Moving the dice values around to ease roll20 playing.

[bloodycelt 31]

I'm thinking of moving some of the dice values around to make deterring success without strife, i.e. simple rolls, go quickly. Roll20 lets people play online, but it also makes a game like L5R hard when in many cases all you want is a success/failure. 

 

So, the changes would be: 

D6: Blank, Opportunity / Strife, Opportunity / Strife, Success / Strife, Success, Exploding Success

D12: 1-2 - Blank, 3 - 5: Opportunity / Strife, 6-8: Success / Strife, 9-11: Success / Opportunity, 12: Exploding Success / Opportunity

Mainly this has the benefit of making a simple roll: 5 or 6 on a D6 and 9 or higher on a D12. And exploding behavior that roll20 can handle (highest die value).

[Tenebrae 428]

As long as the probabilities remain the same, I don't see why not.

[Magnus Grendel 11,673]

2 hours ago, Tenebrae said:

As long as the probabilities remain the same, I don't see why not.

In theory, agreed, but I disagree emphatically with several specific changes and their effects, because even if the raw probabilities remain the same, their interaction with other effects (principally school abilities) will cause mechanical problems, balance issues, or both:

 

3 hours ago, bloodycelt said:

D6: Blank, Opportunity / Strife, Opportunity / Strife, Success / Strife, Success, Exploding Success

This rule prevents you rolling an opportunity with no strife. This is an issue because several effects (such as the Kaiu school ability) add kept ring dice set to a  to your dice pool, which is no longer possible with this change.  

3 hours ago, bloodycelt said:

D6: Blank, Opportunity / Strife, Opportunity / Strife, Success / Strife, Success, Exploding Success

A big part of the difference between Skill and Ring dice is that if you are unskilled, you cannot get an Exploding Success result without also getting a Strife result.

This has the convoluted-sounding-but-important-in-practice effect that if you are compromised, you cannot get an Exploding Success in a skill where you have 0 ranks - and hence cannot pass a check with a TN higher than your ring. Altering this is a big change to the balance between skilled and unskilled PCs in a given field.

3 hours ago, bloodycelt said:

D12: 1-2 - Blank, 3 - 5: Opportunity / Strife, 6-8: Success / Strife, 9-11: Success / Opportunity, 12: Exploding Success / Opportunity

Getting Exploding Success and another result is way better than any result currently on the dice. Since an Exploding Success will generally generate either another success, or another opportunity, or both, in any situation where you can reserve a die (most commonly channelling for high-level invocations), this massively increases the potential of the ability because being able to keep an Exploding success/Opportunity up your sleeve is a huge deal.

You have also halved the probability of an exploding success on a skill die, which is a big change.

It also makes a massive change to any effect which allows you to alter a result to "a result containing " or "a result containing ", such as the Matsu mastery ability, dramatically increasing their power,

3 hours ago, bloodycelt said:

D12: 1-2 - Blank, 3 - 5: Opportunity / Strife, 6-8: Success / Strife, 9-11: Success / Opportunity, 12: Exploding Success / Opportunity

It is no longer possible to roll 'just a success' on your skill dice. This is important for, for example, the Kuni Purifier, who can set results containing  to a  result instead when targeting a tainted being; this ability won't work on skill dice with this change as that result doesn't exist.

 

Edited January 20 by Magnus Grendel

[Tenebrae 428]

Obviously, I did not read the OP closely enough.

If probabilities (and combinations) are changed, it becomes a problem.

[Harzerkatze 262]

I agree with Magnus and Tenebrae. Moving the symbols has far-reaching consequences, as there are multiple abilities that allow you to reroll selected dice, and others that allow to ignore Strife results or exchange Strife dice for normal successes. All those abilities are impacted.

[bloodycelt 31]

Thanks, the main goal is so... unless a particular roll requires it, my group would rather not auto-keep any die that has strife on it. 

I could just swap 5 and 6 on the D6, this would keep the exploding success / strife, its just my group would almost never keep that die. And roll20 won't auto-explode on 5.

On the D12 swap 8 and 11, this would again make it so I can have roll20 count rolls above 9.

The end goal is the character sheet on roll20 would by default count successes without strife, to a maximum of kept die. Similar to how in 1-4th edition, it assumes you keep the highest die, but you can tell the GM if you want to change what dice are kept.

 

Edited January 20 by bloodycelt

[Tenebrae 428]

29 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Thanks, the main goal is so... unless a particular roll requires it, my group would rather not auto-keep any die that has strife on it.

Auto keeping is problematic in and of itself.

Sometimes you want successes, sometimes you want opportunities. Sometimes you want all of a kind that you can get, sometimes you want a (usually very specific!) mix. Loosing out on that extra choice/degree of freedom, would probably make me not want to play in that group.

If it's that simplified, why not just dig out my old 1st edition book?

[Avatar111 553]

38 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Thanks, the main goal is so... unless a particular roll requires it, my group would rather not auto-keep any die that has strife on it. 

I could just swap 5 and 6 on the D6, this would keep the exploding success / strife, its just my group would almost never keep that die. And roll20 won't auto-explode on 5.

On the D12 swap 8 and 11, this would again make it so I can have roll20 count rolls above 9.

The end goal is the character sheet on roll20 would by default count successes without strife, to a maximum of kept die. Similar to how in 1-4th edition, it assumes you keep the highest die, but you can tell the GM if you want to change what dice are kept.

 

I really do not see the purpose here. You should find a way to do roll&keep on whatever platform you are using.
The system (even if absolutely not clearly explained, nor defined... unfortunately) is meant to have lower target numbers because a lot of the time you need to take that strife to succeed and after a certain amount of roll, it gets harder to do (or you become compromised).
Sure you can abuse this with Water Ring opportunities (what a detrimental fluke to the system that this "example of opportunity" is...), but otherwise, I feel this system gains in fun and tension and roleplay if strife builds up and makes some decisions to succeed a bit harder.

[bloodycelt 31]

1 minute ago, Tenebrae said:

Sometimes you want successes, sometimes you want opportunities. Sometimes you want all of a kind that you can get, sometimes you want a (usually very specific!) mix. Loosing out on that extra choice/degree of freedom, would probably make me not want to play in that group.

Maybe you misunderstand, just because roll20 rolls the dice, and lists 2 successes, does not mean you can't see the full results, and tell the GM you'd rather keep a different set of die. I only want to switch things so its easy when in most cases I've found, you just want to count successes, and strife isn't worth it. 

4 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

If it's that simplified, why not just dig out my old 1st edition book?

Perhaps I want to give 5th edition a second try. Our first try ended up with spending too much time managing strife for simple perception / heraldry rolls. It's quite possible our GM likes perception rolls too much, I should point out.... in 4e he ignores movement, and readying weapons which also totally nerf the Matsu... and the Hare.

[Magnus Grendel 11,673]

18 minutes ago, Tenebrae said:

Auto keeping is problematic in and of itself.

Sometimes you want successes, sometimes you want opportunities. Sometimes you want all of a kind that you can get, sometimes you want a (usually very specific!) mix. Loosing out on that extra choice/degree of freedom, would probably make me not want to play in that group.

This. Moving between rolled dice and kept dice - and how you exploit  and/or mitigate  is a big part of the strategy - especially in conflict scenes where the checks come thick and fast.

I don't think auto-explode is a great plan, because I agree players won't always want to keep the  result.

In a lot of checks, bonus successes don't really mean much (if anything), so accepting additional  for a  rather than a  is a bad move.

By comparison, in Fire stance, you're actively looking for dice with results containing , and the decision between keeping surplus  (for damage) and  (for technique-driven dirty tricks) is very situational, so I'm not sure a 'default' approach is a good idea.

7 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Our first try ended up with spending too much time managing strife for simple perception / heraldry rolls. It's quite possible our GM likes perception rolls too much, I should point out....

Possibly. There was a thread about "how many checks do you tend to/should you do in a non-conflict scene" a while back, and I think the generally agreed answer is 'a lot less than in most systems".

Perception, particularly, should (if we're talking "do you see the evil guy") not be a check on the part of the observer - most of the time in examples that's a stealth/deception check by the person engaged in nefariousness, with the vigilance of the observer as the TN, rather than the other way around.

If you're actively searching, fair enough. But that's different (and should generally happen less often in a non-conflict scene, often with the whole group assisting so you can share out the  results between participants).

 

Edited January 20 by Magnus Grendel

[bloodycelt 31]

6 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

This. Moving between rolled dice and kept dice - and how you exploit  and/or mitigate  is a big part of the strategy - especially in conflict scenes where the checks come thick and fast.

I don't think auto-explode is a great plan, because I agree players won't always want to keep the  result.

In a lot of checks, bonus successes don't really mean much (if anything), so accepting additional  for a  rather than a  is a bad move.

By comparison, in Fire stance, you're actively looking for dice with results containing , and the decision between keeping surplus  (for damage) and  (for technique-driven dirty tricks) is very situational, so I'm not sure a 'default' approach is a good idea.

 

13 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

I really do not see the purpose here. You should find a way to do roll&keep on whatever platform you are using.
The system (even if absolutely not clearly explained, nor defined... unfortunately) is meant to have lower target numbers because a lot of the time you need to take that strife to succeed and after a certain amount of roll, it gets harder to do (or you become compromised).
Sure you can abuse this with Water Ring opportunities (what a detrimental fluke to the system that this "example of opportunity" is...), but otherwise, I feel this system gains in fun and tension and roleplay if strife builds up and makes some decisions to succeed a bit harder.

One moment, how often do you do all this OUTSIDE of combat, and I include social combat.

80% of our rolls in 4e are Perception/Investigation, and Initiative. And AGAIN, I agreed that my first proposal would muck up the mechanics, hence all I am doing now is sorting the numbers of the die so all the successes w/o strife are near the top.

Edited January 20 by bloodycelt

[Avatar111 553]

7 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Perhaps I want to give 5th edition a second try. Our first try ended up with spending too much time managing strife for simple perception / heraldry rolls. It's quite possible our GM likes perception rolls too much, I should point out.... in 4e he ignores movement, and readying weapons which also totally nerf the Matsu... and the Hare.

You are making too much checks for "details". This system is designed (again, it is not really explained), or at least works much better, when you only make checks for very important situations that have epic drawbacks and consequences.
Making a Heraldry check to know if you recognize such clan is... not something you should roll for in that game. The PC have some skills in Culture? or Governement? All good. No check required.
IF not knowing the clan logo is a matter of, well, life or death, then sure... maybe.

Personally I loath using checks during Narrative scenes in that system and rather only use checks when the stakes are high: conflicts or downtimes. Narrative Scenes should be just that, narrative. No need to roll for anything.

[Avatar111 553]

Really, why should a Character even gain "strife" because they are trying to remember if they have seen that clan logo somewhere before?

No need for a check. As the GM you decide if the player knows it or not.

If it is an intrigue scene, a STRUCTURED scene. Then yes, the heraldry check is worth a roll because there is tension and limited time. The character can be stressed because he blanks at the wrong moment and forget the clan logo of the new samurai that just got into the room.

Again, as much as possible, use Intrigues and Conflicts.
Narrative Scenes are a bit broken in this game. You should see this game as a TV Drama, every Scene should matter and have very swingy outcomes (very positive, or very negative), random "adventuring" is not really supported by the rules here. Avoid making roll for: "if you know this its cool, but if you don't, bah whatever, it was just fluff anyway". Rolls should be kept for situations that will dramatically alter the story.

 

Edited January 20 by Avatar111

[Avatar111 553]

"80% of our rolls are Perception/Investigation"

This is not L5R 5E... Those rolls are booooring. Basically "you succeed the roll the story moves forward, you don't the story halts to a grind".

oof 😕

Avoid those.

If a character wants to spend a downtime to investigate something, or use an action in an intrigue to figure out a detail, that is good. But in Narrative Scene? You would be best served by just narrating things without checks and making your PC progress almost automatically.

The best example of this is:
"Everytime an NPC talk I make a Sentiment check to see if they are lying"

See what I mean? This is taking it to the extreme, but, really, it is the same idea. At least, I hope you understand my point.

Edited January 20 by Avatar111

[UnitOmega 2,818]

9 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

Our first try ended up with spending too much time managing strife for simple perception / heraldry rolls.

Your GM needs to read the section on making skill checks again more closely. You should only roll when a character has an intent, and if success and failure have distinct states, and those results are different. I/E, if the only result of a failure is "nothing", it's probably not worth rolling on in the first place. This, and "god skills" why there is no singular investigation skill in 5E, but rather you use your other skills in certain approaches to learn things based on your knowledge. When you roll you are looking for specific information, and failure means you do not gain that specific information. Even if taking a broad look at a scene, that's still filtered by your intent and skill choice. Scanning a crowd with Tactics is different than with Design or Sentiment. 

So if you're rolling, say, heraldry, you better have some firm intent behind what you want to know about somebody, like they're from an obscure Minor Clan you can't identify, or to actually track down information on their immediate family or something. The game is not designed for you to micromanage rolling Culture to know just what clan and family every samurai in the room is. 

[bloodycelt 31]

The point of the topic is: If I swap 5 and 6 on the D6 and 11 and 8 on the D12, do nothing else, does it mess with the mechanics? Then if I have roll20 setup where on the sheet, when you roll an approach, it lists the number of successes (i.e. x = 6 on the D6, and y > 8 on the D12), and then shows the rolled results. 

 

We can argue all day about rp approaches, but I doubt I can convince my GM (I am not the one GMing the group). I don't think I can change his style, he likes to run scenes where we get ourselves caught in traps by missing a detail. Like the old man who starts insulting the brash Yoritomo, who misses the heraldry roll, but our Scorpion passes it.... so when the Yoritomo insults back and gets arrested because "his papers are incorrect".... Or when our scorpion misses the fact that the woman making a pass at him is the daughter of the governor, and turning her down will eventually get him killed. 

[Avatar111 553]

2 minutes ago, bloodycelt said:

The point of the topic is: If I swap 5 and 6 on the D6 and 11 and 8 on the D12, do nothing else, does it mess with the mechanics? Then if I have roll20 setup where on the sheet, when you roll an approach, it lists the number of successes (i.e. x = 6 on the D6, and y > 8 on the D12), and then shows the rolled results. 

 

We can argue all day about rp approaches, but I doubt I can convince my GM (I am not the one GMing the group). I don't think I can change his style, he likes to run scenes where we get ourselves caught in traps by missing a detail. Like the old man who starts insulting the brash Yoritomo, who misses the heraldry roll, but our Scorpion passes it.... so when the Yoritomo insults back and gets arrested because "his papers are incorrect".... Or when our scorpion misses the fact that the woman making a pass at him is the daughter of the governor, and turning her down will eventually get him killed. 

I'll be the first one to tell you that Houserules are a GOOD thing in this game.

So if what you are trying to achieve makes the game more fun for your group. Why not.
This game really "cannot" be broken, because it is by nature, broken. And I mean it, probably no two groups play the game the same way, and not just a few details here and there, but radically plays the game differently.

Like I said, I run it like an anime/drama, and a check is a matter of a character aggresively trying to achieve something to either help or screw up someone. So I have my own playstyle and houserules to support my love of those dramatic anime scenes in which decision making, and consequences, are the most important things.

So sure, do not worry about "messing" the game system. As long as your group is enjoying it.

[T_Kageyasu 155]

My suggestion is moving into hand waving house rules territory: use opportunity in narrative / investigation as extra important bits of information beyond the success of the immediate check. I use this for initiative checks too, so that going first is balanced by learning additional information about a scene (that can't be achieved by success rolls).

Not about strife, but seemed like a fine place for my 2 cents.

[Magnus Grendel 11,673]

7 hours ago, T_Kageyasu said:

My suggestion is moving into hand waving house rules territory: use opportunity in narrative / investigation as extra important bits of information beyond the success of the immediate check.

Honestly, that's not really a house rule; that's the primary use of opportunities in narrative stuff -  (or the lack of it) determines if you get the information you actually planned on searching for (and which the skill/ring being used was based on), whilst  is for 'unrelated stuff that's still nice to know'.

[Avatar111 553]

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Honestly, that's not really a house rule; that's the primary use of opportunities in narrative stuff -  (or the lack of it) determines if you get the information you actually planned on searching for (and which the skill/ring being used was based on), whilst  is for 'unrelated stuff that's still nice to know'.

The primary use of opportunities in narrative scene is by far, for my group: 2opp to alter the scene, and, 1+ opp to remove strife... Narrative scenes are just not really tense enough to fully require checks that provoke strife.

I find Winter's Embrace is the best way to play the game, it basically removes all, or most, of the narrative scenes in favor of conflict and downtimes. It goes as far as saying that "you have a chill day, you can take 2 downtime activities". Strife becomes mostly irrelevant as you will regain to half after the scene is over, but, there is a catch. Sometimes, you should use your downtimes to pursue passion or ninjo to clear that strife because you want to be ready for the big conflict, which makes the economy playable. Water ring is still an issue.

It is very hard to really get the good flow. I hope at some point we get a good podcast or stream that really shows a good way to use the system.

[The Grand Falloon 1,718]

The game doesn't call for it, but I think the GM is well within his rights to say, "Sometimes I'll call for a Simple roll. A Simple roll ignores all Strife Symbols, and most of the ways you can spend Opportunity.  If you have a narrative idea for how to spend Opportunity, just ask."

[Magnus Grendel 11,673]

I don't do that, but I do often default to "if XYZ* then this is TN0 and does not require a check. Is that the case? Yes? Right. What you see is....."

As @UnitOmega says, checks are for when the character can potentially fail and the consequences of failure and success are meaningfully different. Rolling too many checks is a bad thing, not just for strife management but also because of allowing players to roll checks for spurious reasons to 'harvest'  for unrelated purposes (allowing players to come up with stupid reasons to use what is clearly the wrong approach for a situation, in order to either  [1] use their best ring or [2] to generate  of a particular ring, is a similar issue)

 

* as appropriate - does anyone have vigilance 4+ and/or the Subtle Observer advantage? Is anyone from the same clan and hence 'has a general awareness of politics within clan lands'? does anyone have government or culture at rank 3+? If any of these are true, I'm probably not going to make the party roll dice to pick out obvious clues to probable factional allegiances from the individual's appearance.

[Avatar111 553]

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I don't do that, but I do often default to "if XYZ* then this is TN0 and does not require a check. Is that the case? Yes? Right. What you see is....."

As @UnitOmega says, checks are for when the character can potentially fail and the consequences of failure and success are meaningfully different. Rolling too many checks is a bad thing, not just for strife management but also because of allowing players to roll checks for spurious reasons to 'harvest'  for unrelated purposes (allowing players to come up with stupid reasons to use what is clearly the wrong approach for a situation, in order to either  [1] use their best ring or [2] to generate  of a particular ring, is a similar issue)

 

* as appropriate - does anyone have vigilance 4+ and/or the Subtle Observer advantage? Is anyone from the same clan and hence 'has a general awareness of politics within clan lands'? does anyone have government or culture at rank 3+? If any of these are true, I'm probably not going to make the party roll dice to pick out obvious clues to probable factional allegiances from the individual's appearance.

Basically how I run Narrative Scenes. No point in asking for a check to see "if the story progresses". Checks should be kept for conflicts or downtimes (structured). A check is made to influence/impact the story.

It is a bit of a crutch of the system, but it can work when you design your adventures accordingly. Winter's Embrace is a good example.

Even in a "non-conflict" scene, I usually set a time/turn limit, for example, 2 to 5 turns (turns might last hours, minutes, depending) and by the the end of that, the scene (or day) is over. Each actions/checks must have a clear intent and will not be a back and forth of checks. It is extra challenging and requires more proactivity and talent from the players and GM in term of scene management, but it can work.

[Magnus Grendel 11,673]

3 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

No point in asking for a check to see "if the story progresses".

That's one of my pet hates in adventure design. Failing a check should make events harder, or follow a different path, or whatever, but "you failed to unlock the door, sucks to be you, guess we wait here until you pass or end the adventure." is really bad design.

By comparison, the 'right' (in my admittedly imperfect opinion) way to do it is as per the Age of Rebellion starter set, which has "you failed to unlock the door on the first go, sucks to be you because now you're going to be stuck on the wrong side of the door for [shortfall] rounds being shot by stormtroopers* until your tech unlocks it."

 

* Okay. Shot at by stormtroopers. Which I admit is not quite the same thing....

[Avatar111 553]

2 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

That's one of my pet hates in adventure design. Failing a check should make events harder, or follow a different path, or whatever, but "you failed to unlock the door, sucks to be you, guess we wait here until you pass or end the adventure." is really bad design.

By comparison, the 'right' (in my admittedly imperfect opinion) way to do it is as per the Age of Rebellion starter set, which has "you failed to unlock the door on the first go, sucks to be you because now you're going to be stuck on the wrong side of the door for [shortfall] rounds being shot by stormtroopers* until your tech unlocks it."

 

* Okay. Shot at by stormtroopers. Which I admit is not quite the same thing....

Voilà.

These types of "pass a check to make the story progress" are really unfun and are one of the reason many ttrpg groups end up in dead ends and players having no clue what to do.