As you guys probably know, Edge of the Empire Die Probabilities are difficult to calculate. There are multiple axisis of success to consider. The die have faces with multiple success which are distributed asymmetrically. The die themselves are asymmetrical. All of this makes calculating their probabilieis more complicated, but not impossible! With the aid of the the terrific online tool anydice.com, I did a fairly in depth analysis of the dies and the probabilities associated with them, i thought you guys might be interested in it.

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

Warning, graphs and math ahead!

You just threw flame on the first for the debate over Specializations that have Talents that give boost dice to a Skill, but don't have that Skill as a Career Skill. Shame on you

Nice math though, it sorta makes the skills and talents, over characteristics debate more intriguing. I'll have to look into it, but it seems like the dice roll is geared toward success with modest failures, and upgraded pools (challenge dice and proficiency dice) dealing more with success than boosting advantage/threat. Only thing is, proficiency dice are the only way to triumph, so if PC's are looking to capitulate on Triumphs, they have to invest on skill training...

Interesting, but I believe you're looking at the dice in isolation, which I'm not sure gives a full picture. For one thing, you need a net positive number of successes to succeed, net zero is considered a failure. So the ability dice don't necessarily favour success as much as simply account for this fact.

Also, this is similar in that it doesn't seem to take in the big picture: "The results are perhaps a bit surprising. Upgrading a die results in only a very small improvement, which means generally skill improvements are not efficient choices for players, at least until the cross their ability score threshold. Playing a high skilled but attribute challenged droid could prove to be a very effective character for this reason, and an initial investment in attribute points might not be a wise as it may seem at first glance. Yes, increasing stats outside of creation is difficult, but higher mean more XP must be spent on skills before you can start adding the more effective ability die."

A highly skilled, attribute challenged droid, with, say, Medicine 4 and Intellect 2, is no more or less effective than a droid with Medicine 2 and Intellect 4, except the latter will be better at all the other intellect skills. I suspect (haven't done the math) that a PC with Intellect 2 and rank 4 in all Intellect skills will be more expensive to create than a PC with Intellect 4 and rank 2 in all Intellect skills.

Interesting, but I believe you're looking at the dice in isolation, which I'm not sure gives a full picture. For one thing, you need a net positive number of successes to succeed, net zero is considered a failure. So the ability dice don't necessarily favour success as much as simply account for this fact.

I'm not sure how I considered the die in isolation, please let me know which combinations I didn't anaylise, and I would be happy to do so. In general though I agree with you, having the 'active' (boost/ability/profficiency) die favor success over the 'passive' die (setback/difficulty/challenge) is possibly a good design decision, if one that is not obvious at first glance to most players. The common inclination I have found is that players believe the die probabilities cancel each other out, which is not correct.

Sadly I am hard pressed to come up a good one for the distribution of theats/advantages.

A highly skilled, attribute challenged droid, with, say, Medicine 4 and Intellect 2, is no more or less effective than a droid with Medicine 2 and Intellect 4, except the latter will be better at all the other intellect skills. I suspect (haven't done the math) that a PC with Intellect 2 and rank 4 in all Intellect skills will be more expensive to create than a PC with Intellect 4 and rank 2 in all Intellect skills.

I haven't run the numbers for efficiency yet, but the key here is that leaving attributes low allows a character to quickly move their advancements into adding ability die, which is much more effective at increasing his average number of success than upgrading ability to proficiency die.

When I do, it'll be the subject of another blog post.

I can tell you at a glance though, the talents that adding (or remove) boost die to multiple skills are probably the most efficient, especially when they are 5 points.

I haven't run the numbers for efficiency yet, but the key here is that leaving attributes low allows a character to quickly move their advancements into adding ability die, which is much more effective at increasing his average number of success than upgrading ability to proficiency die.

Hmm, interesting theory...I hadn't thought of that. I always assumed (like most people have) that investing into Attributes up front provides greater advantage by affecting a greater number of skills (ie - a single point into Intellect benefits all intellect based skills, whereas a single point into an intellect based skill only improves that skill).

However, the idea that adding more greens does more for success than upgrading to yellows I hadn't thought of before. The only counter to this idea is that adding greens never leads to Triumphs. This is a subjective benefit since getting Triumphs can mean any number of things, left up to the GM and player's discretion.

For instance...is getting a success on an attack more important than failing an attack but getting to spend a triumph in healing 4 strain? This answer is completely based on what is going on and has nothing to do with statistical analysis. But if you only have a bunch of greens, you'll never get (or seldom get) benefits from Triumphs.

Has all been done on Reddit for a long time:

http://game2.com/eote/

I haven't run the numbers for efficiency yet, but the key here is that leaving attributes low allows a character to quickly move their advancements into adding ability die, which is much more effective at increasing his average number of success than upgrading ability to proficiency die.

Hmm, interesting theory...I hadn't thought of that. I always assumed (like most people have) that investing into Attributes up front provides greater advantage by affecting a greater number of skills (ie - a single point into Intellect benefits all intellect based skills, whereas a single point into an intellect based skill only improves that skill).

However, the idea that adding more greens does more for success than upgrading to yellows I hadn't thought of before. The only counter to this idea is that adding greens never leads to Triumphs. This is a subjective benefit since getting Triumphs can mean any number of things, left up to the GM and player's discretion.

For instance...is getting a success on an attack more important than failing an attack but getting to spend a triumph in healing 4 strain? This answer is completely based on what is going on and has nothing to do with statistical analysis. But if you only have a bunch of greens, you'll never get (or seldom get) benefits from Triumphs.

the real trick is high abilities to start with and spending all your xp on talents and boost dice, then slowly getting more skills in your low stats, and putting all stat increases into 1 attribute and not leveling the skills that rely on that attribute passed 2.

Has all been done on Reddit for a long time:

http://game2.com/eote/

This is a great program. However two issues with it.

#1. It doesn't calculate Triumph/Despair as success.

#2. It uses Monte Carlo to run a large number (100000 by default) of simulations in order to get its results. The results you get here can be good, but they are not exact. Using the anydice program (and math) I got exact results.

the real trick is high abilities to start with and spending all your xp on talents and boost dice, then slowly getting more skills in your low stats, and putting all stat increases into 1 attribute and not leveling the skills that rely on that attribute passed 2.

I really hate all this min/max'ing. Especially in EotE, dice probabilities really leave out the entire narrative side of the game.

Proficiency dice are the only way to get Triumphs, which is a huge narrative win.

"Efficiency" in dice rolling in an RPG really annoys me, but then I really dislike an overly min/max playstyle.

I really hate all this min/max'ing. Especially in EotE, dice probabilities really leave out the entire narrative side of the game.

Proficiency dice are the only way to get Triumphs, which is a huge narrative win.

Well, it's not just min/maxing. If I'm designing the opposition, it's handy to have some idea of the impact of skill and talent choices. Even if I have to wing it, or am deciding whether to flip a DP, knowing the odds helps me avoid both making it too easy and accidentally walking into TPK.

I really hate all this min/max'ing. Especially in EotE, dice probabilities really leave out the entire narrative side of the game.

Proficiency dice are the only way to get Triumphs, which is a huge narrative win.

Well, it's not just min/maxing. If I'm designing the opposition, it's handy to have some idea of the impact of skill and talent choices. Even if I have to wing it, or am deciding whether to flip a DP, knowing the odds helps me avoid both making it too easy and accidentally walking into TPK.

Yeah, I think this kind of information is helpful to the game for the GMs to know, but harmful to the game for the players to know. Maybe not a popular opinion, but I definitely don't think this should be common knowledge to most players;

I find I can manage opposition and whatnot enough during the course of play that all of this is unnecessary. I've certainly played games with broken math before, but this isn't one of them. If I find that the players are rolling crap or I have made the opposition too tough, I just manage what NPC's do differently.

Min/Max'ing to get the math right for PC's ends up with the players skipping all the fun roleplaying Talents and making an unrealistic math character rather than a fun realistic and flawed character.

I'm just a grumpy old dude who has seen too many RPG campaigns have the fun sucked out of them by "optimization."

mathematically, giving the next person to act advantage (blue dice) is a stacking good thing, as now he is more likely to have advantage left over, pass it on, and the next person gets even more by the time it comes back around you may have 3 blue. Remember you can only choose each option once for spending advantage, however there is ways to pass blue dice, 1 costs 1 advantage, the other 2, so if 2 people say they will give you +1 and the last person gives the next person +1 you now have +3 blue dice

Interesting. It kinda makes destiny points feel a bit pathetic when flipped to upgrade a die.

A net total of about a 1 in 3 chance of doing something when you upgrade an ability die (5/24 success, 1/24 advantage, 1/12 triumph) and conversely upgrading a difficulty die is even more dodgy with a 1 in three chance of doing something "good" (1/4 failure, 1/12 despair) AND a 1/12 chance of doing something "bad" (1/12 chance of NOT generating a threat).

The extra chance of threat or despair is way cool, yes, but is it enough? Maybe if I point out this math to my players, it might encourage a more free spending of destiny points. I'll certainly be using them more often as a GM as the math shows that they are not as potent as I thought at first.

Although I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that if you could buy a boost or setback die with a destiny point that they would be much more mechanically impactful than they are now.

I really don't think the intent was ever to flip a Destiny and get a sure success. For me the cool thing about them is the added chance of Despair or Triumph, as well as a higher range of Threat and Advantage. It's "Destiny", not a Fate Point, Benny, etc.

As I said before, looking at the math out of context removes the entire narrative side of the game.

Has all been done on Reddit for a long time:

http://game2.com/eote/

This is a great program. However two issues with it.

#1. It doesn't calculate Triumph/Despair as success.

Hmm? It does calculate T/D correctly as success/failure and T/D at the same time.

As I said before, looking at the math out of context removes the entire narrative side of the game.

I've already run into this with one of my players before this thread even came around. We have been playing together since D&D 3.5 and he has always been an optimizer, he can't switch it off. So when we started this game he made, what he considered, the most optimized melee droid he could. What he has found (and I think my other players to a degree) is A) This game is far more dangerous than d20 games and characters going down in a combat scenario is very likely and B) optimizing for combat is not that much fun in a narrative based game. Especially one that has built in die mechanics that affect the encounter narratively. As I have discussed the results of these findings with him he said that he will not spend XP on characteristics to increase them higher than 2. My counter point was Triumph and Despair and the ability to drastically change the encounter vs. a simple success. Is that a worthy trade off? I think not. Especially if they face Rivals and Nemesis characters that have plenty of yellow and continuously sway fights in the bad guy's favor.

http://game2.com/eote/

This is a great program. However two issues with it.

#1. It doesn't calculate Triumph/Despair as success.

Hmm? It does calculate T/D correctly as success/failure and T/D at the same time.

I really hate all this min/max'ing. Especially in EotE, dice probabilities really leave out the entire narrative side of the game.

• We thought that the 'active' and 'passive' die balanced in terms of success/failure. IE adding a another difficulty die would 'cancel out' the effect of adding of another ability die.(They are not, the 'active' die are favored.
• We also thought the 'active' and 'passive' die balanced in terms of advantage/threat. (The relationship here is a bit complex and IMO illogical).
• We greatly overestimated the effect upgrading a die from ability->proficiency or difficulty->challenge.
• We incorrectly estimated the odds of rolling an advantage/threat of a die.

I am surprised no one has said this yet, so I will...

But in all seriousness, it is an interesting read. Makes me re-think that Droid PC concept I was tinkering around with...

mathematically, giving the next person to act advantage (blue dice) is a stacking good thing, as now he is more likely to have advantage left over, pass it on, and the next person gets even more by the time it comes back around you may have 3 blue. Remember you can only choose each option once for spending advantage, however there is ways to pass blue dice, 1 costs 1 advantage, the other 2, so if 2 people say they will give you +1 and the last person gives the next person +1 you now have +3 blue dice

I call this the Advantage Resonance Cascade.

Personally, I like knowing that I can still make an effective character, one that's good at what he's supposed to be good at, even if I focus on picking up fun talents and force powers and not worry that I'm gimping my character by neglecting my skill ranks.