FFG Dice and You

FFG Dice and You

Still don't understand the FFG dice, even after reading the beginner booklet, core book, AND watching the three training videos?
Need someone to explain the mechanics to you?
Well /swg/ is here to help!

Unfortunately, the dice system is a lot easier to learn by doing than by explaining. I'll do my best, however.

Your pool starts with your positive dice - those are Ability (green) and Proficiency (yellow) dice. You start with Ability dice equal to the larger of your ranks in a Statistic (Brawn, Intellect, Presence, etc) or your ranks in a Skill (like Melee, Medicine, or Charm, etc). Then you change out Ability dice for Proficiency dice based on the smaller of your Statistic or Skill. That's called Upgrading your dice, since a single Proficiency die is better than a single Ability die.

So say you wanted to hack a computer. That requires the Computers Skill and the Intellect Statistic. You have a Computers of 1 and an Intellect of 3. So you start with 3 Ability dice (equal to your Intellect), then upgrade 1 of them to a Proficiency die (equal to your Computers skill).

At the same time, the inherent difficulty of the check adds difficulty dice (purple). Simple checks have less difficulty dice, and harder ones have more difficulty dice. We'll say this is an unprotected computer terminal, so it's an Easy (1 purple die) check.

So for hacking into that computer, your basic dice pool is 2 green dice, 1 yellow die, and 1 purple die.

So you roll your dice and then you compare the symbols. Successes are the starbusts, and failures are the plain triangles - they counter each other. To succeed at a check, you need at least one more success than failure.

There's other symbols besides simple success and failure, though. Advantage is the two little wings, and Threat is the hexagon with the circle in the middle. They cancel each other out, too. They represent good or bad things happening that aren't straight success or failure, like finding extra data when hacking or setting off an alarm.

The last two symbols are Triumph and Despair. Triumph is the lightsabery-looking thing in a circle on Proficiency dice, and Despair is the hollow triangle with a circle around it on the scary red Challenge die. They also count as a Success and a Failure symbol, and those cancel each other as normal. However, Despair and Triumph DON'T counter each other - it's possible, though unlikely to have both in a single result. Triumph means something REALLY good happened, and Despair means something REALLY bad happened.

So you roll your dice and we'll say you get 2 successes, an advantage, a threat, and a failure. One failure and one success cancel each other, and the the advantage and threat cancel each other as well, leaving you with one success - so you succeeded at your hacking attempt and now have access to the terminal.

That's the basic system. There's more to it, like adding Boost and Setback dice for environmental effects, plus numerous things that add, remove, upgrade, or downgrade dice, but that's the basics of constructing a skill pool, rolling it, and comparing the symbols.