This is less of a rules question, and more of a question about gaming etiquette, I think. I was playing a game and rolled 3 hits from my TIE fighter's Range 1 attack. Sweet. My opponent then rolled three dice for his X-wing's evade: 2 evades and a blank. Then I said, "Wait, you were only supposed to roll 2 dice." I suggested that he had to reroll his two dice and ignore anything he just rolled. He wanted to keep a blank and an evade, and throw out the other evade. He conceded, and rolled a blank and a focus, suffering two hits, though the X-wing survived. I felt a little bad.

I suppose we could have rolled on it, like they say in the instructions, but I was curious if there was an already established standard operating procedures in the gaming community regarding this situation. Do you reroll? Does the one who rolled decide which result to throw out? Would I get to choose which one to throw out?

Parakitor said:

He has to reroll everything.

Agree with ShadowJak. Every minis game (or any other) that I've ever played, the proper etiquette is to reroll the proper amount, ignoring the mistaken roll completely.

Jim

its also proper to reroll everything if the attacker rolls the wrong number of attack dice. we should have a proper xwing thread

I've always used the Titan rule (taken from Avalon Hill's version of Titan): You drop the best results first until you get to the proper number of dice.

Granted, Titan saw as many as 20 dice rolled in a single attack, so re-rolling the entire thing could be cumbersome. But even with smaller dice pools, re-rolling the entire roll can sometimes provide a better result than the error roll, which is why I favor dropping the best results first.

I think it is sort of a house rule thing.

Personally I would say, the error roller, rerolls the proper dice.

Though if you want to penalize (say if the player does this often, or your group are very competitive), then Kingbobb has a good idea.

My question for those that say reroll all the dice.

What if they rolled all blanks? Do you still point it out and make them reroll?

kmanweiss said:

Yes. At least I would.

Jim

Do a complete re-roll, ignoring the first roll entirely.

We generally defer the choice to the opponent. They can choose to have the attacker reroll or not. This works out well for this game since the attacker rolls+modifies first I believe. Sort of like declining a penalty in American Football.

kmanweiss said:

Thats down to your concience and if you want to be known as a good sport or not.

Major Mishap said:

When it comes to board games, I consider myself a good sport. Denying a reroll of all misses when the person rolled to many dice to being with is not something I would consider bad sportsmanship.

Never said its bad sport not to show an opponants error that is detrimental to you, but its being a good sport if you do. There is a difference.

I've never thought about it much. When it happens we basically follow these rules.

If it was a good roll, reroll with the correct dice.

If it was a bad roll, keep it.

The choice to keep or reroll is decided by the person not rolling the dice. Think of it like a football penalty. The team that is the victim of the penalty can choose to decline the penalty if it's in their favor to do so.

The dropping of good dice first seems pretty fair though. Might give that a try. No advantage for rolling extra dice (in fact a slight disadvantage), and no possible benefit from rerolling.

As for the 'good sport' idea. What about the dice roller? Doesn't he have a obligation to be a good sport also. I roll 3 dice instead 2 and get all blanks. I technically cheated, and still sucked. To allow me to reroll with the correct dice seems to reward me for my mistake. I wouldn't worry about this in a home game (except against my manipulative kids), but in a tourney game it would be easy to exploit. Just keep throwing extra dice here and there in hopes that you'll get a good one they won't notice…and if you roll bad, point it out.

Major Mishap said:

I don't see how it's being a good sport to point out they made an error in the game, and then offer them a chance to be rewarded for it.

In most cases of cheating…intentional or not…you don't get a chance to do-over by the rules, without some penalty being applied. In American football, this is exactly what happens for most defensive cheating/penalties. You play the down over, giving up some yardage to the offense, usually. Offensive penalties usually come with a loss of down AND yards, so it's not a do-over. And in the case of defensive penalties, the do-over is more so the non-cheating team doesn't suffer from the penalty.

I've never, ever, until this post, heard anyone suggest that it's good sportsmanship to catch someone breaking the rules, and then giving them a chance to do it right. Probably because doing so encourages cheating. If you know that getting caught just means you're going to get another chance to do it by the book, and that's it, why not cheat? If you don't get caught, you get to roll more dice than you should. If you do get caught, you just roll what you should have in the first place.

If some on is rolling the wrong number of dice over and over again, I suggest penalizing them in one way or another. But I don't think that picking up rolling 3 defense dice when you're supposed to roll 2 is cheating. Most times its just because someone wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that Wedge was shooting at them, or they have multiple ships with different agility ratings. I also don't think that making them pick the dice up and reroll the correct amount is an advantage to either side. There will be times when it works out for one side or the other, but it evens out. As long as its understood in the beginning that this is what happens if you roll the wrong amount. If it becomes an issue with a certain player, then call the TO over and he'll get a warning.

What do you do when someone rolls a die that ends up on the floor? Do you make him reroll, or do you use the roll no matter where it lands?

Roy

kingbobb said:

Actually… very few offensive penalties include loss of a down, almost all of them replay the down. The only ones that include loss of the down that I can think of are illegal forward pass and intentional grounding.

drkjedi35 said:

I have always rerolled. Leaving it on the dirty, uneven floor opens up all kinds of, "I think it mostly sorta has the critical hit face up…" garbage. I don't even pay attention to what was rolled--just pretend it never happened, and reroll on the table. Granted, this comes from my experience with D20's, and those are impossible (for me) to call on carpet. Come to think of it, D8's work fine on carpet, but I like having the dice on the table in plain view of all players.

Re-roll unless the opponent would like to keep the roll you made. No middle ground re-roll all or none, same with all games we play.

If I rolled 4 Dice and and got full house of blanks and should have rolled 3 dice, I would be thinking it was Christmas if someone gave me a re-roll.

To answer the original question, I think the player should re-roll the correct number of dice, regardless of the original roll. Same with the floor question, re-roll it.

But to bring up another point, I was just reading a thread that talked about probabilities, and it's important to consider that each die roll is an individual event. Whether you rolled all blanks on the first roll or not has no bearing whatsoever on your re-roll. And in the original example, the defender rolled 3 dice instead of 2. The probability is actually higher for rolling blanks with 2 dice than it is for rolling blanks for 3 dice.

The math, for those who wish to see it (if you don't, LOOK AWAY NOW!!!! )

# of blanks on 1 die: 3 (note: it's actually 2 on an attack die)

# of sides on 1 die: 8

Probability of rolling a blank on 1 die: 3/8, or .375

Probability of rolling all blanks with 3 dice: (3/8)^3, or 27/512, or .052734

Probability of rolling all blanks with 2 dice: (3/8)^2, or 9/64, or .140625

So, I guess my point is, if the original roll was all blanks, the re-roll has a better chance of being all blanks than the original roll was. And either way, the 2 rolls are individual events, so the first roll doesn't affect the second roll at all. Just remember, Karma isn't a ***** unless you are…

hothie said:

I don't understand the point of allowing a re-roll on a miss/fail result. It's giving that player better odds of success, regardless of whether their odds of success are worse on the second roll or not. If they failed with the better-odds roll, they still failed! To then give them another chance at success seems to be rewarding their mistake. The only purpose I can see is that both players want to get things "right." Except it's still a failed roll. It seems a little obsessive/compulsive to allow a re-roll in this instance. Why not just eat the failure, and move on?

kingbobb said:

In my opinion, the reroll option should be chosen no matter what the results of the dice were. It shouldn't be situational. Whether they were all misses or they were all hits, reroll them all. That way there is no ambiguity.

Roy

I think the opponent should choose whether you reroll or not. There's a precedence for opponent's choice on a mistake because if you are stressed and choose a red maneuver, your opponent chooses that ship's movement instead.

I understand where people are coming from when they say there should be a penalty because otherwise some people might try to get away with rolling more dice than is allowed. In friendly games, the issue shouldn't come up often enough to make much of a difference assuming people's friends are reasonably honest (and if they aren't then why keep them as friends?).

Tournaments are a different matter. If I were a Tournament Organizer, I'd mandate a reroll no matter what but I'd give out escalating penalties starting with warnings. I'm not sure what those penalties should be and there isn't a guide for them in the tournament rules.

Tangentally, FFG really needs to set up an organized tournament scene. They don't even have to give out extra prizes. People like just knowing how well they stack up against others in their area and around the world.

ShadowJak's escalating penalty system for accidental rolling errors:

1. Verbal warning.

2. Opponent determines your dice roll.

3. Hand is amputated.

4. You are asked not to play there any more.