Agamemnon wrote:1) Another layer of handling time
It is still massively less fiddly (and easier to explain) than exploding was.
Operation for rerolling 1s:
1) Roll dice.
2) Look for 1s.
3) Pick up 1s.
4) Roll 1s.
5) Count successes.
Operation for exploding:
1) Roll dice.
2) Count successes.
3) Look for 10s.
4) Pick up 10s.
5) Roll 10s.
6) Count new successes.
7) Add new successes to old successes.
8) Look for 10s.
9) If any 10s, go to 4, else end.
The streamlined version of exploding I was planning on using was:
1) Roll dice.
2) Count 10s.
3) Pick up new dice equal to the count.
4) Roll new dice.
5) Count successes.
Also, reroll would only be on some rolls, not all like exploding. It would feature in probably a couple of edges (Which are OPTIONAL) and a few maneuvers. It could also be a good candidate for burning SAs on instead of exploding.
Agamemnon wrote:2) Between bonus dice, dis/advantage, and rerolling dice, we lay the groundwork for the stacking of bonuses things get that much harder to balance.
Kind of? That might get to be a problem if you plan to release a dozen supplements that continually introduce new ways to get rerolls or dis/advantages and FTNs, but I don't see it being a problem with the rules now.
With the super simple rule "You can never reroll a reroll" you clamp down on a lot of sillyness.
Remember that reroll would be able to replace a bunch of places you are currently using things like FTN or dis/advantage, so there won't be a huge number of things left to stack. "Reroll 1s" inherently doesn't stack with itself. Dis/advantage doesn't stack with itself or FTN. If you are careful, you could even try to keep the types of bonuses segregated (eg Using FTN and dis/advantage for Maneuvers and combat stuff and using Rerolls for non-combat edges and Skills) or otherwise split them up such that the ones you don't want to stack are all the same type (reroll 1s stacks with reroll 2s but not other reroll 1s).
So really, the absolute most abusive case you can get is BTN4, advantage, reroll 1s and 2s and that still can't get more successes than there is dice in their dice pool (89% successes).
Even a simple "You can never reroll more than a single number at once, instead only reroll the highest." is another reasonable limiter.
Besides, you will have me around trying my very best to break it
This might be blasphemy, but reroll could be an opportunity to kill some darlings. Throwing out the FTN and/or advantage systems entirely in favor of the more flexible reroll system is an option too.
As far as I can tell the only places FTN is used is for the Disengage and Block maneuvers. That's a lot of rules baggage for just 2 maneuvers. Consider:
Disengage: Defend with advantage.
Block: Defend with a shield.
Small Shields: When blocking reroll 1s.
Large Shields: When blocking reroll 1s and 2s.
You can't go up to rerolling 3s though, since rerolling a 3 when you are BTN4 with advantage is bad.
Likewise, you can only use reroll 6s as a penalty since rerolling 5s is actually helpful if you are at BTN6.
But you would have reroll 1s, 2s, 6s, advantage, and disadvantage as modifiers that stack with eachother but not themselves.
To get around that weirdness you could do something like "reroll up to 5 failures" instead of specifying.
Having said that I would be cool if you just ditched it but I have to agree that it helps to make characters more unique if you have expertises in addition to skills. One way to handle them could be a bit softer than just additional dice or change of TN. How about just a normal roll and if you happen to have an appropriate expertise then you have a better effect like reduced time (you pick the lock faster) or you craft a better quality lock (without having to generate a huge amount of successes). Heck, you could even have levels of expertise that grant this sort of increased effects but then it might be appropriate to have them as Edges.
