Hey, so I picked up a tube of ubiquity dice, and I sure wouldn’t mind using them for myself when I host my Torchbearer games (I understand many folks enjoy rolling large numbers of dice, but I prefer smaller pools).
Now, as far as I can make out so far, it looks as though the only real mechanical/probablistic issue involved would be any application of the Reroll 6 rule.
But before I even pretend to try and work out whether there’s any means of using ubiquity dice in place of d6’s, I’m wondering:
Besides the use of Fate for Luck, are their any other applications of the Reroll 6 rule in the game?
And as kindofa secondary follow-up question, this one is for Thor: is it possible for you to speculate on the potential likeliness of future Torchbearer supplements introducing any BW Shade-like mechanics to Torchbearer? (because that would also ruin any chance of using ubiquity dice)
Neat. As far as I can recall you only reroll 6’s when you spend Fate points to do so. Though it’s 1 of only 2 ways to use Fate points and the other relies on your wises, so you might have trouble spending enough Fate points to level up if you don’t have the reroll 6 option.
Ok - so since Denizens do not ever use Fate (correct?), and if there are no other GM-procedures which invoke “SFX” on the natural probabilities of a rolled dice pool (assuming standard 50/50 odds of success per-die) - then it looks like I might actually be able to use these as GM at least.
I just couldn’t offer them as a possibility to any Players at the table. (well, unless they don’t have any Fate they might want to spend after a roll)
Though it’s 1 of only 2 ways to use Fate points and the other relies on your wises, so you might have trouble spending enough Fate points to level up if you don’t have the reroll 6 option.
Yeah, I was a bit bummed when it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be able to use those cool dice afterall, due to this one very central rule.
Then I figured, well maybe if Fate is the only application of the Reroll 6 rule, then at least the problem is highly contained; gives me something to mull over in the back of my mind for fun and as a sort of logic or game-design puzzle:
can I achieve an alternative and more-or-less functionally-equivalent ‘Fate for luck’ replacement effect?
( of course if later TB supplements are published which throw Shade-shifting-esque rules into the mix (Shade 3: Master Level!, Shade 2: Immortal Level! or somesuch) - then the idea becomes way less interesting because it just can’t work unless each die has 50/50 odds )
( admins: sorry! If this is getting too hacky for Adventurer’s Essentials by all means close or move thread to Hacks and Expansions )
Option off the top of my head: 3 successes let you roll another die.
Problem: this doesn’t let you reroll nearly enough dice, because there’s always the roll where you get four 6s, or the roll where your 6 keeps exploding, and those are the swings that make for epic results.
Also, keep in mind that the rules for help, and also for conditions and gear/weapons, involve some back and forth of single dice. This would be mainly a problem for players, however.
Thanks CarpeGuitarrem and Bobo for the input; considering a bit, I think the following would ‘work’ while maintaining “close’ish-enough” parity to the original probabilities. This works because - as CarpeGuitarrem pointed out - any success has a 1/3 chance of being a 6, and thus re-rollable.
When a Test is called for, the ubiquity dice are rolled and successess determined as normal. If you decide to expend a Fate for luck:
Pick up and roll a number of D6 equal to your current success total. Any of those dice with a resulting face value of 5 or 6 are considered a ‘lucky success’. Add these lucky successes to your total, then roll them again, this time proceeding with the Reroll 6 rule and repeating until there are no more 6s to reroll.
Here’s a slightly different take which has subtly different effects from the above:
When a Test is called for, the ubiquity dice are rolled and successess determined as normal. If you feel you need extra successes:
Pick up and roll a number of D6 equal to your current success total. Any of those dice with a resulting face value of 5 or 6 are considered ‘lucky’. You may now spend a Fate for luck to roll these lucky dice using the Reroll 6 rule, repeating until there are no more 6s to reroll.
Obviously they both intrinsically suffer from the fact that they are not RAW. I don’t expect many people would want to adopt ubiquity dice if it means adding a house rule to the game.
But otherwise, as far as the logistics/probabilities of either of those two rejiggered Fate for Luck procedures go, they appear to be well enough in line with the normal results from what I can tell.
Not trying to advocate for this, though I may experiment with it at the table sometime - because I’d prefer to generally roll significantly smaller dice pools, which the ubiquity dice do really well.
This occurred to me as well, but - I think - the standard Fate for Luck rule more or less offers a similarish potential of risk, right? I mean, you can spend your Fate for luck to reroll those 6s from your originating Test, just to have those rerolled dice turn up as scoundrels - you’ve just spent a Fate point but got nothing out of it.
Somehow, I get this feeling that option #1 is possibly slightly more powerful than the standard RAW. However option #2 does offer the Player a sense of greater safety; but then it requires that extra confirmation roll which doesn’t do anything other than identify how many dice you get to start rerolling. (while #2 adds successes immediately for those initial values of 5 or 6.)
I’ll hit anydice later on when I have the time, and will calculate the average results for each of the three procedures (raw, #1, and #2).
It might turn out that #1 has slightly higher initial risk with slightly greater payoff, while #2 has slightly lesser risk with slightly lesser payoff - at least that’s my current intuition.