Favorite game mechanics?

[Malkavian Grin]

Exploding dice are a fun, if odd, mechanic. It can make low stats still be viable, if less consistent.

For instance, based on just the math, you're more likely to do better with a lower die size unless you go significantly larger. Ex.: A d4 explodes 25% of the time; a d10 only 10% but on average rolls more than twice as well as the d4.

[cailano]

10 hours ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Exploding dice are a fun, if odd, mechanic. It can make low stats still be viable, if less consistent.

For instance, based on just the math, you're more likely to do better with a lower die size unless you go significantly larger. Ex.: A d4 explodes 25% of the time; a d10 only 10% but on average rolls more than twice as well as the d4.

I kind of always wanted to run a test on that. Generate 10,000 rolls per die and figure in the median if you add the explosions. Never did it.

But it makes the game less predictable and more spectacular and I'm all for that.

[leons1701]

I've seen this mathed out various places, it's complicated and eye glazing but the results are pretty simple. Bigger dice are still better even though they benefit less from explosions because their innate average is a big enough advantage. Where it gets tricky is something like Classic Deadlands where you might have the option of buying an increased number of dice or bigger dice. I can't recall seeing a good breakdown for that. Is 3d4e keeping 1 better than 2d6e keeping 1? I really don't know. If you're adding the dice, 3d4e is better than 2d6e but keeping only the best one?

 

[TheFred]

 We talking just RPGs, or games in general?

Two board games I love have interesting mechanics that, even if you meant RPGs, probably have something in common with something somewhere.

Eldritch Horror (a Pandemic-like game where you fight Lovecraftian monsters rather than a plague of small cubes) has a pretty neat risk/reward thing going on. It's not exactly a mechanic as per se, I suppose, but a lot of things see you suffering conditions which are generally bad but have a delayed effect. The most obvious is the Debt condition, which you can voluntarily accept to buy more stuff; it doesn't do anything by itself but every so often you roll and it might do something, and the something is usually fairly bad, sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's very bad. You can try to get rid of it before it goes bad, but that takes actions too... so all in all you've got this tension between gambling or not, and how long for, which I quite like.

Another great game is Shogun and the one odd little thing I like about this is that actions each turn are performed in a randomised order. The first half of the order is revealed, then one additional action gets revealed after each one (it's also tied in with a sort of turn-order bidding process which is a bit odd). Since some actions can invalidate others, though, this can lead to some interesting interactions and, occasionally, very clever plans. For example, if invasions happen before taxes, you might be able to invade a place that someone was going to collect taxes from, thereby preventing them from getting anything (which is a massive blow). It just seems like a very simple way to add an interesting extra layer of strategy.

On 5/18/2023 at 12:17 AM, leons1701 said:

I've seen this mathed out various places, it's complicated and eye glazing but the results are pretty simple. Bigger dice are still better even though they benefit less from explosions because their innate average is a big enough advantage.

It's not all that complicated, actually, it's just a sort of telescoping sum but there's a formula for it (more precisely, it's a Geometric Series). A d4, for example, gives you an average of 2.5 (1+2+3+4 divided by 4), but an exploding one also has a 1 in 4 chance of giving you... what would be +2.5, but that could explode too... but since you've got a 1/4 chance of getting one extra die and a 1/16 chance of getting a third and a 1/64 chance of getting another, the effects rapidly drop off. Anyway, add them all up and you get 1/3 extra dice, basically, so 3-1/3. That is indeed worse than a d6 which has an average of 3.5.

Obviously, exploding d2s are the best. One d2 has an average of 1.5, but an exploding one is twice as good, offering 3 damage average.

(It looks like dice get better again around 2.4 sides - which makes sense, because an exploding 1-sided die you'd just keep "rolling" forever and get an infinitely large result. Above 3, though, increasing the dice size is, unsurprisingly, always better, even though they explode less frequently)

On 5/18/2023 at 12:17 AM, leons1701 said:

Is 3d4e keeping 1 better than 2d6e keeping 1? I really don't know. If you're adding the dice, 3d4e is better than 2d6e but keeping only the best one?

Rerolls do get a bit more complicated... honestly at this point the easiest thing to do is probably just pop it into an online dice calculator, like this one: https://anydice.com/ 🙂

(It will also depend on what you want... rolling lots of d4s and keeping the best might give you a better average than one or more d6s, but you can't ever get better than a 4)

Edited May 21, 2023 by TheFred (see edit history)

[RedMax]

On 5/17/2023 at 12:41 AM, cailano said:

I kind of always wanted to run a test on that. Generate 10,000 rolls per die and figure in the median if you add the explosions. Never did it.

But it makes the game less predictable and more spectacular and I'm all for that.

I found this:

The number is the average increase for value if you use exploding dice (you re-roll it for free if you hit the max for the die and add it to the result, infinitely) Data resulted from 1,000,000 tests each with a C++ program.

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/2zd3ff/thinking_of_using_exploding_dice_heres_the/

 

 

[cailano]

@RedMax, nice! Great find.

[TheFred]

16 hours ago, RedMax said:

The number is the average increase for value if you use exploding dice (you re-roll it for free if you hit the max for the die and add it to the result, infinitely) Data resulted from 1,000,000 tests each with a C++ program.

Exploding dice are worth n/n-1 times as much as regular, where n is the dice size. So an exploding d4 is worth 1.333... times as much as a regular d4.

Or, to get the figures given on the graph (the overall increase by making a die exploding), divide the dice average (that's (n+1)/2) by 1/(n-1), for (n+1)/2(n-1). So, for our d4 example, you get 5/6. The numbers appear slightly off for the d100, possibly because 1,000,000 tests isn't enough to make that number reliable? This is, I suppose, the problem with doing a simulation rather than just knowing the answer. 🙂

What's interesting is that this is, for any n that isn't very small, always roughly 1/2, and gets smaller as you go up. The smallest "die" you can "roll" with an integer number of sides is a two-sided one (a coin, effectively), and that gets a +1.5 increase. This means that exploding can never be better than adding 1.5 to your die roll and is usually adding somewhere a bit over 1/2.

[Vladim]

I don't think it has exploding dice (I could be wrong), but Lex Arcana, a game that's basically Call of Cthulhu meets Monster of the Week meets alt history in the Roman Empire, has an interesting dice pool mechanic. I haven't played it but I think you can build your own pool, for example you can use 1d12 or 2d6 or 3d4, as long as the max is the same (12 in my example). So it forces some strategic thinking-do you risk a flat distribution to try and 'crit' with the max result, or do you go for the more bell-curved, reliable distribution?

Board Games... I am no expert, though there are a few I like. But I am not sure their rules are applicable to RPGs. But I don't mind reading about mechanics!

Maybe someone should make a thread about bad mechanics too, just for fun... but maybe it would devolve to system-bashing, so perhaps we shouldn't 🙂

[Malkavian Grin]

I just finished the latest episode of Me Myself & Die playing 5 Parsecs From Home and I must say, I loooove all the world-building and emergent storytelling that comes from the rolls of each campaign turn! Sure, it's a bit crunchy with all the rules, but the amount of tables you roll on each session can bring about some really great story ideas. Honestly, I think this all comes down to the same vein as how someone plays a solo game, rolling on tables to figure out what exactly is going on, and then you figure out the who/what/why after the fact. Maybe it's just me, but I love starting with random and then pulling it all together into something coherent (Sure, doesn't always work, but it's a HECKIN' lot of fun when it does!)

[Vladim]

13 minutes ago, Malkavian Grin said:

I just finished the latest episode of Me Myself & Die playing 5 Parsecs From Home and I must say, I loooove all the world-building and emergent storytelling that comes from the rolls of each campaign turn! Sure, it's a bit crunchy with all the rules, but the amount of tables you roll on each session can bring about some really great story ideas. Honestly, I think this all comes down to the same vein as how someone plays a solo game, rolling on tables to figure out what exactly is going on, and then you figure out the who/what/why after the fact. Maybe it's just me, but I love starting with random and then pulling it all together into something coherent (Sure, doesn't always work, but it's a HECKIN' lot of fun when it does!)

There's a chance you might enjoy Thousand Year Old Vampire then. It's very rules lite and very narrative, for what it's worth.

[Suzuki Stumpy]

1 hour ago, Vladim said:

I don't think it has exploding dice (I could be wrong), but Lex Arcana, a game that's basically Call of Cthulhu meets Monster of the Week meets alt history in the Roman Empire, has an interesting dice pool mechanic.

It kind of does. The 'Fate roll' mechanic is such that:

Quote

Whenever a player rolls one or more dice and the roll scores the highest possible score on all dice (for example, rolling an 8 on a d8 or a 15 rolling d10+d5), the player then rolls the same die (or dice) again, adding the second roll result to the first. Should the second roll again score the highest possible result, then the player would roll again, always adding the result to the previous total.

So, in theory, if a player were incredibly lucky, then you could continue rolling indefinitely ...

[Malkavian Grin]

Just now, Vladim said:

There's a chance you might enjoy Thousand Year Old Vampire then. It's very rules lite and very narrative, for what it's worth.

Hmm, I'll give that a look, thanks! And wouldn't you know it, there's community copies available so I can try it while still being broke LOL.

[Vladim]

6 minutes ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Hmm, I'll give that a look, thanks! And wouldn't you know it, there's community copies available so I can try it while still being broke LOL.

Yes. The author is most kind. The book itself is very artsy in a strange kind of way.

 

9 minutes ago, Suzuki Stumpy said:

So, in theory, if a player were incredibly lucky, then you could continue rolling indefinitely ...

Best game night ever. Just make sure to bring snacks!

[Suzuki Stumpy]

8 hours ago, Vladim said:

Best game night ever. Just make sure to bring snacks!

Hell, with that sort of luck, I’d be immediately out to buy a lottery ticket!

[TheFred]

You can roll infinitely high, but you're infinitely unlikely to do so. 🤷‍♂️

21 hours ago, Vladim said:

I don't think it has exploding dice (I could be wrong), but Lex Arcana, a game that's basically Call of Cthulhu meets Monster of the Week meets alt history in the Roman Empire, has an interesting dice pool mechanic. I haven't played it but I think you can build your own pool, for example you can use 1d12 or 2d6 or 3d4, as long as the max is the same (12 in my example). So it forces some strategic thinking-do you risk a flat distribution to try and 'crit' with the max result, or do you go for the more bell-curved, reliable distribution?

More, smaller dice have a better mean roll, however, which I think beats any preference in distribution. The average for a d12 is 6.5, but the average for 3d4 is 7.5... and if I'm allowed 12d1, that's even better!