Attributes and Exploding Dice

One of the ways in which this edition of the MTDAA RPG hybridizes (and yeah, that’s a word. I was surprised too) previous games is in the way attribute ratings are assigned. Each of the four attributes is rated as a dice value, ranging from D4 (below average) to D12 (supreme). You roll this die (with modifiers based on either traits or saves) for actions, resists or results. I’m reserving the D20 for the big guys (sparrows, frogs and garter snakes).

I like this because it means that even if you roll D12, the little D4 has a chance of success against you; sure, the D4 doesn’t have a good chance, but it’s a chance.

And did I mention that dice explode? This is probably my favorite piece of the system, because it makes anything possible, but anomalies grow increasingly less likely the larger the die is. On your D4, you have a 25% chance of the die exploding, so you have a reasonable shot when rolling D4 of ending up with a 6 or 7 on the die. At the higher end, your D10 only explodes 10% of the time, so you can get a result of 17 or 18, but you’ll have to get pretty lucky for it to happen. There are no limits to dice explosions, so it’s possible to roll 3 10’s in a row (although even my limited background in statistics shows me that’s a 1 in 1000 shot), but it can happen, and you can end up rolling 30+ on a D10.

This has cool carryover effects to other parts of the system, but I'll talk about these as we go...