We want to port our old Vampire the Requiem game into V5.
What would be a good analogue for the 9-again mechanic? Would it be more dice, would around 2 suffice, or is that already too much?
Maybe the ability to add an extra success if successful?
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\$\begingroup\$ Ouch, you try to convert from Revised Storytelling System (chronicles of darkness... 2nd ed?) into V5, which is porting from one path diverging from the original storyteller system and a massive makeover later to another path diverging from it? \$\endgroup\$– TrishJan 22, 2022 at 11:39
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2 Answers
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Okay — having checked the probability chart and seen the effects of granting 9-again in Chronicles of Darkness games, my suggested analogue would be allowing 9s to count as 10s for the purposes of confirming criticals. That is, rolling a 10 and a 9 gives four successes, just like rolling a 10 and a 10 does. This doesn't help you turn failure into success, but it does mean that when you succeed, you can get extraordinary results, which is what 9-again tended to do. If you want to take 8-again, have paired 9s work the same as having paired 10s.
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\$\begingroup\$ Do you have a more readable version of that probability chart? At least to me, the one you've linked looks so tiny that it's pretty much unreadable. (I'm not sure if it's because the original image is small or because the image host is doing something silly. But either way, I can't read any of the text because it's only a few pixels tall and blurry.) \$\endgroup\$ Jan 24, 2022 at 3:05
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\$\begingroup\$ @IlmariKaronen I don't; all the sources I used back in the day have succumbed to time and link rot. \$\endgroup\$– JadascJan 24, 2022 at 3:13
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As a disclaimer, I never played New World of Darkness, but I'm familiar with Old World, which V5 is basically a return to, and I'm roughly familiar with V5's particular new system.
In OWoD, there was something like 9-again, 10s on a roll with specialty exploded, which is to say, every die that came up a 10 when you had a specialty in the task, added a new die to your pool, with no real limit, but statistics tended to limit it well.
V5, as you well know, doesn't do that kind of thing. However, it does say that 10s count double, and two tens are a critical, adding two additional successes on top of the ones showing on the dice.
Looking at Anydice, in NWoD, you have a slightly higher chance of getting one success on any pool greater than 2.
However, V5's method means that, if you're rolling 2 dice, basically, bare minimum for most things, you have slightly better chances overall, from getting at least 1 success, up to getting 4 successes (Which technically should be the chance of getting 6 successes, because of the critical rules. I had to find formulas, because anydice formula writing is still dark magic to me). Not only that, but because of 10s automatically counting twice, you have slightly better chances of more successes overall.
Anydice results for 9-again and doubleten
Now, what does this mean for adding 9-again to V5? Well, basically it means that you're overall boosting successes very slightly. Anydice results for V5 with 9-again
The increase is fairly small, statistically, so you'd probably be fine to just add in 9-again as is. Mind you, though, it seems the target number in NWOD was 8, and the target number in V5 is 6, meaning, all other things being equal, your players will likely be rolling more successes already.
But I think you would be fine to just add on "9s give another die to roll, that doesn't not then continue exploding." It won't affect statistics too much, and it might ease some changeover anxiety/hesitency.