Dice pool

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In some role-playing game systems, the dice pool is the number of dice that a player is allowed to roll when attempting to perform a certain action.

In most RPG systems, most non-trivial actions require dice rolls. Most RPGs roll a fixed number of dice, add a number to the die roll based on the character's attributes and skills, and compare the resulting number with a difficulty rating. However, in some systems the character's attributes and skills determine the number of dice to be rolled. In some systems (such as the Storyteller System) the number on each die is compared with the difficulty rating, and the number of dice whose number exceeds the difficulty gives the degree of success. In others (such as Over the Edge) the dice are totalled and compared with the difficulty rating. (Famously, early versions of the Storyteller system sometimes made rolling botches (critical failures) more likely the higher your skill or attribute was.)

Penalties may temporarily reduce the dice pool for one or more skills (for example, a leg wound may reduce the dice pool for actions such as running, climbing, and jumping). Occasionally the dice pool can be increased (for example, a character may focus her attention and temporarily gain dice for observation-related skills).

The first widely successful game to feature dice pools was Greg Costikyan's Star Wars Role-Playing Game (1987), developing a system pioneered the year before in the Ghostbusters RPG by Greg Stafford, Lynn Willis, and Sandy Petersen. (Both games were published by West End Games; Costikyan consulted on Ghostbusters.) This was followed by Over the Edge (1992) and Vampire: The Masquerade (1992), both of which were based upon a project between Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen which followed their development of Ars Magica for Lion Rampant.