Hi guys. I was thinking, and one thing that keeps me from getting back to playing Shadowrun using the Shadowrun system (I'm using a Gurps "hack" these days...) is the absurd amount of dice rolled for almost everything, and one of the worst offenders is the resisted roll. Any trivial, or simple test usually involves rolling 10+ dice for each side, so I was thinking: Why don't we roll only the difference between the two dice pool? Lets say that one character is rolling Agility 5 plus Stealth 5, for a total of 10 dice, against an oponent 4 Intuition plus 3 Notice, or 7 dice. Instead of rolling 17 dice, we subtract 7 from 10, and end rolling only 3 dice.

For the more mathematically inclined, what are the problems with this method? It seems that it lowers the possibility of huge successes, but I think that we can use the "rule of six" in those rolls for it, no?

Thank you for your thoughs!

Buh ... buh ... buh ...

Get rid of the "absurd amount of dice???"



Here's one problem. Reducing the number of dice would inordinately increase the number of glitches, including critical ones.

That would kind of screw over the characters with the lower dice pools, though. Someone rolling 17 dice vs. 12 dice might get nearly two hits more, on average, but with a TN of 5, dice rolls go all over the place, so the dice pool of 12 is still a threat. 5 dice vs. no dice at all? Much less so. And would you essentially have those security guards have no chance at all of hitting defenders rolling more dice than them? Even grunts can get lucky.

I don't think it would really improve the flow of the game, either. Instead of two people just rolling dice and comparing successes, you would have them sitting down together and figuring out the dice pools and modifiers, and after all that, only one of them would get to even roll.

Well, Glyph, it seems you are right, this is my gut feeling as well, but I wish to know, maybe from someone with the actual probabilities, if using this really does screw the mooks more than the reduced dice pool already does. About improving the flow of the game, anything that includes rolling less dice improves: it is much quicker to add and/or remove modifiers than rolling 12+ dice and counting the results.
But thanks nevertheless for the attention!

It wouldn't work: why?

What happens if you fail?

The best exemple is this one:

Say character A has 10 dices, B has 9 dices.

So A would roll 1 die: he has 33% chances to win, so actually, mister B has more chances to win the resisted roll, despite the fact he has less dices.

But to expand:

with 2 dices more, you win 55% of the time (so beeing by 2 dices better make chances even).
with 3 dices more, you win 70% of the time.

It doesn't work well.

If you wanna reduce the dices without screwing the probabilities too much, you can simply change the dices you use:
Translate 3d6 into 1d10:

in the d6 system, when you roll 3 dices, that's your probabilities:

3 success=> 4%
2 success=> 22%
1 success=> 44%
0 success=> 30%

So simply transform it into a read of a d10:
10: 2 success and reroll
9: 2 success
8: 2 success
7: 1 succes
6: 1 succes
5: 1 succes
4: 1 succes
3: no success
2: no success
1: no success

It will divide dice pools per 3 and not change the stats too much, with a system still easy to remember (4+ 1 succes, 8+ : 2 success, 10: add a reroll)

Question of glitches would not be solved though I guess that the division of number of dices coupled with a 1 happening less often shouldn't make it this different from the d6 system.

Other question is to alter how edge works.

Reducing dice... hmm. Maybe do something like make it skill plus half Attribute (rounded up), with net positive modifiers capped at half the skill rating? It would cut down the total amount of dice, which seems to be what you want to do, and skills would go back to being the most important factor in the dice pool again.

If you have attribute dice a different color, you could have the attribute dice TN 6, and the other dice TN 5, perhaps with exploding sixes. Capping modifiers would be good, but I think half the skill rating is too low. I don't think Edge needs to exist.

The number of dice doesn't bother me, but the whole system is very unbalanced toward having high attributes.