A set of four Hunter dice, two orange regular dice and two black Desperation dice, showing the range of results with standard d10s underneath showing equivalent rolls.
One of the most obvious things that distinguishes the 5th Edition World of is the shift from standard d10s to ten-sided dice with icons that correspond to:
- 1-5 = Blank/Failure
- 5-9 = Success
- 10 = Potential Critical Success.
The basic mechanic is that players roll a number of dice equal to the sum of an Attribute, like Wits, and a Skill, like Investigation. They hope to get a number of successes (6+ on a standard d10) to match or exceed a target difficulty. A pair of critical results (10s) makes a critical success and each of those counts as two successes, so that a roll of 10,10,9,3,2 would be 5 success, one for the 9, two each for the 10's.
Each game has a set of special dice, used for Hunger (Vampire), Rage (Werewolf) and Desperation (Hunter) that add additional complications. For Hunter, the Desperation Dice have what would be the "1" side result in Overreach or Despair, while Vampire and Werewolf have their own thematically appropriate complications on both successes and failures.
In Vampire and Werewolf, the Hunger and Rage dice track an individual PC's Hunger and Rage, replacing the old Blood/Hunger and Rage tracks from previous editions. They serve as a Push Your Luck kind of mechanic where a player can risk getting more Hunger or Rage to fuel their supernatural powers—a mechanic which I find to be an elegant replacement to the mere resource tracks of previous editions.
What sets the Hunter Desperation Dice apart from Hunger or Rage dice is that they are tied to a track shared by the entire Cell (Hunter party) and not any single PC. This ties into one of the two Trackers that are unique to Hunter in the 5th Edition World of Darkness games, Desperation and Danger. This means that instead of individual players managing their Hunger or Rage, it's the Storyteller of a Hunter game who handles these important mechanics.
For a Storyteller new to Hunter, this can be tricky, the core rulebook has only a couple of pages covering the mechanic without much advice at all on how best to use them. It took me several months of running Hunter before I realized that it's best to think of them as tools for Pacing the Hunt...
