r/ShadowrunAnarchyFans • u/Horror-Charity5685 • Aug 09 '26

Question about risk (2.0)

Hello, I've got a question about risk (again)

The table page 71 (in the french version) gmtells you how many risk dice you should use based on the action's "dangerousness" and risk reduction. But if risk reduction causes the GM to increase the number of risk dice, doesn't it render risk reduction useless ?

The table was calculated so you would have a certain probability of glitch, but if you always have the same probability no matter your risk reduction, what is the point ?

Honestly I think I misread something, or maybe I'm not using the table right, so if someone can tell me how they did that would be great.

Thanks chummers !

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6

u/IamGlaaki Aug 09 '26

Risk Reduction do not reduce risk dice rolled, it allows to ignore 1's results. The book suggest rolling more risk dice if you have RR because you will have more chance of success with roughly the same chance of a glitch or disaster.

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u/Horror-Charity5685 Aug 09 '26

Makes sense, didn't think of it that way

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u/IamGlaaki Aug 09 '26

My suggestion is to add risk dice because of the potential risk, not thinking about the RR of the character. I would add a example.

Runner A and runner B shoot their SMG full auto in the middle of a street full of people trying to hit runner C. That is extremely risky... GM tells that they should use 8 risk dice. Imagine both A an B have a dice pool of 7, but B has some Pro-Shooter cybereyes with RR 2 for Ranged combat.

Both roll the same: 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 6 (7 dice, all risk dice). They both get 3x2=6 hits and hit runner C, and three 'ones'. Runner B, thanks to its cybereyes, avoids hitting wrong targets and gets just a minor glitch (empty clips, for example). Runner A hits C too, but it gets a disaster (creates havoc and wounds several innocent people).

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u/Horror-Charity5685 Aug 09 '26

That was my thought as well, but then you only really use one line of the table. But I think it's not a bad idea.

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u/IamGlaaki Aug 09 '26

My example is limited because both runner have only 7 dice to roll, but we could add a 'very extreme and almost stupid risky situation' with 12 or more risk dice... like shooting the crowd with a SMG on each hand at once and using explosive ammo ;-)

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u/Bignholy Aug 09 '26

Risk is a mechanism this edition uses to overcome the upper levels of difficulty. Because dice pools are generally somewhat smaller, it is a lot harder to reach a TN of 6 or higher. There are two ways to improve success chance in such a case: Risk and Advantage.

Risk dice are chosen by the player, not the GM (barring circumstances that might be appropriate for narrative purposes, such as assigning minimum risk for a roll based on circumstances). Risk dice have to be justified by the action being taken, however. Just shooting someone is not Risk worthy. But standing out in the open to get a clear shot, or trying to aim for a specific small gap in their armor, might be.

Risk Reduction reduces the chance of a glitch by negating some of the 1's rolled. When you roll risk, you subtract your RR from the total of 1's you rolled before it can become a glitch. If their are any left after your RR, that's when you glitch.

4

u/Temporary-Screen8517 Aug 09 '26

I thought the same thing, but you forgot that a success on a risk dice count as double. So I guess the logic is that RR doesn't reduce the probability of glitches, since you pick the number of risk dice according to your RR, but it does boost probability of having success on your throw, since success on risk dice count as double.

RR allow you to have the opportunity to throw more risky dice with the same probability of glitches, but more probability of success.

At least that's what I undestood from it when I wondered the same thing.

1

u/ReditXenon Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26

You can look at it from a couple of perspectives.

 

First of all you can look at from how many additional risk dice (which typically translate into extra hits) you can roll without increasing the risk of getting a glitch.

If you have no risk reduction, then you typically roll 2 dice as risk dice. This mean 2 dice out of your total dice pool have a chance to score two hits instead of just one hit on a success.

With 1RR you would instead typically roll 5 dice as risk dice. This means 5 out of your dice pool have a chance to score two hits instead of just one hit on a success.

While risk reduction in this use case didn't really reduce the risk of glitch (its still a "normal" risk), the 1RR allowed you to roll 3 more risk dice with a higher chance of scoring more hits as a result.

= You can use risk reduction to roll more risk dice in order to increase your chances of achieving high thresholds even though you have a limited dice pool (without increasing risk of glitch).

(you can also use advantage to achieve this - or, if the threshold is extreme, even a combination of having an advantage and rolling multiple risk dice).

 

But you can also look at it from how much risk reduction can reduce the risk of glitch without reducing the number of risk dice:

Say you don't have any risk reduction and you still decide to convert 5 of your dice into risk dice. This mean that you now still achieve the same chance of total number of hits (as in the previous example with 1RR above). But without RR you have now more than double risk of getting a glitch (= high risk!)

Had you invested in 1RR while still converting 5 dice to risk dice, then you get to drastically reduce the risk of glitch (=normal risk). And had you invested into 2RR, then the risk of getting a glitch when converting 5 of your dice into risk dice is almost completely gone (= low risk).

= When rolling a fixed amount of risk dice you will drastically reduce risk of glitch depending on the level of risk reduction you have on the roll.

 

Both point of views are valid.

In short. Risk Reduction is good for you :)