Hello, fellow gamers. I have a thought about BitD rules which I would like to share with you.
After running eight sessions of Blades, I’m really liking the system. It’s pretty complex and it requires more system mastery than I thought at the beginning (or at least pbta experience), but every rule makes a lot of sense and supports the game style really well.
My only issue is with dice mechanics. Although they do look beautiful and elegant to behold, I have found two problems.
1) it’s difficult for players to understand the probabilities of outcomes at each level, which leads to players not getting when they should push themselves, which I think is important for players to be able to, in order to manage their stress and other resources meaningfully. It might get better with experience, but it requires a lot of it.
2) by comparing the dice probabilities with the standard PbtA dice mechanics (level 0 being equal to -2 with the standard PbtA 2d6), I found that the chance of success is about 10% higher across the spectrum, at the expense of failure. Success is usually the most boring outcome, so I find the die roll outcome not as interesting as with PbtA dice, especially combined with issue #1. At higher levels, the chance to fail is too low, and the chance of critical success remains low even at higher levels.
A potential “fix” would be to roll 2d6, and take the level (number of dice) as a bonus to the roll, with a result of 8- being a fail, a 9-11 being a mixed result, a 12-13 being a success and a 14+ being a crit. (That is to account for a -2 difference between PbtA stats and BitD dice.)
Yes, adding and removing dice looks much prettier than just adding bonuses, but I feel the 2d6 curve of PbtA gives a better flow to the game.
My question is: has anyone else felt the same issues? Do you think that this house rule fix is worth it, at the expense of the elegance of system?