Picking Your Dice
Level One is designed around having fun and telling great stories together. Some groups love the tactile satisfaction of rolling handfuls of dice, others prefer quick resolution that keeps dramatic scenes flowing, and still others enjoy the strategic mini-game of optimizing their rolls. All of these approaches work! Pick what sounds fun for your table.
Simple Pool
Perfect for groups who want fast resolution and love throwing lots of dice!
Use any dice you want as long as it has an even distribution of even/odd numbers. Roll dice equal to your EL and count the odd numbers. That’s it! At EL 8, grab eight dice (or eight coins) and let them fly. This is a great option if you don’t have zero-base dice, because it doesn’t matter what the actual numbers are. Just count the dice that roll odd numbers and you’re done.
Extra Effort: If you want to try for better odds of a higher value, just add a few extra effort dice. You decide how many! The more you roll this way, the better the odds of getting a result closer to half the number of dice, but now you’ve introduced the possibility of rolling higher than your EL, which always completely fails with a total effect of zero. This is a risk/reward decision that you totally control. The benefit is finer control of your rolls; the cost is the chance of total failure, and loss of potential critical successes – see Extreme Results.
A Closer Look
If you like simple things, you can skip this section. If you’re a Dice Goblin like some of us, and enjoy pondering the complexities of permutations with your glorious math-rocks, then this may be for you…
Evens/odds is just a simple way to use any dice you have as zero-based d2s…or more accurately, d[0-1]s. There’s generally no reason to ever roll fewer than your EL, since every die you add halves the current odds of rolling a zero total. Extra Effort by adding more dice is just manipulating the curve for better odds at a better roll.
You don’t have to limit yourself to even/odd dice. If you really want finer control over the intensity of that bell curve, you can use any dice you like!
AnyDice
This is great for groups who enjoy “min-max” tactical optimization and don’t mind a bit of math.
For reference, when talking about zero-base dice, we’ll use a special notation. If 3d8 means roll three “normal” eight-sided one-based polyhedra dice, then to be crystal clear, when talking about the equivalent zero base versions, we’ll say 3d[0-7]. You can get this with “normal” dice by just reading the highest side as a zero, or by rolling every die as 1dX-1.
If you are using AnyDice System zero-base dice, there is literally no constraint or restriction, though there are certainly some guidelines that will help.
Want to play it safe at EL13? Just use a Simple Pool and roll 13 dice – 13d[0-1]. With so many dice it’s extremely unlikely you’ll roll a zero – literally better than 8000 to 1 odds. It cannot roll over your EL13 so it’s “safe”, but the odds are equally low of rolling an optimal 13. The more dice you throw, the more the results will tend toward the middle of the range.
Feeling lucky? Try 4d[0-5]! The range is 0-20, but the average is 10, so it’s pretty safe, and you could hit that 13 perfectly… or roll too high and fail. 3d[0-7] (0-21) is swingier and more dangerous. Your choice, your risk, your story.
The dice selection becomes its own strategic layer for players who enjoy that kind of tactical and statistical thinking, while players who just want to roll can grab the most obvious combination and keep the story moving. It really is any dice, so you can still use a Simple Pool, or a single die.
Using Standard Dice
If you’re using standard dice instead of zero-based ones, you can just treat the highest number on each die as zero. A d6 becomes 0-5 (the 6 reads as zero), a d8 becomes 0-7, and so on.
I’d Really Rather Not Deal With All This…
If you absolutely do NOT want to buy new dice we won’t judge. We also completely understand if you don’t want to keep reminding yourself “No, the 8 on my d8 is a zero now…”
The easy solution is Simple Pool, rolling even/odd as zeros and ones. If you don’t like that either, then just use normal dice. You won’t be able to roll zeroes, so it changes the dynamics a bit, but…
The system is robust enough that if you really don’t want to use zero-base dice, it still works. The opposition system still lets enemies cancel out your success, so you can just use what you have and let the results take care of themselves. At EL4 roll a d4, and the GM will use the same rules for your opposition. It won’t be as elegant, but if it works for you, we promise not to tell anyone.
Other Alternatives
Use a deck of playing cards – if you read red/black as even/odd, just deal out however many you want and count the black cards, then shuffle them all back in.
You can use practically any random number generation system. Make a spinner if it makes you happy.
You can even play completely without dice. It will radically change the feel and function of the game, because it shifts more of the mechanics onto tactics and strategy, and making Boosts is going to become very important, but there have been some very successful game systems that have done this.
Just figure out your EL and the opposition, and assume that’s what you each rolled. No swinginess, no randomness; it’s all about the tactics and the story. Have fun!