Wild Die

The issue of the Wild Die has been a problem in my game for the last few months as we were finding that no matter how good you are in a particular skill, there was always a 1 in 6 chance that a complication or reduced roll would occur. For newish characters this wasn't that noticeable as you would expect that, but once some of your characters have got 7D or 8D in a skill you shouldn't have that high level of poor results. At the other end of the spectrum you can end up with ridiculous rolls if you roll a 6. These events simply happen to often. So after a long discussion with my players and with the help of a holonet thread we've started using the following rules.....

Please note that the text is based on text found on page 74 of Revised & Expanded.

Rolling Actions
Characters roll their Skill dice (or their Attribute dice if they haven't improved the Skill) whenever they do something important and there's a risk of failure. A player makes a Skill roll when his character is trying to shoot a Stormtrooper, fix a Starship, or get information out of a computer. A player doesn't have to roll to see if his character can walk down to the corner droid shop.

The Wild Die
Whenever a character makes a Skill or Attribute die roll, the player must roll their dice plus a D20 die - The D20 die is the Wild Die. Whenever the Wild Die comes up with a number between 2 and 19, just ignore the die and total the other dice normally.

Example: Thannik is rolling his Blaster Skill of 5D. His five normal dice roll a 1, 2, 5, 3 and 6. His Wild Die (the D20 die) comes up as a 16. His total is 17.

When the Wild Die comes up as a 20, add 10 to the rest of the roll.

Example: Thannik is rolling his Blaster Skill again. His normal dice come up as a 2, 4, 5, 6 and 2, while his Wild Die comes up as a 20. His total is 29!

When the Wild Die comes up as a 1, subtract 10 from the rest of the roll. Should this result in the total for the roll being less than 5 then the gamemaster may decide that a Complication occurs (see Complications).

Example: Thannik is rolling his Blaster: Blaster Pistol Specialization of 6D. He rolls a 3, 4, 2, 5, 3 and 4 on his normal dice and a 1 on his Wild Die. His total is 11!

Example: Thannik is rolling his Blaster: Blaster Pistol Specialization again. He rolls a 1, 3, 5, 2, 1 and 2 on his normal dice and a 1 on his Wild Die. His total is 4 and the gamesmaster may now decide that a Complication occurs.

Invariably a roll of a 1 on the Wild Dice will result in failure, whilst a roll of a 20 will result in success.

The Wild Die rule counts for all die rolls in the game, including Skill and Attribute checks, weapon damage, and rolling Perception for Initiative.

If the player is rolling two different types of dice at once — for example, rolling the character's Starfighter Piloting Skill and the starship's manoeuvrability die code — only one Wild Die is rolled.