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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Jan 28, 2015 17:28:51 GMT
Are we discussing whether you could use your second reroll (if you have it) on a dice that turned up 1 both the first and second time or if you could reroll that dice over and over and over again until it turns up something else than 1?
Because that's two different things, and the latter is just a custom of convenience used everywhere else I've played with a dice roller function, one that is not supported by the book. The former however, requires a lot more work to justify an interpretation that you can't do that.
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Post by Damon Nettles on Jan 28, 2015 19:09:43 GMT
I was discussing whether or not it was possible to keep re-rolling until you have no 1s. I never discussed what happens if you have "spare" re-rolls available than the initial number of 1s rolled. As it happens though, I don't think you get to save "spare" re-rolls for a second shot at removing a 1, because I don't think there's such a thing "spare" re-rolls. Let's say my Persuasion is 4; with Attractive, that would allow me to re-roll up to two 1s when I roll a Persuasion test. However, for me to be able to re-roll two 1s, there would have to be two 1s rolled in the initial test. If I only rolled a single 1, then I only get a single re-roll. If that roll comes up a 1, then that's what I get. This is makes sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, the Persuasion test begins and ends with the first set of dice rolled. Attractive allows me to modify that roll after the fact (unlike some other benefits that modify during the test roll), but its effects are dependent on the first roll. So, if I only roll a single 1 on the initial roll, then I only have a single 1 to re-roll. If I rolled two 1s, I could re-roll them both. If I rolled three or more 1s, I could only re-roll two of them. IMO, this is the most straightforward reading of the benefit, and therefore one I believe to be the intended one. If you instead go with the line of reasoning that says that you always have two re-rolls available because you have Persuasion 4 available, you make the benefit more flexible, but also open up some weird (IMO) scenarios. You get not only the scenario where rolling a single 1 in the initial test will allow you to re-roll your re-roll if the first one comes up a 1, but you also get the scenario where, if you get three or more 1s in the initial roll, you could choose to re-roll just one of them and save a re-roll in case it turns up 1 again. I can't imagine why you would want to do so, but you could, and this sort of pointless flexibility leads me to believe that it's not how Attractive is meant to be played.  |
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Post by Ayleth Bartheld on Jan 28, 2015 20:14:31 GMT
Benefit says you may re-roll X amount of 1's. You don't have to, you could choose not to re-roll any of them. It's just how such things are worded, and it is how it would be worded regardless of how it's meant to be played.
However, nowhere in the book (that I know of) is support being offered for a definition that the test begins and ends with the first set of dice rolled. Book definition is "roll a number of dice and add them together", then comes a plethora of benefits that lets you do re-rolls and other modifiers before the result comes up. What you write would require an expansion of the definition of a test.
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Post by Damon Nettles on Jan 28, 2015 22:59:35 GMT
The process of resolving a test is described in chapter 2, but I can see no description of how benefits that allow re-rolls or otherwise affect tests interact with this process. So the rules are actually silent on the matter. Any standardized definition of how benefits interact with the test process would therefore be an expansion. So once again, we (well, the Stranger actually) must ourselves judge the best way to apply benefits and drawbacks to the test process. And I feel my interpretation leads to the quickest resolution of the test without really diminishing the value of the benefit. YMMV.  |
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Post by Symon Kytley on Jan 29, 2015 0:09:42 GMT
The process of resolving a test is described in chapter 2, but I can see no description of how benefits that allow re-rolls or otherwise affect tests interact with this process. So the rules are actually silent on the matter. Any standardized definition of how benefits interact with the test process would therefore be an expansion. There is no need to explain whether or not a rerolled die is part of the test. Per page 28, the test doesn't end until the narrator describes the outcome. A die reroll happens between "Step One: Player Declares the Action" and "Step Seven: The Narrator Describes the Outcome". Thus a die rerolled by the Attractive benefit is a die rolled as part of a Persuasion test. Thus the Attractive benefit applies to it, so long as the limit on rerolls has not been reached. So once again, we (well, the Stranger actually) must ourselves judge the best way to apply benefits and drawbacks to the test process. And I feel my interpretation leads to the quickest resolution of the test without really diminishing the value of the benefit. YMMV. Your interpretation is no quicker, and does diminish the value of the benefit. Say I have Attractive, 4 persuasion (so 2 rerolls), and 2 bonus dice of convince. Assume I am rolling against a an Intrigue Defense of 10. In Orokos I make a roll like the following: Persuade(convince): 6d6k4 19 1d6 3 1d6 6Of course, that is a terrible example as it has no 1s. So let me create a trio of hypothetical cases. Hypothetical #1 (an example we both agree on)6d6k4: 19 [6d6k4=[6, 5, 4, 4], 1, 1] 1d6: 1 [1d6=1] 1d6: 6 [1d6=6] As I got 2 1s and get two rerolls, I substitute in the two 1d6 rolls, which yields [[6, 6, 5, 4], 4, 1] which gives a total of 21, for 3 DoS. There are 3 steps: roll, substitute, and add. Hypothetical #2a (your interpretation: a reroll cannot be rerolled)6d6k4: 19 [6d6k4=[6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] 1d6: 1 [1d6=1] 1d6: 6 [1d6=6] As I got 2 1s and get two rerolls, I substitute in the first reroll, which yields [6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] which gives a total of 19 for 2 DoS. There are 3 steps: roll, substitute, and add. Hypothetical #2b (my interpretation: a reroll that comes up as a 1 can be rerolled as long as the limits are respected)6d6k4: 19 [6d6k4=[6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] 1d6: 1 [1d6=1] 1d6: 6 [1d6=6] As I got 2 1s and get two rerolls, I substitute in the first of the rerolls, but as it is also a 1, I substitute in the next reroll, which yields [[6, 6, 5, 4], 4, 3] which gives a total of 21, for 3 DoS. There are 3 steps: roll, substitute, and add. All three cases take the same 3 steps, so neither 2a nor 2b are any faster than the other (or case 1). Thus the claim that your interpretation is the quickest is false. Further, case 2a yields one less DoS than case 2b despite all the same values being rolled. Thus the claim that your interpretation does not diminish the benefit is also false. My mileage varies significantly. |
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Post by Damon Nettles on Jan 29, 2015 16:52:56 GMT
I believe the bolded part is the real point of contention here. If you're going to use the test process on p. 28 as evidence that you can re-roll a re-roll, then there had better be something in the process that addresses this - but there isn't. With a benefit that allows re-rolls when a certain number comes up, the actual application of the benefit must necessarily occur during step 5 (sum the dice, apply modifiers), but that tells you nothing about how to use the Attractive benefit. Steps 6 and 7 are certainly part of the process of resolving the test, but no dice are rolled there, so they have no impact on how to apply a re-roll benefit in a test situation.
You made a mistake here. You only got a single 1 in the initial roll, so it should read as follows:
6d6k4: 19 [6d6k4=[6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] 1d6: 1 [1d6=1] 1d6: 6 [1d6=6]
As I got a single 1 when rolling 6d6k4, I get one reroll, which is another 1, yielding no change.
Again, you got a single 1, not two, but I'm assuming that's a typo in this case. And yes, in this case being able to re-roll the re-roll got you a better result. But in reality you already had a 5/6 chance of improving your first roll without needing the second re-roll. So yes, losing the option of re-rolling a single die 1/6 of the time seems an inconsequential loss to me. (Of course, since I've read the benefit as working this way from the start, I don't see a loss at all.)
As for the steps required when rolling, I think there are more of them than you do, but whether or not there's a gain to be made using my interpretation of Attractive depends on how stringent you are when rolling with orokos. Comparing hypothetical 2a with 2b, the net savings is one die roll on orokos. You could circumvent that by just rolling 2d6 in hypothetical 2b, but that might make checking the dice rolls confusing for the narrator (or anyone else).
So from where I stand, we're arguing about making an improvement to the initial roll go from "very likely" to a "near certainty", but only when you happen to have more re-rolls available than the initial number needed. IMO this introduces an unnecessary exception to the basic functioning of the benefit. It also likely requires you to make at least one extra die roll on orokos compared to my reading of the benefit.
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Post by Symon Kytley on Jan 29, 2015 23:09:11 GMT
I believe the bolded part is the real point of contention here. If you're going to use the test process on p. 28 as evidence that you can re-roll a re-roll, then there had better be something in the process that addresses this - but there isn't. With a benefit that allows re-rolls when a certain number comes up, the actual application of the benefit must necessarily occur during step 5 (sum the dice, apply modifiers), but that tells you nothing about how to use the Attractive benefit. Steps 6 and 7 are certainly part of the process of resolving the test, but no dice are rolled there, so they have no impact on how to apply a re-roll benefit in a test situation. I don't think the bolded part is what we are disagreeing on; if I have used one reroll and I have a limit of two I have not reached the limit, regardless of whether my rerolls apply to a die I have already rerolled. Ah, I see the issue. You see the benefit as coming into play after the roll is made (part of step 5, while I see it as being part of the roll itself (i.e. part of step 4). As far as I can tell rolling dice belongs with rolling dice, not with addition. You made a mistake here. You only got a single 1 in the initial roll, so it should read as follows: 6d6k4: 19 [6d6k4=[6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] 1d6: 1 [1d6=1] 1d6: 6 [1d6=6]As I got a single 1 when rolling 6d6k4, I get one reroll, which is another 1, yielding no change. The only mistake I made was a copy/paste error. The second line should read: "As I got one '1', I substitute in the first reroll (also a '1'), which yields [6, 5, 4, 4], 3, 1] which gives a total of 19 for 2 DoS." What you may be missing is that because I cannot know how many rerolls I will need, I rolled them all up front; this means that no matter how many 1s I roll I only ever need to make one orokos roll. Here is the actual orokos roll I based the examples on: Persuade(convince): 6d6k4 19 1d6 3 1d6 6I had put it in that post, but it was a long post so you may have overlooked it. This roll has no 1s, so if it were a real test I would just stop at the 19 and ignore the 3 and the 6 completely. Just as an FYI, the roller code used was "6d6k4;1d6;1d6". Again, you got a single 1, not two, but I'm assuming that's a typo in this case. And yes, in this case being able to re-roll the re-roll got you a better result. But in reality you already had a 5/6 chance of improving your first roll without needing the second re-roll. So yes, losing the option of re-rolling a single die 1/6 of the time seems an inconsequential loss to me. (Of course, since I've read the benefit as working this way from the start, I don't see a loss at all.) Ah, yes, it was a copy/paste error in both cases. The second line should read: "As I got one '1', I substitute in the first of the rerolls, but as it is also a 1, I then substitute in the next reroll, which yields [[6, 6, 5, 4], 4, 3] which gives a total of 21, for 3 DoS." As for the steps required when rolling, I think there are more of them than you do, but whether or not there's a gain to be made using my interpretation of Attractive depends on how stringent you are when rolling with orokos. Comparing hypothetical 2a with 2b, the net savings is one die roll on orokos. You could circumvent that by just rolling 2d6 in hypothetical 2b, but that might make checking the dice rolls confusing for the narrator (or anyone else). Again, I think you have missed that in each hypothetical case there was only ever one orokos roll. I could have used "6d6k4;2d6", but as you noted that reports the sum of the re-rolls, which is not useful and can be confusing (though it does save a little typing). I prefer the multiple 1d6 rolls myself, though with a larger number of rerolls it could get messy (I doubt we will see more than 3aytime soon, so that shouldn't be an issue). The point is that regardless of your interpretation or mine there is no need for any more than the three steps: 1) Make an orokos roll including all possible rerolls. 2) Check the roll for any 1s, make substitutions as necessary. 3) Add up the new total. |
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Post by Damon Nettles on Feb 2, 2015 19:58:31 GMT
I actually didn't know you could do that! That certainly puts paid to my idea that it would take longer to do the necessary rolls in orokos with your interpretation. But that's also all that's proven...  Honestly though, the point about my way being quicker is just a sideshow. Even if I had been correct regarding orokos, it wouldn't really have contributed anything to explaining how Attractive and similar re-roll benefits and drawbacks are meant to function. Your points below remain the crux of the issue, so I'll go through my arguments one more time and then call it a day. I think you're skipping past the conditional nature of Attractive and similar benefits/drawbacks, and so you've ended up putting the cart before the horse. Let's use Danger Sense as an example, since it was also mentioned earlier in this thread. It states that you may re-roll all 1s on initiative tests. If no 1s come up when rolling for initiative, then obviously no dice can be re-rolled. The only difference between Danger Sense and Attractive is that the latter places a cap on how many 1s you can re-roll. So, in order to know whether either benefit can be used, you must first know how many 1s there are in the original roll. If you read the examples appended to each of the steps in the test process, you'll notice that it's only in step 5 that the player reads the results of the dice roll and thus notes which numbers she got. Therefore, it is only at this point that the player can even know whether or not she can use Danger Sense or Attractive. I think it's important to set aside online dicerollers when discussing how these benefits are supposed to work. The rules only discuss playing with physical dice (see p. 27), so it's reasonable to assume that the entire test process and all the benefits are written with this in mind. Let's go back to Danger Sense; while you can program orokos to simply re-roll any 1s until there are no more of them, you can't do that when using physical dice. You must first roll your test dice and bonus dice (step 4), then read off the number of 1s (step 5), and only then do you know how many dice to re-roll. By reading Danger Sense as allowing infinite re-rolls until you have no more 1s, you would also be turning the initiative test into a form of open-ended roll. I've played a number of systems that used open-ended rolls (e.g. Star Wars d6, WFRP 2e and Rolemaster), and all of them went to great pains to explain that you keep rolling until you stop getting the trigger number (a 6, a 10 or a critical range). Neither Danger Sense nor Attractive do that. Since open-ended rolls are not a feature of the SIFRP test mechanic, it seems implausible to me that such a feature would be introduced via benefits, with no clarification that this is intended. Instead, both Attractive and Danger Sense just say that you may re-roll 1s. Therefore, the more likely interpretation is the simpler one; you re-roll as many 1s as you got in the original test, and you only re-roll each 1 a single time. With Attractive, you are also limited in how many 1s you can re-roll in the first case. |
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Post by Symon Kytley on Feb 2, 2015 21:42:23 GMT
Damon, there is no reason that one could not roll any arbitrarily large number of dice physically or virtually so long as they have a sequence. The rules examples are written in the way most people would because it is easier, but it is not necessary as both methods are mathematically equivalent. Thus the traditional physical method and the virtual method with the rerolls prerolled will always produce the same value. All that changes is an arbitrary time-factor. I can do out a mathematical proof if you would like, but Im typing on my phone at the moment.
Regardless of whether the benefits apply in step 4 or 5 is irrelevant. Either way a 1 on a rerolled die is a 1 rolled during the test and thus as written the benefit applies.
If Danger Sense has no limit then I would see no problem with using the 'r1' Orokos code.
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Post by Damon Nettles on Feb 2, 2015 22:52:36 GMT
Please don't bother! This horse is deader than a doornail. Beating it further serves no purpose.
I think there are clear and easily identified limitations in the text of the benefits and the steps in which a test is carried out, and you don't. End of story!
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Post by Stranger on Feb 4, 2015 0:49:08 GMT
Attractive and all other benefits now officially will give the specified number of rerolls, there should be few to no r1's in your Orokos rolls now. Secondly, the number of rerolls you get do allow you to reroll any 1s (even those rolled from another rerolled die). This is of course limited by your reroll number.
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Honestly though, the point about my way being quicker is just a sideshow. Even if I had been correct regarding orokos, it wouldn't really have contributed anything to explaining how Attractive and similar re-roll benefits and drawbacks are meant to function. 
