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Here's a simple rule variant that warms my hard, cold, large-dice-pool hating heart.
You roll a maximum of 10 dice. Nothing pushes past this cap (with the exception of dice from 8-, 9-, or 10-again). You've exceeded the point where do I succeed is really an interesting question. Now, we care about how much you succeed.
If you exceed the limit by two dice, put a die on the table showing an 8. If you have any number of successes in your actual roll, add that 8 to the pool and be happy - it's an extra success!
If you exceed the limit by two more dice, replace that 8 with a 9. Two more dice give you a 10, with all the delicious, lovely exploding action that entails.
You hit 18+ dice? Add another die showing an 8, and start the process all over again.
For example:
If you'd be rolling 22 dice, you instead roll 10 dice, and get to add two 10s to your pool if you succeed.
You're a vamp with Strength 3, Vigor 1, and Brawl 2. That's 6 dice for punching people! If you burned 3 Vitae on Blood Buffing, you'd roll 10 dice and get an automatic 8 added to a (successful) roll.
The Man Your Man Could Talk Like, a mortal with a 5 in Presence, 5 in Persuasion, and Persuasion speciality in "While Shirtless" would be rolling 10 dice to persuade people, with or without a shirt. If he burns Willpower on the roll, he adds a 9 to the roll if it's successful.
• Yeah, you really aren't trading out dice for successes efficiently. You're essentially trading 6 dice for a free success and a die that slinks past the limit. I did it this way to prevent people with 20-dice pools from rocking automatic Exceptional Successes on appropriate actions. Now you have to be rocking a 30-die pool, which is still doable, just not as easy to get.
• Want to go whole-hog? Anything that gives you bonus Successes on successful rolls instead counts as twice that number of past-the-cap dice... even if you haven't reached the cap. So Strength Performance •••• (which normally gives two bonus Successes) would instead give you an automatic 9 on any successful Strength roll... making 9-Again always useful for such rolls.
• Similarly, you can do this with stuff that gives you an Exceptional Success with three successes instead of five - they count as four dice past the cap regardless of whether you've hit the cap. This and the previous bullet-point exist mostly so you can stick the two onto one roll and not get an automatic Exceptional Success on a successful roll.
• Hell, want to go too far? All weapons now have a Weapon Bonus of +0 - instead, they count as adding twice their weapon bonus in past-the-cap dice. This reduces damage by a lot, but makes damage a bit more variable. If you go with this, I suggest comboing it with the Conditions as Health variant spoiled for Hurt Locker.
You roll a maximum of 10 dice. Nothing pushes past this cap (with the exception of dice from 8-, 9-, or 10-again). You've exceeded the point where do I succeed is really an interesting question. Now, we care about how much you succeed.
If you exceed the limit by two dice, put a die on the table showing an 8. If you have any number of successes in your actual roll, add that 8 to the pool and be happy - it's an extra success!
If you exceed the limit by two more dice, replace that 8 with a 9. Two more dice give you a 10, with all the delicious, lovely exploding action that entails.
You hit 18+ dice? Add another die showing an 8, and start the process all over again.
For example:
If you'd be rolling 22 dice, you instead roll 10 dice, and get to add two 10s to your pool if you succeed.
You're a vamp with Strength 3, Vigor 1, and Brawl 2. That's 6 dice for punching people! If you burned 3 Vitae on Blood Buffing, you'd roll 10 dice and get an automatic 8 added to a (successful) roll.
The Man Your Man Could Talk Like, a mortal with a 5 in Presence, 5 in Persuasion, and Persuasion speciality in "While Shirtless" would be rolling 10 dice to persuade people, with or without a shirt. If he burns Willpower on the roll, he adds a 9 to the roll if it's successful.
• Yeah, you really aren't trading out dice for successes efficiently. You're essentially trading 6 dice for a free success and a die that slinks past the limit. I did it this way to prevent people with 20-dice pools from rocking automatic Exceptional Successes on appropriate actions. Now you have to be rocking a 30-die pool, which is still doable, just not as easy to get.
• Want to go whole-hog? Anything that gives you bonus Successes on successful rolls instead counts as twice that number of past-the-cap dice... even if you haven't reached the cap. So Strength Performance •••• (which normally gives two bonus Successes) would instead give you an automatic 9 on any successful Strength roll... making 9-Again always useful for such rolls.
• Similarly, you can do this with stuff that gives you an Exceptional Success with three successes instead of five - they count as four dice past the cap regardless of whether you've hit the cap. This and the previous bullet-point exist mostly so you can stick the two onto one roll and not get an automatic Exceptional Success on a successful roll.
• Hell, want to go too far? All weapons now have a Weapon Bonus of +0 - instead, they count as adding twice their weapon bonus in past-the-cap dice. This reduces damage by a lot, but makes damage a bit more variable. If you go with this, I suggest comboing it with the Conditions as Health variant spoiled for Hurt Locker.
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