Echelon’s Advantage Dice System started as a straight roll-with-advantage system and has grown dice pool elements (mostly for measuring critical success). You get a ‘tier die’ (based on your level) for any check you can try, then various talents can add more dice based on the tier of the talent. That is, if you are a ‘veteran’ character (nominally equivalent to a first-level D&D character) you have a d8 tier die. If you have a talent at the veteran tier that applies to your check, you can roll 2d8 take the higher one; if the supporting talent is only at the expert tier you would roll d8+d6 and use the higher value. Depending on the check, you might count successes after the first to determine additional effects.
We use Roll20 as our virtual tabletop and I could not see how to handle this. The obvious things I tried didn’t work.
Last night, we had our first session of Savage Worlds: Weird Wars Rome, and I saw how to create and select from a group of rolls. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised it uses braces (‘{‘ and ‘}’), which are often used in math as set indicators.
So, to roll ‘Echelon style’ I have two options, for the two ways they are rolled.
- /r {d8, d8, d6}k1
- This rolls two d8 and one d6, keeping the highest value.
- /r {d8, d8, d6}>5
- This rolls two d8 and one d6, counting the number that rolled at least 5.
Now, if I can find a way to make a character sheet that can differentiate between talent types (because different talent types can be rolled together, while two talents of the same type cannot) and association talents to the underlying rolls, I think I’ll have everything I need to build Echelon character sheets in Roll20.
It’s coming together.