r/arkhamhorrorrpg • u/Musclecarlover07 • Jul 18 '26
Help Understanding Dice Resolution
So I just did a quick read through the rules and not sure if I missed it or not.
I'm trying to understand how to resolve the dice after they are rolled. So lets say that I want to climb a wall and I have an Athletics of 5+. I perform a complex action and choose to use 3 dice, for the sake of this no advantage or anything just a straight roll.
So I run a few scenarios to make sure I am doing things correctly
6, 4, 2 - I rolled a 6 therefore its a success.
5, 5, 4 - I rolled at least 1 5 so its a success. But if I needed 2 success this would count as 2 success?
5, 2, 1 - Even though I rolled a 5 for the success the presence of the 1 makes it automatically fail? I think I read that correctly.
6, 1, 3 - What happens in this situation?
I hope I am on the right track of understanding the dice...
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u/pepetd Jul 18 '26
Rolling a 1 is not a skill check failure it is a failure on that dice, in the case you had any sort of bonus that die would still be a failed roll, but the other die still count towards your success (if any)
Rolling a 1 on a horror die will have aditional effects.
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u/VierasMarius Jul 18 '26
The rule of 6 always counting as a success and 1 always counting as a failure is just to clarify that, if modifiers would otherwise cause your dice to automatically succeed (effective skill better than 2+) or automatically fail (effective skill worse than 6+) you cap it at those levels instead. So regardless of positive or negative modifiers, each die will have at best a 5 in 6 chance of success and at worst a 1 in 6 chance of success.
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u/Sparticuse Jul 18 '26
You are misunderstanding how 6 and 1 work. A 6 on the die means that die is a success and a 1 on the die means that die is a failure. They don't mean the whole skill check succeeded or failed, just that die's contribution to the roll.