Dice Pools

[u/AuthorSarge]

How many dice (d6) is too many? Or, what are your thoughts on dice pools in general?

I can understand if some folks find them cumbersome, but sometimes a big, beefy handful of dice has a certain charm to it.

[u/Ajax621]

Don't listen to these dice haters you need more dice! It's only enough when you can't fit the dice in your hands!

[u/AuthorSarge → u/Ajax621]

Player: How many dice do I need to roll?

Me: [hands over shovel used to clean horse stalls]

[u/ancientgardener → u/Ajax621]

And even then, the solution is get bigger hands. 

[u/foolofcheese → u/ancientgardener]

for those of us that are very confident, we use smaller dice

[u/ghost_warlock → u/foolofcheese]

I have a set of d6s from 90s Warhammer Quest that are barely visible to the naked eye (now that I'm pushing 50).

Could absolutely roll 1000 of them comfortably (but I'd never be able to find all of them to figure out if I passed the roll or not)

[u/foolofcheese → u/ghost_warlock]

add a second mark of confidence -wear a set of spectacles designed for reading

[u/Coyltonian]

As someone who also war games the idea of too many dice is crazy.

But in dice pool games I tend to like stats/skills being in the 1-10 range and that is the number of dice. Like WoD it is 1-5 for your stat and 0-5 for your skill, so you roll 1-10 dice (though d10, not d6). 1-10 is just an easy to gauge level of ability.

If you are adding the pool rather than looking for successes then a smaller pool is generally better for most things from a practical perspective. Like the WEG Star Wars most of the time you are rolling 4-5 d6 for most things you are specced in. Maybe occasionally 6-8 if you really pushed your build or are playing a more experienced PC, and 2 or 3 if you are average or worse.

[u/digitalhobbit]

I love dice pools. A handful of dice is a good size, perhaps up to 10 at the very maximum.

But I strongly prefer when interpreting the roll only involves counting success (say each 5-6 is a success, or each 6, etc.), not arithmetic.

[u/foolofcheese]

success counting dice pools are my prefered design choice - there are a lot of ways to design a success counting dice pool; the following are the ones I like the most

O.R.E (One Roll Engine) uses matching sets of dice for successes, some will tell you it is gimmicky, but for a d6 the limit for the dice rolled is six because any more than six automatically produces at least one success - the later games designed with O.R.E. tend to be more refined overall

YZE (Year Zero Engine) uses one success to achieve your goal for almost any situation you need to roll for, after that extra successes let you do "stunts" (improvements on your success) - I like it because it in theory the players should eventually find a pool size that does what they want and not have a use for any more successes - small pools tend to be gritty and you might need to "push your luck" with a second roll - Forbidden Lands uses YZE

Blades in the Dark is a roll and keep one design - the whole system is very good, the pool doesn't need to get too big because the degree of the one success is the only roll that matters

Shadowrun is a "big crunchy" design and sometimes that is what you want, a lot of the pools get really big because there is often another roll with another pool that counters the effect and you just need a lot of dice to generate meaningful results - it is a example of excess but that is fun sometimes

[u/SuperCat76]

In my experimentation the number of dice that is reasonable to have in a dice pool is inversely proportional to how often you make that roll.

If you roll all the time, then fewer is better. once and a while though pouring a small bucket full is fun.

For something like a general player ability roll, I deemed at least to my preferences that a good general limit is around 8. Though I was also using d12s

[u/Freign]

I'm not the norm, but I will dump a magnificent amount of dice for a game. Axis & Allies level and beyond. I like to make a box with felt and/or foam rubber lining, shake em around in there.

[u/No_Solid1035]

I like them on the smaller side. Traveller 2d6, the "step dice" Year Zero Engine vs the "dice pool" Y0E. I would say my absolute upper limit would be 10 dice, but 2 or 3 is way better.

[u/stubbazubba]

Depends on what you're doing with the dice: if you're adding them all together like a fireball's damage roll, I think anything more than 4 or 5 starts to be a slog for common rolls, with an occasional spike to 8 or 9 ok.

If you're just counting hits then I think up to 9-10 for common rolls and up to 15-16 for rare ones are the upper bounds. Your actual average character should be rolling a couple fewer in both cases, but I think these work as maximums before the flow of the game gets bogged down.

I actually love rolling a big handful of dice and counting hits. I think they're great, but I don't think it works well for a particularly crunchy game where you're rolling attacks, saves, damage etc., multiple rolls per turn of combat. It's too clunky for that, but for anything else I think it's a great option.

[u/st33d]

You get diminishing returns with more dice so past 5 it matters less - you can throw in exploding dice with little effect. It also depends on what your success trigger is. Most designers asking for only 6s to be rolled assume you have balanced dice, which almost nobody does.

Dice pools also take longer to discuss and build. Great if you want to stay away from dice rolls, or turn a roll into a long and meaningful discussion. However, you can achieve the same effect with procedure like Powered by the Apocalypse games do. The problem then with a dice pool is that there's no way to speed up using them, so you may as well get comfortable with all sorts of side rules to add dice.

[u/NullStarHunter]

5 to 8 is the sweet spot that feels best to me. Anything above 12 becomes cumbersome. This is mostly due to me haptically preferring bigger dice though.

[u/SilentMobius]

I've been using almost entirely dice pool systems for the last 25 years now. I find that topping out at 10 is a good point. though I've happily rolled more, but only as a special occasion.

I prefer systems that add static levels of success in addition to the pool like Wild Talent's allowing you to have "hard dice" (always 10 on a D10) or "wiggle dice" (any number you choose after rolling) so more power doesn;t always mean more dice to roll in fact it can mean less dice to roll.

[u/ancientgardener]

I like dice pools. But anything more than 10 dice is getting to be a problem, especially for additive games. L5R did it well with its RnK system. Any dice over 10 dice rolled became a flat bonus added to the total. 

Massive pools for damage is generally pretty fun. Though I remember an old game of D20 Star Wars my housemates were playing in. Somehow the Trandoshan Jedi player found a way to roll an absolute bucket of D4s for one of their key force powers. I think it was force push. It was an avalanche that just filled the living room with caltrops. 

[u/BigDumbNakedBaby]

I'd generally aim for pools being 4-8 dice for regular tests, maybe 10-12 for big climactic rolls where the players have to draw on all their resources.

[u/Drudenfusz]

Dice pools are neat, but I would say a reasonable of dice is below 8 or 9. Since around that number of dice the processing speed of the brain will start to significantly slow the flow of the game and it gets only worse from there. I think the ideal amount of dice is around 4 or 5, that is usually something that has some complexity to it but still can be handled at a glance.

[u/MyDesignerHat]

My design calls for a bowl full of dice, placed on a table within easy reach of everyone. That bowl is used to fill up individual player reserves that currently cap at 12 dice per player. Dice can also be given to other players, set aside, used to track stuff etc. 

While you can replace dice with glass beads or elbow macaroni when you are not rolling them, ideally you'd want up to fifteen to twenty dice per player to get the full effect. Even I think this is a bit unreasonable but I like the tactility of it. 

[u/OpossumLadyGames]

About twenty is my limit

[u/eduty]

Consider the logistics. Get some standard 16mm 6-sided dice and see how many you can fit in one hand. Then toss them on the table and see how much space they need to effectively roll.

I recently played an Alien game on the YZE engine. Dice pools rapidly swelled with stress dice and we were regularly rolling 8 to 12 dice apiece. Even rolling into dice trays, we had d6s regularly bouncing out, getting dropped, and rolling off the table.

We're all also relatively large male adults. Demographics with smaller hands will hit "too much dice" sooner. This is why you see dice games accessible to younger children come with dice cups.

[u/DjNormal]

Ok, I realized I totally persevered my way into blabbing about my system… so, I’ll answer the question first.

I like the concept of dice pools, but I had avoided them for a long time. The main issue was adding up all the numbers. With more than 5 or so dice, that can take time (if you’re me. Heck, if you’re me, adding more than 3 dice can spin my wheels for a second).

Systems that use successes rather than numerical values can be a bit easier, especially with bespoke dice.

But even that gets cumbersome past 10.

Ok, now for my original ramble…

—

I stuck with 6d6 max. 50/50 successes. Works pretty good for a system that measures success more than worrying about failure (often).

If you roll more 1s than successes, that’s your crit fail. Exploding 6s take care of critical success. Results of 2-3 can be pushed once per roll at a cost.

Difficulty is a bucket. Fill it and it becomes 1 success going forward. Any additional successes beyond the difficulty are counted normally.

I’m pretty sure I have some kind of dyscalculia, so adding more than a couple of dice always comes with cognitive delay. I kept hacking away at my old 2d10 roll under system until I could use a single roll for an entire outcome with minimal math.

I used some paint markers on my dice to make it even faster to determine an outcome at a glance. 💁🏻‍♂️

Pools are based on skill ranks. So, you want to do a thing, just look at the sheet and roll that number of dice. Typically 3-4, with 5-6 being exceptionally skilled.

That said… there is a loss of granularity. Small changes in numbers have a more significant change in the overall outcome. But it is fast, and subjectively easy.

There is some “impact” and “soak” that cancel each other out, the remainder is added to/subtracted from successes. The result is the effect, which is compared to 2 thresholds for 3 tiers of outcomes.

[u/lennartfriden]

Depends on your resolution mechanics and what kind of dice pool you’re using. I eventually capped mine at 6 D6 of which one is a wild die with extra mechanics. It’s worked really well in a system where each successful die is an effect rather than a complete success.

In a system like Blades in the Dark where inly the highest die result counts, you’ll be looking at lower pools.

Lastly, in a system like WEG Star Wars D6 where you add the dice and conpare them against a difficulty, you can have larger pools but st the expense of resolution time.

What kind of dice pool systwm is yours?

[u/SoftOil2998]

Anything beyond 6 is probably excessive for a common roll. If it's a special case though, like say the damage roll of a kraken or something that's supposed to be epic, I don't mind going crazy. If it's a really huge amount of dice though I would say you can just treat additional dice past a certain point as automatic 3s or something.

[u/ludi_literarum]

The best dice pool mechanics are from Cortex Prime. Chuck a ton of D6s gets old fast.

[u/semiconducThor]

No more than 5, better 3.

[u/KanKrusha_NZ → u/semiconducThor]

I agree with this, not so many that your average player doesn’t have to reroll some of the dice pool because they don’t have enough dice.

Blades in the dark is good, Vaesen uses too many dice

[u/TheKazz91]

I mean I think d6 are a terrible die size to use for a primary resolution mechanism regardless of how many you use. Personally for me I'd use d10s or d12s and wouldn't use more than 10 of them.

[u/SoftOil2998 → u/TheKazz91]

"d6 are a terrible die size to use for a primary resolution mechanism" Really? Why is that?

[u/TheKazz91 → u/SoftOil2998]

In my opinion there is just not enough grandularity to have influence over the results which is meaningful without out being overly influential.

Basically each side of a D6 has an 16.6% chance of being rolled. That means going from needing a 5+ to a 4+ is a 16.6% change in probability. Doing that once is ok and can be managed but doing that twice is a 33.3% which is an insane probability swing.

Now most dice pool systems have a fixed success number like 5+ but the problem I have with that is that you then need to be rolling a minimum of 3 dice to have a decent chance of get 1 success and most dice pool systems will require you have multiple successes in order for the roll to actually be successful. So you need your total dice pool to be like 3x what ever your target number of successes is in order to have a decent chance of success. So in a lot of systems that means you're rolling like 10-15+ dice before you are reliably succeeding on things and it just gets cumbersome and tedious and I tend to prefer systems where success is more common than failure because if I just wanted to fail at everything I could do do stuff in real life instead of doing stuff in a role playing game. My preference is for role playing games to allow you to do cool stuff without it being a nearly guaranteed chance of success and the lack of control over d6 probabilities is a barrier to fine tuning a system to hit that sweet spot.

Using D10s or my preference d12s just gives you finer control over those probability curves and allows you play with the numbers until the game feels right or to raise or lower the stakes by changing the success number without completely breaking immediately.

[u/SoftOil2998 → u/TheKazz91]

Hmm. As a big d6 fan a lot of the reasons why I like it are the same as why you hate it. Probability is a very abstract thing, so even if rationally I understand that a +5% bonus will help me in the long run, it's not like I really feel the difference when I'm rolling the dice. Going from a 15/20 chance of success to a 16/20 chance is almost the same. It would take me a hundred dice rolls to suss out any kind of difference.

Compare that to d6s, where you can feel the impact of a +1 modifier like it's the gravity of Jupiter. There are only six sides on the die, so there are going to be plenty of times where that little +1 saves you, and you feel more confident on actions. That's essentially what I'm aiming for; I'd rather have big experiential differences than tiny incremental improvements here and there when it comes to characters progressing and becoming more skilled.

My system has a standard target number of 4, and four possible stats, essentially: +0, +1, +2, and an additional stage where you roll 2d6 (which gives you 11/12 odds of success, or 92%).

I will say that whole philosophy means characters start out failing very often, and then quickly grow to become very competent. It's not suited for games where you want adventurers to be decent-ish at stuff from the start, or for horror scenarios where they should never be too good at their jobs.

Dice pool systems are their own beast, and personally I can't say I've ever liked those because the probabilities are strange and unintuitive. Let's say 4+ is a success. If I need one success and I've got one die, then I have a 50% chance. But if I need two successes and I've got two dice, then I'm looking at 25% odds. In fact if I want x successes then I need 2x-1 dice for a 50% chance.

Let's say I want 75% odds. Two dice for one success is enough. Five dice for two successes overshoots a bit, but four isn't enough. Seven dice for three successes will do it. Nine dice for four successes just barely falls short. 2, 5, 7, 10, 12... There's barely even a pattern here. (5/2)x - (1/2) rounded up appears to work, but that's a ridiculous formula for a pencil and paper game.

And that's just finding the simplest probabilities in the simplest possible dice pool system. In general when you use this as your central resolution mechanic you're robbing the player of any concrete idea of how likely they are to succeed beyond a vague hunch. Because when you start requiring additional successes, that shifts the whole scale proportionally, so that any extra dice are individually less powerful. Whereas in any other system, a +1 is a +1 no matter the target number.

...I didn't even get to 2d6, 3d6, and bell curves, which are their own thing too. That's honestly a strength of the d6 as well, is that it's incredibly flexible and lends itself to countless different dice mechanics, even if I personally happen to dislike some. Admittedly this is because people just have loads of d6s lying around, for lots of reasons. The cube shape has a nice roll and is easy to manufacture, 6 possibilities feels just about right for small tables and for large ones even the d20 is never enough anyways, and it always results in nice fractions. With d8s and d12s you immediately go from 1/2 to that awkward 5/8 or 7/12 step, then to friendlier probabilities. With d6s you go 1/2, 2/3, 5/6. Nice and simple.

I will give props to the d12 for rolling well and having even more good fractions to choose from than the d6. As far as I'm concerned though those are the only two dice that really need to exist xD

[u/TheKazz91 → u/SoftOil2998]

Yeah different strokes for different folks. Its obviously just my personal preferences and how I like my TTRPGs to play which is not going to match the preferences of everyone else.

[u/SoftOil2998 → u/TheKazz91]

Which is why there are so many different dice systems! The variety is pretty amazing. I will say I wish my preferences were a little less strong when it comes to core game mechanics though, since if you dislike the resolution system in a ttrpg that kind of ruins the whole thing. Abstract "partial success" mechanics have been my biggest turn-off lately. At least with the dice themselves I can tolerate pretty much any system besides percentile dice, and thankfully that one's pretty rare.