How many dice are too many?

[Winston]

While there is something satisfying about pouring a double handful of dice through a dice tower, at some point it becomes unwieldy. OpenD6 normally handles this by rolling fewer dice and adding a modifier. I don’t like this very much. It feels artificial and the modifiers are solidly in the mathematical mean.

I have two ideas right now for an alternative.

1. Scale. At some point the stat simply jumps to the next scale and starts over. Since OpenD6 also handles scale through a system of adds, we would need to a different way of handling that as well. Perhaps automatic success or failure for scale differences? Or a +5 modifier to difficulty for each scale step?

One advantage I see is that we can create competitive levels: vehicle, supernatural, massive, etc. Mutants and Masterminds 3e does this very well with a logarithmic scale. One problem is that scale doesn’t make sense for every comparison (e.g., skill).

2. Die caps. I really like the idea of undercapping dice. At some point, you stop adding dice and start raising the minimum dice value, either per die or for the total.

Total cap: the dice total has a minimum value. 10D normally yields from 10 – 60 (mean 35). Any roll less than 20 now equals 20. Characters can progress by raising their total cap, making their minimum value higher and higher. It is simple to calculate.

Single cap: any dice below a minimum value are adjusted upwards. All 1s become 2s. 1s and 2s become 3s. This preserves variation in the roll and players get to manipulate their dice.

Of course I think I really want to use all of the above!

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