Tweaking My Favorite System (Dice Pools)

[BentonGrey]

Howdy guys! BASH remains one of my favorite systems, but my crew and I like dice pools, so we're giong to try out some of the alternate rules for our next campaign. Does anyone have any advice or special houserules that they think help the system work with dice pools instead of multipliers?

[BASHMAN]

You are going to use the ones from the optional rules section of the book? Personally I would go with either d6 success count (6 counts as 2 successes) or roll 1d12 per multiplier.

But little known fact, before it used dice, the very first playtest of BASH! used the playing card method.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks for the response! We ended up going with the d12s, and we all really liked it. We still got some pretty explosive rolls from time to time, and it all worked pretty well. The only issue is that it makes modifiers a little fuzzy at times because obviously dice modifiers aren't nearly as powerful.

[BASHMAN]

Thanks for the response! We ended up going with the d12s, and we all really liked it. We still got some pretty explosive rolls from time to time, and it all worked pretty well. The only issue is that it makes modifiers a little fuzzy at times because obviously dice modifiers aren't nearly as powerful.

For the Dice Modifiers, you should be adding those *per die*. I would also allow that to apply to exploded dice.

So if you have were rolling +2x4, that would go to 4d12 w/ +2 to each d12.

So if you rolled 2, 4, 7, 12, (and the 12 exploded to be a 5), you would have a result of 4+6+9+14+7 = 40.

But I'm glad to hear it was working out!

[BentonGrey]

Ohh, that's an elegant solution! Thanks man!

[BentonGrey]

Howdy folks, I'm starting a new arc of our ongoing superhero campaign using these modified BASH dicepool rules, and I've got a question for y'all. If you're using dice pools, how do you handle critical failures? Obviously, if you've got multiple dice, the chances of all of them coming up "1" are pretty low, so what do you use instead? I was thinking making it 'over half 1s' is a critical failure. Anyone else having played this style that might have some suggestions?

[BASHMAN]

Are you rolling a pile of d12s and counting up the total? Or are you rolling a pile of d6s and counting all the 4-5 as a 'success" and every 6 as 2 successes?

If you are doing the pile of d12s method, I think you have a good idea-- if at least half the dice come up a 1 it is a fumble or auto-failure or something. Of course, if you roll 1d12 or 2d12, it is going to come up more often!