Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: luizborges on <02-03-18/2005:07>
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I'm new to SR5 although I knew and played it on second edition.
I noticed quite quickly the the glitches mechanic has strange odds. It oscillates according to the pool size (meaning it jumps up and down) and decays into nothing really quickly (any medium sized dicepool has almost 0 chance of getting a glitch).
Critical glitches are even worse. They almost never happen on really low pools (4-6 dice) and are non-existent 10 dice and above.
According to the glitches descriptions on the core book, and the edge mechanic of negating glitches, I feel they should happen more often. I'm not talking about critical glitches, just the regular ones.although the critical ones could happen once in a while too.
How do you usually handle that? Is there a common house rule to address that?
I started to work on an alternative glitch system with minimal impact to the way tests are done and that demands even lower effort than counting half the pool size. I just need to lock on a nice value for the odds of it happening and would like to know what you think about it.
How do you view glitches and how often should they happen (regular and critical). Also, what do you think about the exploit result from Anarchy glitch die.
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Glitches aren't meant to come up often. When was the last time you played a roleplaying game and was like "man, I just haven't rolled badly enough tonight." Besides, Shadowrun is already a very lethal game, PCs don't need yet more to contend with.
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Isn’t it a good reflection of the real world? The more experienced, gifted and skilled a person is the less likely that person will be making mistakes even under stress or when fatigued. Equipment serves to help and minimize the margins of error as well so that’s pretty accurate too in my humble opinion.
Other games that rely on a single dice doesn’t really reflect this and it becomes more of a game of luck, so basically I’m fine with the mechanic in SR5 as they are. You still need half your pool to glitch and I see that often enough even with massive pool characters.
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Maybe I'm misreading something, but Glitchs are not failures, they are unforeseem circunstances or small problems with your action, you are still successful (unless it is a critical glitch). Based on most examples from the book, a glitch is something like a -2 modifier to your next test, or something like that. So it is not anything major. It is definitly nothing life threatning, or game changing. Now, a critical glitch is supposed to be life threating (but still capable of being dealt with).
Also, Edge can be used to downgrade a critical glitch to a regular glitch or to negate a glitch, so again, a glitch is easily avoidable.
Now on statement that they happen enough with massive pools, I find that quite impossible, since a glitch has less than 1% chance of happening with a pool of 6 dice (with 7 it bumps to 1.7% and then drops again to 0.46% with 8 dice), and less than 0.1% by 14 size pool, this is effectively never.
Critical glitches are even worse, you have 2.8% with 2 dice and around 5% odds with 3 dice, but then it drops to 1% and by 6 dice it is below 0.5%, by 10 dice it is below 0.1%.
So, with a dicepool of 6 dice, you have 1 chance in 100 of having a glitch, and 1 chance in 200 of having a critical glitch, any pool size above goes even lower much more quickly. With a pool of 12 (nothing extraordinary, not even for new characters) you have about 1 glitch every 800 tests, and 1 critical in 6.000 (SIX THOUSANDS) tests!!!
Also, I still think that the chance of glitches should diminish with how high are your pool size, but it shouldn't disapear neither they should be so rare that you never even remember them, after all you have Edge to deal with them if you need (and the book says so right up front).
Even if you are an expert marskman, something wrong might still happen. A change in the wind, a shout in the distance, or something else that doesn't fail your shot, but make it not happen as you would like. And if this something wrong DOES happen you are an expert and probably quite capable to deal with that easily. This is how I understand glitches...
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Well the Gremlins quality makes glitches much more likely. Good for hilarity at the table since a glitch can still be a success....
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You have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a "glitch" per die.
You have a 2 in 6 chance of rolling a "Success" per die.
At the lowest form, that's about as balanced as you can make it.
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1) Why are you wanting glitches to happen? They are not replacements for good story telling.
2) Yes, players are unlikely to glitch often on what they are good at. That is by design. Rolling bad isn't fun. Glitches happen more often when people roll for things they are not great at.
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The only issue is the fact that glitches turn up more often in even dicepools, which has a significant impact on "desperate rolls" witch low dicepools. At the most extreme, you have a 1/6 Chance to glitch with one die, but almost 1/3 to glitch with two dice.
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People, not meaning to be disrespectful, but your odds are way off. With ONE dice you indeed have 1/6 odds to glitch, but with 2 it already goes to 2.8%. Remember that to glitch you need MORE THAN HALF of your pool, so both dice need to be 1s with a 2 dicepool.
Also, I don't mean to use glitches as crutch, I mean for that to happen as described in the book. As they are described in the examples they should happen with some frequency (you even have means to negate the glitch) because they are minor things, take a look in the book and check it for yourself.
Glitches are meant to be rare on things they are good, but not to disapear completely someone with 3 in a skill (competent) and 3 in the relevant attribute, by description "struggle with complex operations and tricks", but as it is, they glitch once every 200 tests, it doesn't feel like a struggle. A starting character can easily have 12 size dicepool for what they are good at and this is garanteed to never glitch.
So why have glitches in a system if they never happen? Either house rule them out (and stop worrying about 1s) or make they happen when they really should. I really think the devs "glitched" the glitch system. Maybe they didn't check the odds correctly or something like that, but as it is, the odds are a mess and I hardly doubt anyone would like those odd curves on purpose...
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Because knowing there’s a slight chance of hilarious results adds excitement especially when you roll poorly?
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But this is my point, there is no chance for that happening. Please recall in your memory how many glitches you had in your last games, using the rules as written: "more ones than half your pool" (2 ones with 2 and 3 pools, 3 ones with 4 and 5 pools, 4 ones with 6 and 7 pools and so on).
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3 times in my last 12 sessions. It not statistically likely but it happens more often then you would think once you have a whole room of folks rolling. Each character might go months without a glitch but the tables as a whole do it often nuff to matter.
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For some reason the glitches I can remember involve grenades.
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You bring up dicepools of 12 a lot. That means, the person likely has 6 skills in it, which according to the list is "Professional" level. Aka he does it all the time. And he needs 6 in an attribute which is the maximum of human potential, before you throw in stuff like magic or cyberware.
So you really expect someone like that to screw up all the time?
Glitches are meant for those situations when you don't have a lot of dice to start with and then get saddled with a -4 penalty on top. Do you really risk rolling those 2 dice now?
As others mentioned rolling glitches or failing on the things your character is good at is not fun, if it happens to often. It happens once every now and then, there's still that "Oh this is an important roll, I hope I don't glitch" there, and when it happens it sucks, but at least you don't dread rolls because you fear glitching.
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Quatar, I don't expect a 12 pool to glitch all time, I'm just telling that as it is is, it glitches NEVER. And 12 is quite average for shadowrunners.
Now you mention a 2 dice pool, this had 1/36 odds to glitch, and you still have Edge to just negate that, or simple to pre edge and basically garantee you won't fail. Also, 2 is a really low dice pool, it is basically as low as you can get, so the chance a glitches and botches should be a bit higher for those. And on another matter, how often do you throw a 2 dice pool in your games?
3 glitches in 12 sessions, how is that relevant for your games? Do you really worry about glitches? Because with that record and considering 4-5 players you are looking a 1 glitch per player every 20-30 sessions...
I started this post because I researched a bit, run some probabilities and made a few tests using a dice roller to have a "practical" onlook on those odds. With a dice pool of 10 I got 2 regular glitches in 500 tests (no critical) and with a pool of 12 o got ONE glitch in 1000 tests (again no critical):
https://imgur.com/gallery/yFGkB
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Here's the thing, you are new and have very little to no experience with the game. You came seeking advice and the advice you have received from players with years of experience is that your idea is unfun and you should not do it.
Glitches are rare. They are meant to be. No one wants to play the guy who constantly fucks up. Once in a while is fine, it's a threat that hangs over people's heads, but it needs to be a rare one.
Your dicepool of 12 example that you keep insisting on, that roll shouldn't glitch. The player put a lot of resources into that. But I am telling you, we are all telling you, in games of Shadowrun not every dice pool is going to be 12 dice.
Now you have said you aren't wanting to use it as a crutch, what are you wanting from it?
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ShadowcatX, may I ask you when was your character last glitch, how big was the pool size and what happened due to the glitch?
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Also, 2 is a really low dice pool, it is basically as low as you can get, so the chance a glitches and botches should be a bit higher for those. And on another matter, how often do you throw a 2 dice pool in your games?
You'd be surprised.
It just needs to be a skill you don't have, and usually you don't roll more than 3 or so dice. And not always do you have the choice of "No I don't want to roll my sneaking dice now!"
Sometimes people with a Cha of 2 and no social skills try to out-face the face and the GM makes them roll that one die.
Some test, highest dicepool is 5 or 6, 2 other decide to help with teamwork tests, but they only roll 3 and 4 dice each.
Mage runs around in an area with a nasty high background count, they sustain two buff spells on the team and suddenly their 15 dicepool on casting spells has shrunk to 5.
We're not talking about things the Characters are GOOD at. We're talking about things they are NOT good at. Not always is there a chance to let the "expert" in that field make the roll. That's where glitches matter.
Btw, fun fact: The chance for a glitch/critical glitch on 3 dice is about 3 times higher than with 2 dice.
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Just to comment on your fun fact. This is bad. If your pool increase how come you chance of failure increase as well?? This is the purest sign of bad design in the glitch mechanics. With is around 2% with 2 dice, 5% with 3 and 1% with 4... This is not a probability curve, this is a zigzag line onto nothing...
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You still need two 1s same as with two dice, but you get to roll one more die that can be a 1. The big difference is: With 2 dice any glitch is a critical glitch. With three dice there's a fairly good chance that it's just a normal glitch.
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Not really... If 2 of 3 dice are 1s then you have 1/3 of chance of having a regular glitch, most of them would be critical. And 2/3 of those glitches which are critical is more than than the 1/36 of just having 2 dice.
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Glitch can happen, it VERY, VERY Unlikely in large end pools, it's reasonably possible in secondary pools, and from the game design stand point that is what they want. The mechanic that govern's high die pools, is Limit. Keeping you from being too successful without an element of luck. If you want more glitches there is a very easy way to get them at first, and that is simply force checks with skills Characters aren't good at. That will work for awhile, and eventually they will find a solution, it not actually that hard to develop character that will roll something like 10 dice for almost everything, but it takes time and effort. After that there are at least one other way to force glitch, there spirit power that can do it. However using that trick more then a couple times will get old very quickly, and believe me your players will start stomping on such spirits and their casters so hard.
But keep in mind, everyone has who play long enough has the seen the truly unlikely happen, 20 dice all come up 1's or 2's. Yeah it's really, really unlikely but shit does happens.
If you just want to turn up the heat on players for tech, send hackers to start bricking things guns and implants, and for magic, just introduce low to moderate background count with some regularity. That will get most players to start paying attention to the little details.
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Glitches aren't meant to be common. They're generally rare things, unless you're dealing with low dice pools and characters without the edge to reroll 1s. Honestly, I've only run into a couple of them, since 4th ed when I started playing. Glitches are basically carte blanche for the GM to screw with players. Crit Glitches take away the lube. This is something that is not supposed to happen except once in a blue moon, and when it does happen, it hurts a helluvalot more. TPKs are more common because human stupidity plays a larger role in those.
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@Mirokon, this is not what the book says about glitches...
The guideline for a glitch is that whatever happens should make life more difficult for the particular shad-owrunner while not disastrously interfering with their work. For example, a runner who rolls a glitch while working to defuse an explosive may drop his wire cut-ters, or may call up the wrong augmented reality win-dow of information about the nature of the device. The gamemaster should not, however, decree that the player abruptly cut the wrong wire so that the explosive blows up in their face. As an additional factor, the gamemaster may decide to make the glitch more severe if the player only had one or two hits along with it.
Dropping your wire cutters, a stumble on the pavement, or droppig your gun (considering you probably had a backup or can readily pick it up), is not something bad. As a general rule a glitch is a -2 penalty.
And regarding critical glitches (which should be bad):
gamemasters and players will likely have more fun if the roll keeps the players alive but forces them to improvise, test the limits of their skills, and develop desperate plans to help them stay alive.
Again, nothing tpk or disastrous about that...
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I don't recall but I don't get to play as much anymore either. I can, however, tell you the last time I thought glitching would be fun: Never.
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@Mirokon, this is not what the book says about glitches...
The guideline for a glitch is that whatever happens should make life more difficult for the particular shad-owrunner while not disastrously interfering with their work. For example, a runner who rolls a glitch while working to defuse an explosive may drop his wire cut-ters, or may call up the wrong augmented reality win-dow of information about the nature of the device. The gamemaster should not, however, decree that the player abruptly cut the wrong wire so that the explosive blows up in their face. As an additional factor, the gamemaster may decide to make the glitch more severe if the player only had one or two hits along with it.
Dropping your wire cutters, a stumble on the pavement, or droppig your gun (considering you probably had a backup or can readily pick it up), is not something bad. As a general rule a glitch is a -2 penalty.
And regarding critical glitches (which should be bad):
gamemasters and players will likely have more fun if the roll keeps the players alive but forces them to improvise, test the limits of their skills, and develop desperate plans to help them stay alive.
Again, nothing tpk or disastrous about that...
Ah, spoken like someone who must surely believe that the IRS taking an interest in you is no problem if you have nothing to hide, or that the BTL junkie is completely honest when he says he's going straight.
A mediocre GM would impose a -2 penalty on a glitch. A good GM would make the glitch personal in some way, so that it does something to rankle the characters in a noticeable way. As for crit glitches, sure, they might not insta-kill you (unless you crit glitched to disarm the bomb, in which case it just might), but you damn well better believe that it can put you in positions where the GM is going to fuck with you, and (depending on where and when the glitch happened) you usually end up wishing you died, instead of whatever happened.
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Even with large pools, "statistically unlikely" is not the same as "impossible." I've seen some really weird rolls over the years. I've seen a pool of nine dice roll all 1s. I've seen thirteen dice roll six hits and seven 1s, for a result that was both a glitch and a critical success (four or more net hits made a "critical success" in SR4). Dice can always surprise you.
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Sorry, my mistake I mean it is generally EQUIVALENT to a -2 penalty, meaning it is something minor like a small blunder at a social test or "dropping your wire cutters" (check all the glitch examples in the book so you can check for yourself).
Again, you can play like that of you want, but I opened this thread thinking about what the book says and if it match the mechanics provided. What the book says is not to fuck the players, but to force them to improvise and make desperate plans. Make the players wish they were dead is kind not in the vein as suggested use of critical (again, they are guidelines, but this is what is in discussion here).
As the book described, it nowhere says glitches should be rare. It even has TWO mechanisms to deal with them, so it does expect them to happen. Also one of the ways to recover Edge is to endure a critical glitch. One edge is recovered every day with proper rest, so endure a critical glitch might be something stressful and hard, but as mentioned not something "rare as a blue moon".
AGAIN, I'm not accusing anyone of "playing wrong" I'm just put into question the Rules As Written.
@Sphinx, if the whole system of glitches is based on something as unlikely as rolling more than six 1s in 13 dice (a 0.24% chance), then why have the system in place? It is mostly a waste of time, and from what I can see from other replies here, reason to kill a character or the whole group due to a rare roll... Is that why glitches exists??
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@Sphinx, if the whole system of glitches is based on something as unlikely as rolling more than six 1s in 13 dice (a 0.24% chance), then why have the system in place? It is mostly a waste of time, and from what I can see from other replies here, reason to kill a character or the whole group due to a rare roll... Is that why glitches exists??
Well as pointed out glitches are extremely unlikely on anything a character is good at. Glitches are only a realistic worry if you're rolling a small pool of dice. Such as when secondary or tertiary skills are being rolled. Heck, without the possibility of glitches, there'd be little reason to NOT have everything done outside of combat done as a teamwork test where everyone at the table contributes even 1 or 2 dice to the task.
Besides glitches don't kill or cause TPKs. A GM making that directly happen is kind of being a jerk. Now if a PC is unable to deal with the glitch/critical glitch and that in turn causes a death/TPK, well that's a horse of another color..
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@Sphinx, if the whole system of glitches is based on something as unlikely as rolling more than six 1s in 13 dice (a 0.24% chance), then why have the system in place? It is mostly a waste of time, and from what I can see from other replies here, reason to kill a character or the whole group due to a rare roll... Is that why glitches exists??
On average, I see probably 2 or 3 glitches per session. They tend to happen to NPCs more often than players. When they happen to a nameless grunt, I often invite the table to decide what happened. Players can be fiendishly clever thinking up embarrassing but essentially harmless blunders to afflict hapless NPCs. Everyone has fun with that. And of course, the best ideas can be filed away for future player glitches.
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One more thing you didn't consider yet is Extended Tests.
Even a dicepool of 12 or 15 erodes really quickly when you face a target number high enough... and when you're down to 5 dice or 3 dice, then you're really thinking "I need two more hits... just two. But if I crit glitch now, it's going to be REALLY bad. Should I go on?"
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@Sphinx, your answer is one of the reasons I'm here discussing that. A glitch like a harmless blunder IS fun. It adds variety to perfect soldiers. You yourself said that you save the best ideas for players, but if the only ones who glitches are hapless incompetent NPCs, then what is the point? Here I'm talking about opinions I think the glitch idea is fantastic, but as it is, it is ineffective because the players rarely glitch...
Most people here seem to think that a glitch is something terrible or something bad, but this is up to the GM and this is a reflection of what he wants for his players. I would use glitches to introduce new elements to a scene, things that change a bit a static situation. I would like to see glitches every other scene, not every other session and done by NPCs..
This was all opinion. Now back to the analysis.
This is what the book says about extended tests. A glitch doesn't stop an enhancement extended test, but a critical glitch does. But then again, this is one point of edge away of being fixed. With the current rules, a critical gltich is a risk at 3 dice, above that it is almost negligible. But lets us consider 5 dice as the last safe pool. If you start with a pool of 10 dice you will throw 45 dice to reach the safe pool. This is 45 dice almost guaranteed to not critically fail. If you start with a 15 dice pool you will throw 110 dice. With an average success every 3 rolls, that is 15 success for the 10 dice pool and 36 successes for the 15 dice pool... When did you need more than that???
Also, edge is your friend and it can be used more than once here since those are separate tests...
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You know what, it's your game, if you want to change the glitch rules there, do it.
People here told you more than once now that it's not needed and not intended to be more common. You don't believe it, fine. Go ahead, make it more common.
I also play VtM where Botches happen way more often, and let me tell you they're no fun.
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Quatar, people told me their opinion, and I also have mine, but AGAIN, the case in point is the interpretation of the Rules As Written, just that. And the RAW and the way many people here see it is VERY different.
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I wouldn't get to caught up in the worst possible interpretations of what folks are saying, the wording on page 45 of the core is very clear "When you
glitch, something bad happens." most of the folks on here have a both a very good idea of RAW, and the Rules in practice. Yes there will be consequences for Glitches and Critical Glitches, and yes the player probably won't like them, but that's part of the fun of it. Sometime the dice just let you down. It's how you develop "Character" lol.
The other counter point to this, is we have no rules of critical success ether, you can achieve a huge pile of success but there isn't some kind of magical critical success threshold, so it's really only fair the glitches aren't a huge deal ether.
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I like how star wars handles this. With various dices.
You could use colored dice.
Say everytime some rolls a dice pool 3 of those dice are red.
Glitches/critical glitches are only calculated on behalf of those 3 dice. As a bonus they always have the 6-again rule.
If the pool is less than 3, then you would only be rolling 2 or 1 as appropriate.
You should also make a short list of possible glitches, and then pick the most fitting/fun whenever a glitch/ critical glitch occurs.
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Quatar, people told me their opinion, and I also have mine, but AGAIN, the case in point is the interpretation of the Rules As Written, just that. And the RAW and the way many people here see it is VERY different.
No, the Rules As Written say you glitch when more than half your dice show a 1. Critical glitch is when you glitch and get no success. The people here know that and say "That's fine, that's how it should be"
What you are hung up on is the FLUFF of the description of what glitches are, and try to shape that into "it should be more often". Fluff and crunch in SR5 don't always mesh up too well. Sometimes its better to ignore one for the other. In this case people tell you to ignore the fluff part.
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Im pretty sure he knows RAW. But believes the game would improve if glitches were more common.
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I'm still curious what you hope to get from increasing the frequency of glitches. Do you think your players will be grateful? Do you think it will make the game more fun?
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Near as I could tell it seems that the opinion expressed was that glitches are so improbable to occur that the rule is pointless without modification.
Of course there's a whole thread's worth of opinions on that opinion.
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Perhaps you are right, but if so an alternate and much easier solution would be removing glitches from the game, which OP clearly does not want to do. Ergo, he must believe they add something to the game and that making them more common will make the game better. I would like to know what and why. Hell, maybe he's thought of something we haven't.
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To those that care, this is my modified rules for glitches.
I'm still developing a sheet showing all it's probabilities (and comparing to RAW.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GGvWuypiWt3GDB4LYRtdQvQTvdPbvKjrGI2R1FtGVRw/edit?usp=drivesdk
With those glitch mechanics critical glitches are still rare above 4-5 dice, but they do happen "once in a blue moon".
Regular glitches happen around 2-5% of the rolls above 4-5 dice.
Both (glitches and critical glitches) follow nice smooth curves (again to be added later), have no odd/even dice pool problems and no special cases whatsoever.
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I haven't analyzed the statistics, but based on the way you have those rules set up, I don't think you've made a significant change to the probability that Glitches will occur. And because of the excess ones causing hits to be cancelled, it seems like it would have the effect of causing glitches to be inherently worse and (also) more likely to be critical glitches.
Like I said, I haven't analyzed the statistics in-depth, and I don't plan to. But let me walk through a couple scenarios with this proposed system and compare it side-by-side with the core rules:
Scenario A (Original Glitch): Dice Pool of 13. Result: 7 1's, 3 hits.
Now, this fairly unlikely roll in the Core rules would be considered a glitch with 3 hits, which is a reasonably good success under most circumstances. If we were to apply your new rule, this (already) unlikely roll would have only a 1 in 6 chance of being a glitch, which technically reduces the chances of a glitch. If the "glitch" die doesn't roll a 1, then you're golden and all those 1's don't matter. Now, on the off-chance that you do roll that one on the glitch die, the results actually become rather dire. There are now 8 1's showing, which is five more than the number of hits. With your Hit cancellation, this means that not only did the rule make this a glitch, but now you only have 1 hit, downgrading that to barely a success at all. And if even 1 die had been different (1 less hit, or 1 more 1), the odds are significant that it would actually be a critical glitch instead.
Scenario B (Near Glitch): Dice Pool of 13. Result: 6 1's, 4 hits.
I see this come up a lot in my games, people roll just one or two 1s shy of glitch on their rolls and give that big sigh of relief, thankful that they didn't end up glitching. With your suggested rules, again, this result has a 1 in 6 chance of being a glitch. And again, if it does become a glitch, it means that the success is reduced.
Scenario C (Plain Failure): Dice Pool of 13. Result: 2 1's, 0 hits.
In the Core Rules, this result would be unfortunate, but nothing to write home about, there isn't nearly enough 1's to be a glitch (we need 7+, so even max Gremlins wouldn't do it), but there just aren't any hits so it's a fail. With these new rules, Again, there's a 1 in 6 chance of it becoming a glitch, and even more so, it would be a Critical Glitch! Even if there was a single hit, the new rules would ruin that simple poor roll into a Critical Failure.
Honestly, I like the idea of there being that fudge die to have a chance of pushing those near-glitches into glitches, that can be fun. But that, in addition to the hit cancellations just seems to be overly punishing. It won't affect good rolls, but it will make mediocre rolls worse, and poor rolls flat-out bad. And it definitely increases the percentage of glitches that are going to be critical glitches, even if they would have formerly succeeded...
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To those that care, this is my modified rules for glitches.
I'm still developing a sheet showing all it's probabilities (and comparing to RAW.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GGvWuypiWt3GDB4LYRtdQvQTvdPbvKjrGI2R1FtGVRw/edit?usp=drivesdk
With those glitch mechanics critical glitches are still rare above 4-5 dice, but they do happen "once in a blue moon".
Regular glitches happen around 2-5% of the rolls above 4-5 dice.
Both (glitches and critical glitches) follow nice smooth curves (again to be added later), have no odd/even dice pool problems and no special cases whatsoever.
This is basically old school D6 star wars, but without the upside. If you're gonna use such a thing you should add a bonus effect to the glitch die so that it can also assist and not just screw you.
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Those are the odds for those that care: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jwn8YAhCc39QDQ9mjxEBHVlLnb0APk-pi2UXPtXdM1U/edit?usp=sharing
It is in portuguese, but easily understandable:
Falha Critical = Critical Glitch
Falha = Glitch
Falha Normal = Regular Glitch
Falha Normal com N sucessos restantes = Glitch with N hits remaining
I also added a comparison to the core RAW method.
@Kiirnodel, since you said you don't plan on looking on the statistics I won't bother explaining why you are wrong. Let me just say that you can't compare specific scenarios because the combinations are different in each mechanic.
With 13 dice you have 4,15% total chance of glitching, those 0,75% of critical glitching and 1,5% of glitching AND still having 3+ hits remaining. So the odds of not having 3 success due to a glitch is 2,65%.
@Marcus, didn't know Star Wars. Nice coincidence. I based a lot of it on the Glitch Die from Shadowrun Anarchy. I could add a mechanic to have an upside, but I honestly don't see a reason since this can already be done by counting net hits (even more if you use Push your Limit). Adding other mechanic would make it way too common (around 7% of the rolls would feature a "upside").
The amount of Glitches is greatly increased compared to the RAW mechanic, but still in an acceptable rate (based on input from the RPG community in Brazil). Considering the description of what Glitches should be (a minor inconvenience, but something that add to the scene) they would happen between once per 20-30 rolls in the 11-17 range dicepool, once per 15-20 rolls in the 4-10 range and once per 30-40 rolls in the 18-25 range. Critics are much rarer, being below 1/100 with a dicepool of 12.
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People, not meaning to be disrespectful, but your odds are way off. With ONE dice you indeed have 1/6 odds to glitch, but with 2 it already goes to 2.8%. Remember that to glitch you need MORE THAN HALF of your pool, so both dice need to be 1s with a 2 dicepool.
Oh, you are right. Always thought it was half the dicepool or more :o
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So all you did was nerf all your players while making the game more complicated and rolling more annoying? No upside that I can see. You do you, but I'd walk away from the table at that point, too much "be a fan of the players" in my thinking.
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So all you did was nerf all your players while making the game more complicated and rolling more annoying? No upside that I can see. You do you, but I'd walk away from the table at that point, too much "be a fan of the players" in my thinking.
To Nerf would be to make them weaker. That is not true in any way.
Again, according to the books glitches are complications, not lack of skill. The more skilled they are, the better they handle those complications. One complication every 20ish rolls, is that nerfing??
How can the rolling be more annoying?? It is easier and simpler. If the glitch die is anything other than 1 you don't need to bother counting 1s (something that you have to do in all rolls in RAW). If it 1, you still don't even have to check what is half your pool or anything. Put the 1s beside the hits, if it's more, it glitches. Purely mechanical action that is usually done anyway even in RAW to separate hits from 1s, but here you do that only 1/6 of the time. Think about all the time you will save counting ones ;D
The hit cancelation, still mechanical. Separate 1s that match the count of hits (if you put them side by side it is visually clear even without separation), from what is left, just take out 1s in pairs and bring a hit with you for every pair.
Oh, this is all if you want to go the purely mechanical way, if you can easily see that you are over by 2 remove a hit, by 4 remove 2 hits. You rarely will be over by more than 4 (for that you need a pile that is quite big already).
Remember that the doc I linked is formal description writing. Is how rules are supposed to be written to encopass all possible scenarios. The hit cancelation is described as turning to a neutral face just so that there is no confusion if you use second chance or push the limit. Do you need to turn them to a neutral face,? Not really, I believe everyone is smart enough to notice that you can just disregard those hits in 99% of time when no other dice will be added and no rerolls will be done, but since those are rules, they must be written in an unambiguous way.
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So all you did was nerf all your players while making the game more complicated and rolling more annoying? No upside that I can see. You do you, but I'd walk away from the table at that point, too much "be a fan of the players" in my thinking.
To Nerf would be to make them weaker. That is not true in any way.
Again, according to the books glitches are complications, not lack of skill. The more skilled they are, the better they handle those complications. One complication every 20ish rolls, is that nerfing??
Except you have a mechanic where glitching can reduce the number of hits. That is explicitly making them weaker. No part of your idea balances that part out.
You are changing glitches from just a complication to complication plus you do worse on the roll.
And it definitely increases the chances of critical glitches...
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The reduce hits mechanic is a way of having occasional criticals. Otherwise if the requirement of no hits for criticals would keep then happening almost never. This has minimal impact on pools, as you can clearly see by its odds. To remove just 1 hit has a very, very small probability. I would not consider that nerfing. It could be nerfing if I used that to cap max hits or to declare arbitrary criticals based on some other criteria. As it is I doubt it would be considered nerfing.
The table of probabilities is there, check it yourself (but you are going to need to make some calculations), I even made sure to include a every probably per remaining hits. Just make sure that you understand that is "probability of glitching with N hits remaining" it is NOT "probability of hit cancelation"!!!
Also, don't forget that you always have Push your Limit and Second Chance to get more hits. You will just endure a critical clitch if you really want to.
Finally, my house rule is just that: a house rule. It is not mandatory to anyone. I'm sharing it here because someone might find it interesting. If someone don't like removing hits, no problem, just be advised that critical hits will still be VERY rare, to the point of being barely noticeable above a 2 dicepool. The regular glitching odds will remain just fine.
EDIT:
Here, I made you some probabilities:
Odds of cancelling 1+ hits: http://anydice.com/program/ea5b
Odds of cancelling 2+ hits: http://anydice.com/program/ea5d
The first includes the second obviously. And most of those would result in a critical (this is the main critical mechanism on the rule). You have to understand that to be able to cancel 2 hits you need a pool of at least 8 dice, of which 6 are 1s. To cancel 1 hit at least 4 dice are needed just for that.
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Luiz, while I appreciate your effort at making statistics work, I think you really need to remember that while stats work on paper, in the real world application, stats often fail to explain what actually happens. As my example, I have watched one of my players doing his first skill roll, with a pool of 12 dice. His first result: 12 1s. After the shock passed, I said reroll that. His second result: 12 1s. This is the point when I said "use my dice". I handed him my dice (which unbeknownst to him, had six cheaters in it, so it was not possible for him to roll any more than 6 1s). His third roll: 6 1s and 6 2s. That makes 36 minimum results out of 36 dice rolled. He gave up playing games where he had to roll dice, because he broke math when he did.
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@Spooky, Bernoulli would disagree with you (as would every casino owner ever) ;)
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So all you did was nerf all your players while making the game more complicated and rolling more annoying? No upside that I can see. You do you, but I'd walk away from the table at that point, too much "be a fan of the players" in my thinking.
To Nerf would be to make them weaker. That is not true in any way.
Again, according to the books glitches are complications, not lack of skill. The more skilled they are, the better they handle those complications. One complication every 20ish rolls, is that nerfing??
You have made your characters strictly worse than they would be otherwise by causing penalties to come up more often. Yes that is nerfing them.
How can the rolling be more annoying?? It is easier and simpler. If the glitch die is anything other than 1 you don't need to bother counting 1s (something that you have to do in all rolls in RAW). If it 1, you still don't even have to check what is half your pool or anything. Put the 1s beside the hits, if it's more, it glitches. Purely mechanical action that is usually done anyway even in RAW to separate hits from 1s, but here you do that only 1/6 of the time. Think about all the time you will save counting ones ;D
Ok, I have 16 dice, roll 16 dice, shit I forgot the glitch di.
I have 16 dice, roll 17 dice, shit I rolled all the same color.
I rolled a medium number of ones I have to count. Now I have to count successes. Now I have to math away successes, because Shadowrun needed more math.
And all the extra work you have put in for players to do, to make their characters worse, still adds nothing fun to the game.
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Man if you fumble a simple dice roll this bad no wonder you don't like criticals and glitches... ;D ;D ;D
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Nice job deflecting the issue. But given that you haven't addressed the basic question of why you want this I shouldn't be surprised. You have fun with it, I doubt your group will.
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Shadowcat's Question is reasonable, you haven't really said why you want this?
I played D6 Star wars for years, and I'm very familiar with the downside of that, and you version even lacks the small upside of it. There is a reason that system didn't go forward and the "wild die' was one of those reasons. I wouldn't want that rule active in SR game I was part of.
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Indeed. That is far too complex, for far too little benefit. And this is coming from someone who plays HERO System.
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@Marcus and a few other, I already address why I think this is important "fix" the glitch system in this thread in a few places, added bold when needed:
Also, I don't mean to use glitches as crutch, I mean for that to happen as described in the book. As they are described in the examples they should happen with some frequency (you even have means to negate the glitch) because they are minor things, take a look in the book and check it for yourself.
(...)
So why have glitches in a system if they never happen? Either house rule them out (and stop worrying about 1s) or make they happen when they really should. I really think the devs "glitched" the glitch system. Maybe they didn't check the odds correctly or something like that, but as it is, the odds are a mess and I doubt anyone would want those odd curves on purpose...
3 glitches in 12 sessions, how is that relevant for your games? Do you really worry about glitches? Because with that record and considering 4-5 players you are looking a 1 glitch per player every 20-30 sessions... [ADDED INFO: this is in regard to the description of glitches mentioned above, that makes it looks like they are much more common]
I started this post because I researched a bit, run some probabilities and made a few tests using a dice roller to have a "practical" onlook on those odds. With a dice pool of 10 I got 2 regular glitches in 500 tests (no critical) and with a pool of 12 o got ONE glitch in 1000 tests (again no critical):
As the book described, it nowhere says glitches should be rare. It even has TWO mechanisms to deal with them, so it does expect them to happen. Also one of the ways to recover Edge is to endure a critical glitch. One edge is recovered every day with proper rest, so endure a critical glitch might be something stressful and hard, but as mentioned not something "rare as a blue moon".
This one is mostly opinion based, but I will talk about that after the quotes:
(...) your answer is one of the reasons I'm here discussing that. A glitch like a harmless blunder IS fun. It adds variety to perfect soldiers. You yourself said that you save the best ideas for players, but if the only ones who glitches are hapless incompetent NPCs, then what is the point? Here I'm talking about opinions I think the glitch idea is fantastic, but as it is, it is ineffective because the players rarely glitch...
Now back to my OPINION. In Shadowrun Anarchy (a "Fate" based version of Shadowrun), you don't have much extra in terms of success and failure, but you have the Glitch Die instead. The Glitch Die up the ante on test and can be added by anyone at any time just using a plot point (it is cheap to use it). With that die your test has 1/6 flat chance of glitching. Simple and direct. It also has a 1/6 chance of Exploiting if you succeed. Now lets think about this both ways:
- The highest probabilty of glitching in my system is with a pool of 0 dice, 1/6 chance of critical failure, it lowers quickly beyond that. My system make it looks like a glitch die is added every 4-5 tests, this would be much IF there was no means to counter it, but there are. You can pre and post edge with push the limit to avoid a glitch, you can use close call to negate a glitch, you can endure the glitch to get an edge point back. IF you glitch you have 3 ways of dealing with it.
- Now about the exploit side of things. This already exist in the system, even though it is not mentioned. Your net hits in many places determine how well you succeed. If you use Push the Limit or Second Chance you can bring that even higher. Now it just up to the GM to interpret that. If you made a test with threshold 1 and have 5 net hits, to me is not a simple success, it is a GREAT success. So the system is already in place, is up to the GM to use. And since my system focus on one small aspect of the system (the odds of glitching), there is no reason to mix stuff up and make a house rule that approaches both matters together.
This quote of mine is in context of my "fix" for the glitch system and its benefits, and why I would like that.
With those glitch mechanics critical glitches are still rare above 4-5 dice, but they do happen "once in a blue moon".
Regular glitches happen around 2-5% of the rolls above 4-5 dice.
Both (glitches and critical glitches) follow nice smooth curves (again to be added later), have no odd/even dice pool problems and no special cases whatsoever.
A few people didn't know or never noticed the special cases or problems, so I will explain those here:
- 0 Dicepool is a special case not covered by the rules. You can rule that you can't make a test like that, but in some situation like an opposed test there must be some chance to fuck it up by have 0 dicepool against someone, and not simply "i'm standing there doing nothing and staring at my opponent". With 1 dice pool the system has 1/6 chance of critical, and 0% with 0 dicepool? BAD!
- One thing that already poped up in this thread: a glitch happen with "more than half" ou "half or more"?? In 4th edition it was the second, now it is the first. Both of them have problems and are confusing...
- The RAW says that everywhere you have a division you must round the result up unless told otherwise. Also, the RAW of Glitches is "If more than half the dice you rolled show a one". Half the dice is a division, right? Most people interpret the glitch as split your 1s in two piles and if the 1s is the largest it is a glitch, BUT if you follow RAW strictly a glitch would happen if 1s are larger than POOL DIVIDED BY 2. So, A pool of 10 dice, glitchs with 6 or more, what about a pool of 11? Strict RAW would be 11/2=5.5 => 6. So you would need 7 or more dice to glitch.
- In RAW there is stuff like a dice pool of 3 is MUCH worst than a dicepool of 2 (about 3 times the odds of glitching), and the same happen with all even pools being worst than the even pool right below it.
- In RAW there is no probability curve, there is a jagged line. This IS terrible from any stand point.
NOW, I will addess ShadowcatX. I haven't seem a question in his last post. In the previous one he questioned (rethorically) that the system was more complicated and annoying, I explained him that it is not more complicated. The only thing "extra" it has is hit cancelation, that if someone isn't confortable, just remove it, the odds for criticals will drop a lot. My rule is one page long, it covers Description, Reasons for it, Mechanics (in just 4 lines), Clarifications (that is mostly retelling the same stuff in a way that it is clear), Comentaries (on ALL Edge and Quality effects that affects glitchs, mostly it is more clarifications that just says: "work as described" or add a little bit of extra information so that there is no doubt).
The rule could easily be:
"Roll 1 extra die, if THIS die is 1 and the total of 1 is more than hits, you glitched."
or even
"If you have 1s equal or more to the numbers of hits, roll 1 extra die, if it is 1 you glitched."
Those would work just fine, without the hit cancelation, and will fix ALL the problems with RAW. The criticals would still be quite low and non-existent in higher dicepools, so I like the hit canceltion aspect of it.
About his example diceroll, why all the confusion? You throw 16 dice, and forget the glitch die, throw it aside and check for 1, any other result doesn't matter. If you read and understand the system, you will know if you have to throw the glitch die or not, because if you have less 1s than hits, the glitch die will at most give you one extra 1, so not enough for a glitch and not needed. About the "extra math", the SAME kind of thing is already used in Shadowrun:
- every two full boxes of excess Stun damage, carry over 1 box to the Physical damage track
- inflict 1 DV of Matrix damage to the target for every two full net hits
- every two full net hits counts as one hit on a Matrix Perception Test,
- every two hits adds one Initiative Die
- every two hits, increase the light penalty by one category
Those are just the ones I found searching "every two". It is EXACTLY the same as my system, "every two 1s over total hits cancel 1 hit" could also be read as "every two NET 1s cancel one hit". If doubt anyone playing Shadowrun is bothered or confused by this sort of "math".
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I played D6 Star wars for years, and I'm very familiar with the downside of that, and you version even lacks the small upside of it. There is a reason that system didn't go forward and the "wild die' was one of those reasons. I wouldn't want that rule active in SR game I was part of.
I looked into the D6 Star Wars system, and it is not in anyway like my system aside from the fact that it uses another die with your roll. The way it works is very much different, the odds of bad results are MUCH MUCH higher, the mechanics are horrible (depending on the result you add, subtract, add something and subtract another, etc).
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To be clear i'm not try to defend Shadowcat, they have their own issues, I was interested in why you wanted this and you did answer that question mostly I think far to concerned about small number cases. I clearly missed something in your rules, as I understood it, if your glitch die goes one you glitch, as with Anarchy. I believe the industry term is Narrative based system. Why they felt the need to make Anarchy I honestly have no idea. While there is nothing wrong with the Narrative concept, and it works fairly well for things like Fantasy Flight Star Wars, Shadowrun is a classic game with an accepted system. Why distract from what works?
0 die pools don't exist, if you arrive at one in an extended test your done, extended test over. Otherwise it's minimum one. So I'm not really sure why that's even being discussed. If you roll a one on die pool of one you just critically glitched. There isn't some tricky rules lawyering argument that gets you out that, 1 is greater then 1/2 so you have more then 1/2 your pool showing as one and you have no successes therefor critical glitch. I don't think there is a GM in existence who was confused by this, and the GM who set this up is probably a jerk.
The Bell curve covering success vs failure is the probability curve that everyone looks at, and generally we are more concerned about the effects of limit on that curve then we are about the extremely unlikelyhood of a glitch. No one rolls a die pool of 1, or a pools of 3, why b/c players know better, if you take a look at how we recommend creating characters it will ensure such things don't happen, and if someone comes across such a situation then its ether edge time or just accept that you failed and try something else. That jagged curve is a non-existent one.
For the record I do think the rules say glitches are unlikely, it says so when it defines how glitches happen.
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The base rule "if more than half your dice are 1s, you glitch." Your rule "add an extra dice. Your extra dice is only counted if it rolls a one. If more than half your dice are ones you glitch. Something, something, hit cancelation." Your rule is 4 sentences long, the base rule is 1 sentence long. That is significantly more complex.
And while yes "every two" shows up in RAW, hit cancelation does not. Adding an extra di that only ever penalizes players again, never shows up in RAW. You are introducing two new concepts to a game that was already difficult enough, and mind you they are concepts that apply to every roll a pc ever makes.
And if you think glitches only happen every 20 to 30 sessions, that's your lack of experience talking. Go play 30 sessions of shadowrun, you'll feel differently.
But you have answered what you wanted. We have different definitions of fun, doesn't make either of us automatically right. Good luck to you and your group.
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@Marcus, as I was writing my browser refreshed and I lost most of it, I will try to answer you again.
My system is no the same as Anarchy where the Glitch Die alones determines if there is a glitch. Here the Glitch Die is a condition die, if it is 1 then there could be a glitch, otherwise there is no chance of glitching.
This could be rewritten as: "If you have 1s equal or more to the numbers of hits, roll 1 extra die, if it is 1 you glitched." But since I play a lot of The One Ring, Dragon Age, and a few RPG and boardgames other that have a special die roll with your pool, I choose to describe it as a condition die because it was more familiar to me.
You say that Shadowrun is a classic system. I played second edition in the 90's with target numbers (the same way as storyteller system was in the 90's), and it as confusing as hell (with failures happening with a single 1, exploding 6 where standard, etc) this was changed in the next edition, and changed again, and again. The system is changing, the dicepool grew bigger, than was limited, now is bigger again, but with limits. And the system is improving, but the odds are still a mess, who knows how the sixth edition will be? Specially now that we already have Anarchy with an alternative glitch system?
There nowhere in RAW (at least I never found) that says that the minimum pool is 1. Defaulting with atribute 1 could result in a 0 die pool, as a test with negative modifiers. You could say: "but then the player wont do the action to risk a critical failure", but what if this is an opposed test? Now there is a difference between a simple failure and a having a glitch to go with it.
About the half and 1/2 this is being strict, I'm not saying that someone would do that, but if you apply the Rules As Written, there is a rounding done there, and the RAW says to round up unless told otherwise.
You said: "No one rolls a die pool of 1, or a pools of 3, why b/c players know better". Take a look at the previous answers here in this thread. I begin my discussion talking about pools in the 12-16 range as the usual for players in stuff they are good at, and 6-10 in stuff they might have to test sometime. And a lot people here told me: "Ah, but in my game players roll 4 dice pool a lot, you never know the modifiers, and if they are forced to roll, etc, etc, etc". The smaller pools will have mostly the same odds they would have with RAW, the larger ones (the ones players do roll) will have more chance of glitching. Why? Again, because without that there is NO glitch in pools 10 and above, it simply doesn't happen. If the odds are below 1% in a game where each player makes what? 50 rolls at most in a session, it means that they will have a glitch (non critical) with a 10 dice pool ONCE every 2-3 sessions, IF they are unlucky and roll a lot of 10 size pool, and then there is always edge to go away with glitch.
The bell curve of success is still the same, the hit cancelation trims a little bit of it (mostly by turning a few of the glitches in critical glitches) but otherwise you wouldn't notice any difference in the ammount you success you had before vs what you have now. One very important point that is not apparent, is that for 1 hit to be cancelled there is a minimum of 4 dice involved, so it is quite impossible to a large ammount of success to have even one hit cancelled.
Finally you said that there is no jagged curve, I invite you to look at my table of odds: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jwn8YAhCc39QDQ9mjxEBHVlLnb0APk-pi2UXPtXdM1U/edit#gid=0
This is RAW and my system, below the table there is a graph.
Dark blue is RAW critical
Light blue is RAW glitches
Dark Purple is my criticals
Light Purple is my glitches.
Now I dare you to tell me the blue ones looks like something done on purpose... :/
If you want unlikely glitches and a better curve, you could use my system with a d12 as glitch die.
EDIT: Ops, when I lost the text I missed the explanation of dice sizes.
You can have any size of die for the Glitch Die, from a d4 (more glitches) to a d20 (glitches as rare as RAW). They all have nice probability curves, and all of those fixes the issues with RAW. With a d8 you will have just 75% of my glitches, with a d12 it will cut my system by half, and with a d20 it will be as rare as RAW with 30% of my glitches.
About why I choose the d6:
- A Shadowrun player has lots of d6 and for sure a few of them are diferent to work as glitch die, otherwise just throw it separately.
- The odds for the d6 are nice enough for my taste, not too much, not too little. And since glitches can be anything, it happens enough that I can use it to insert things as minor or as important as needed to the scene.
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The base rule "if more than half your dice are 1s, you glitch." Your rule "add an extra dice. Your extra dice is only counted if it rolls a one. If more than half your dice are ones you glitch. Something, something, hit cancelation." Your rule is 4 sentences long, the base rule is 1 sentence long. That is significantly more complex.
My rule could be read as:
"Roll 1 extra die, if THIS die is 1 and the total of 1 is more than hits, you glitched."
or even
"If you have 1s equal or more to the numbers of hits, roll 1 extra die, if it is 1 you glitched."
If any of those are still too complex to you I don't know what else I can say about it.
And if you think glitches only happen every 20 to 30 sessions, that's your lack of experience talking. Go play 30 sessions of shadowrun, you'll feel differently.
That is Bernoulli's law of large numbers talking, and for you is survivor bias. You remember all the time that glitches happened, and none of the time it didn't. I even asked you about your last glitch and this was your answer: "I don't recall but I don't get to play as much anymore either. I can, however, tell you the last time I thought glitching would be fun: Never."
I've played a lot of RPG systems in last 25 years. I like to study, understand, develop and improve systems of rules. I can noticed problems like odd probabilities in a system quite easily just glancing at the method used to roll the dice. So I can say for certain and without doubt: "glitches are rare in shadowrun" unless you are playing with inept characters rolling 4 dice pools all the time, the chance of your character seeing just one glitch in an average 5-10 session campaign is slim at best.
So you might not like glitches, but you definetly cannot say they are common. You also cannot say the system don't expect that, look at how much the glitches are mentioned in the system...
In Shadowrun 2nd edition, you had have all your dice pool of 1's to glitch. Today is just half of it, why this change if not to make criticals happen at least a bit more? Maybe is because of growing dicepool sizes and not seeing glitches anymore. They could have gone further and make it happen if one quarter of your pool is 1, but that is an inelegant solution and a bad one also. My system fixes that. You have a nice curve of glitches/criticals. And as I said to Marcus above you can replace my Glitch Die for a d20 to have criticals as rare as RAW, but at least you won't have problems with odd probabilities.
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The base rule "if more than half your dice are 1s, you glitch." Your rule "add an extra dice. Your extra dice is only counted if it rolls a one. If more than half your dice are ones you glitch. Something, something, hit cancelation." Your rule is 4 sentences long, the base rule is 1 sentence long. That is significantly more complex.
My rule could be read as:
"Roll 1 extra die, if THIS die is 1 and the total of 1 is more than hits, you glitched."
or even
"If you have 1s equal or more to the numbers of hits, roll 1 extra die, if it is 1 you glitched."
If any of those are still too complex to you I don't know what else I can say about it.
You're using phrases, but in the end it is still multiple parts where there used to be one part. It is a straight increase to complexity, no matter how you want to argue it.
And if you think glitches only happen every 20 to 30 sessions, that's your lack of experience talking. Go play 30 sessions of shadowrun, you'll feel differently.
That is Bernoulli's law of large numbers talking, and for you is survivor bias. You remember all the time that glitches happened, and none of the time it didn't. I even asked you about your last glitch and this was your answer: "I don't recall but I don't get to play as much anymore either. I can, however, tell you the last time I thought glitching would be fun: Never."
I've played a lot of RPG systems in last 25 years. I like to study, understand, develop and improve systems of rules. I can noticed problems like odd probabilities in a system quite easily just glancing at the method used to roll the dice. So I can say for certain and without doubt: "glitches are rare in shadowrun" unless you are playing with inept characters rolling 4 dice pools all the time, the chance of your character seeing just one glitch in an average 5-10 session campaign is slim at best.
So you might not like glitches, but you definetly cannot say they are common. You also cannot say the system don't expect that, look at how much the glitches are mentioned in the system...
In Shadowrun 2nd edition, you had have all your dice pool of 1's to glitch. Today is just half of it, why this change if not to make criticals happen at least a bit more? Maybe is because of growing dicepool sizes and not seeing glitches anymore. They could have gone further and make it happen if one quarter of your pool is 1, but that is an inelegant solution and a bad one also. My system fixes that. You have a nice curve of glitches/criticals. And as I said to Marcus above you can replace my Glitch Die for a d20 to have criticals as rare as RAW, but at least you won't have problems with odd probabilities.
Here's the thing, you've based your arguments on dice pools of 12 or more. People have told you that half of playing shadowrun is when you roll things you're not great at, but you don't listen, you just keep throwing numbers for dice pools of 12 or more. But whatever, you have very little experience, you'll learn over time. Or you won't, it doesn't really matter to me.
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@ShadowcatX, last Marcus post had this sentence: "No one rolls a die pool of 1, or a pools of 3, why b/c players know better, if you take a look at how we recommend creating characters it will ensure such things don't happen, and if someone comes across such a situation then its ether edge time or just accept that you failed and try something else. "
So it is not me who is saying the players rolls what they are good at.
And besides, 12 is an average. Anything above 7 dice in RAW has no chance of glitching to me (less that 1%). In any game RPG or Boardgame, if something has less chance than 1%, it simply isn't worth considering...
This is my table of comparison for the odds https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jwn8YAhCc39QDQ9mjxEBHVlLnb0APk-pi2UXPtXdM1U/edit#gid=0
PS: Above 11 dice in my system there is less than 1% chance of criticals too, this is by MY design :D
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Luiz, I think you just need to stop arguing that your system is better than RAW, and simply go develop your own complete game system. If your only answer to my actual experience, and those of others, is to say "this guy would argue" or "that can't happen, because math" then I submit that you have fallen victim to what I call 'Mathematician"s Digression". Explained simply, MD happens when mathematically inclined people try to prove that math on paper explains everything that can possibly happen in the real world. There's always an example given as refutation that is simply not explainable by the given math, and the presenter just ignores it in favor of expounding their hypothesis. So here's my question to you: Are you actually willing to listen to the advice and opinions of the people here, or are you simply listening to your own voice? If you are willing to listen, whether you accept what is said or not, please keep going. If you are not willing to listen, then my response will be to ignore you.
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I was just reading some passages in the book and found this example of glitch and critical glitch when Quick Drawing a weapon:
If he glitches, the gun is stuck in the holster or dropped, and no more actions are allowed. On a critical glitch, a drawn blade may be fumbled out of the character’s reach or a pistol accidentally fired while still in the holster; the gamemaster decides the exact nature of the screw-up.
Again, how is that disastrous? You are trying to do two actions at once (that can be done using 2 simple actions in a single initiative pass) and the worst that can happen is dropping the weapon or firing in the holster?
PS: Fine by me Spooky. But if you allow me one last message:
If you paid attention, I just answered each and everyone that questioned my method (as someone should when inquired), even when the other person just tried to say: "it is not needed" with a rethorical question. I'm not saying that my method gives a better gaming experience, read all my messages and I never said that. I even said that each can choose what he pleases. What I DID say about my method it that it is better from a statistics point of view, and honestly, if anyone said otherwise it would be lie. You might not like the frequency of glitches, the extra die, the hit cancelation and everything else, but no one can say that RAW odds (like odds for odd pools are worse than even pools for no reason) is better! Also frequent is very subjetive, and I asked more than once, how often people glitched in their games. And from the responses I don't think it frequent to me, but this is subjetive. I might not be very experience with SR5, but I played a few sessions of it to notice the problem right away (again a problem to me), I played SR2 also a few decades ago, an a whole lot of other systems (most of which I know the odds for the rolls so I know what to expect from them).
You can argue all you want about "math", but unless you have crooked dice, the odds apply to you as well as too me. And I make a bet with your right now, using fair dice tape yourself getting a critical with a dicepool of 16, if you do I buy you a colletion of shadowrun products or anything else you want. :o
Just kidding, this happens once in 46.729 rolls, it could happen on the first one and this wouldn't invalidate the odds in any way... :D
I also argued that the glitches and critical glitches are not as harsh and terrible as many people where saying, and to do that I use the rules and description from the book, like the example that I just gave here. And I think (this is opinion talking, and I tried to make sure to always say when I was talking opinion) from all that, that glitches should indeed be more frequent. One of my last answers what regarding ShadowcatX complaining about the frequency of glitches, which can be solved by using a die with more faces.
Later there was some complains about my method, and I address those the better I could. One was about the frequency that I told above, another complain was about hit cancelation, again, you don't need to use it, your critical odds will drop a little. And finally: "this is bad, I like the RAW better", fine! I'm not trying to convince anyone on the right way to play the game, nor that there is a right way to play.
I like to play a game with nice odds, just that, and the subject of this thread is: "Glitches, odds and inexistence of critical glitches" and this is the what I talked about. At first I was hoping to just find a house rule or a solution for that (for ME that is a problem), when this didn't happen I proceed to develop a solution that was pleasing to me and could help others. I tried my best to explain how it works and to ease any doubts about it.
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I actually agree with you on the idea that glitches do not occur often enough with large dice pools.
However, I dislike adding more dice to rolls. While it seems straightforward, the most intuitive part of Shadowrun rolling is that dice pools follow a very simple formula: stat + skill + intuitive modifiers.
Your proposal, while simple, detracts from the intuitive nature of Shadowrun rolling. Given that Shadowrun is extraordinarily complex, and already has numerous modifiers, even given the heading of intuitive, adding any more dice to this system that are not immediately intuitive, for me, is a big hindrance.
Therefore, I'd like to see a proposal that does not include a new dice.
Additionally, while it does depend on the table, having penalties to dice pool size of up to -6 can be fairly common (multiple times per session, potentially many times depending on environment). Importantly, this applies to mooks, not just PCs. I find it fairly common to have 4-6 sized dice pools.
Further, and this is very table specific, I do use the gremlins quality for gear. Especially found gear - that gang who likes to custom mark their guns? Yeah it actually damages the guns, and the whole gang has gremlins 1.
So I find glitches overall actually do occur a fair amount. The issue is that they don't occur for players rolling large dice pools, who plan well enough that they avoid penalties.
And for me, the specific problem here is that of regaining edge. I really LIKE that rule, as I like mechanical conditions (as opposed to roleplay conditions) that renew special resources such as edge.
So, I'd like to see a proposal that doesn't add more dice, and that still noticeably affects large dice pools but not small ones.
Unfortunately this has been low priority for me, as I'm working on chargen changes first, so I don't have a proposal of my own.
(However as a note: if you do use gremlins for gear, and use a lot more environmental factors, you will get a lot more glitches, which for the OP, may actually be enough.)
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I am sorry you lost that post due to the reload I have had that happen to me many times and it's super annoying.
Anyways, I am very surprised folks roll pools of 4 regularly i can't recall the last time I did such a thing, but not everyone agrees on making optimzied characters, so such is life i guess. You are correct about min rule, while there are plenty of place where mins do come in there isn't min 1 specific rule, I really though there was such a rule, but i may be recalling something from 4th, or maybe I'm just fooling myself.
Anyways SR is classic to me, 3rd target number issue and dmg codes were a bit obscure at first, but keep in mind that was part of the industry back then everyone was messing with TNs. (The old 6=7 thing was always super amusing to me, but that's where we were.) Luckily sanity arrived and 4th edition came down and put in end to that nonsense, which exactly why it is a classic system. Lots of time has gone into SR, and over time it has steadily improved.
Even if you look at DnD 5th, it's a hugely improved system even over (3rd/3.75) and don't get me wrong I'm one the few who really liked 4th edition DnD.
Well it's pretty clear you have considered your house rule, and certainly argued it from ever angle I can see, so carry then. Please come back and report on how it plays.
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Nelphine, I have an idea for not having "extra" dice that does work for what you want but that involves either:
- replacing one of the dies from your dice pool with a d12 and considering it like a regular dice with hits on 5,6,11,12 and considering it like my glitch die on 1 (it has to be 1 and more 1s than hits to glitch).
- considering the first die throw in the pool (or having a d6 with different color) as the glitch die, this works the same, but the odds are higher.
The main problem with those is: this is a "replacement die" so you MUST remember to replace it in your pool. And this is bad. This is the reason that I wanted an extra die.
If you forgot to roll it with your pool, just roll it as soon as you remember. One added benefit is that it easy to see if it will be needed, if you have less 1s than hits you don't even have to bother rolling the glitch die because you will never have more 1s than hits in this case. So after you roll you notice you have a lot a of 1s roll the glitch die, otherwise it won't matter if you forgot it (only if you got no success, but then someone at the table will remember to roll the glitch die to see if you critically glitch).
I promise you, I looked really hard into this and I would like to get a solution that doesn't involve ANY extra dice, unfortunately, as it is this is possible due to how the pool is formed and the odds of the d6. If this was d10 (like storytelling system, it would be a different story and more manageable)...
So, as far as me (and a few other people that helped me think about that that are quite knowledgeable in statistics and rpg) can think of, the least amount of impact with the most (beneficial) change to the system is adding one condition die in a form of another. :(
@Marcus, thanks :) will do test it on the table. A few people in Brazil said they were going to test it as well, and I already got a very positive feedback from one gm where two glitches happened in his session (but no Crits yet).