Roll / Keep Systems and Exploding Dice

[Girl-of-Dust]

Hi, I'm looking into the possibility of investing in the program for my L5R group and I was wondering if any R/K system can be created through the ruleset editor?

If possible, I'm also looking to create some sort of function or command that can do cumulative rolls (Exploding dice. For example, rolling 10 on d10 causes you to roll again. So a roll of 10 (reroll) 5 sums as 15 on 1d10.)
My uncertainty about this is the only thing really keeping me back from getting the program for myself and my group, so if anyone could help me out with this I'd be very appreciative.

[Zeus]

Hello and welcome.

Exploding dice are possible. Both the RoleMaster and Savage Worlds rulesets implement them. These are third party rulesets. CoreRPG (developed and supported by Smiteworks) also includes a Fudge Die implementation.

FG uses XML to define each ruleset's components (including die) and Lua script to implement ruleset logic. I would take a look at the Wiki and the Ruleset Developer guides and familiarise your self with FG's APIs before you making your decision. Whilst you can't change the 3D dice models, it is possible to override the chat window reporting so you can report any die face result as required. However implementing exploding die would require some level of programming skill/experience, even in FG, so if your prepared to roll up your sleeves with a little coding, I find most of the critical aspects of RPG game mechanics are possible with FG.

[Valarian]

There's an exploding die mechanic in my Conspiracy X (Unisystem) and Star Wars (WEG d6) rulesets too. See the link in my signature. Unfortunately, alternative die mechanic take some Lua code to register a dice handler and custom dice.

If you can explain the mechanic, someone can potentially help out.

[damned]

can be created through the ruleset editor?

Also there is not currently a ruleset editor.
Editing/creating rulesets is done thru coding in LUA and XML with your favourite coding tools.

[Mgrancey]

The Roll and Keep system uses Traits, which are generally speaking either Stats or Skills though there are also Honor and Glory stats but they are less commonly rolled (similar use as in Werewolf:tA). You usually roll the total of both and keep your Stat value (some are just a stat or another trait like Honor or Glory) ,which are added together to see if you meet the Target Number (TN), in addition there is PC enabled Raise system where the PC will increase the TN on their own for extra effects. Stats are limited from 1 to 5, while skills can grow more though it gets more costly. TN runs from 5 - Mundane (juggling one ball), increasing by 5, to 40 - Never Done Again (juggling 9 balls while a geisha nibbles on your ear).

Damage uses Stat and Weapon plus bonus dice from Raises and Techniques to determine damage, only this time you keep dice determined by the weapon and techniques.

L5R only uses d10s so on any 10 the die rerolls and adds back onto itself (keep rerolling 10s), still counting as only 1 die (same explode mechanic as Savage Worlds). No more then 10 dice are ever rolled. Void can be used to temporarily increase a Trait by 1.

As a warning my copy of L5R is from 1st or 2nd edition but so far as I know the mechanics are the same. Here is an example from the book:

Mirumoto Kuro wants to show off his skill with a katana for his new lord. He demonstrates a difficult kata in his lord's court. Kuro has a 3 Agility (stat) and a 3 Kenjutsu (Skill), so he will be rolling 6 dice and keeping the three best (because his Agility is 3) Kuro rolls the following: 3, 5, 7, 7, 8 and a 9, making his total 24 (7+8+9 are the highest three rolls so he keeps those.) 20 is Hard and 25 is Very Hard so up to you if you think he succeeded.

That was a simple roll, there are also contested which is 2 PCs/NPCs rolling against each other, standard resolutions.

[Girl-of-Dust]

Things changed in 4e, but you've got the basics Mgrancy.
I've done some basic coding before, and I'm sure with time I can pull together the details of the how.

I mean, I'm guessing I just need to implement a set of text commands to trigger the RNG with specific additional rules. (Something to signify the difference between unexploding and exploding roles.) The R/K is more what I'm a little concerned about, because I haven't seen any examples of other people implementing similar mechanics.

[Girl-of-Dust]

Oh and just to clarify this is how things go in 4e:

A samurai has an agility of 4 and a kenjutsu still of 2 with the emphasis in Katana.
When making an attack roll, the Samurai rolls his Agility + Kenjutsu while only keeping the number of dice equal to his agility. Because he has an emphasis any 1's will be rerolled once. (A 1 rerolled to 1 stays a 1.)

Thus 6d10 keep top 4, explode on 10s, reroll 1's once.
Not all rolls explode though, or will reroll 1s. Rerolling 1s only happens on skills the player purchases an emphasis in. Explosions don't happen when a player is attempting to use a skill they don't have. (An unskilled peasant attempting to use a kanata will only roll his Agility Keep Agility with no explosions.)

[Mgrancey]

Hmm. More complicated though I can see the reason for the non-explosions.

As far as the keeping the top numbers, I can't say specifically how to best handle it in FG and LUA, but generally speaking you would have a temporary array to hold all the results, use an function to sort the values from high to low, determine if dice rolled is greater than dice kept, then claim the first X positions that are being kept.

Alternatively you could make the array to hold only the values kept, compare them to whats in the array keeping and tossing out as necessary than just add up and output the array.

Off the systems I know, look at the World of Darkness stuff. Successes are compared to failures with 7 being standard difficulty. The sorting and comparing would probably be somewhat useful.

[Girl-of-Dust]

Hmm. More complicated though I can see the reason for the non-explosions.

As far as the keeping the top numbers, I can't say specifically how to best handle it in FG and LUA, but generally speaking you would have a temporary array to hold all the results, use an function to sort the values from high to low, determine if dice rolled is greater than dice kept, then claim the first X positions that are being kept.

Alternatively you could make the array to hold only the values kept, compare them to whats in the array keeping and tossing out as necessary than just add up and output the array.

Off the systems I know, look at the World of Darkness stuff. Successes are compared to failures with 7 being standard difficulty. The sorting and comparing would probably be somewhat useful.

I mean, a really lazy way would be to just set it to organize values from lowest to highest in output, everything explodes but players manually add top values to kept dice and only add 10 for explosions on non-explosion rolls.

[Girl-of-Dust]

I had a couple thoughts:

#1: Could we potentially create a visual distinction between the Kept Dice? (Like adding a slight highlight between the highest rolled dice as part of a theme edit)

#2: Can we add additional conditions to the /die command? If we could program additional functions such as
/die 6d10k4 (Like how the +N function is currently) Potentially adding on a qualifier for explosions or rerolling 1s?
Maybe adding on to the +N functionality we could do something like
k(x) - Keep
e(x) - Explode on X
rr(x) (Or just r(x) - reroll X
So the above roll I mentioned could look like

/die 6d10k4e10r1+0
A bit of a cluster, but it shouldn't be too hard to remember as a player if you are familiar with the mechanics already. It also provides the most amount of customization. (Which could be useful in cases where the explosion number is changed. I believe having a Kenjutsu skill of 7 in 4e actually lowers the explosion on Kenjutsu to 9.)

[hueffmea]

I'm sorry I have nothing of value to add to this conversation but I want to know when a new post has been added since I'm trying to figure out how to do the exact same thing!

[damned]

At the top right hand corner of each thread is a link "Thread Tools" with a drop down. Therein you can subscribe to a thread without posting :)

[Girl-of-Dust]

I'm sorry I have nothing of value to add to this conversation but I want to know when a new post has been added since I'm trying to figure out how to do the exact same thing!

Are you trying to do it for L5R or another game?

[Moon Wizard]

This is where dice rollers get complicated really fast.


So what happens after you roll a 1, can you still explode on a 10?
And vice versa, if you just exploded on a 10 roll, do you still reroll on a 1?
Should exclusive and inclusive options both be supported? Can some options be inclusive and others exclusive?
If so, what should the default be? (inclusive/exclusive all)
I saw another system where penalties add more dice, but drop first. (same system?) This means that drop, keep can also be applied multiple times and must be processed in order.


I'm working on a more advanced die roller right now, so this is of immediate interest. Right now, I'm leaning towards exclusive, which is what RM essentially provides. (i.e. once you roll low, it is always exploding negative; once you roll high, it is always exploding positive).

Regards,
JPG


I had a couple thoughts:

#1: Could we potentially create a visual distinction between the Kept Dice? (Like adding a slight highlight between the highest rolled dice as part of a theme edit)

#2: Can we add additional conditions to the /die command? If we could program additional functions such as
/die 6d10k4 (Like how the +N function is currently) Potentially adding on a qualifier for explosions or rerolling 1s?
Maybe adding on to the +N functionality we could do something like
k(x) - Keep
e(x) - Explode on X
rr(x) (Or just r(x) - reroll X
So the above roll I mentioned could look like

/die 6d10k4e10r1+0
A bit of a cluster, but it shouldn't be too hard to remember as a player if you are familiar with the mechanics already. It also provides the most amount of customization. (Which could be useful in cases where the explosion number is changed. I believe having a Kenjutsu skill of 7 in 4e actually lowers the explosion on Kenjutsu to 9.)

[Girl-of-Dust]

In L5R you do NOT re-roll 1's on an explosion. (So rolling 10, 1, = 11, end rolling.) I don't think any exploding dice system has a re-roll 1's on exploded dice. (Unless there is a system where only 1's explode perhaps...)
So the re-roll function needs to have an exclusion for cumulative dice.
Something like SUM of Dice 1 must equal 1 to scrap total & recalculate RNG, this function dependent on a variable which set at 1 for each individual dice but each dice has the variable take a -1 to equal zero, re-roll checks variable to see if a re-roll has already occured on a single dice previously as to not have it roll 1,1,1,4=4 but rather 1,1=1. (Or maybe if not a total scraping of initial roll, an explosion that adds a -1 mod to individual dice if possible?) This sort of variable attached to the individual dice being rolled separates explosion mechanics from re-rolling mechanics, so that if the dice roll 1,10 explosion still happens as explosion is neither tied nor limited to the variable.

In short:
Attach variable Z to individual dice.
Roll 4 dice.
Z on dice 1, 2, 3, 4 all set to 1
if Z[x] = 1, check D[x] (x = Dice arrangement position. Dice 1, Dice 2, etc.)
if D[x] = 0
z - 1
Scrap roll, re-apply RNG.
Return to top of output and check for any additional D[x] = 1, Z[x] = 0 situations.

This way, a 1,10,1=11.
Dx = 1, (Z[x]-1=0)
Rolls again
Dx = 10 (Z[x] irrelevant.)
Rolls again.
Dx + Dx2 =/= 1, rr function not triggered. (And if it was anyway, Z[x] = 0 thus bypassing Re-Roll.)


This is where dice rollers get complicated really fast.


So what happens after you roll a 1, can you still explode on a 10?
And vice versa, if you just exploded on a 10 roll, do you still reroll on a 1?
Should exclusive and inclusive options both be supported? Can some options be inclusive and others exclusive?
If so, what should the default be? (inclusive/exclusive all)
I saw another system where penalties add more dice, but drop first. (same system?) This means that drop, keep can also be applied multiple times and must be processed in order.


I'm working on a more advanced die roller right now, so this is of immediate interest. Right now, I'm leaning towards exclusive, which is what RM essentially provides. (i.e. once you roll low, it is always exploding negative; once you roll high, it is always exploding positive).

Regards,
JPG

[Valarian]

Star Wars d6 wild die - on a 1 you remove the highest rolled die. On a 6 you reroll and add.

CJ Carella's Unisystem (Eden Studios) has a system where 1s are rerolled as a negative and 10s as a positive.

[hueffmea]

Valarian has already cracked the explosions. I looked at his Star Wars D6 mod, fantastic by the way, and it uses the Wild Die mechanic which is to roll another die if you get a six on a certain die.
Change the certain die to any die, the D6 to a D10, and take out the penalty for rolling a one and the explosion is perfect.
Now we just need a mechanic for rolling up to 10 D10s but only keeping some of them.
We also need a mechanic for changing extra kept dice, or unkept dice into a flat bonus.

For instance
1k0 is a rolled but not kept die
1k1 is a rolled and kept die
10k10 (read 10 rolled and 10 kept)
11k9 gets changed to 10k10 because you never roll more than 10 dice. So one rolled moves to the one kept column.
10k10 + 1k0 = 11k10 = 10k10+10 You never roll more than 10 dice and you can't keep more than 10 dice, it just gives you a flat bonus of +10 for each unkept die after that, and +20 for each kept die.

[Girl-of-Dust]

@hueffmea

Actually, 11k9 has 1k0 scrapped in 4e. After 10kX, you only raise the number of kept dice by 1 for every 2 additional rolled dice. (11k5=10k5. 12k5=10k6. 14k5=10k7, etc.)
Also in 4e, ALL DICE (rolled or kept) above a 10k10 roll are turned into a +2 static mod to the roll.
(16k8=10k10+4.)

I think it's best to leave this up to players actually figuring out their rolls rather than attempting to program it into the system.

[Paul Pratt]

I have an old roll/keep function from 7th Seas I used. Not sure if it works with 3.0, but it rolled up to 10 die and keep your trait in dice. The way I got it to work was dependent on the players clicking their char sheets correctly. I used dots for skills level 1-5 and traits 1-5. Click the skill, next the trait and it assembled the pool to roll. The second click set the keep dice.

[hueffmea]

Well if you still have it somewhere I'd love to give it a try.

[Moon Wizard]

Some dice rolling mechanics features I'm working on, and I'm looking for feedback.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=179647

Regards,
JPG

[hueffmea]

Some dice rolling mechanics features I'm working on, and I'm looking for feedback.

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=179647

Regards,
JPG

Can I download this mod, and put it through some paces?

[Moon Wizard]

It's not quite ready yet, and it requires a new FG client in development. It will be released as v3.1 for beta testing on theLaboratory forum. You can subscribe to the dice features thread, and I'll announce when it's available for testing.

Regards,
JPG

[hueffmea]

Sorry to Necro this thread, but I'm wondering if you ever finished this mod.

[damned]

Wont be released before Unity port from what I recall...
Have a look at DMFirmy for his roll X drop y extension.
Oberoten is also doin a bit of a Wild Die extension.
There is also some Wild Die support in Savage Worlds and 5E has the Advantage and Disadvantage rolls (roll 2 keep highest/lowest) which might help...?

[Blacky]

Never used it so I can't vouch for it, but here's (https://voodonline.fr/~actarus37/public/Ruleset/L5R/L5R.zip) a supposedly L5R ruleset for FG (date way back before CoreRPG). Done by a French user but I think it's in English.

[AstaSyneri]

Sorry to Necro this thread, but I'm wondering if you ever finished this mod.

In the same vein of questioning: Is there anything in terms of L5R or 7th Sea that could see the light of day on the current engine (would be a shame if not, considering we have no clue when FG Next will be out)?

If there is a version of L5R in the works (it has been hinted at in several places), how far has it progressed? Or should be bury all hope until FG Next is out? ;-)

[damned]

FG Next has nothing really to do with the Rulesets from what we know so far about it.
It is intended to support the existing rulesets and methods of building rulesets. it will still use LUA and XML it will just have more other things like - multithreaded application - networking doesnt interfere with graphics doesnt interfere with database etc, more graphic options are a possibility light dynamic lighting, fog of war, 3d terrain...

[DissenterKnight]

Sorry to drag this thread out of the archives, but did anything ever come from this?
An L5R 4E or just a roll/keep module would be a real welcome sight if it were ever finished.

[damned]

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?55139-Legend-of-the-Rings-5E-(WiP-Beta-Many-incomplete-things)&highlight=legend+rings