Problems with "Lucky" characters

[pawsplay]

The problem is that they don't.  Lady Luck's Smile explodes on the next-highest value; the other two explode on a 1.   (Unless you're describing a new potential house rule).  Hence 1, 3 or 4 on a D4 giving a 3/4 probability of the die exploding.

Somehow I missed that. It's interesting that at level 6, a character with those kind of exploding dice have all their starting dice become less powerful. And that's quite a few dice.

I guess that brings me back to my original suggestion. Under my proposed houserule, you could not apply Lady Luck's Smile to a d4 that already exploded on a 1 or 4, or Tales of the Rascal to a d4 that already exploded on a 3 or a 4.

[ludomastro]

It's an inherent quirk of any exploding die mechanic that uses multiple types of dice.  The lowly d4 is elevated to the status of near god-hood because it has a higher explosion probability - under any scenario.  (The feats/campaign qualities in question just exaggerate the problem.)

The only real options for "fixing it" are either a kludge or a change in the mechanic itself.

As most of my efforts in this direction have been less than productive, I will now go back to lurking and reviewing this thread periodically.

[Morgenstern]

I guess that brings me back to my original suggestion. Under my proposed houserule, you could not apply Lady Luck's Smile to a d4 that already exploded on a 1 or 4, or Tales of the Rascal to a d4 that already exploded on a 3 or a 4.

The biggest problem is you just wrote a blank feat if either of the explode on 1's are in effect:

Lady Luck's Smile
Benefit: ... Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Until you are Career Level 6, only that's not actually a prerequisite of this feat. Then this feat does what the book says it does. Unless we're talking about the dice from Fortunate, in which case this feat still does nothing. Forever.

To me, its preferable to let people have 3-4 dice that have an average value of 10 when used as a boost than to create dead character options. The game does a LOT of dancing to avoid dead options. I think its a dance worth continuing . Removing the explosions from the Fortunate dice at least tells you up front that certain interactions are not going to occur.

Actually I'm not even sure the problem is that it's more than half the faces, so much as that there's only 1 face left that doesn't. 4 exploding faces on a d6 is only minutely higher average than 3 on a d4 (10.5 average vs. 10 average). 5 faces on a d8 is up to 12. 6 faces on a d10 actually DROPS, comming back down to 9 & 1/6th. These gains are small - not substantially larger than the +1 increase in the average of a flat die.

[Bill Whitmore]

My problem is for my current game, my player's entire character build is centered around the d4 action dice from Fortunate exploding, so I am not comfortable just up and taking that away.  At that point, I may as well tell him to go make a new character which I don't want to do.  While limiting the range that the dice can explode is a kludge, it seems a fair compromise in this case.  I'll still give him the option to decide if his 1's or 3's explode, and he can decide based on what value he thinks he needs to reach for any given action die.  I'll talk to him about it when I see him next.

For any future games I run, I'll probably go with changing Fortunate to be non-exploding Action Dice.  I'll probably leave Fortune's Fool alone so if the GM does spend action dice against him, those d4s have the potential to explode, which seems a legitimate deterrent to the GM spending Action Dice against them.  At that point, a player would know up front that the dice won't explode before deciding whether or not to take the feat.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.  It was a lot of help!

[paddyfool]

I was initially doubtful of the utility of your solution of having a choice between the 1 or the 3 (or 5 on a D6 etc.), but I did some thinking about the maths, and I suppose it would have enough utility value to be worth the fiddliness.

If he needs a +2 or +3 for success, he'll want the 1 to explode on a D4.  If a +4, a +5,  or (barely) a +6, the 3.  After that, I haven't run the numbers (doing it in my head), but I think it still favours the 3, albeit by an increasingly negligible amount.  Of course, I'd assume that often he wouldn't know the target anyway... and if I didn't know the target, I'd generally be more tempted by using the 1 than the 3. but he could probably often make an educated guess (e.g. if he thinks he might have rolled about high enough or very nearly high enough for success, but wants to make sure, he might choose the 1 to explode; whereas if he thinks he needs to do quite a bit better, he might use the 3).

[Bill Whitmore]

And some numbers they'll end up knowing because they are static, like Jump DCs and foraging checks, and others they'll be able to deduce fairly easily.

"Hey, a 17 hit these guys earlier, but the 16 just missed.  Well, I know what number I am aiming for now."

But yes, they don't generally know the DCs of what they are attempting except in fairly broad terms.  I have used knowledge checks in the past for them to assess just how hard some task may be.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Trying to think of something to help, but I'm not a great math person, nor a great seer of interactions.

The only thing that crosses my mind is the question of whether the number of character resources that need to be sunk into getting this result should be increased.  My guess from the very existence of this thread is that people think no.  Could we do something about that?

EDIT: And would there be a problem adding to Bold Heroes "Action Die granted by Fortunate are now d6."?  That sounds like it might help.

[Deral]

I just watched the mathiness of that do a flyby past my thick skull.  Is there a short explanation of how to get Excel to calculate the exploding dice?

Yea, sorry.  I spent a lot of time deriving that formula and I caught a lot of crap from my friends for voluntarily reading my calculus book to do so.  But it was worth it.  FOR SCIENCE!  (or, you know, gaming).  It's pretty bad when all my friends started calling be a geek... 

The formula is

Code:

(x + 1) / (2 * ( 1 - (y / x)))

x = sides of the die
y = number of sides that explode

If you want to plug it into excel just copy and paste this into any cell other than A1 or A2, then A1 will be the sides of the die, and A2 will be the number of sides that explode.

=(A1 + 1) / (2 * ( 1 - (A2 / A1)))

It'll look like this when it is in excel, with the 10 being where the formula is entered.

4	Sides of the die
3	Number of sides that explode
10	Mean average

Egads, even that came out seeming really complicated, but its the best I can do via text.

If you've not used this before, it's pretty handy: http://anydice.com/

[pawsplay]

I guess that brings me back to my original suggestion. Under my proposed houserule, you could not apply Lady Luck's Smile to a d4 that already exploded on a 1 or 4, or Tales of the Rascal to a d4 that already exploded on a 3 or a 4.

The biggest problem is you just wrote a blank feat if either of the explode on 1's are in effect:

Lady Luck's Smile
Benefit: ... Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Until you are Career Level 6, only that's not actually a prerequisite of this feat. Then this feat does what the book says it does. Unless we're talking about the dice from Fortunate, in which case this feat still does nothing. Forever.

So don't take it until Career Level 6 in such a campaign. The same argument applies fully to taking Tales of the Rascal in a campaign with the Bold Heroes quality.

To me, its preferable to let people have 3-4 dice that have an average value of 10 when used as a boost than to create dead character options. The game does a LOT of dancing to avoid dead options. I think its a dance worth continuing . Removing the explosions from the Fortunate dice at least tells you up front that certain interactions are not going to occur.

It still makes it silly when you go from level 5 to level 6.

Actually I'm not even sure the problem is that it's more than half the faces, so much as that there's only 1 face left that doesn't. 4 exploding faces on a d6 is only minutely higher average than 3 on a d4 (10.5 average vs. 10 average). 5 faces on a d8 is up to 12. 6 faces on a d10 actually DROPS, comming back down to 9 & 1/6th. These gains are small - not substantially larger than the +1 increase in the average of a flat die.

The additional chances of explosions are adding gradually less and less anyway.

[Sletchman]

The same argument applies fully to taking Tales of the Rascal in a campaign with the Bold Heroes quality.

Close, but not quite - Tales of the Rascal still lets you increase your Dex for 50 rep per +1 in a game with Bold Heroes (which can get quite silly with a Pech).  Without Bold Heroes it wouldn't be very high on my priority list, but still not quite nothing.

For a long time I was (still am I suppose) seriously considering changing Fortunate to "You gain 1 additonal Action Die at the start of each session.  This bonus Die does not count as one of your Starting Action Dice for the purposes of abilities based on number of Starting Action Dice you possess."

[pawsplay]

The same argument applies fully to taking Tales of the Rascal in a campaign with the Bold Heroes quality.

Close, but not quite - Tales of the Rascal still lets you increase your Dex for 50 rep per +1 in a game with Bold Heroes (which can get quite silly with a Pech).  Without Bold Heroes it wouldn't be very high on my priority list, but still not quite nothing.
[/quiote]

Taking a feat you don't get half the benefits of, in fact using only the half that requires a further expenditure of rep, is pretty much stabbing yourself in the forehead.

[Sletchman]

The same argument applies fully to taking Tales of the Rascal in a campaign with the Bold Heroes quality.

Close, but not quite - Tales of the Rascal still lets you increase your Dex for 50 rep per +1 in a game with Bold Heroes (which can get quite silly with a Pech).  Without Bold Heroes it wouldn't be very high on my priority list, but still not quite nothing.

Taking a feat you don't get half the benefits of, in fact using only the half that requires a further expenditure of rep, is pretty much stabbing yourself in the forehead.

Oh, I agree. With Bold Heroes (what I meant to say originally) I would be extremely unlikely to take it, unless it were in a campaign where we have nothing to spend rep on (which I have actually played in) and even then I'd be far more likely to take it as a prize (if possible) then waste a feat on it.