wastedyuthe said:

nice rule im thinking

It's a hard call, depending on what you want, but remember that a 1 and 6 combination will only come up 2.7% of the time or about 1 in 37 combats. Basing automatic loss on just the roll of a 1 is 16.7% of the time or about 1 in 6 combats. The latter seems too high/often, but to me, but sometimes the 1 and 6 combo just doesn't come up often enough.

I'm not playing Talisman as much as I would like to nowadays but few years ago I was playing a lot with my friends.

We were always using "exploding dice", as someone called it here - on a roll of 6 you roll again, add up rolls and so on...

It eliminated auto-kills but more importantly it gave a weak characters some small chance to win battles that would be hopeless otherwise.

We've seen just starting character with strength 2 have a lucky shot at a dragon and we've also seen advanced character with strength around 12 being defeated by a wild boar (I kid you not - the boar had three rolls of 6 in a row ).

The system is fairly simple, dosen't introduce different dice and probablity of rolling 6 is high enough to make every fight exciting.

Just my two cents

Hi Felis,

Yes, we've discussed the exploding dice option a few times. It's inherent problem is exemplified in what you stated. Each time the die is rolled, there's still 16.7% chance that the same triggering number will come up. Most people found it happen just a little too often, and there were a lot of people (well, modern players at least, and not so much long timers) who didn't want to "waste" time on multiple rolls. But hey, lots of variations herein for whatever floats anyone's boat.

In the old days we used to play for the adventure and not so much for the Crown so we had few house rules to reflect that. Some of our games lasted whole day or weekend so the characters were getting ridiculously strong. Exploding dice was just the system we needed.

It's true that it is unbalanced for standard games when objective is to get to the Crown as fast as you can and at the same time slow others down. If you're planing a game for two or three hours additional rolls might be annoying.

As you said - for everyone each own. What works for me doesn't have to work for others.

We still play for the adventure as well, and our games are certainly still longer than some of the reports I've heard. I've even seen people rating their games by who had the fastest win. Kinda sad, isn't it?

One of our favored ways to get rid of the auto-win was a 2D6 system, with 2 being automatic loss and 12 being automatic win on one roll. The Bell Curve kept these from happening to often, and the larger roll range made it harder to to have so much advantage that you couldn't be beaten on a roll. We ended up having to make rules for double-loss and double-win, but that itself had some surprise and amusing effects when it happened (and it did once in a while).

I am playing Talisman since 2nd edition, I started like 15-20 years ago, and here are rules I use:

any fight in outer region - use k6 dice

any fight in middle region - use k8 dice

any fight in inner region - use k10 dice

This solved for me problem of being overpowered...

also few other changes:

you can buy mule in the village for 4g and he increases your capacity by 8 - but you can own only one mule(this restriction will reduce the situation when some silly people used thiefs to create caravans of all available mules and stealing items from all players in the same time making them impossible to obtain new mules).(I dont remember exactly but in 2nd edition you could buy a mule in village? and he got 8 capacity for sure), In 4th edition there is far more items in compare to monsters in a adventure deck so having 4 items capacity and very small chance to get a mule(just marketplace) was really very silly idea from FFGames...

character carrying limits depends from strength:

str: less than 7 7-9 more than 9

items: 4 5 6 (max)

also when coming to a space with other character first you have to resolve all other card encounters there or board text(in opossite to official 4th edition rules). It will give a chance weaker characters to still survive situation when someone is chasing them...example if you go to forest where other character is staying, you have to roll first and if you will loose 1 turn then you will be not able to encounter this other character.

also when killing other character you cant have his followers, they are being discarded except mule and the mercenary if you pay him(thats a logic-no serious follower would ever join you if you killed his friend;) ).

another change is when using armour, logically you can use two or more different pieces of armour during the fight, so if you loose then you have one roll for each item separetely. Of course you have to use logic here... example warrior when using two weapons cant use a shield in the same time....nor you cant use two different types of helmets or chests...

Also armour do not prevent loosing life when fighting creatures using craft attribute(including players).

I really dont like the idea of Mule being a follower now instead of item(mesmerizing mule to join you???? thats just silly....) I was thinking about threating him as an follower of item type, so basically from the point of view of spells he would be threated as a sort of item which walks by himself so he is not included in capacity limit but he can be taken after loosing a battle and he could be stolen or acquired by a acquisition spell .... so basically like in 2nd edition.

PS. Yes, I am adventure type of player I can only feel sad when some people think that playing Talisman is like playing race game.... fun from playing this game flows from exploration....gearing up, creating stronger and stronger character and then.... one day.... meet with other characters in one big fight,..... so there can be only one........

You could always go with "exploding dice" if you want there to always be a chance of failure (I'm sure someone else has brought this up, but it's probably the simplest solution).

Basically any "6" rolled in combat rolls another die until you stop rolling 6's. Keeps the possibility of failure in the equation, but doesn't screw with the probability by adding extra dice (ie 7 doesn't become the most common number or whatever).

Edit: Another advantage of sticking to one die is that it doesn't screw around when multiple dice come into the equation by various means (Basilisks,flails and the like).