SW Exploding Die Numbers

I was curious on real world die roll results with the Savage Worlds dice mechanics.  Just to sum it up, all your stats and skills are based on die sizes that you buy with character points.  For example a stronger character might have a d10 Strength while another might have a d4.  That dictates the dice you roll when doing strength related skills.   Skills are the same way, a sniper level marksman might have a d12 Shooting while someone who’s shot grandpa’s ol’ 12 gauge a few times might have a d4.

Where it gets a little interesting at least on the surface is that in Savage Worlds the dice can ‘explode’ or ‘ace’.  This means that if you roll the maximum on a die, for instance roll a 6 on a d6, you get to roll it again.   And if you roll maximum again then you keep rolling.   This means that smaller dice, d4′s and d6′s explode more often than bigger dice d10′s and d12′s.

One interesting artifact of this mechanic is you can’t roll multiples of the dice you’re rolling.  For instance it’s impossible to roll a 4/8/12 etc on a d4.

And as you might expect the change in average totals means more for lower sized dice as a result but the differences aren’t nearly as significant in the grand scheme of things as one might think.  The entries below marked ex boost: show the upgrade in average damage that you can expect to see from the mechanic versus without it.

Over 10,000,000 rolls these are the numbers I came up with and boy are my arms tired.  Ten million rolls is enough to elminate vagaries in the stats out to a couple of decimal points I would think.

What I find interesting is that rounding the progression with exploding dice is still one point average damage difference just like the progression without explosions you get with rounding without it.    So raising your die size for a skill will yield a 1 point higher average roll.

These numbers indicate that on average with a d6 you should succeed at most tasks barring modifiers since a 4 is the Target Number you need to roll equal to or higher than.   The most important exception of this Melee skill which barring weak opponents has a Target Number of 5 or higher.   In this case you really need to have a d8 to expect some measure of success on average.  NOTE: All players get to roll a d6 on top of whatever dice they may have built their character with which changes the success rate but without that die these are what you can expect on average.