Quote:
Originally Posted by Aeonite
I would also like to hear more about the system other than the dice required. The idea of rolling either 6d4 (d4s always roll poorly) or 6d20 and then having to add all the numbers certainly sounds like it would slow a game down. Some groups I've played with have a hard time adding 1d20 plus modifiers without using their fingers and toes.
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It scales between the 6d4 and 6d20, with most people rolling some combination of d6s and d4s. It really works very like a standard d20 system (i.e. roll 1d20+X, and get higher than Y), except that rather than just roll 1d20, you roll a specific combination of dice. Generally, you only have to look up the right dice once - after that, you upgrade one die every time the relevant stat reaches the next even number. The X is the combination of your skill and field (skill group) ranks, which is going to be a number between 0 and 45 (usually in the +3 to +5 range at chargen for a character with skill, maybe up to +8 for a really focused one), and the Y is the difficulty.
Just about everything uses the same dice rolling system (though a few rolls will use different calculations for X), but in combat, you have to actually split up your allowed 6 dice between all 6 passes you can act in. Most starting characters can only act in two, so they
usually use three dice each time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by macd21
Some friends of mine played a few sessions of it. These guys love crunch-heavy games, but A-O was too much for them. They found that the mechanics of the game were both slow and too easily broken.
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It does speed up as you get used to it - my group is running at about D&D 3.5 speed now (which isn't all that fast because we have players who sometimes take a while to figure out what to do, but at least it's no worse). There are a couple holes in the rules, though, some of which have been errata-ed or otherwise addressed on the official forums, some of which are yet to be addressed.