Full Version: Does using edge increase your chance for a glitch?
The rule for including edge in a roll is that if the roll is a six, you re-roll that die, but still count a hit for that die.
The rule for a Glitch is that if half or more of the dice rolled are ones, it's a glitch.
Okay, let's say that with edge, I roll six dice. The result is as follows:
1,1,3,4,6,6
Admittedly, an unlikely roll. So far, so good. 2 hits, and it's not a glitch. The trouble is, I have to now reroll those two 6's, (but remember that they are hits.) When I do, the dice on the table look like this:
1,1,3,4,X,X, +2 hits.
The thing is, if even one of those two X's are a one, the test becomes a glitch -- this is because re-rolling the sixes doesn't add any extra dice to the check, it just adds (potential) hits. This, I assume, is why the book says to re-roll the dice, and not roll new ones or something. I've thus added a possibility of a glitch that did not exist for non exploding dice.
Is this interpretation correct? Or am I just being asinine? I suspect the later, but I wondered if others had any thoughts along these lines.
Its ambiguous. I'd say the initial 6 dice rolled determine the glitches. so the 1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 6 decide if you glitch or not. Then, edge rules say to re-roll those 6's, regardless of what they are, you didn't glitch.
Thats my interpretation, the rules aren't specific.
Thats my interpretation, the rules aren't specific.
I would simply count the rerolled dice as "new" ones. So if you roll 6 dice, roll 2 of them again, you're at 8 dices, not 6 anymore.
Edit: But I have to admit, simply not counting "rerolled" 1s is probably the better idea.
Edit: But I have to admit, simply not counting "rerolled" 1s is probably the better idea.
I kind of like the glitch interpretation. It probably won't come up a lot, but non-critical glitches are usually more entertaining than disastrous. Using Edge is to live the adage, "Its better to be lucky than good." But I like glitches, because they spice things up.
Since exploding 6's don't change the dice pool, only the number of potential hits, I'd agree with Tarantula that if you didn't glitch on the initial roll, you wouldn't glitch with the explodings.
Since exploding 6's don't change the dice pool, only the number of potential hits, I'd agree with Tarantula that if you didn't glitch on the initial roll, you wouldn't glitch with the explodings.
I have to agree with the others that getting 6s when using edge shouldn't increase your chance of a glitch. Beyond any other mechanical/common sense reason there is this: You just used up some of your 'luck' Why in the heck would being lucky make it more likely that you would screw up?
Now, if you had the unlucky quality, I'd definetly consider doing what the OP said.
Now, if you had the unlucky quality, I'd definetly consider doing what the OP said.
Karaden has a good point about Edge as luck. If it's luck, why would it reduce your chances?
I think if the designers had meant for the use of Edge to increase the danger of a glitch, they would have said so specifically.
Finally, for simplicity's sake, I just don't count any ones that come up in the reroll.
I think if the designers had meant for the use of Edge to increase the danger of a glitch, they would have said so specifically.
Finally, for simplicity's sake, I just don't count any ones that come up in the reroll.
Honestly I don't know the math but we so rarely see a glitch, I think in last few months playing twice a month we've had just a handful of minor glitches and no major at all. And we have some fairly large dice pools, with our veteran players.
The chances for a glitch are fairly small, and only get smaller as you get a larger dice pool. So someone with a 1-2 dice pool would glitch and/or critical glitch fairly often, but someone with a 12 dice pool is rarely going to glitch.
Quick math lesson is something like this. With a 2 dice pool you only need a singe 1 to glitch, but with 12 you need six of them. Now, the odds of rolling six ones in a row is 6 to the 6th power, which is really really tiny, now granted your rolling twelve dice and not just six so it is slightly more likely then that, but not much.
Quick math lesson is something like this. With a 2 dice pool you only need a singe 1 to glitch, but with 12 you need six of them. Now, the odds of rolling six ones in a row is 6 to the 6th power, which is really really tiny, now granted your rolling twelve dice and not just six so it is slightly more likely then that, but not much.
I'm just going to chime in with my 0.02Y that I check for a glitch once, when the dice first hit the table, and then we continue with the rerolls. Further 1's don't matter.
The other side of glitching on exploding 6's is, can you explode your way out of a glitch? If you consider the re-rolls to expand the pool, you could glitch on the initial roll and with the 6's expand the pool enough so that it wasn't a glitch.
It just seems like one more thing to keep track of. Its a lot easier to check to see if the initial roll glitches and consider all the exploding dice as phantoms.
It just seems like one more thing to keep track of. Its a lot easier to check to see if the initial roll glitches and consider all the exploding dice as phantoms.
| QUOTE |
| With a 2 dice pool you only need a singe 1 to glitch, but with 12 you need six of them. Now, the odds of rolling six ones in a row is 6 to the 6th power, which is really really tiny, now granted your rolling twelve dice and not just six so it is slightly more likely then that, but not much. |
Actually, it is three orders of magnitude higher than that, which in most circles qualifies as "much more likely" ;). 1/(6^6) ~= 0.002%. The odds of a glitch on 12 dice, if my formulas are correct, is ~0.8%. Still not high of course -- less than a 1 in 100 chance. But if you've got four players making 10 rolls a game with dice pools of 12, you'd expect to see one every two to three games. If the die pools are 16 however, the time between glitches is roughly four times that. The odds of a critical glitch with pools that size are still vanishingly small though.
Odds can add in somewhat confusing ways -- for instance, I had been assuming for a long time that the odds of rolling a glitch when rolling two dice are twice as great as when rolling one die. After all, you still only need a single one, but you've got two chances to get it, right? This makes intuitive sense, but it's wrong.
By the intuitive way, that's 1/6 * 2, or ~33.33%
If we where to list all the possible results of two dice, there would be 36 entries. But if we list just the ones that roll a glitch, you'd get this list:
[1,1][1,2][1,3][1,4][1,5][1,6][2,1][3,1][4,1][5,1][6,1]
That's 11 possibilities, out of 36, that could be glitches. So the actual odds of glitching on two die are ~30.56%. The difference is small with only two die, but it can really add up at the higher die pools. The reason for that difference is that the intuitive method counts the possibility of rolling [1,1] twice, and that isn't obvious (at least to me) until you write it all out.
The glitch question, and the statistics above, are on my mind because I'm re-writing my Shadowrun die roller, and I'm including a statistical analysis so you know what your odds are before you roll. It took me much longer than it should have to get the statistical formulas right, because I'm so bad at statistics. Calculating the odds with exploding sixes from edge was the worst, actually. It was so bad initially that I just simulated every possible roll and added the odds. That worked swell for dice pools around 8, but would have taken ~2 hours for a dice pool of 16 or so, and weeks by the time you got into the 20's.
I've since re-worked it using statistics instead of simulation, and while it was a huge headache, it now calculates "instantly" for all sizes of die pools -- though I run into overflows even using 8 byte arithmetic at pool sizes around 30. Then again, if you're rolling more than 30 dice, I think we can safely assume you'll win whatever test you're making...
Incidentally, I spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out why my glitch odds where wrong for two die, before I actually wrote out all the possibilities. I was so convinced that it should be 33% that when I got 30% I thought I had goofed the code.
| QUOTE |
| I'm just going to chime in with my 0.02Y that I check for a glitch once, when the dice first hit the table, and then we continue with the rerolls. Further 1's don't matter. |
I'm pretty sure this is the method that I'll be going with when I re-do the die roller. It's not how it is done in my old version, because the question didn't even occur to me the first time.
True, .8% is in fact qutie a bit more then .002%, but you must admit that one glitch every couple of games is still quite rare. (also supprised the increase was that much, always been bad at odds when multipul dice and such where considered)
And of course it still supports the one person saying that their group rarely glitches, the odds for it are quite small with fewer then 1 glitch in 100 rolls.
P.S. Any chance of you sharing that program when you get it working to your satisfaction?
And of course it still supports the one person saying that their group rarely glitches, the odds for it are quite small with fewer then 1 glitch in 100 rolls.
P.S. Any chance of you sharing that program when you get it working to your satisfaction?
| QUOTE (Karaden) |
| True, .8% is in fact qutie a bit more then .002%, but you must admit that one glitch every couple of games is still quite rare. (also supprised the increase was that much, always been bad at odds when multipul dice and such where considered) And of course it still supports the one person saying that their group rarely glitches, the odds for it are quite small with fewer then 1 glitch in 100 rolls. P.S. Any chance of you sharing that program when you get it working to your satisfaction? |
I do agree with you that a glitch every two to twelve games (depending on pool size and number of rolls) is quite rare. It's pretty clear the glitch system is in place to add a bit of humor for people trying to work outside their skillset (Me troll smash. You want smash to drive car? Uh... me try. *windshield wipers engage* *lights flash*) -- or to brutally punish people crazy enough to take Gremlins or Cursed. Now that I think about it, I need to add support for those two flaws to my program as well
And yes, I certainly intend to share it once it's done. Given that it's the holiday season, that might be longer than I like, unfortunately. I've got most of the math hacked out, but I've decided to switch GUI libraries to try to keep the code size down. Plus, I haven't a clue where my old code went -- it's been almost two years since I worked on it
I added support for the Cursed and Gremlins flaws to the math section, because I got curious. Just in case you're curious too, rolling 12 dice with gremlins maxed out at 4 gives you a ~62% chance to glitch! Your odds to critically glitch jump up to almost what the normal glitch odds were -- ~0.6%. It's a more manageable ~27% and ~0.1% for dice pools of 16, though for magic that's a *lot* of dice. It'd require a magic 6 skill 6 with a power focus 2 casting within his specialty (if you stick to non-initiated starting characters) -- and still you'd mess it up 1 in 4 times. Ouch.
Mages who take Cursed at 20 BP must be suicidal. Even if glitches are "mostly humorous" glitching every other test would get you in a lot of trouble. Of course, now I want to try it
Mages who take Cursed at 20 BP must be suicidal. Even if glitches are "mostly humorous" glitching every other test would get you in a lot of trouble. Of course, now I want to try it
I'm actually supprised the odds of glitching are that low with maxed out cursed/gremlins. You sure your numbers are right? I mean a roll of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 on a six sided die working towards glitching would seem to indicate a roughly 5 in 6 chance of glitching regardless of how many dice you roll (And seems like it would actualy go -up- the more dice you roll, just as it usually goes down, because instead of the rare number being the glitching number it is the non-glitching number.)
Ihe accident power or spell would be what i think is what would happen on a (critical)glitch.
In one of those descriptions it said that a target affected by that could be hit with a cake. To his face!
In one of those descriptions it said that a target affected by that could be hit with a cake. To his face!
| QUOTE (Karaden) |
| I have to agree with the others that getting 6s when using edge shouldn't increase your chance of a glitch. Beyond any other mechanical/common sense reason there is this: You just used up some of your 'luck' Why in the heck would being lucky make it more likely that you would screw up? Now, if you had the unlucky quality, I'd definetly consider doing what the OP said. |
Why? Someone with the Unlucky flaw is already being punished enough. Why make things harder on them? You'll just discourage people from taking that particular Flaw.
Karaden, gremlins/cursed make you need less 1's for a glitch, not make each die more likely to glitch.
Using the example of 12 dice. Normally you need 6 1's to glitch. If you have level 4 gremlins, then you'd need 2 1's to glitch.
Using the example of 12 dice. Normally you need 6 1's to glitch. If you have level 4 gremlins, then you'd need 2 1's to glitch.
| QUOTE (Karaden) |
| I'm actually supprised the odds of glitching are that low with maxed out cursed/gremlins. You sure your numbers are right? I mean a roll of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 on a six sided die working towards glitching would seem to indicate a roughly 5 in 6 chance of glitching regardless of how many dice you roll (And seems like it would actualy go -up- the more dice you roll, just as it usually goes down, because instead of the rare number being the glitching number it is the non-glitching number.) |
That's not how cursed and gremlins works. It reduces the number of 1's you need, not the roll on the die. For instance, if you roll a pool of 6, you normally need 3 1's to be a glitch. If you have gremlins 1 (5 BP), you only need to roll 2 1's for it to be a glitch -- but the die must still be a 1.
*opens mouth, inserts foot*
Oh, must have been remembering it incorrectly, that makes it not as debilitating of a trait as I had thought it was, thanks for setting me strait on that one.
But ya, the odds of glitching are absurd on the higher levels of those qualities.
Oh, must have been remembering it incorrectly, that makes it not as debilitating of a trait as I had thought it was, thanks for setting me strait on that one.
But ya, the odds of glitching are absurd on the higher levels of those qualities.
Gremlins 4 says "Dear God, please never shoot a gun near me."
Chris
Chris
Of course, that also means that someone with Gremlins 4 will glitch 100% of the time whenever their DP is 8 or less, right? Normally 8 dice glitch with 4 or more 1's, but with Gremlins 4 then zero 1's are required to glitch.
I would rule that you would always need at least one actual '1' to glitch.
| QUOTE (Fortune) |
| I would rule that you would always need at least one actual '1' to glitch. |
So the 8 die pool only glitches 75.7% of the time? You're such a sweetie.
That's not a bad modification, I suppose. I haven't had to deal with it yet, since the only person I've had to deal with had Gremlins 1 and has yet to roll a pool of precisely 1 or 2 dice. I don't know, on the one hand, it seems like there should be some remote chance of escaping the glitch, on the other hand glitching does not prevent success, and anyone who takes Gremlins wants to glitch.
I'd agree with Fortune, at least one 1 is required. Though, strict text reading just say subtract gremlins rating from 1's required to glitch. Thusly, DP of 8 with rating 4 gremlins = 0 1's required to glitch. They always have glitches happening.
| QUOTE (Tarantula) |
| I'd agree with Fortune, at least one 1 is required. Though, strict text reading just say subtract gremlins rating from 1's required to glitch. Thusly, DP of 8 with rating 4 gremlins = 0 1's required to glitch. They always have glitches happening. |
Wouldn't this mean that having fewer dice below 8 would actually improve your chances of not glitching? If I've got Gremlins 4, I've got better odds of glitching (although still lower odds of success) rolling 2 dice than I do with 8 dice.
Yes, but I just don't like the idea of automatic glitches.
Yeah, I'd say you have to at least roll a 1 to have a 1.
If a player saw fit to buy Gremlins 4, I have no issue with them having automatic glitches sometimes. It's the price of the flaw.
i would have issues with automatic glitches . . especially if they would not be just FROM TIME TO TIME but basically every time they actually roll their dice . .
I think it's important to remember that Gremlins only has its effect on tests involving technology and machinery at least somewhat advanced. I don't think throwing a rock would qualify, and I would rule that even using a knife, swinging a pipe, most athletics tests, and many others would be exempt. However, the use of tech (visual perception vs. visual perception tests aided by vision enhancement-modified cybereyes) makes a test eligible for the Gremlins flaw.
Really, even if it granted "automatic hits," it only does so when using gadgets and technology. Gremlins isn't a way to totally screw the player necessarily, and there are ways around it (though admittedly low-tech ones.)
Really, even if it granted "automatic hits," it only does so when using gadgets and technology. Gremlins isn't a way to totally screw the player necessarily, and there are ways around it (though admittedly low-tech ones.)
so in SR4 where even the mage has to deal with comlinks/nano-paste and stuffies it's basically a way to screw every character no matter what? O.o
I have no problems with "auto-glitching" since there are ways around it. Spirits with Guard and Sprites with Stabilise are some of them. Glitch? What is this glitch that you speak of?
| QUOTE (Abschalten) |
| I think it's important to remember that Gremlins only has its effect on tests involving technology and machinery at least somewhat advanced. I don't think throwing a rock would qualify, and I would rule that even using a knife, swinging a pipe, most athletics tests, and many others would be exempt. However, the use of tech (visual perception vs. visual perception tests aided by vision enhancement-modified cybereyes) makes a test eligible for the Gremlins flaw. Really, even if it granted "automatic hits," it only does so when using gadgets and technology. Gremlins isn't a way to totally screw the player necessarily, and there are ways around it (though admittedly low-tech ones.) |
Anything with an idiot or child proof label.
The rarity of glitches makes them even rarer, by way of the human factor.
When you're only getting a glitch every fifty or a hundred rolls, the people rolling the dice are going to forget about checking for them. Then glitch results will get overlooked.
When you're only getting a glitch every fifty or a hundred rolls, the people rolling the dice are going to forget about checking for them. Then glitch results will get overlooked.
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