New ideas to limit the passive subtraction of successes that I do not particularly like.

Idea 1

1. PCs/NPCs/monsters all have natural defence rating that increases as they become experienced. This value ranges from 1-5 extra purple die added to atackers dice pool.
2. When someone parries the attack is resolved as an opposed roll (2d base +1d parry + misfortune for skill/special)

• This idea can work but reactive defences become relatively worse to use as you rank up. That's bad. Perhaps parry could add one purple die plus remove one success automatically.

Idea 2

1. PCs/NPCs/monsters all have natural defence rating that increases as they become experienced. This value ranges from 0-4, and is the number of characteristic die the attacker removes from his dice pool before rolling.
2. When someone parries the attack is resolved as an opposed roll (2d base +1d parry + misfortune for skill/special)

• Even removing 5 blue dice from an experienced players dice pool doesn't decrease the chance of success more than 11%. Perhaps a combination of idea 1 and 2, so the blue dice are replaced with purple dice. I'll have to do some calculations on that one.

Expertise defence idea

1. For every skill level in a relevant skill (melee/athletics/discipline etc.) the player adds one purple and one black die to the attackers dice pool.
2. Default difficulty is 1d
3. Monsters have an expertise of their threat level divided by 2 rounded up or down at GM discretion
4. parry is an opposed roll with a default difficulty of 2d + misfortune for skill/special + the defence card.

Example with an experienced fighter fighting an equal opponent:

• 4 blue
• 4 green/red
• 3 yellow
• 2 white
• 5 black (2 defence + 3 expertise)
• 4 purple (1 default + 3 expertise)

This gives a basic hit chance of 80% against an opponent not defending and a 49% chance for 3 successes. That's fair, since hitting someone not actively defending shouldn't be harder.

Now if the opponent parries we get the following dice pool:

• 4 blue
• 4 green/red
• 3 yellow
• 2 white
• 7 black (2 defence + 3 expertise + 2 opposed roll skill/special)
• 6 purple (2 default for opposed + 3 expertise + 1 for parry)

This gives a basic hit chance of 53% and 22% for 3 successes. This also seems fair as one should assume that if two opponents are fighting and defending then there should be 50/50 chance for them hitting each other if they are completely equal.

Huge dice pools is the big downside to this but if I use the same system on the fighter one of my players created in the weekend I get the following success rates:

• 73% chance to hit an equal opponent not defending and 34% chance for 3 successes
• 46% chance to hit an equal opponent using advanced parry and 15% for 3 successes

The system hits new players slightly more, but looking at the numbers it's quite ok that the general hit rate against an opponent is slightly greater as they rank up. As long as it isn't the other way around. The system scales fairly well.

All these numbers do not take into account bonus die from fortune, cards and other circumstances of course.

Gallows said:

Though I do agree a single roll is good, the size of these pools you are talking about is roughly the same number of dice when two opposed pools are combined to this single roll. Computation would also be slower when a single player has to calculate a twenty die pool as compared to two ten die pools calculated by two people. This also may not look nearly as pretty at low levels, and I am running the math on that, but I think it has a more dire effect on weaker characters than you realize. For instance, lets look at an average fighter, with 2 conservative stance:

2 green

1 blue

1 yellow

2 Black (1 for opponents expertise, 1 defense)

2 Purple ( 1 for default 1 for expertise).

(+ any other penalty for the action card)

The system also makes it nearly impossible for non-combatants (envoy for instance) to hit anyone. It is possible at high level an envoy will have absolutely no combat ability:

3 Green

1 Blue

No yellow

No White

5 Black

4 Purple

There is absolutely no chance in the world he would hit this character. Sure maybe if the dice fall a specific way they would. This system you propose (as many as you have) forces combat leveling to stay "in the game." It also makes it impossible for a low level character fighting, lets say, a BloodThirster to ever get in a lucky hit, because its defense against an average character gives no opportunity for a successful attack. The margins are just too far gone to even attempt actions.

Still, this mechanic is better than the subtract systems you propose earlier since the fail ratio on that beast is way in favor of combat gods and making it harder to hit an envoy just because he's rank five over 1 seems flawed as well.

I am not meaning to play devil's advocate, just pointing out some parts I see as problematic. I am still trying to think of ways (other than opposed resolution how to rectify this situation) but I'm still working on it. I haven't put that much effort into yet as we use a slower experience system (5 xp get 1 advance, pc's gain 1-3 experience per session) system and started out Rank: 0, as kids, so we could grow into the system and characters so I haven't thought about how it will shape up in years to come.

Honestly, I think the system totally breaks down at high levels because of their allusions to a high-end of eight - ten dice. Personally, the system needs to stop at some point earlier with characteristic dice (I'd surmise a 6 right now, again still haven't looked at it). I think the real flaw is the prospect of eight dice rather than a lower number. There is no reason why it even needs to go that high in my opinion,, that many dice won't add all that much more flavor, all it really does is make roll computation longer, and be it stranger. How the heck are we to know what a 7 Boon success looks like compared to a three boon?) White Wolf got by for years with lower figures and I thought it worked fine (after running the same Mage game for over 5-8 years). So the best way to keep the integrity of the system is to honestly review why on earth you feel it should go that high (the eight levels) and really reassess the viability of that as a system. As you point out it doesn't work. You've added all this detail to combat, now imagine a knowledge check? The Envoy will never fail those either? Imagine a medicine roll? All doctors are gods now, no critical wound problems? Imagine a climb check to get away from problems? It will not fail and there will be no way to add extra blacks and purples to inflate that system, you will have no mechanism in place as you have with the combat system. Honestly, the system just does not work with that many dice and FFG should have just said that upfront and capped at roughly 6 in my opinion.

I also agree defense is a stat that needs tweaking. I prefer to think of it from talents or action cards rather than weighting already powerful skills even more powerful (the combat skills). If the single skill keeps you alive and allows you to kill better its value to a player greatly increases and suddenly envoys are trading in document papers for broad swords. I would surely put these on talent cards. Increased Parry ability, Increased defense ability, increased protect an ally is a new Talent that would stack with specialization. One Black from defence + 1 black from Parry specialization + 1 purple from a parry Talent if you have the specialization, thrown into the standard contested system (compare stats) and you are looking at some difficult rolls for players as long as you aren't looking at those oh so precious 8's.

If Six seems too limiting, keep the bonus white to characteristics away from players until the characteristics max, Create high level action cards and talents that reward them in different ways (like I don't know, lowers critical value of their weapons). All in all, the leveling here is the mechanical issue which creates the dice problems. All those extra dice don't really add anything either since the max success line on a card is a 3 + typically two boons. It is a hard issue I realize to push, but kill the high level, curve it with contested check as base difficulty, add new talents/action cards, restrict what can be achieved at each rank, add defense modification talents (active and passive) and I think you'll come out with a system much easier to play, more enjoyable to play, and with very little alteration to the core - mostly all you'd be eliminating is some cryptic remark in the characteristic section about how high characteristics go. The rest you'd pull from the system, with a little alteration of switching combat to contested rolls (which the versus on all the cards actually imply). If you boost on that line a character's defense is equal to their strength or aglity stat + any gear added and use the contested rules for determination (add 1 black for expertise remember +1 black for any other pertinent detail + 1 Black for any corresponding talent), I think you will find a much more varied, be it intricate and more give and take combats. I also recommend slowing the rate of advance to 5 experience equal one advance and then prorating how much each could cost, like Characteristic cost stays the same. A skill 3, a talent 2, a specialization 1, an action card 1 or 2 (your call, but we do 2). This I think will make a better game than what's been presented to us, which, as it is held together by duct tape, I consider it some great ideas we're supposed to hack anyway (God knows why they killed strange eons over it). But it all starts with the level cap and a little ingenuity on your part, rather than trying to get players to roll 24 dice to resolve a single, did you hit them. Did you play old champions? I did and all those dice only meant one thing: Did I hit them or did I miss.

Those are my two cents and I'll post up the details later.

Some great input Commoner!

Yes with passive defence based on rank even the scholar would have the defence even though he had no combat skills. But he would be unable to get three successes if he had 2 strenght and no weapon skill.

But I do however see the only viable solution to this system being difficulty based on a number of successes needed as adding even purple dice isn't enough.

I have also thought about limiting the dice pool to say half the characteristic (rounded down to minimum 1), but even that just won't do the trick.

1 blue, 3 yellow and 1 purple... that's still 75% chance of success.

But once people start getting 10+ experience rank 2 characters in their groups they WILL discover that the system is completely broken.

Just did some quick calculations and with stats ranging from 1-10 where you only get half that dice works pretty well. perhaps the solution is that simple.

The envoy for example with 2 strenght, 1 fortune die in strenght (cheap), 1 melee skill (cheap) would hit someone with defence 4 43% of the time without spending fortune. That's not bad. With the current system his chance would be 62%

But the super fighter with 8 strenght and 3 melee would hit 95% of the time and 78% for 3 successes. With the current system his chance would be 99% and 96% for 3 successes.

Still tough for the envoy, but not that bad.

So:

Characteristic dice limiting idea:

• Characters get their characteristic dicided by 2 as dice pool. 2-3=1, 4-5=2, 6-7=3, 8-9=4, 10=5
• On uneven numbers they get a bonus fortune die in the statistic to compensate.

A quick reply, the flat one challenge die is why the system fails. Lowering the characteristic cap (like you suggested) or my suggestion of limiting it to six, then throwing it on the contested resolution, adding in black defense dice, adding in ways to raise defense (via talents), adding in ways more tactical options (such as combat action cards), solves a great deal of problems. Increasing the difficulty of complex actions as well (as some cards have) is another way to increase difficulty in a lower scale. If first you compare two stats and they equal, that is 2 purple +2 Black for the double strike, +1 Black for the opponents expertise, +1 Black for an additional talent., +2 for defense. This goes against like this: 2 characteristic, 4 Passive dice + 3 Yellow versus 2 Purple +6 black should greatly decrease margin of error. This closes the gap. Action cards could also add 1 purple base to the contested check + the difficulty on the cards on a fixed scale. So sure, you can hit more frequently with a basic attack, but harder actions will still be harder.

I agree the system is broken on the suggested scale. Therefore, for me, the way to fix the system is to fix the scale. That way, the rest of the system remains integrity. This same problem plagued West End Games Star Wars as it does this one. Both good systems, just only on the low end. Fixing that low end is key. In my opinion, characteristics and stances even start to high. The problem lies in leveling and generation, not the actual die mechanic. Fix those two mechanics and the dice & combat system fixes itself.

But what if they had instead put a bit more thought into the dice themselves.

Lets say a green die had only 30% chance for success instead of 70%. That would maintain the great variety and let the system scale nicely as characters grow stronger. If they released new dice they could fix the entire system easily... that's where the math is and where the system fails.

Currently one extra green die just adds too much. Instead starting out with around 4-5 dice and then eventually getting 8 characteristic dice would scale just fine if the dice were made with some sort of matemathical logic

Gallows said:

Yes but they probably/for sure will not release out new dices...
But yes that would solve a lot rebalance the dices.

Please check my simple reflexion and rule limitation in this thread. I think I've got something quite cool to solve that problem.

(Moreover could we please guys moderate us about this subject and talk about it on less threads at the same time ?)

Characteristic dice pool limitation idea:

• Players get half their characteristic as a dice pool, rounded down.
• At uneven (3, 5, 7, 9) players get a bonus fortune die until they raise their stat again and get a real blue die.
• When using defensive cards players may add a number of purple dice on the first card equal to their rank, up to two. Extra dice spill over to the next card if used, up to two dice on each card.
• A chaos symbol is ALWAYS a miss when the defender is using a reactive defence card.

Or instead of the parry idea:

• The base difficulty to hit someone is his rank or threat level divided by 2 up to a maximum of d3.
• Chaos stars still count as a complete miss when the target is using a reactive defence card.

Characteristic dice limiting idea final version (I hope ):

1. Characters get their characteristic dicided by 2 as dice pool for all checks except initiative: 2-3=1, 4-5=2, 6-7=3, 8-9=4, 10=5
2. On uneven numbers characters get a bonus fortune die, in the characteristic, to compensate for half a die.
3. The default difficulty to attack a target is it's rank or half its threat level. You can never get assigned a greater default difficulty than the number of characteristic dice you have, for the action, based on the opponents rank. Other circumstances may increase the difficulty further however. The bonus fortune die at uneven numbers count as a characteristic die for this purpose.
4. Reactive defence cards add dice as per normal rules, but when you attack someone using reactive defence a chaos star signifies a miss, no matter how many succeses in the roll.

This means that the hit rates rise against an equal target as you rank up, but you can still miss. It also means that a scribe with low strenght and no weapon skill can still hit a trained warrior, since he won't get more than 1d difficulty. The trained warrior will get 3d difficulty if the scribe is rank 3, but since he has more dice his chance to hit is still greater and his ability to dead damage is certainly better. I think this is the closest I can get to a system I find perfect. It's fairly simply and keeps the dice pools reasonable.

interesting idea.
I am not sure deviding by 2 the pool of dices will work really cause of the stances you have to allocate.
What do you do when u have only 1 dice in your pool? u will have to change your blue dice to a red one or green.

I do like the uneaven adding the fortune dice.

I also had a proposition but it needs to be polished. Based on what I read so far and of course the fact that characteristics should not be greater than 5 or 6 for PJs.

You can't allocate more than 1/2 your total pool of characteristic dices (blue) into reckless or conservative stances.
example:
5 blue dices you could divide them like this:
5/2 = 2.5 so round down = 2 max dices in a stance.
3 blue + 2 red
3 blue + 2 green

4 blue charac dices:
max 2 red or 2 green

3 blue charac
max 1 red or 1 green

if you have to round down (and u feel u losing one dice for a stat like 3 or 5) perhaps you could add an extra fortune dice:

5 blue dices you could divide them like this:
5/2 = 2.5 so round down = 2 max dices in a stance.
3 blue + 2 red + 1 white
3 blue + 2 green + 1 white

On this you add of course trained (yellow) dices and fortune (specialisation) also when allowed.

for all the tests I would use opposition when needed (certainly for combat)
but would use purple dices instead of black onces for charac, defense and also specialisations....
I would also use 1 black misfortune die minimum for each action + adding an extra or 2 regarding circonstances.

The issue still is the amount of dices you throw for high level characters with well trained skills.

System 2 Test

also another possibility using automatic succes for difficulty depending on rank.

so same based system
characteristic dices
stance: reckless or conservative ( but maximum 1/2 of the amount of characteristic dices)
yellow dices if trained
and fortune dices if specialisation etc...

difficulty

the base: one automatic succes x (cross swords) per rank of opposing pj/pnj
so based on Gallows proposition I changed it a little.
rank 1 adversary = 1 success
rank 2 adversary = 2 success
...

on top of this you add either purple or black dices for special training, defense, conditions...
In fact the challenges levels are replaced by automatic success in a way.

this system has to be balanced of course still. but the advantage of this one is that your pool of dice is less important.

Gallows said:

You are getting to the heart of the problem here. In some cases the 5 stat person over the 3 stat person has over a 25% success rate as starting characters. In DnD this 2 stat difference is 5%. By cutting the stats in half you are cutting that % down to sane numbers between fighter and non fighters while scaling back the whole game to allow for misses. I think these rules are overly complex for such a simple game, but I feel you address the two real issues with these rules 1. being the enormous difference between non combat and combat characters at starting levels and 2. the success rate.

sorry to repeat myself, problem is characteristics are too high.

A chaos warrior is around 6 in its primary characteristics, a troll or giant STR and TO are around 5 or 6... How could a hero human/dwarf/elf be above that... up to 10 ?!

willmanx said:

u are right.
have u checked my propositions?

willmanx said:

I'll set max characteristic limit to 8 personally. That means a PC can potentially become as strong as a giant. But I don't just see it as raw strenght... it's more applied strenght in relation to combat. With my system, the A/C/E dice will also suddenly begin to play an actual role in the fight at high rank now.

Well I'm thinking of making a house rule that doesn't allow a character to start above a 4 in a stat. While this solution is a band aid, it does mitigate the quick start awesome characters.

Sinister said:

I did something similar. I robbed the players of their +1 increase in characteristic from the starting career.

I can't understand why there is such a worry about stats 7, 8 or even 9. have you guys done the math of how long it will take to gain that those numbers? even if a character starts with 5 it will cost him 13 xp to reach strenght 7 which can only be done over two careers (remember you have to spend the xp to complete your career), and 21and 30 xp to reach 8 or 9 which again takes another two careers (4 in all) and doesn't leave room for much of any other skills or talents etc.

so in fact you have to spend 28 xp plus the xp cost for career change and bonus to gain an 8 stat. and lets not talk about the amazing feat of patience required on the player involved, to save up 8 xp. Thats a long time to wait while all your fellow players harvest the skills. To gain what? an extra dice to use in combat and not much else? Is it really worth it? Wouldn’t it be much better and more interesting to gain a diversity of skills and actions and talents to arm you against more than one type of encounter. After all an adventurer must be able to cope with many different challenges and his friends may not always be around in this dangerous world.

This is what I did, Sinister and you may like it as it addresses what you're talking about.

Commoners Common Law of Character Creation & Advancement

At generation, a character automatically gains 2 in all six characteristics. Racial benefits are then applied. A character may then purchase two advances to any two abilities they choose (they can advance any 3 to a four and any four to a 3), and only two. The rest remains the same. (admittedly, creation points may need to be lowered somewhat, but that is yet to be worked out):

Characteristic and Stance Advancement works like this:

Rank one, you may only raise two stats to rank 4 and all stats may be increased to a 3. No more than one box in a skill.

Rank Two: All stats can go to four, only two can go to five. No more than two boxes in a career skill.

Rank Three: All stats can go to five, only two can go to six. No more than three boxes in a skill.

Rank Four: All characteristics can go to six.

Rank Five: All characteristics can go to six.

As for stance meter, this is what we did:

Each character gets one stance piece in both directions. The stance pieces shown on a career card are the maximum number of stances the character can get in those professions. To buy additional stance pieces costs the character an advancement. This way, characters are not stacked in their conservative and reckless dice and have to actually spend points to get more dice, rather than getting them for free. In addition, when you switch careers you do not lose stance pieces. You retain the ones you have. However, you can only advance stance pieces if the new career has additional stance pieces you do not have (i.e. if you had 2 reckless pieces and the new career gives you 3 reckless you may now purchase an additional reckless). We have yet to have a situation where a new career has less stance pieces, but we believe you may lose your old stance pieces purchased as you move into the career - to reflect the characters change of focus (i.e. the old career had 2 conservative and the new one only has one, you would then lose 1 conservative stance as you move into the career), but that is not set yet or anything like that.

These two factors are great and give more variance to the mechanic, while maintaining the integrity. If we restart (and when we do) this is the system we will be using.

Anyway, back to the dice and combat. The green dice are good, yes, but the design flaw with them is the delay effect is not limiting enough like Fatigue and the banes on the reckless dice are. Personally, I would have thrown a bane on them or not even included them at all, but since they are here to stay, this is what I have done:

Basically an hourglass does its normal effects as outlined in the rules. Except, there are other tools the GM can use with them. One, is to give the player 1 black on their next action they attempt that scene. Basically suggesting they took so long to do what they did last, they are now catching up to what is happening next. Additionally if this seems to be the only roll that encounter or the black die is not justifiable and they did not use an action and if no initiative is in play, I will them a stress for the hourglass. Lastly, if the roll is being used against the tracker, I will either move their token backward (yes even for the whole party) or advance the token of their competitor or the upcoming event. Basically, this says well it took you longer to do this, so you wore yourself out a bit mentally. Take a stress. Or on the tracker level, it says you were too slow, now things are getting harder for you to get it done in the time alotted. I noticed my players starting to shy away from constantly going green all the time.

The other nasty thing we are trying out to restrict these dice is to make all tear drops and hourglasses actually count. All the other parts of all the dice always count, so why the exception to these little nasty things? I am not down with it at all. So each teargives one fatigue. Each hourglass, one recharge token is added per roll, or black die is added, or initiative step is moved, or a counter is moved on a tracker. Sometimes I use a combination of these effects on conservative rolls not to be a total prick. It works very well and I notice players are not always jumping for those fun-colored success balls. They go reckless not for mechanical reasons, but because their characters are going reckless. They go conservative, because they are being conservative.

Lucas Adorn said:

Lucas, I totally agree with you. From first level, looking at the amout of xp you are talking about roughly 30, you are talking roughly 30 sessions, that's almost 8 months of game time (assuming you game every week). It is a level most people will never, ever see and at great sacrifice to the rest of your character.

I am sort of to blame for diverging from a combat system discussion to a level conversation because it seemed to me a great deal of this combat thread was to abort the entire system to adjust it for level 8 and 10 stats. Which, that level of stat is a problem for the system, one the system can't support. People (including you maybe) will see it once you get to that level. Additionally, I am concerned over the level issue because I do not always play under the assumption of starting at rank one. Lets say you want to play a party of grizzled old knights who had seen too many winters and now are making a last heroic stand. This game could go on for years, but would start at high ranks. So now, my players and I are ready to jump in, but when we do they all are God-stats and cannot be stopped by nearly anything (especially in straight up, standard challenges that are non combat related, such as a climb check). The game would not present statistical challenges what so ever. Now come to combat and they will be nigh unstoppable at an absurd level of soak, damage, and lethal potential. They will roll Bloodthirsters without the bat of an eye. I see this, myself as a problem if I so choose to jump into that type of game rather than play it from first rank. This system is geared toward rank one, possibly rank two. You can see it in the way the careers are that we have. It also is apparent in the fact you can only do a career once. So by rank five you will have to have walked through 5 careers in order to advance anything, regardless if you were a dockhand for life. Right now, the system supports us having two careers without anything truly strange happening and has room for most careers not to go past one rank at all period. And no, every commoner is not going to grow up to be a witch hunter. The system was not written for high levels and I believe the frustration is there is no accounting for it. This limits play options (such as anything beyond rank three). You can easily get the 30 required advancements at generation if you are generating that high in level.

Hence, why I have an issue with it. Also, I spent 100 bucks on the thing. For a system so flawed at the high end, it makes me question if the 100 buck buy in was worth it? Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but it is 100 bucks to play rank 1 and 2. For a hundred bucks DND accounts very well for these higher levels, this system does not.

Well then there's the question of thematically if characters aren't suppossed to die most of the time before reaching high levels. This game really does remind me of a fantasy Cthulhu in places and the grim nature makes me not want to pull punches unlike DnD where I think the DM often makes decisions (such as not attacking the down guy) or attacking the guy with the most hit points, especially when things start to go south for the players.

Do you guys think thematically speaking character death should be higher than most rpgs to fit the world view?

Characteristic dice limiting rule:

• Players can't use creation points on characteristics, but always start at their racial level. Humans start with 9 creation points and dwarves/elves start with 6 points. You can never raise your characteristic more than 3 over your racial starting value. Humans can however one characteristic as their main one, to allow for one extra point potential.
• The default difficulty to attack a target is it's rank or half its threat level. You can never get assigned a greater default difficulty than the number of characteristic dice you have, for the action, based on the opponents rank. Other circumstances may increase the difficulty further however. The bonus fortune die at uneven numbers count as a characteristic die for this purpose.
• Reactive defence cards add 1d as per normal rules, but when you attack someone using reactive defence a chaos star signifies a miss, no matter how many succeses in the roll.
• Each character gets one stance piece in both directions. The stance pieces shown on a career card are the maximum number of stances the character can get in those professions. To buy additional stance pieces costs the character an advancement. This way, characters are not stacked in their conservative and reckless dice and have to actually spend points to get more dice, rather than getting them for free. In addition, when you switch careers you do not lose stance pieces. You retain the ones you have. However, you can only advance stance pieces if the new career has additional stance pieces you do not have (i.e. if you had 2 reckless pieces and the new career gives you 3 reckless you may now purchase an additional reckless)
  

I think that's it. I've been going over all the different points made in our rules debate threads and I think this one will create the most balanced play for my troupe. Thanks for all the input.

commoner said:

My group has earned 12 XP to date and we have only been playing for 4 weeks. This is over about 8 sessions, with a few of the sessions garnering a bonus XP point.