No-roll Threshhold

[MrNexx]

So, what is your no-roll threshhold? At what intersection of skill and difficulty do you just say "Don't bother, you made it"?
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[jmanski]

Always roll the dice.

You never know what can happen....
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[CRMcNeill]

I know when I came up with this, someone over on the G+ community was quite insistent that the possibility for automatic success or failure should be included. I was on the fence, so which way I would go would probably be dependent on the circumstances.
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The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

I've rarely had one, but if even with getting all 1s on the die they still can beat the diff by 5 or more, i have on occasion said "just roll the wild die to see if you might have gotten a complication'. BUT i never do that for combat.
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[Bren]

Generally I find players like rolling the dice when they have lots of dice to roll, which is also when automatic success is often likely so they are often pretty happy to roll and get a really good roll or a roll with a lot of overkill. So players often don't mind rolling the dice when success is highly likely.

Of courses there are really low rolls and the wild die and such so sometimes as the GM I may want a roll to see if the unlikely event occurs and they fail.

So I usually have them roll the dice. On rare occasions where I want to use automatic success that tends to occur in two situations.

1. When time is short and I am trying to move the action along to a climax, ending, or good stopping place for the evening.

1a A variation of this is when many rolls are called for and I want to abstract the effect of say lots of blaster shots by making only three rolls. I used this method on the recent Halloween adventure I ran where the PCs encountered a shambling, slow kind of zombie and they ended up blasting several groups of zombies into many, many pieces and parts. Rolling the dice a few times is exciting. Rolling the dice 20 times for similar actions in similar situations is dull.

1b When the character is doing something like bargaining, persuading, or intimidating where there are a series of interactions and where the player rolling would be disruptive and provide OOC knowledge. I may call for or secretly make one roll and then use that roll as a modifier to how I judge the success of what they say and what I decide the NPC says. So here it is partly to avoid providing OOC knowledge and mostly to speed up the conversation and make it flow nicely.

2. When I feel sorry for a player who repeatedly has rolled very, very badly, even failing when using Force Points and character points. In this case if their skill is such that they ought to succeed I may skip a roll, especially if the character is about out of Force and character points. This sort of situation may happen once every four or five sessions. Or it may not happen at all.

[garhkal]

Now let's flip this around. Who's had it where cause of what a certain PC is attempting, the diff is so high, even popping off all of his available to be spent CP< he would need at least 3 or more '6's on the wild dice and/or CP to even get close to hitting the difficulty. Thus you have almost an auto-fail situation.

Case and point, you've got a pc system that the enemy is working on directly against the party, and they roll extremely well to set up the 'firewall' the party needs to get by. BUT YOU expected both of their computer geek pcs to be up and available to counter the enemy.. However either they are both down/dead, or were captured (or some other reason they are not there), so the best available tech skill is up, and he's NO WHERE needed the skill level to succeed..

What do you do then?
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[shootingwomprats]

I have the players roll dice if failing the roll makes the players story/scene more difficult or dramatic, is important to the story. Of course, if the players want to roll dice, I let them as well. Heck sometimes I have players roll dice and not even have a reason for it. They ask me, "What was that for?" To which I smile and answer, "Oh nothing, its not important." Yet they know I do not have them roll pointlessly, so it amps up drama as well.
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[Bren]

[garhkal]

[Kytross]

I skip rolls when it's not important to the plot and the roll is trivial to their skill index. Both conditions must be met.

You should also know that I automatically have the player remove the highest and lowest dice when they roll a 1 on the wild die.

So, for example, landing a ship under normal conditions is an inconsequential event that happens in my games five-ten times a night. It is a very easy task and I require a 3 to successfully land a ship. If my player has a dice pool of at least 5D, from their skill and the ship's maneuverability, then even if they roll five 1's, they will still get a total of 3. There's no point to rolling, they're going to succeed.

If it was important to the plot, if it wasn't normal conditions, I would have them roll.

[Whill]

What Kytross said. My wild die "remove" option only removes the highest die and not the 1, but otherwise I'll do the math like him. I do use complications too though, so If I've got a possible complication in mind for an automatic success, sometimes I will have the PC only roll the wild die and tell me if it's a 1.
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[Kytross]

Whill, I have a group I play with every few months that I do the 'roll a wild die, tell me if you get a 1' thing with. The other guy in the group who GMs D6 does that and so the group expects it. In fact, the players do it automatically. I've had situations where I am about to give them a no-threshold success and before I say anything, they tell me what they rolled on the wild die.

What can I say, it works!

[thedemonapostle]

years ago when i was still kinda new to the star wars rpg, we we shooting a security droid. some of us has skill at or near 10D. but we just couldnt hit that thing. nope it was the guy with a meager 2D that for some reason his dice wouldnt stop rolling 6's. now keep in mind in AD&D this would be the guy that when fighting back to back would constantly roll snake eyes and "mysteriously" lose his swords when they got stuck in something behind him. this is also the guy that would roll so bad that he would shoot himself with a long bow and do max damage. in star wars this was the guy we put in power armor because he would trip and nearly kill himself.

i dont remember exactly what he rolled in total that day, but i do know that it was 44 points over what i had rolled with my 9D+2.

but while he hit the droid. he used up all his luck just rolling to hit as his roll for damage on 4D was 5.

im pretty sure that he shouldnt have been allowed that many rolls on the wild die, but the gm just wanted to see how many it would roll before it stopped coming up 6.

while i enjoy the randomness of the dice, sometimes waiting for some to roll their bucket of dice and slowly count them up can get annoying. so before each game we might set the day's auto roll rule which usually comes out to 2 or 3 per die. but i reserve that for rolls of 10D or more.
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