Surge Dice vs Luck Dice

#1

Good morning, All!
I recently purchased Altered State and love the idea of Surge. I also love the idea of DM Scotty’s Luck Dice. Very similar but d6 instead and they are given out after a failed roll. So I guess my questions are…

  1. Has anyone tried both and do you have feedback between the two as a replacement for Hero Coins (for ICRPG in general, not just Altered State).
  2. Could the ideas be combined? Everyone starts with 4d6. You can never have more than 4. However, a failed roll can “refill” a pool of spent dice. Ex. Mark has spent 3 of his dice and now only has 1d6 left. He fails a throw so he takes another for 2d6.
    Thoughts?

I’m wanting to make a “pulp adventure” campaign, ala Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, etc. and thought about calling them “Fortune Dice”.

#2

I’ve tried d6 luck dice, if five are accumulated, they automatically convert to a hero coin.
I felt ‘meh’ about it. I like hero coins for good role playing. There’s probably a better way to handle it.

#3

Thanks for the reply!
I suppose everyone could start with a hero coin each time. I’m looking for a real over-the-top action-adventure style, I guess. :slight_smile:

#4

I do surge and hero coins. I think my players get more out of the surge dice; they feel less precious than the coin, which also means when I award coins it can feel kinda “meh” when they already have one. You could have a finite pool of these dice to pass around to encourage spending them. I even proposed once that if someone one a D6, and there were none left to pass out, another player had to give them one.

#5

I have used surge dice in different ways throughout the years, they work well on their own and I think players enjoy the choices relating to them (and the bonuses in clutch situations). In my opinion surge dice work well as a finite commodity and I feel they would be out of balance if given out for each failure.

#6

Thanks for the reply! I was a little worried about that, as well.

#7

Thanks for the reply!
Did that work? I think I’d not allow players to transfer dice. Play it as more of a “luck running out” resource.

#8

I haven’t tried it, but it’s not an ability to trade - it’s a forced transfer of a limited resource, to keep them from hording dice. The idea being that if there are only 6 dice between all the players, they have to keep spending them, or risk losing them.

#9

I did a similar thing last weekend for a VC game where I gave the group 4 D8 dice to use, it worked reasonably well.