d6 to capture an extra die; should be easy.