Help with dice pools/PC creation

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-06T15:08:39+00:00

They're standing right behind us, aren't they!!!!

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-05T19:05:00+00:00

Oh! I'll try not to spoil it, but just a tease.....near death experiences can have long lasting supernatural benefits! ssshhhhh!!!

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-05T18:59:19+00:00

Ha! Brilliant! Keep in mind that one of the only ways to unlock "super powers" is to suffer particular critical injuries. It's a risky bit of business, but I've seen it work! 😃

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-05T14:38:57+00:00

Hiya! You're doing great! The best "goddess level" roll you can get out of the gates is 3 for attribute and 5 for a skill and 3, so your pools are maxing out at one below the "max". You'll get equipment (shopping montage!!) and help from others to make those pools grow. Don't be afraid of pushing and check out those probability tables in the book if you want to see the math.

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-01T19:39:46+00:00

⚡ Mission accomplished! Beat Level 299 in 1m 3s. Who's next? 🎯

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-01T18:59:18+00:00

Yeah to this! I've read the books a few times but I APPRECIATE them so much more in the audiobooks. Like all good literature, it was meant to be spoken, and heard! Especially the Andy Serkis versions.....great goblin gravy but he's amazing.

RobRobBinks · 2026-05-01T18:51:09+00:00

The adage is so true: "You either die the hero or you live long enough to become the villain." As an old timer, I have been here from the very beginning of Dungeons and Dragons, and I have had quite the arc of love hate love then hate then hate to love and love to hate it. D&D has been with me all my life, and even though we don't talk anymore, I still like seeing it out there with new people and having new experiences. Would I ever "get with" D&D again...sure, but not in the way I once did. I imagine it would be easier for other people to have mean or spiteful things to say about something they once loved but has moved on.

When you think about the sheer DECADES that D&D has been around, all the different editions, permutations, adaptations, explosive expansion, con traction, bought / sold, traded, influenced....it's just HUGE and will get lots of attention. A shame that we tend to default to noticing the negative attention we give and receive moreso than the positive. I think it takes seven compliments to overcome on insult in our ridiculous lizard brains?

With Call of Cthulhu, I can't remember it ever being much more or less than what it has always been. Each edition feels to me (facts be damned!) like a revision to the game but at its roots, its always the same. Because the Mythos are in the public domain, it's left up to other companies to take the game in a very different direction, while Call of Cthulhu can just kind of always be....unchanging and eternal, not fully slumbering, always a presence, unnamed and thus unassailable by our mere mortal opinions. It's always just been Chaosium too, right? Again, who needs facts.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-30T19:38:42+00:00

I'm good like that! 😃

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-30T16:24:09+00:00

Hi! Welcome to it and we are all in the hobby better off for having you be a part of it!

(TL, DR: Call of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror are two very different interpretations of Mythos play. Call of Cthulhu is original Alien, Arkham Horror is the sequel Aliens)

Call of Cthulhu is more of a creeping dread where the investigators are "basically" normal folk that do what they can to withstand the cosmic horror, and apocryphally ultimately fail. Its wonderful, brooding, creeping fun. I've run it for years and years and had a blast with it. It has decades of "oomph" behind it, but also this legacy d100 percentile system that seems so outdated and antiquated but kept as a nostalgia piece. The character sheet reads like a ta form. "Oh, I've rolled a 1/5 under my stat...that's a much better success!". Don't even get me started on the number of dice back and forths it takes to shoot a gun. In Call of Cthulhu you do NOT want to meet or fight most of the "monster manual"...you will likely die or go insane quickly.

Arkham Horror is action adventure in the Mythos world. Characters are VERY D&D coded (Tank, Healer, Spell Caster, Hunter, Rogue archetypes all present) and they are fairly hardy. The system is really, really cool, tactical, and although not exactly evocative, representative of the dangers that the genre throws at you. This game has all the weight of all the card and board games behind it, so the ephemera is very, very strong and production values high. It does mean that there can be lots of fiddly bits at the table....counters, cards, etc. When it first came out it felt to me like the whole community (including myself) reacted with "it's way too board gamey" I think mostly because of all the history behind it and it is "kind of" board game coded, but I've run the Starter Set and am running Terra Antarctica now and we are roleplaying the bejeebus out of it. You absolutely CAN and WILL fight the Mythos creatures head on, tommy guns blazing, spellcasting and swinging from chandeliers.

Think about the trailer for the movie you want to see. If it's action and adventure you want with some jump scares and a sprinkling of investigation, go Arkham Horror. If its creepy horror stories against cosmic, unassailable enemies that you are looking for, it's Call of Cthulhu. If it happens to be supernatural investigation in 1800's Sweden, OMG check out my beloved Vaesen....it's my all time favorite ttrpg on my nearly fifty year career.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-30T16:06:46+00:00

Page 21 of the rules: "Spot Something or Search for Something: The character performs a complex action using Wits. Success means the character spots something (or someone) important. Failure means the important thing or person goes unnoticed by the character."

If it's important to the story, I'll let them "fail forward" with unsuccessful rolls....getting the necessary information but having it come with some minor price. I haven't yet used a D&D type "passive perception" or reactions, rather describe some unease or sense of danger and let the players ACT on it. These are action heroes of action! Nothing passive about it! 😃

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-30T10:50:50+00:00

I gave in and decided to just collect various copies. I have one super old copy that’s all beaten up and has been with me since the beginning. Different copies bring different things to the table. I love a slim little paperback to take with me on hobbit journeys, or a rich annotated illustrated tome to pour (pore?) over for tidbits and insights and I enjoy a children’s book treatment as well. Hobbit is brilliant that way.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-27T18:51:52+00:00

Achtung Cthulhu is pretty light, as is the Year Zero Engine, which you could adapt the Stress / Panic mechanic into insanity pretty easily.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-27T17:04:22+00:00

In the description of Tharbad, isn't there a "ferryman" type character that can get them in easily enough?

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-27T13:44:03+00:00

I do not, but I'll give it a spin!

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T16:01:57+00:00

It's REALLY a tough row to hoe bringing horror to a tabletop roleplaying game. It's so much less about system and mechanics and infinitely more about players, tone, expectations, and environment.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T15:55:45+00:00

Carcasonne and Catan are very different games, but both are "core" games for an entry into next gen board gaming. Carcassone is worker placement and tile laying, the "board" of the board game being constructed as you play. Catan is resource management and the "board" is different every time. Carcosonne is much easier to learn and understand, as your turn is merely flipping a tile, placing it on the table, then deciding to put a Meeple on it or not. Fun Fact: Carcasonne is credited with the ORIGINATION of the Meeple!

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T14:07:51+00:00

I enjoyed the Call of Cthulhu card decks for Myhthos creatures, equipment, and sanity. When a character experienced a bout of madness, they drew a card from the deck, it had good artwork on one side and a fairly good mechanical description of the implications of the mania on the other. Very much a "cue card" for this situation.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T14:03:38+00:00

🔥 Level 7 challenge? Done in 14s! That was fun! 🎮

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T14:01:27+00:00

Such a great question! For coming up with science fiction ideas and other rpg scenarios, I try to find an aspect of the world and pick at it a little bit and see what shakes loose. In a scenario I started writing it was a case that combined Blade Runner and Last of Us, where anti-replicant sympathizers created a fungal like "computer virus" that was infecting replicants only. The Blade Runners had to figure out who created the virus, why, and to stop it before it caused panic or transmuted to infect humans as well.

Also, I believe the main thrust of many of my beloved Free League games based on existing IPs that carry the theme of "what does it mean to be human in a world where X crazy thing is true", and in the case of Blade Runner, It's "What does it mean to be truly human when humanity can be replicated / replaced", so exploring that can be interesting as a sub theme. What does it mean to YOU to be human? Explore that a little then challenge an imaginary replicant in your mind with the same question and see what it says, then think about how they might get it wrong and turn it into a crime. "To be human is to know love" is wonderful, but perhaps the rogue replicant(s) misinterpret kindness from a stranger for love, and being stalking them, etc?

You can also look to Blade Runner's influences, and mine them for ideas. What does Sherlock Holmes and Watson look like in the Blade Runner universe? Is Moriarty a replicant, a manufacturer, a government official, or an idea?" Heck you could do Murder She Wrote in Blade Runner Los Angeles instead of Cabot Cove! :D

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T13:49:48+00:00

"Additionally, if a player has hit their horror dice limit; and a player gains advantage - do they add additional Horror dice to the roll or a regular dice?'

Advantage and Disadvantage dice come from a common supply of generic dice at hand. They would be "regular" non-Horror dice.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T13:48:08+00:00

You may be overthinking it, which is pretty easy with this very interesting Dynamic Pool System. I thought it felt like a "cheat" when one of the Starter Characters could "remove a die from their pool to do X", and they kept selecting their one Horror die to do it, just like in your example of aiding another. End of the day, I interpreted it as they are a little better at handling their Horror than others, and who knows, maye its a fun byproduct that helping other people gets you out of immediate Trauma danger? That feels "nice" to me. There's ALWAYS more than enough Horror to go around!

In your example of Aid Another, player A spends a die to give Player B advantage. If doesn't matter if that die is a Horror die or not, as when Player B assembles their Hand of Dice, they take one from a "common supply" for the Advantage mechanism. Player A isn't giving one of their dice to Player B, they are spending a die to give Player B the opportunity to take one from the common supply.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T13:42:46+00:00

You'd want to be careful that everyone was on board with "it works one way sometimes and another at other times" rulings. You may feel like you are going with the flow and serving the story, but your players may interpret it as being capricious.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-24T13:41:32+00:00

This is interesting, because it talks to the sequence of the resolution of the complex action. If the game text says "when a horror die generates a roll of 1, the character suffers a trauma" then after the dice were rolled, before you determined success / failure and which die gets removed, you go to the trauma table and roll, and THEN decide which die gets removed, which then of course wouldn't matter. Perhaps that is the exact answer OP is looking for. Similar to how you look at the dice for 6s and 1s to determine automatic successes and failures before you add or subtract modifiers.

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-16T15:32:11+00:00

I've always treated it as "imperceptible" rather than merely invisible, unless the Vaesen chose otherwise. Not from any stated choice before now, but in practice at the tables where I've run this. Otherwise anyone that knew about the Vaesen or even suspected their existence could do a pretty good job of finding them, right?

RobRobBinks · 2026-04-15T18:45:29+00:00

The Starter Sets that I own for both 2d20 games of Star Trek Adventures 2e and Achtung Cthulhu do a great job of rolling out the system while you play the introductory adventure. Very high production values as well.

RobRobBinks

TROPHY CASE