Aberrant Mega-Attributes: Adding Dice vs Reducing Difficulty

[JamesShazbond]

In Aberrant, Mega-Attributes, with the exception of Mega-Strength, allow you to either add your Mega-Attribute dots as dice to relevant rolls, or use them to reduce the difficulty of relevant rolls. What are the benefits of each approach, and when should you do one or the other?

[Justin OOC]

when adding the mega att scores as dice, you roll them and any success counts as 2 successes towards the needed total.  If it rolls as a 10, it is 3 successes.

performing actions under stress, or under various circumstances can incur a difficulty penalty to the roll, meaning you'd need additional successes.   Using mega att score dice to reduce this value works on a One for One scale.

I personally have found that rolling the mega attribute die gives much better rewards, though it isn't always certain.   Using them to reduce difficulty really works in games where your GM is going to apply all those difficulty modifiers, but if the GM isn't doing so, it's generally better to roll the dice.

[SalmonMax]

When you can reduce difficulty, it's probably a better idea. Reducing difficulty is a static bonus...a benefit that doesn't require a random roll on a dice to have a concrete impact. More dice mean more potential for success, but it could still come up less than 7 and net you no benefit.

The exception, of course, is if the difficulty is already zero, in which case pile on extra dice.

It's also worth considering that mega-dice often count as two successes per success (or 3 on a 10), so that can shift the debate a bit. It's still a 40% chance of getting a success at all per die, which isn't great odds, but since the benefits of getting a success are larger, one can argue that it's better to just roll as many as you can and let them stack.

To take that into account, I'd say if you're rolling a larger pool of mega-dice, that makes the odds of those extra successes stacking higher than canceled difficulty more. So if you have a lot of dice, and the difficulty is low...roll the dice.

If you don't have a lot of dice, and the difficulty is higher, cancel them.

Or if you just feel lucky...roll away.

[Noir]

Remember, they are not just added as regular dice, but added as Mega Dice so rolling a 7, 8 or 9 rolled on a mega dice counts as two successes and each 10 rolled on a mega dice counts as 3.

As far as when to roll the fice or reduce the difficulty, or fo a bit of each, it is all situational. Your dice pool composition (non-mega to mega dice) and the base difficulty bring the main factors.

Generally, it is better to roll the.mega dice, but if you have a smaller dicepool, then sometimes lowering the difficulty for a roll you really need to make is the better option.

Also, individual playstyles matter. Some people are more risk takers. Heh.