this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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In PF2e, you get Hero Points which allow you to reroll checks. We use a house rule that if you use a Hero Point and roll the same number on the die, you must use that number (no more rerolls) however you don't spend your Hero Point.
It comes up surprisingly often.
It's just like playing XCOM. Basic math says there's a 95% chance of something bad not happening? You'd better believe it's happening every single session!
If you read it as 1 in 20 it now doesn't feel anywhere near as certain.
You shoot a lot of aliens in xcom, it's bound to happen eventually.
I bet it comes up approximately 1/20 times it'd used.
Just about that, yes!
I prefer Fate's system:
When you don't like your roll, you can either reroll or take a flat bonus. Because Fate is a dice pool instead of flat-probability-1d20, if you do take the reroll to make up for an atrocious roll, you're less likely to get another atrocious roll. Usually you just need the little bump to make a difference.
I still haven't gotten around to giving Fate a try, but been on my list a while. Too many games not enough time!
Statistically it comes up 5% of the time you use a hero point, so yeah, about as often as rolling a nat 20.
Yep! But there's typing that out, and then there's experiencing it first hand, and the latter can be surprising. ;)
Sounds like salience bias.
People typically don't use fair dice. There's often a much higher than 1/20 chance of getting a particular result
Dice are polished to remove molding marks, which also rounds off edges and makes faces different sizes
But they are polished equally on each side, right?
They often are polished the way rocks are, tumbled with abrasives, which randomly wears them down
Few expensive dice will be polished carefully
I trust internet dice rollers over commodity dice, d6 is pretty much the only one easy to get fair versions made for the gambling industry
How do you know all that?
I read a lot and own game science dice. Game science described the process in their marketing to explain how their dice were different
Is that some kind of company? Or am I missing a very obvious joke?
Game science was a company that made fair role playing game dice
I was thinking of that as a house rule for Mutants and Masterminds (which has a similar system, but is much more generous with the reroll). I think it's better if you don't feel like you wasted the Hero Point because you rolled low.
That said, it works best if it's a success/fail type thing. I understand pathfinder has a lot of things with critical success and critical failure. I guess you get it back if you don't score better?
D&D 5e has a similar system.
The new 5e rules have the same called inspiration. Inspiration points are given out at the DMs discretion. It's a nice reward to give out for stuff like good roleplay and what not. I'm guessing it's the same for hero points.
By "new 5e rules," do you mean 5.5e released in 2024? If so, DM Inspiration is not new to them, and was in 5e when it originally released in 2014. I'm not familiar if there were changes made, though, as I don't play dnd anymore.
I think before it let you roll with advantage while the new rules lets you reroll afterwards if you don't like the results. I'm not super familiar with the pre 2024 rules though.
I think you're correct on the old rule. You had to declare in advance that you were spending it. No idea on the new rule though.