How Wild are you?

[MrNexx]

Or, "How do you adjudicate the wild die, both 6 and 1?"

What do you do when an exploding 6 results in insanely high results? 20, 30 points above the difficulty?

More mundanely, what is your rule of thumb on a 1 on the wild die? How do you decide when it's a complication, a failure, or a mishap?
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[cheshire]

When it's an exploding six that's WELL above the difficulty, I usually throw on some sort of bonus. As in "you succeed AND..." There was one time someone rolled a 30+ for a melee defense roll. As a result, they blocked the shot and they disarmed the other guy.

In terms of what to do with the 1? When is it a failure? For me, only when they also do not meet the difficulty number. Complication and failure are not necessarily the same. I've combed over every itteration of the D6 mechanics I could find (I even wrote an article about it once for the D6 Magazine -- though not my best work). As the years went on they got more and more harsh about how to treat a 1, pretty much punishing people on a 1 in 6 random chance.

Though it's not the way it goes by the RAW, I play it that you can succeed and still have a complication. Once someone hit a SUPER high attack and SUPER high damage. Funny, they rolled a 1 for both attack and damage rolls. So, when they gashed into the carnivorous plant that they were fighting, they had to get out of the way of the digestive enzymes that came gushing out. In fact, I think they even broke off the battle to dive into a pond to wash off the liquids.

There are usually creative applications of complication in most scenarios. But if I can't think of anything, I don't force it. I'll take off the highest and lowest if I can't think of something relevant.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[garhkal]

[Whill]

6 explodes like normal and I sometimes throw in a bonus effect for really high rolls, but that's for high rolls in general and not just when there was a 6 on the wild die.

For 1, I decide on one of the three RAW options with a minor change:

• Add up the dice normally.
• Total up the skill dice normally to see if the skill roll succeeded, but a "complication" occurs. (Yes a Complication can happen with success or failure.)
• Subtract the highest die (only). The 1 is already a 1 so subtracting the highest die is enough of a penalty.

Of course it is worth noting that the first and third options have the same result in cases where the roll was high enough to succeed even with the highest die being subtracted (success anyway) or low enough to fail with adding the dice up normally (failure anyway).

When choosing between these two options would be the difference between success and failure for close rolls, deciding between these two options is often an equalizing consideration. If I feel the adventure is going too easy for the PCs or the story would be better served with a failure, I may choose the third option. Likewise if the adventure is going too hard on the PCs or the adventure would be better served by a success then I may choose the first option.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[MrNexx]

My rule of thumb is to always subtract the highest die, then consider the results:

If "minus highest" is still a success, then they get a "Yes, but"... a success but a complication. Luke figuring out how to lock the door, but missing that it will also prevent them from extending the bridge.

If minus highest is a failure, but would've succeeded with that die? Simple failure.

If the full value wouldn't have succeeded anyway, then you get a failure plus a complication... Han trying to hotwire the door on Endor's moon, but accidentally closing the door that's already opened.
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"I've Seen Your Daily Routine. You Are Not Busy!"
“We're going to win this war, not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.�
http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/

[Whill]

I like it. That totally works.
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[MrNexx]

[garhkal]

[Zarn]

On a 6:

Reroll, keep going. Add together.

If you meet the difficulty, you succeed. For each class of success you go over, you get an increasingly larger benefit.


On a 1:

Reroll. If the reroll is a 1, you get a complication. If it isn't, remove the wild die and the highest die from your total. If you still succeed, you succeed but is disadvantaged. If you fail, you fail.


I've also introduced "positive wild dice" (i.e. wild dice that can only explode on 6, and doesn't do anything in particular on a 1), "negative wild dice" (I think it's obvious what this means). Dice bought through character points are positive wild dice. STR checks to resist damage only have positive wild dice.

There's also one particular wrinkle in the way I use wild dice:

Wild dice is for sentients.

Which means that there's no wild dice for (non-player) droids, or for something that is wholly done through a machine (damage from an unmodified blaster pistol, damage from a TIE Interceptor's cannons).

A droid doesn't get wild dice on their resistance roll. A droid doesn't get wild dice on hitting someone with their after-market blaster cannon. And so on and so forth.

Jury Rig dice are always wild dice.

[garhkal]

If droids are non sentient, why only non pc ones get teh no wild die?
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[Zarn]

Because if I have a PC droid (i.e. a player playing a droid as their player character, not having a droid as a line on their equipment list), I like to use the same rules around the table. Well, ish, but that's the sentiment of it.

If I have a player playing an "NPC" droid ("Heck yeah, I'm the protocol droid now!") because of some circumstances, they stop worrying about wild dice for the duration of them temporarily taking the reins of the NPC droid.

[MrNexx]

I'm reminded of SAGA's difference in kinds of processors... all droids are artificially intelligent to one degree or another, but only certain droids (and seldom class five droids) were equipped with adaptive learning brains. PC droids were always considered to have the more advanced and creative brains, which also lead to them being more "eccentric" than droids not so equipped.
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"I've Seen Your Daily Routine. You Are Not Busy!"
“We're going to win this war, not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.�
http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/

[CRMcNeill]

[MrNexx]