Rules tweak for Ars exploding rolls

I love the concept of a stress dice in Ars Magica 5th edition, and liked the Quality dice roll in the older editions too. One aspect that slows a table down is when a 1 is rolled on the stress dice and doubling mechanic kicks in.

As a player I dislike the rolling a 1 then a low number as it makes the “doubling” result somewhat disappointing. In stress rolls it is also a little odd in the number distribution of a 1d10 roll to have a zero as a potential botch and a one as the potential for greatness.

So instead I’m pondering a 1d10 roll where a result of 1 is a check for botch, and a 10 causes an additional roll where 10 is added to the result. Then the botch check treats a 1 as bad instead of a 10 so that the rolls are consistent. A further tweak might be skip the additional roll equal to dice+9 rather than +10, to distribute the result. Each 10 rolled in a row indicates a +9 on the next roll.

What will it be like in play?

Very similar to current, and more logical.


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