So I've been playing dice games for a pretty long time. Not as long as a lot of you guys, but awhile. Initially, I really liked the FFG dice system, what with the unique dice, and the narrative pool reading... It seemed really cool.

The more I play, however, the less fun the dice are becoming. I fail rolls when I have twice as many positive dice as negative ones... Pretty consistently, actually. Generally it's because I'll roll 0 successes and 15 kerjillion advantages.

Am I doing something wrong? Is this just something my group is seeing, or is this a common problem? I know that there aren't, but it SEEMS like the dice are biased towards Failures with Advantages. Is this just us/me?

It's you.

http://maxmahem.net/wp/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-die-probabilities/

They're weighted mostly towards successful results.

Can you describe your average pool?

Marauder in the last party was swinging with YYYGPP most turns, sometimes aiming. If the guy he was swinging at had any sort of melee defense at all, he would miss most attacks. Ended up remaking the character because of it.

This one isn't quite as bad, but I have a character that swings in melee with GGBBPP, and he misses about every swing because I always end up with blank results on my positive dice, or I get nothing but advantages. In my last session, we had two checks over the course of the session that had completely blank difficulty dice, but still failed because no successes came up on four or five positive dice.

Thats not the way it 'should' happen. the nice thing with it though is that you can do some serious encounter ending stuff with that many Advantage. your remembering that a triumph is also a success?

Thats not the way it 'should' happen. the nice thing with it though is that you can do some serious encounter ending stuff with that many Advantage. your remembering that a triumph is also a success?

The first session we missed out on Triumph being a success, but we fixed it by the next one. And the group is starting to figure out the strength of advantages, it's just really getting obnoxious that nobody seems to be able to accomplish anything...

We can shoot the blasters out of the hands of every stormtrooper in a room, but god forbid if we actually have to drop one.

And i asume your using physical dice? not an app or online roller? Perhaps you need to pre-roll the blanks out of all of them!

I just did a quick test of APPPDDS and out of 20 rolls got 15 with 1 or more success, so i can see how its definitely possible to get a failure from that pool, more than i actually expected.

Aiming is obviously helpful, especially if the shooter has the True Aim talent. The talent Frenzied Attack is great for Melee/Brawl characters too.

Passing boost dice is also an easy go to, but for 3 advantage you can Upgrade the next PC's check, this is an awesome use of excess Advantage for 3 reasons:

1. there is a much higher chance of rolling any success on a Proficiency compared to an Ability (2/3 vs 1/2)
2. the chance of 2 success is higher too (1/6 vs 1/8)
3. the chance of a blank is lower too (1/12 vs 1/8)

Basically you have a good pool of dice there, but its still not a 95% to hit pool, remember that combat isn't everything in this game, and not every fight is to the death. Sometimes it makes sense that half the NPC's lay down their arms when their boss is killed.

And i asume your using physical dice?

Passing boost dice is also an easy go to, but for 3 advantage you can Upgrade the next PC's check, this is an awesome use of excess Advantage for 3 reasons:

1. there is a much higher chance of rolling any success on a Proficiency compared to an Ability (2/3 vs 1/2)
2. the chance of 2 success is higher too (1/6 vs 1/8)
3. the chance of a blank is lower too (1/12 vs 1/8)

Basically you have a good pool of dice there, but its still not a 95% to hit pool, remember that combat isn't everything in this game, and not every fight is to the death. Sometimes it makes sense that half the NPC's lay down their arms when their boss is killed.

We do use physical dice... One of our players used the digital roller during a boss fight and swore the thing off. I still use it for NPCs, but nobody cares how they do.

And the next character I plan on playing shouldn't be rolling much of anything, I'm hoping to just RP myself through pretty much everything. 64 year old Ryn hobo padawan... Should be fun

Some of the Force Powers and Force Talents can seriously change your chance of success. If your able to roll your force rating as part of the pool and spend Force Pips to gain success or Advantage then your basically guaranteed 1 success symbol (if your happy to take the downsides of using a DS pip!). Then if you have a FR higher than 1 then those success can add up quickly.

Yeah, the party is starting at knight level... Joram has a 2 in every stat, but a Force Rating of 3 and a WHOLE lotta XP tied up in Move. The idea is for him to not use his force powers for as long as possible, letting me get more powers and pretending he had them all along.

It seemed to me that Force dice were some of the easiest ones to get positive results on, so I built a character based on that.

Definitely, but there is a cost, there is always a cost! You need a good Strain Threshold or ways of recovering strain during encounters. If your using the FaD system of Morality then you also need to be very careful how you balance the Conflict cost, or be happy to be bad to the bone.

I've got 12 wounds but 15 strain. DM let me start with a Meditation talisman, if I was able to fit it into my backstory AND I could pay for it.

And my goal is a kind hearted old man, IDEALLY I don't generate much, if any conflict in a session. BUT, so far, I've only played EotE, and I've only DMd, so we'll see how it goes. Haven't actually PLAYED (rather than DMd) a game in so long

its a lot of fun crossing to the other side for a while.

I would imagine. I haven't really been able to play a character since 3.5 DnD. This system is good enough that my fiancee actually plans on taking over GMing, something she has never had any interest in doing before.

Your a very lucky person! I wish my wife was that into gaming, she is more a board gamer.

So I've been playing dice games for a pretty long time. Not as long as a lot of you guys, but awhile. Initially, I really liked the FFG dice system, what with the unique dice, and the narrative pool reading... It seemed really cool.

The more I play, however, the less fun the dice are becoming. I fail rolls when I have twice as many positive dice as negative ones... Pretty consistently, actually. Generally it's because I'll roll 0 successes and 15 kerjillion advantages.

Am I doing something wrong? Is this just something my group is seeing, or is this a common problem? I know that there aren't, but it SEEMS like the dice are biased towards Failures with Advantages. Is this just us/me?

[From another one of the OP's post:]

If the guy he was swinging at had any sort of melee defense at all, he would miss most attacks. Ended up remaking the character because of it.

!

Could you tell us what the symbols on your black dice are? Do they look like the ones in this post?

Because if they do - you got the wrong Setback dice (manufacturer's issue - they mixed up the Imperial Assault dice with the RPG dice).

While it's been made clear at the release of the system that the dice are indeed weighted towards "Success with Threat" and "Failure with Advantage," if you're rolling Setback dice with those three Failure symbols, it would be the reason why your Marauder friend keeps missing opponents with melee defense, as this mechanic adds Setback.

wow, missed that fault! ouch thats gotta hurt.

Could you tell us what the symbols on your black dice are? Do they look like the ones in this post?

As soon as I saw that thread I checked my dice, they're good.

Your a very lucky person! I wish my wife was that into gaming, she is more a board gamer.

She was a wargamer up until she started working nights. Luck doesn't have much to do with it, it took some HUNTING.

There's a website that I found a while back that calculated the odds of various combinations of Ability/Proficiency/Difficulty/Challenge (it didn't deal with Boosts/Setbacks). I can't remember the site now (if someone knows please link to it), but I downloaded the chart for my games. Anyway, according to that chart...

2 Ability and 1 Proficiency vs 3 Difficulty - which I would say is a fairly standard roll for a beginner character rolling a suitable check (e.g. a Slicer rolling Computers, or a Scoundrel rolling Charm) - should succeed 53% of the time.

The 1 Ability and 3 Proficiency vs 2 Difficulty that you described earlier should succeed 83%, and even when it fails you should get plenty of Advantage. My own (admittedly suspect) maths suggests Triumph should be cropping up about 22% of the time. So your marauder should have been doing pretty well.

If Setback are genuinely causing that big an issue, perhaps...

a) The GM is handing out too much Setback

b) The players aren't using enough talents - like Brace - to remove Setbacks

c) The players aren't calling for enough Boost dice to counteract the Setbacks.

I've been DMing the sessions, and generally I don't add a whole lot of setbacks for melee attacks. The only defense was from the Shell Hutt armor.

And what all would a player call upon for boost dice? I could see, like, elevation granting one or two? But other than aiming, what else would you recommend for getting boost dice?

Oh man! My guys are at around 450 XP. I am the King of Setback Dice. Not a roll goes by where I don't have at least 2-3 setback dice in a roll. Most are environmental factors. Like the gusting wind chills you to the bone! That's a Setback. Anytime they are in an industrial area with a lot of loud noises, I add in setback die due to the loud unexpected sounds. Even when I throw in 3-4 setback dice, My guys can usually get rid 2-3, if not all of them though! But it makes the talents useful, and it helps me explain the scene better.

Any way, if I usually want my difficulty to be hard, at three purple, I will usually turn the third difficulty die into setback dice, and if they have the talents to get rid of them, even better. For each GM, to each their own, but I don't get off on the theory "I need to make the game more difficult mechanically, just because I can". I don't feel empowerment through that, but anyway.

The main way to get those ever so valuable Boost Dice is through spending Advantages. Spending one Advantage, you can pass the player to act one Boost Die. Spending two, you can pick the player who will get the Boost, or you could pass the next player to act two Boost. The CRBs give you a chart with some ideas, but that is all they are, just a starting point, nothing final or definitive on how to spend the Advantages.

My group has now playing together long enough we are to the point where I don't allow them to say I pass him a boost die. They have to explain narratively what is going on in the scene, and how the action or effect is doing this thing to help or hinder the situation, and from the narrative we can then make the case for the Boost or Setback die being handed out. We use the Dice Symbols to guide our Narrative, which in turn guides our mechanics. So yes, our rounds are not quick, but it is not, "I shoot, ok, you miss, next, I shoot, ok, you hit, ok, 23 damage, ok next, I shoot, you miss, ok, next round." Some people want that, and that is fine, but we don't.

But every round should have some Setback, and Boost dice in them. Melee attacks can also aim. I feel that combat is really about resource management too. You have to mange your WT and ST effectively. Spending your Strain and the right times for that second maneuver or to activate that talent, then using those left over single Advantages to regain some of that lost Strain back.

I don't really ever see the problem with the high fail rate on the dice. I mean it can happen, it is a probability game, and I have seen 5 Boost dice all come up blank before! Things can happen, but for the most part, my guys win. Perhaps I should just start upgrading all the difficulties because I bought the book!

Hope this helps a little bit.

You could house rule that if all the dice come up blank, you get to re-roll. It is considered a failure by RAW, but if you also get no advantage or threat, what's the point? lol

It's just called bad luck...sometimes poop happens.

I LIKE that even with insane pools, bad things can still happen. It's so much better than THAC0 10 with +10 to hit...

Personally, I tend to have the opposite problem: I have to assume my players are going to succeed on things even if they really shouldn't, because our (my) dice like to roll successes on positive dice and blanks on the negative dice. Even dumping Setbacks on them doesn't seem to help...

It does allow for awesomeness, but it gets annoying when I look at something and have to go, "Okay, the book says it's daunting, so I need to find 4-5 things to add Setbacks for or they'll pass easily..."

And my characters are at ~80 xp, and most of them didn't spend any xp on characteristics, so their dice pools are generally 2, maybe 3 dice.