Manifest: Static Versus Dynamic Dice

Last time, I looked into a core “dice-roll” mechanic, and decided to link each Manifestation’s roll to their Tier and Bond stats, their level and friendship scores, respectively. I liked the idea that both of these stats decided what dice you rolled “to hit” with any Manifestation, so I explored three different possible rolls: XdY, 1dX+Y, or Xd20+Y

At the moment, 1dX+Y is the simplest of the three. It’s linear, low-effort, and familiar for most RPGers. Since there isn’t too much to explore with it compared to the other two, I’m going to leave it in my back pocket for now, and see how interesting I can make XdY and Xd20+Y.

For both, we can require the Player to roll multiple dice and pick the die with the highest number showing. Since both roll multiple dice, the major difference is whether the size of the die changes or not. Therefore, I will call these two options the Static option, (Xd20+Y) and the Dynamic option. (XdY)

Let’s look at the Dynamic option first, and get a feel for the number ranges we can get. Since there is no +Y, our range is based entirely on the size of the die. A d4 Manifestation will only ever roll from 1 to 4, and a d12 gives us a range of 1 to 12; they’ll never roll higher. That makes the ranges pretty easy to measure: If this roll decides damage, for example, we can easily see how a d4 will, at their best, take three turns to deal as much damage as a d12 could deal in one turn.

Let’s look at the Static option, and acknowledge that the d20 looks pretty bad. Rolling d20s and taking the highest will weaken Y to the point where a +5 won’t matter too much. 6 to 25 isn’t that much better than 1 to 20, spread wise.

On the other hand, d4s are more than doubled with a +5. While a high Bond could make rolling a 4 almost certain, a weak Tier would give you a +1, or a relatively reliable 5 on every roll. Swaping to a low Bond and high Tier makes your rolls more swingy, a higher chance of rolling 1s and 2s, but a higher bonus, meaning a swingy 6 to 9.

That’s not a good spread. If a high Bond gets you a 5 at best, and a high Tier gets you a 6 at worst, why would you ever choose to raise your Bond over your Tier?

A d6 might even that out. Then we have a range of rolling a reliable 6+1 for a 7, versus rolling a swingy 6 to 11. That’s better, but still not ideal. What if we used d8s? Then we get a reliable 9 versus a swingy 6 to 13. That is more like it.

But it’s reliable 9, not certain 9. Rolling 5d8s won’t always get you an 8, and awful rolls can get you a 5 or a 6. What if we pushed the static die up to a 10? Then we have a more reliable 11, versus a swinging 6 to 15. That works much better, with the added bonus that — thanks to White Wolf — having multiple d10s on hand isn’t out of the question for a lot of players.

Around here is where I realized that I had naturally fallen into an Interesting Choice TM. The basic decision between: “Do I level up my Bond or my Tier? It’s a question that players will ask themselves every time they level up, but there is a difference between “what do I want to do,” and “what do I want to do first?”

If Manifestations can all become Bond-5 Tier-5, then the interesting choices all eventually even out. To make the Bond or Tier choice interesting and significant, the choice needs to last.

So, what if you level your Manifestation up 5 times, and each time you choose whether to level up your Tier or Bond? That makes for some interesting choices, as now your max-leveled Manifestations are either Tier-2 Bond-5, Tier-3 Bond-4, Tier-4 Bond-3, or Tier-5 Bond-2. That forces you to decide whether you want your Manifestation to be more reliable or more powerful.

I like that idea.

But the die roll is getting a little more complicated now. If only there were an easier way to crunch these numbers oh wait!

Anydice.com is a die probability calculator, where you can create small “programs” to game out the results of any given die roll. For example, if I wanted to see what the probabilities were for rolling 3d8 and keeping the highest die, I would simply write:

output 1@3d8

Looking at the “At Least” tab, I can see that rolling 3d8 and keeping the highest has a 75% chance of being at least a 6. How useful! I’ll be dropping in some code here and there as I explore different dice mechanics, for those who are interested in seeing the graphs.

For example, let’s look at all the possible combinations of die rolls using the Xd10+Y mechanic, assuming a spread of 1 to 5 for both stats:

loop BOND over {1..5}{
 loop TIER over {1..5}{
  output 1@BONDd10+TIER named "[BOND]d10+[TIER]"
 }
}

That’s…kinda a mess. What if we just wanted to look at the maximum level Manifestations? And having a +1 to +5 is kinda silly too. What if Tier was ranked 0 to 4 instead?

loop BOND over {1..5}{
 loop TIER over {0..4}{
  if BOND+TIER = 6 {
   output 1@BONDd10+TIER named "[BOND]d10+[TIER]"
  }
 }
}

That’s more interesting. In the “at least” tab We can see how having a max Bond of 5 makes it more likely you’ll roll at least an 8 than a max Tier Manifestation, but less than either a Manifestation of either Bond 3 or 4. That extra plus one makes a significant difference…but that third d10 is pretty important too, as it’s more likely you’ll roll a 10 or better with the mid-Tier Manifestations than a maxed Tier.

What about the XdY? What does that look like?

loop TIER over {4,6,8,10,12}{
 loop BOND over {1..5}{
  if BOND+(TIER/2-1) = 7 {
   output 1@BONDdTIER named "[BOND]d[TIER]"
  }
 }
}

Again, focusing on Bond or Tier to the exclusion of the other doesn’t mathematically seem to be as reliably useful as one might guess.

But regardless of the “balance” of it, this does make Bond and Tier immediately and visibly accessible. Having Bond increase the number of dice you roll gives you a better chance of getting a higher number, while increasing your Tier gives a steady increase to your “max strength.”

Is one better than the other? At the moment, I’m going to say they both could work, but I should probably choose one and change later if I have to. Deciding the spread of numbers I will have to deal with will be important when considering HP and such, after all.

And, for completeness sake, what if we did 1dX+Y? If Bond equals reliability, it would look something like this:

loop TIER over {4,6,8,10,12}{
 loop BOND over {0..4}{
  if (TIER/2-1)+BOND=5{
   output 1dTIER+BOND named "1d[TIER]+[BOND]"
  }
 }
}

This really represents the ideal: high Bond means a tight and reliable spread while high Tier means greater highs and lows, but all of them center on the same average of 6.5. It’s a reliable method too, and perhaps its foolish of me…but it’s just not sexy enough for me.

So I’m going to go hook up with the dangerous rebel first, and maybe come back to the guy-next-door later. Of the two wild and sexy options, I’m going to try XdY first. There is something appealing about picking the highest die and not doing any math on top of it, while raising the size of the die as you get stronger.

Next time, I’d like to explore another interesting idea I came up with for this die roll: Sync.