Maximum Number of Success Die

[Majestic]

I've read many times here how the maximum number of Success Dice that can ever be rolled is six. And so when it's come up in my games I've repeated that to my players. But I don't recall actually reading that in the rules.

So I just did a search (using the 'Find' feature on the PDF of the Revised Rules), looking for the words "six", "success", "maximum", and the number "6", and couldn't find any reference to this. The closest I found was Shadow Bane (p. 109), which says you can have a maximum of 6 attack dice, or making Magical Treasure rolls (p. 86, Rivendell).

Now I know that six is the highest any skill is going to go, or any hero's Wisdom, Valour, or weapon skill. But is it actually said anywhere that six is the maximum number of Success Dice for any roll? It especially comes up with bonus dice added (from Preliminary Rolls, or Rewards/Virtues).

[zedturtle]

On the subject of dice, it says that the dice set contains the exact amount of dice needed. And most abilities that would cause the number to exceed six remind us that six is the maximum skill dice to be rolled.

[Majestic]

On the subject of dice, it says that the dice set contains the exact amount of dice needed. And most abilities that would cause the number to exceed six remind us that six is the maximum skill dice to be rolled.

Right, but where does it actually say that. As in, a character has six dice in a skill. And, perhaps even for a very important and crucial roll, wants to add a Preliminary Roll Success Die to that total.

I just don't see it in the rules anywhere, so (unless I missed it somewhere) I plan on allowing them to use more, especially if the circumstances or narrative warrant it.

[Indur Dawndeath]

On the subject of dice, it says that the dice set contains the exact amount of dice needed. And most abilities that would cause the number to exceed six remind us that six is the maximum skill dice to be rolled.

But is it actually written anywhere that preliminary bonus dice and bonus dice from singing a song, cannot make the dice pool exceed 6?

[aramis]

A few places have explicit maxima of 6.
TOR 2E, p. 181, Shadow Bane:

When you are fighting in a Forward stance (see page 172)
against servants of the Shadow (including Spiders, Orcs,
Trolls and Evil Men), add one Success die to all your attack
rolls (up to a maximum of 6).

2E Page 218 gives a maximum skill of 6 for LMCs...

There is a hard limit of one success die added from preliminaries. (page 151)

There is a soft limit set in 2E, on page 26...
TOR 2E, p. 26:

The dice
used in The One Ring are a set of specialised dice, sold
separately in The One Ring Dice Set, including six 6-sided
dice (also called Success dice) and one 12-sided die with
two special icons (called the Feat die).

One of the dev team answered a query about inspiration that it was subject to the dice limit of 6 success dice, but I cannot find that post.

Rivendell has a hard limit of 6 success dice on treasure rolls (p 86)

I don't use a hard limit; I keep the hard limit on skill levels...
So
Feat dice 1 base, + 1 drop lowest for certain virtues†, +1 drop highest for certain virtues and/or traits‡.
Success dice: 0 base, +skill/rating to explicit maxima of 6, +1 preliminary, +2 song inspiration. +1 magic§.
† eg: hound support.
‡ eg: opponent's protection test when attacker has a dalish longbow
§ In theory, more, because the various magic may overlap, but at present, the ones I see don't overlap.

[zedturtle]

Yeah, I've tried searching the forum for that Inspiration thread, since it was fairly definitive. But the game's not going to break horribly if you let someone roll seven dice... at that point you're very much into the realm of diminishing returns (e.g. if you've already rolled two sixes on the first six dice, the seventh die is essentially valueless).

[Rich H]

Here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2083&start=10

[Indur Dawndeath]

Here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2083&start=10

That pretty much nails it for me. In my game 6 dice will be a hard limit. Fortunately enough , no one have rolled more than 5 dice as of yet.

Thanks for pointing to Andrews clarification.

[fencingmonkey]

My players hit six dice reasonably often; they all have *something* (trait, common skill, weapon skill) rated at 4 and are big big fans of the Song system from Rivendell, which means lots of +2 Inspiration spends. I think there was a situation where someone could have gotten to 7 but was capped, but I don't recall the exact circumstances -- it was certainly a corner case. Interestingly, they've pretty much stopped raising things past 4 for largely this reason -- they're capped for one big roll, and can get to 5 dice for most of the rest of the encounter/combat/whatever from preliminary dice. As stated in this thread, the difference between 5 and 6 dice doesn't seem to be large enough for them to bother.

[Deadmanwalking]

My group also make extensive use of Songs. That said, raising combat skills at least past 4 is a really good idea, since it lets you save the Song dice for protection tests. There's also not always time to sing before something bad happens, and our LM ruled (very reasonably) that we can only have one set of Song dice hanging around at a time.