Botches

I always knew there was a problem with the Botching system in Changeling, but I had no idea it was quite as bad as it is. My intuition told me that, except vs Difficulty 10, a greater number of dice should mean a greater number of successes and therefore a decreased chance of Botching. However, when I made a slight modification to Botching to try to give an alternative to a modification Mistypaw suggested on the Changeling forum, I finally decided to mathematically check the figures. I'm not going in to math details, however here is an intuitive exercise:

Your chance of rolling a 1 on any die increases with the number of dice you roll. Your chance of succeeding on any die also increases (at a greater rate than rolling 1's), but at difficulty 6 and higher, your chance of failure on any die increases at the same (or a higher) rate! That means that having more dice doesn't help the ratio of #successes/#failures. You may get more actual successes, but you'll get even more failures. Then, to tip the scale, your chance of rolling a one (included in those failures) is increasing all the time (for more than two dice). All you need to Botch is more 1s than successes - you don't need at least half the dice to be 1s, or any other ratio test! So there goes the camel's back...

My alternative:

I came up with this a while back to use in a game I am planning to release and publish sometime in the future, but, because I love Changeling and our forum regulars so much, I'm putting this part of my system in the public domain:

• Rolling 1 die: if it's a 1, you Botch.
• Rolling 2 dice: if both dice show 1 or 2, you Botch.
• Rolling 3 dice: if every die shows 1 through 3, you Botch.
• Rolling 4 or more dice: if every die you roll shows 1 through 4, you Botch.

Percent chances to Botch by above (vs any difficulty):

1 die: 10%
2 dice: 4%
3: 2.7%
4: 2.56%
5: 1.02%
6: 0.41%

Rolling a one does NOT take away successes - but botching precludes any successes. In this manner, difficulties 2 through 4 are still viable. Take an example roll of 3, 2, 2, 1, 7, 8 (on six dice) vs difficulty 3. Since two dice are above 4, the roll is not a botch - in fact, it has three successes.

This should help in your games!

Jhardhel'Healdan Rules Botches	Site Map