[Exalted 1st Ed] Consequences of altering dice rolling

[Haku1]

We'll be here to support you... but this rule really does suck balls. Especially if you're one who rolls bad all the time.


You might want to look at success buying charms (custom built) for 1e, or at least some sort of supplemental charm to negate the 1s rolled, if he's absolutely adamant on this "house rule" of his. Ask your ST in private so it doesn't turn into a dick waving contest in front of the girl players?  8)


Conversely, you could offer to run a one shot "Return to the 5 Corner Tome" game for your ST and other players, set for 1e, without the whole... you know... 1 negating 10s rule.

 

[Moonsilver]

OMG female players as well, can it get any worse?


Seriously, you could suggest something else to make the Exalted more "fallible". Tens not counting as two successes for example, or all players have to take a 3 point GM approved Flaw for no Bonus Points.

 

[Flagg]

I think you've got a case of the Bad STs.  The prognosis is grim.

 

[cyl]

Well, with two "spank me harder daddy" female players, I'd say the prognosis's fucked up... but who knows, if you give the girls more power, they might start to enjoy it  :lol:


We're here to support pal  

 

[Persell]

Meh, someone call the drama lama already!


God, all this behind the back bullshitting on the intarweb doesn't get you anywhere. You are just pussyfooting around. Talk to your storyteller about genre emulation and player empowerment or get the hell out of the group.


You can find some stupid ego stroking here, but in the end the only way to solve your problem is to turn off the internet and talk to your fellow players.


And for the record. Making 1s subtract from the successes doesn't make exalted any less epic in first edition. Defenses are rolled so they are not more effective than the offense (well not more than they usually are) and the rest stays the same, too.


On an average you will have 10% less successes, that's no big deal and for christ's sake now don't start bitching because you "always roll poorly" that is a) not true b) it doesn't make any difference because you would "roll poorly" in the other system, too and c) just shows that you are a poor loser.

 

[Flagg]

Feel the love  

 

[magnificentmomo]

*Standing ovation for Safim.

 

[Vanman]

Having ones cancel successes makes the game less fun. I played in an oWoD game and hated that aspect of the game. It simply made the game less fun for me. Having the ones cancel out what could've been a decent success was frustrating and ruined the game for me. Bottom line - I didn't have fun. It sounds like Mirrorblade's in the same boat. I don't think calling him a poor loser is fair.


I will agree on one thing Safim said, though - if you're not having fun, you need to either talk with the group or get out. If you're not having fun, it's up to you to take steps to correct it.


And don't take Safim personally, MB. He's just this cranky naturally, and he's universally cranky to everyone. He's not signaling you out. I expect a snarky comment for my response. In fact, I would be a bit disappointed if he didn't snark me out!

 

[Lord Kamina]

Having ones cancel successes makes the game less fun. I played in an oWoD game and hated that aspect of the game. It simply made the game less fun for me. Having the ones cancel out what could've been a decent success was frustrating and ruined the game for me. Bottom line - I didn't have fun. It sounds like Mirrorblade's in the same boat. I don't think calling him a poor loser is fair.
I will agree on one thing Safim said, though - if you're not having fun, you need to either talk with the group or get out. If you're not having fun, it's up to you to take steps to correct it.


And don't take Safim personally, MB. He's just this cranky naturally, and he's universally cranky to everyone. He's not signaling you out. I expect a snarky comment for my response. In fact, I would be a bit disappointed if he didn't snark me out!

I do know people who have shit luck at dice. Really... He's in my group. And at first, he REFUSED to play Exalted(Or any other WW game) because of bad experiences with WoD and botches.

 

[Persell]

I don't think calling him a poor loser is fair.

Meh, go read his post again. He didn't say it makes it less fun for him, he said it makes it less fun for him, because he always rolls poorly.


That is the sign of being a poor loser, but I don't think I have used a lot of snark. A lot of people are poor losers and actually roleplaying games have developed a structure since they were imagined in which losing is undesireable, because it is not fun, so it is understandable that someone is a poor loser.


Luke Crane wrote in his first roleplaying game something along the lines "as long as you (the gamemaster) can't imagine a fun outcome for a given roll no matter whether the player succeeds or fails, then don't ask for a test". The reasoning behind that is actually quite sound, in literature usually failure is fun, too, because something bad happens in most roleplaying games when you fail your streetsmarts roll to find a fence, you don't find one. In luke's game you find an old love who turned fence and doesn't like you a lot. The story continues, it is fun for everyone.


But I am off topic and doing the raving fanboy thing of advertising a game I like. Apologies.


Anyway... bad luck. It doesn't exist. You will roll poorly, yes, but you will not roll poorly constantly and you will roll great, too. No matter what anyone says not everyone who bitches about his or her bad luck when rolling dice is the one exception to the bell curve.


Most people are just whiney, ignore all their good rolls and get teary eyed as soon as a bad roll shows its face. And that is being a piss poor loser.


P.S.: I don't think I often snark into your direction a lot, 'cause actually I like your calm way of posting.

 

[Coyotekin]

The funny thing is that is the most flaming I have seen here since the original EC. The sad part is this is hardly considered flaming. So maybe it isn't so bad


I will disagree with you about the poor loser thing Safim. Every player wants to see their character succeed every once in a while. Sure, there are players like myself that dislike the failures, but enjoy it a lot when something like you described with the fence happens. It keeps things interesting.  And by the same token there are players, like myself, that get bored never failing because it reduces the challenges. Overall I think it should be mixed up here and there.


Truthfully though, if the game isn't enjoyable to you then you shouldn't play it. It is that simple. Find something more entertaining for you, otherwise if you insist on playing the game then I highly reccoment lots of dots in the area you want to excel at so your ST can every so often give you your auto-sux for the 7+ die pool.

 

[Mirrorblade]

Well Safim, tell me if botching every single roll in a session is called luck on your table... and what you don't grasp is that, if every 1 you obtain on a roll negates one succes you allready have, it worsens the "quality" of the action rolled and sincerely i'm sick and bored of playing competent characters that sistematically fail at their speciality.


Anyway, after a quite long discussion, and an ever longer session of Exalted I can confirm that my ST is mule-headed, that tendencially I'm the only one getting his character heftily messed up by this rule with constant horrible rolls (rest of the group average? 5 successes on 6 dices nine times out of ten) and that one of the girls is a social monster in game... no one told me she mastered old World of Darkness for the last 10 years.


The rest of the group remained most time of this chapter "cherleading" while she "diplomatically" (litterally!) solved a problem of ghosts, convinced an entire tribe to resettle and so on... she literally steamrolled every challenge she faced in the last 4 chapters (and nearly got bitten in half by a siaka alongside my character...)


It wasn't boring, it was even entertaining to watch, but there was zero action and space for the rest of the group, end near to zero dicerolling.

 

[Persell]

@coyote:


Read his post again. He is not complaining about failing constantly, like you implied with your "everyone wants to succeed once in a while", he just complains about failing MORE than before.


Which from the numbers just doesn't hold a lot water, a reduction of 10% in successes is with exalted's huge dicepool really not a big deal. It just means that mister specialized solar does not have a legendary success on an average roll... not that big a deal.

 

[Coyotekin]

Actually Safim the comment was more of a generalization based upon the thread as a whole. That whole chain reaction where one post can lead to another can lead to another and so forth. In short, the conversations brought that to mind.


As for the losing sux based on ones: I do not see it being that big of a deal actually. I have been thinking if implementing it in my Scion game because otherwise a character cannot botch it seems because of auto-sux.

 

[Vanman]

P.S.: I don't think I often snark into your direction a lot, 'cause actually I like your calm way of posting.

I know you don't. It's just that, you know, sometimes I feel a little left out because of that lack of snark.


:-D

 

[Moonsilver]

I think Safim is downplaying this one, regardless of whether the OP is more concerned about himself or the effects for all the players. I am not looking at that, just the effect this has on the game.


Making 1’s botches has a huge effect; it is not just a reduction of 10% in successes. In cannon rolls it is extremely hard to botch. Thinking back to old Vampire, a huge dice pool meant you could sometimes get a truly horrible roll. When’s the last time somebody botched in your exalted group?


Also it disturbs the balance between the Excellencies. The second Excellency is made more powerful than the “rolledâ€

 

[Lord Kamina]

I think Safim is downplaying this one, regardless of whether the OP is more concerned about himself or the effects for all the players. I am not looking at that, just the effect this has on the game.
Making 1’s botches has a huge effect; it is not just a reduction of 10% in successes. In cannon rolls it is extremely hard to botch. Thinking back to old Vampire, a huge dice pool meant you could sometimes get a truly horrible roll. When’s the last time somebody botched in your exalted group?


Also it disturbs the balance between the Excellencies. The second Excellency is made more powerful than the “rolled†Excellencies as having an automatic success is now far more useful. Same goes for Charms which yield auto success over Charms yielding extra die.


I am not saying this makes the game unplayable, but it is a big rule change. I tend to rein my players in on being too all powerful but this rule change could easily get them killed in their first scenario.

I botched an Iron Skin (Ended up receiving Aggravated damage with my full soak of 0) roll a few weeks ago. But it's the first time I have ever botched in 20 and something sessions.

 

[Requiem of Forgotten Lore]

I botched an Iron Skin (Ended up receiving Aggravated damage with my full soak of 0) roll a few weeks ago. But it's the first time I have ever botched in 20 and something sessions.

See that's the idea' date=' it shows that the chosen by the gods are not perfect they have flaws and can mess up.  However by the same token, they were chosen by the gods for a reason.  The Unconquered Sun wouldn't just willy-nilly choose any random person, they have to [i']prove[/i] themselves, the person has to do something that makes the god take notice.  If you look at the rolls in a role-playing setting, why the heck would the Unconquered Sun choose Bob the Pathetically Lame because he keeps stabbing himself with his own sword every time he uses it or gloriously screws up anything he does?  The Unconquered Sun wouldn't choose somebody like that, so why would you play the game like that?
I understand the idea of making the game more gritty, but if I have a large dice pool for rolling something I'm going to dread rolling those dice every time... been there, done that.  Besides there are quite a few different ways of making the game gritty without loosing the fun (and purpose) of playing an Exalt; heck there are quite a few people right here that can give pointers for your ST, and I maybe over stepping my bounds when I say this, but seeing the people in this ECR versus to the old ECR, I'm sure they're be more than happy to help.


@Mirrorblade:  If you want your ST to at least take your plight into consideration you need to stop talking to him yourself!!!  I've learned this in business, when you keep yourself in the picture people don't give a flying rip what you say, because they know you.  However when you put someone that they don't know, and better yet you "mirror" (meaning you find someone who has a similar background or hobby, which would be Storytelling an Exalted game) that person to your friend, in this case your ST, then they start to listen.  I know it's bass-ackwards from what it should be, but business studies have shown this to be the case.


It's easy for me to use the medical profession for an analogy because I know it, so think of it this way:  Your friend is a doctor (ST), you're a nurse (PC) (I knew plenty of male nurses so don't freak out).  Your friend has worked on humans for as long as he can remember (OWoD).  Now he's charged to work on a cat (Exalted) that you're very fond of.  Now as far as humans and cats are concerned they both have hearts, a pair of lungs, digestive track, stuff not all that different from each other; however, a human is a human and a cat is a cat.  There are things apart of one that should never be assumed to have a commonality in the other (i.e. a male cats urethra is very narrow and makes a hair-pin curve, this defect is in all normal male cats but not in humans (sadly one of the reason why male cats are euthanized, it's costs an easy $500-$700 just for the emergency room visit for the cat... I know this first hand, but worth every dime )).  Now your friend doctor wants to fix the cat but he's unskilled in feline biology.  Now his friends (the other players) are telling him that he's doing good on trying to fix the cat (but they've all been in the medical field, not the veterinary field), meaning they really don't know any better.


Now the question you have to ask yourself: "Why would he listen to you since everyone else around him is telling him that what he's doing is OK?"  Answer: He won't.  However if you get him around a bunch of veterinarians (us here at Pattern Spider or other STs that have been running game according to the rules), they are going to ask him why he's doing what he's doing; and as long as they don't bite his head off for doing it wrong and we explain it to him why the rules don't state to subtract 1's from rolls with successes (which is a pointer to all of us), then he will understand just how powerful exalted are... and the cat will be saved (Yay! ).

 

[Guest]

Wordman provided all the math.


I will sum up the point- This is Exalted. You are either the re-incarnation of the ancient god-kings, the direct descendants of the god-kings' great armies, the chosen shield-mates of the god-kings, or the viziers of the god-kings.  Or, you are the corrupted god-kings sent to murder the world.


The whole point is to go forth and kick ass in the name of yourself!


Anything that up the chances of failure ignores that point.

 

[Lord Kamina]

Really, you don't need to have 1s cancel successes to have Exalted fail ocassionally and/or botch. The game I'm playing has shown me that. I have botched very sparingly (As it should be) and failed quite enough.

 

[Persell]

Wordman provided all the math.
I will sum up the point- This is Exalted. You are either the re-incarnation of the ancient god-kings, the direct descendants of the god-kings' great armies, the chosen shield-mates of the god-kings, or the viziers of the god-kings.  Or, you are the corrupted god-kings sent to murder the world.


The whole point is to go forth and kick ass in the name of yourself!


Anything that up the chances of failure ignores that point.

This is exalted. A game about reincarnated ancient beings who fight an uphill battle against a host of enemies which beset creation and against their own murderous pasts.


The whole point is to experience the drama of a very powerful but ultimately dommed and faulty character.


Both your premise and the one I outlined can easily be read into exalted and I don't think one of them is any better than the other. The storyteller of the OP might have had something like I outlined above in mind for which a bit higher chance of failure is absolutely fine.


And for the record. This does not "greatly increase" the chance of a botch. At least not when your exalt is at least competent (i.e. 2s in attribute and ability).

 

[cyl]

This does not "greatly increase" the chance of a botch

Well I guess you're just born lucky, I have a player in first ed I allowed to take the 9 points merit Lucky long after we started to play when the PG came out, because he just kept on screwing every significant thing he did, be it  fighting, sailing a boat, investigating or anything else...


It wasn't his fault, and he wasn't even complaining about it, but his bad luck endangered him and the rest of the group (as he was a boat captain) and made the game less fun for him and the others, who sometimes anticipated and played against his bad luck.


I remember one of them once saying to him off game "couldn't you make this roll because you believe to the death this is for the greater good and will help our cause... and... add your Conviction to the roll"


I mean okay, you can roll great sometimes too, but the potentiality you screw up at the wrong time is higher with this rule... and we all are aware of Murphy's law's effects.


Botches or failure CAN happen in exalted without this rule, but augmenting the chances they do happen doesn't add anything to the game and I'd say it takes away opportunities for grandeur (even if it's in a small way, it still does).


And yes, exalts are flawed to the roots, that's right, but they're still chosen and empowered by the gods... that to has to be sensed in the game too.


I think the complaint about the rule (not about the rolling bad stuff)makes some sense here. This is not OWoD... this is exalted we are talking about !

 

[Lord Kamina]

This does not "greatly increase" the chance of a botch

Well I guess you're just born lucky, I have a player in first ed I allowed to take the 9 points merit Lucky long after we started to play when the PG came out, because he just kept on screwing every significant thing he did, be it  fighting, sailing a boat, investigating or anything else...


It wasn't his fault, and he wasn't even complaining about it, but his bad luck endangered him and the rest of the group (as he was a boat captain) and made the game less fun for him and the others, who sometimes anticipated and played against his bad luck.


I remember one of them once saying to him off game "couldn't you make this roll because you believe to the death this is for the greater good and will help our cause... and... add your Conviction to the roll"


I mean okay, you can roll great sometimes too, but the potentiality you screw up at the wrong time is higher with this rule... and we all are aware of Murphy's law's effects.


Botches or failure CAN happen in exalted without this rule, but augmenting the chances they do happen doesn't add anything to the game and I'd say it takes away opportunities for grandeur (even if it's in a small way, it still does).


And yes, exalts are flawed to the roots, that's right, but they're still chosen and empowered by the gods... that to has to be sensed in the game too.


I think the complaint about the rule (not about the rolling bad stuff)makes some sense here. This is not OWoD... this is exalted we are talking about !

I fully endorse this post.

 

[Coyotekin]

I say use it as you see fit based on your game, your group, and your style.


I mentioned it to my group and they didn't have a huge issue with it. Then again the do not botch all that often so it would make things interesting. In addition, they know the rolls for NPCs and such get the same rule as well.

 

[wordman]

Wordman provided all the math.

Not all of it. All I showed was that the average number of successes per die decreases by 10%.


I also made the claim that a damage roll (i.e. one that doesn't use the rule of 10) is equivalent to the "WoD" style rolling. In terms of average successes, this is correct. It's also true in terms of (non-botching) failure. But thinking about it more, this is not true when it comes to botches. The reason for this is the nature of botching: that they only happen when no successes are rolled, and the WoD style makes this more common by virtue of "eating" successes. This doesn't change the average successes, but does change the chances of botching. (Although, still not by the apocalyptic level some posters in this thread seem to suggest.)


Comparing a damage roll to a canon roll, chances of botching are exactly the same (because if a ten gets one or two successes doesn't matter; either avoids the botch). Chance of failure is also identical. Chance of binary success (i.e. did the roll as a whole succeed or fail) is also identical. All that changes is the number of successes.


Comparing canon with WoD rolls, however, is a different story. Chance of non-botching failure remains the same. Chances of binary success are reduced, and chances of a botch are increased. This change is non-linear. There is no doubt a formula that could calculate the exact amount, but it eludes me. Instead, I wrote a shitty python program to look at every possible roll of up to eight dice and count how many were binary successes (i.e. they got at least one success), how many were non-botching failures and how many botched. Results look like this:

Result counts for canon
Result    1 dice   2 dice    3 dice    4 dice      5 dice        6 dice        7 dice          8 dice
success   4/ 40%   64/ 64%   784/ 78%  8,704/ 87%  92,224/ 92%   953,344/ 95%  9,720,064/ 97%  98,320,384/ 98%
failure   5/ 50%   25/ 25%   125/ 12%    625/  6%   3,125/  3%    15,625/  1%     78,125/  0%     390,625/  0%
botch     1/ 10%   11/ 11%    91/  9%    671/  6%   4,651/  4%    31,031/  3%    201,811/  2%   1,288,991/  1%
total    10/100%  100/100% 1,000/100% 10,000/100% 100,000/100% 1,000,000/100% 10,000,000/100% 100,000,000/100%

Result counts for wod
Result    1 dice   2 dice    3 dice    4 dice      5 dice        6 dice        7 dice          8 dice
success   4/ 40%   58/ 58%   682/ 68%  7,494/ 74%  79,804/ 79%   834,940/ 83%  8,637,920/ 86%  88,680,246/ 88%
failure   5/ 50%   25/ 25%   125/ 12%    625/  6%   3,125/  3%    15,625/  1%     78,125/  0%     390,625/  0%
botch     1/ 10%   17/ 17%   193/ 19%  1,881/ 18%  17,071/ 17%   149,435/ 14%  1,283,955/ 12%  10,929,129/ 10%
total    10/100%  100/100% 1,000/100% 10,000/100% 100,000/100% 1,000,000/100% 10,000,000/100% 100,000,000/100%

Some things to note:

1. The number of rolls that fail remains the same in both systems.
   
2. Given that, it is no surprise that the reduction in the percentage change of a successful test equals the increase in the percentage chance of a botch.
   
3. Under canon, chance of both failure and botching clearly approach a limit of zero.
   
4. I'm wondering if, as the number of dice increases, the chance of botch in the WoD system approaches 10% rather than zero, while the chance of failure still approaches zero. It may be possible to prove this, but I'm not sure how at the moment.

If my last observation proves to be true, then the WoD seems stupidly broken to me. Essentially, it means that as you approach uber levels of skill, your chance of success improves less and less with each skill increase (good), your chance of failing decreases (good), but your chance of colossally screwing up remains about the same (stupid).