Wise Turtle Publishing

Can/should stats go above 5 dice? Here I'm thinking about superhero-esque anime, with superheroes in the cosmic range. I know you shouldn't START above 5, but can it go over without borking the die pool?

The main reason why it's not suggested is twofold. First, it then needs buckets to roll the dice. Secondly, the average of the bell curve becomes even larger and it creates odd and less reliable results.

Why not just use the Scale system?

Scale is a good suggestion.

Additionally, you might just consider redefining "normal" for your game. In a universe like DBZ, for instance, all characters who matter in a fight scene generally have astronomical abilities...so rather than making higher and higher ability levels, just define levels 1-5 as appropriate for a mega-powered fighter. So the level where you can lift a car or what-have-you normally is now the level where you can lift a planet or what-have-you.

(Effectively, this is also scale...just that you're not even dealing with the question of a difference in abilities between the normal scale and the super scale. If someone of normal scale goes up against one of these guys, they're just so much cosmic dust.)

Scale would be my recommendation also. Inventing increased ranges for Abilities (e.g. +6–+10) results in a lot of dice being thrown around. Which might be cute for DBZ (It’s over NINE THOUSSAAAAANDD....dice), but with scale, you can achieve the same purpose without quite as many number cubes bouncing about.

As pointed out by S’drolion, characters are very unlikely to fight people from outside of their scale anyway, and when they do, it’s often thematically appropriate just to squish them like bugs instead of rolling dice. Just give your Krillins +1 or +2 and your Gokus +5 and you should be golden.