Hi:

I bet the Edge of the Empire Beginners Game includes some funky SW dice. Could it be possible for FFG to sell the dice separately for us, betatesters?

L

I can imagine they'd pretty much have to. After all, the players at the table may well want their own dice and not have to pick up an entire set of things for themselves, so having dice alone would be handy.

LETE said:

This has been clarified a couple of times by FFG. The Beginner's Box is going to include a full set of dice. Individual dice sets will be sold separately from the Core Rulebook at the time of that release.

Cyril said:

Yeah, but that don't help the playtesters much.

Hi!

We wanna dice now!

L

They could end up changing some of the ratios on symbols of the dice due to the Beta. It would be dumb to mass produce dice now then have to change them later.

Until then we have stickers applied to dice from the Beta book sheet, a chart of conversions from standard dice, and smart phone/pad apps that can be updated if things change.

Sturn said:

And, from the sound of things here on the boards, that's exactly what FFG is going to wind up doing, in the end, since apparently the dice math isn't turning out all that well, by some estimations.

Rikoshi said:

New Zombie said:

There's been a lot of jawing/discussion/whining over in the game mechanics section about how people are citing that you're better off having more Ability dice than any Proficiency dice when it comes to calculating successes on dice rolls.

Seriously, some of the posts read like they came out of a Statistics textbook in how the break down the likelihood of getting multiple successes based on what you roll, with Proficiency dice apparently coming out on the losing end based on their armchair analysis.

Whether you believe said findings to be 100% Gospel or not is a matter of personal opinion. Personally, I don't think the dice really need that much of an overhaul, but that's just my view on things.

Rikoshi said:

Yeah.. well… Never tell me the odds!

That Blasted Samophlange said:

Too bad there's some folks that only want to hear about the odds *roll eyes*

Still, it's better than incessant whining about why there aren't full rules for Jedi Knights in the first book.

In any gaming group, yer always going to get the people who want the mechanics to be something they can't…for want of a better word, "game". These folks often scan new rules for things that lead to "One True Way's" and "Always Do's" because they hate them. Since in most games in the past, these things have popped up in the rules and not the dice, they've focussed their attentions there, but in this case, since the dice are entirely new, that's where they're gonna focus their gaze.

I think for the writers, as much of a pain in the ass as these people are, they are also kinda necessary - sort of like that English Teacher we all had who paid not one bit of attention to what we wrote in our stories, all they cared about was where we put our punctuation or if our participles were dangling. It was infuriating but wholly necessary. We don't want flawed mechanics. If a game gets a rep for that it's sunk.

Donovan Morningfire said:

To be fair, it's valuable input for FFG to have,and exactly the sort of thing that should some out of a beta, IMO. THe pages of whining about it we can probably do without, but I don't see any harm in raising it (along with proof/analysis) as part of the beta process.

That said, I also agree it isn't really a major issue, but I think something should be done to try and push the odds back the way a lot of the game system seems to have been intended to work. Personally, I like the triumph = three successes suggestion, as it has the least impact on the game/rules and any already manufactured dice, and I think it does enough to push the math in the right direction.

gribble said:

Given that Triumph already has a built-in wildcard effect, perhaps the "turn the tide" option could be rephrased to also include "if no other immediate option presents itself, count the Triumph as three successes instead of just one"?

Donovan Morningfire said:

Sure, that could work. I kinda like 3 raw successes (and despair as 3 raw failures), plus the "turn the tide" effect. Makes them extra special/punchy when rolled, which is exactly what something that is only on one side across all the dice in the game and is bought with destiny points should do IMO. But I'd be happy with either approach - the key is something to shift the balance in favour of the proficiency dice a little, without completely mucking up the dice stats (or having to completely redo the dice faces).

Donovan Morningfire said:

borithan said:

I had a thought about that earlier.

A lot of the talk about "dice odds" seems to be focusing on generating successes, and how you're more likely to generate excess advantages than those extra successes.

I can't help but wonder, given Jay Little's admitted Indie-game inspiration when designing EotE as discussed on the Order 66 podcast, if that was the intent of the math all along, to focus not on rolling large numbers of successes as one might be accustomed to, but rather rolling lots of advantages, which can then be used to do a whole host of cool things both in and out of combat, where extra successes are just "do things faster" (non-combat skills) or "more damage" (combat skills).

So maybe it's not the math that's at fault, but a paradigm shift that we're still getting used to. As a certain wrinkled green Muppet said, perhaps we need to unlearn what we have learned.

Sturn said:

Hiyas:

But what about the mass-produced dice for the Beginners Game? Is this game coming out before Edge of The Empire publishes? It'll be dumb then, to have a a game whose (?) dice are all screwy & then another corrected.

We wanna dice!!!

L

Donovan Morningfire said:

But I want the Jediiiiiii…

and also, there's no stats in the book for power converterrrrrrrrs…

Donovan Morningfire said:

I think you're very right about the paradigm shift. Having finally placed my dice stickers on and begun rolling dice, the mechanics feel fine. Combat can end VERY quickly. One lucky shot can ruin your characters day.

It very much is a different way of thinking, sadly in such a way that many won't be able to adapt.

I really don't think the dice will change at all. Just because this was probably the first thing the devs started working on. To be honest, the dice work fine. Just rolling them, they are incredibly evocative in terms of how the action unfolds. Since one hit can make a huge change to combat, running an encounter with the dice can make a miss-a-thon (something that happens all the time to me in d20 based games) fun. My character can be running around, ducking behind cover, shooting steam pipes to slow down the enemy. I feel like I matter in combat. This will help keep a player involved, especially if they have a modicum of control on how they interpret things.

I said this before, and I intend to work on this, but this system is PERFECT for a superhero RPG.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

Having gotten several sessions under my belt as both player and GM, the math does fell pretty good, as even a "missed" attack can provide benefits to the heroes, such as being able to disarm a foe even though you did no damage (had that happen last night as the medic whiffed the attack roll but had scored 3 advantages). And with certain weapon traits, all you need is one success to score a "hit" and then need advantages to trigger the nifty stuff, like blast for grenades or autofire.

Truthfully, I hadn't thought about using this system for a superhero RPG, but now that you put that out there, I can't argue that point, as the narrative feel the dice impart does seem a natural fight for the narrative style of combat that a lot of superhero comics have (or at least had when I was actively reading comics several years ago).

The thread being referenced here probably is the one I did some stuff on. What the original subject was about, was adding a Boost die better than upgrading an Ability die to a Proficiency die. Not surprisingly, rolling 2 dice was better than rolling 1 die.

The other results were comparing someone with fewer total dice, some Ability, some Proficiency vs someone with more Ability dice. Again, the results came out in favor of the larger dice pool.

The thread being referenced is here . It may not be the only thread, however, being referenced. My familiarity with the forum's posts is not exhaustive. I also know I've seen other people come to the same conclusions found on the linked thread in separate threads.

It was intended to describe, with examples, my findings when I got curious about just how an upgrade changed a roll. The results were pretty dismal. The results also explained why my players were seeing their failed rolls choked with advantages (a result of stacking boost dice for big rolls). Really, I had hoped that the results would be used to make changes to even out rough edges and anomalies in the new dice system, and therefore reduce gaming the system. I stated this repeatedly in my responses.

The devs commented on the thread twice, and never said the mechanism wasn't working as intended, nor did they say the math was incorrect. I think ynnen in particular made an interesting point about considering the source of the mechanic, and I think handling the vast majority of player controlled boosts upgrades instead of additional boosts could be part of a worthwhile solution without making changes to the dice.

Seeing as how I'm a doctoral candidate in Biostatistics in addition to being a GM with more than a decade of experience, I'll take complaints that what I produced "looks like it was from a statistics textbook" as an unintentional compliment. The numbers are accurate, repeatable, and supported by empirical evidence, both from my table and from these posts.

I've posted that I'm willing to share the [simple and extensively commented] code for R that produced the results, if anyone would care to check how the numbers were produced.

If you see not believing the numbers or results as matter of personal opinion, fine. I can't force you to agree with the facts. The simple act of me posting it in a public place means there's an open invite to anyone to use equally rigorous methods to show I'm wrong. I am eager to find flaws in my results or interpretation, since I can't improve them without finding them. We call that science .

-WJL

PS You have NO idea how hard it is to make that final statement and refrain from making contemporary political remarks about certain groups in certain countries with certain religious and political views.

LETE said:

Just pay the $5 for iOS/Droid app, ffs. It's probably gonna be way cheaper than the actual dice anyway.

That only works if you have a device capable of running the app, I have an android and it is not compatable.

E