[RPG] Messing with the Wild Die

savage-worlds

I'm planning on running a post-apocalyptic setting for my Savage Worlds campaign, and one thing I want to do is to make Wild Cards have less of an advantage over the average inhabitant of the world-they take more to kill, but basically they don't get as much of an edge-there's less mercy for them.

One thing I've considered doing is replacing the d6 Wild Die with a d4, to make things less powerful (I want to leave Acing in so that there's a chance of getting, say, 11 on the Wild Die, but you'll need to Ace twice to do so). However, will this create issues? Should I instead, say, limit the use of Wild Dice to a few select instances?

EDIT: When I say that I don't want the Wild Cards to have much of an advantage over an Extra, I more meant to say that I want to keep the distinction, but mess around with it to be more lethal in general-I'm okay with frequent and horrible failure, as it fits the feel of the game.

Best Answer

Working with a d4 Wild Die will have a number of effects on the system. Note that I haven't yet run the numbers on the exact changes to probabilities with this change, but I believe that the general trends I've identified will hold:

  • You will reduce the average die total on trait rolls, but the results you get will be more 'swingy', as 25% of the time you will get a 1 on the d4, and 25% you will get a raise. This may make the system feel a little more arbitrary and luck based as on average, results for PCs will be less consistent. It will also increase the frequency of critical fails, and depending on the setting this could have a major impact on the dangerousness of characters with Arcane Backgrounds and the unpredictability of Skills with bad outcomes when these are rolled.
  • It becomes more important to spend advances on raising skills and attributes in order to compensate for the lower Wild Die. This is likely to lead to fewer Edges being taken by your players. As Edges are more important than skills for defining the 'niches' that each PC fills, you may well end up with PCs that are more similar in terms of what they are good at.
  • Average damage rolls will be lower as there will be fewer Raises on successful attacks. This will impact on the value of Edges relating to Damage such as No Mercy.

Regarding other suggestions to achieve what you are trying to do:

  • Removal of the Wild Die altogether is a huge change, and will have a massive impact on all sorts of areas of the game. Even if you only consider doing this for certain rolls, I would be very careful, as it is likely to have consequences on other areas of the system that will be difficult to correct for.
  • Most suggestions around this raise NPC abilities rather than lower those of the PCs, as this is a far easier angle of attack with tried and tested methods. For example, you can introduce more gradual 'levels' between Extras and Wild Cards including Extras with 3 wounds, Wild Cards with no Wounds, Extras who only use a Wild Die in their 'expert' skills, varying the number of bennies available to different NPCs.
  • If you want to make PCs more 'squishy', then an obvious area to look at is the way wounds and injuries work. Gritty Damage and Critical Fails are both setting rules that could be used to help reinforce this feel, as well as being frugal with the number of Bennies you reward during each session.
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