Need Help for making Vampire the Masquerade Dice Rules

[kindredwolf]

The "Roll Conditions" don't seem to be complex enough to account for how d10 system counts successes. Here's what I need the roller to do...

Count the number of successes on a variable number of d10 dice with the successes being any number of dice equal to or greater than the assigned difficulty number.

Example: a pool of 6 dice (always d10) with assigned difficulty 7.
Each die rolled equal to or greater than the difficulty is a success.

Further complications... each roll of a 1 is a FAILURE and takes away one SUCCESS. If the number of FAILURES is greater than the number of SUCCESSES it is a BOTCH.

I only want the system to count the number of successes and failures.
I could not care less about the sum total of all the dice.

I would like to be able to just have a variable "pool" or the number of dice.
I would like to be able to just have a variable "dc" for the difficulty.
The system seems too inflexible to handle this. Does anyone have a workaround?
Or can the d10 system be programmed into a patch/update?

[SophieHoulden]

though a little awkward, this is possible already. I think this should be the roll you are describing:

roll=6d10, check(roll#{>6}-roll#{1}, roll#{1})

To explain; first it defines a result called “roll” as 6d10, this result can be referred to by name in subsequent parts of the expression (separated by a comma).

We then use the check function to compare two numbers, the function will say “pass” if the first number is >= the second number. So the first number we pass is the successes (counting dice in “roll” >6, subtracting the 1s), and the second number is just the count of 1s in “roll”.

The relevant parts of the dice notation documentation are “Count[sophiehoulden.com]”, “Multiple Results[sophiehoulden.com]”, and “Check/Compare Functions[sophiehoulden.com]”.

Also worth noting is that for now, the count (#) condition doesn’t have a “greater-than-or-equal-to” comparison yet, so you will need to specify a number one less than your dc, which is why it is >6 and not >=7 in my example. (I am hoping to fix this in a future update!)

I understand this is perhaps a bit overwhelming but it’s as simple as I think it can be for now. I’m unlikely to make a roll condition for this particular logic in any future update, but a more VtM-friendly function than “check” is definitely something I’ll look into!

Thanks for the feedback, and I hope my example is useful to you :)

Edit: oh and please tell me if I’m misunderstanding the roll logic you want! I haven’t yet read/played any version of VtM other than… bloodlines :p

[kindredwolf]

Thank you! This works well enough. I know this isn't designed for the rule set I'm using, but in a pinch when dice aren't available... this is great.

I would like to see the ability to port user defined variables into functions in the same expression... i.e.

pool=6, dc=7, roll='pool'd10, check(roll#{>'dc'-1}-roll#{1}, roll#{1})

Or something like that. Another neat feature request...

Make changing dice face values on the fly via expressions, target dc being the modifier, with successes changed to a symbol or phrase, and failures to another, or meets yet another.

Thank you for all your hard work, this is an amazing program. :)

[The Former]

By the way, this is quite delayed but if you really want to get fancy, throw "!10" at the end of the roll. This will cause 10's to explode, which I believe is a part of the World of Darkness mechanic, at least if you're talking nWoD. I've never played original flavor VtM so I'm not sure if it's the same.

So I BELIEVE in Sophie's example, it would look like...

roll=6d10!10, check(roll#{>6}-roll#{1}, roll#{1})

You can change that to 9 or 8 when 9-again or 8-again rules are in effect.

[kindredwolf]

Nice, thank you. I'm playing older rules set with Dark Ages setting, but still useful. We haven't been using exploding 10's, but instead been adding an extra die where specialties apply.