In order to give a more mythic feel to the game perhaps we could use a different dice mechanic to the standard roll one d20.
For example instead of rolling a d20 for a strength check the player rolls a d6 instead and keeps rolling until they roll a 1. The result becomes the number of dice needed to roll a 1. So if it take 5 rolls of the dice before a 1 comes up then the result is 5. The advantage of this system is that it is theoretically possible to roll any positive whole number but larger numbers become increasingly unlikely. So truly amazingly high results are possible but unlikely. Using a d6 there is a roughly 16.667% (1 in 6) chance of rolling a 1 on the first roll giving a result therefore of 1. There is a roughly 1% chance that you will need to roll that same d6 25 times or more in order to roll a 1 therefore yielding a result of 25+. And roughly a 0.01% chance (1 in 10,000 chance) of getting a result of 50+. Possible, but unlikely.
The average result using this system will generally be equal to the number of sides on the dice +1. So for a d6 the average result is approximately 7, but since the distribution of results is uneven, low numbers (below 7 in this case) will be more common that high numbers (above 7). The occasional very high number is what brings the average back up to 7. If GMs think 7 is too low an average they can use different dice, although d12 is about as high as I would recommend.
Ordinarily it would be a pain to have to roll so many dice to establish a single result, but these days it is so easy to create a spreadsheet that can effectively roll hundreds of dice at a time, thus giving an instant result.
Below are the rough probabilities of results of 1 through to 50.
1 16.667%
2 13.889%
3 11.574%
4 9.645%
5 8.038%
6 6.698%
7 5.582%
8 4.651%
9 3.876%
10 3.230%
11 2.692%
12 2.243%
13 1.869%
14 1.558%
15 1.298%
16 1.082%
17 0.901%
18 0.751%
19 0.626%
20 0.522%
21 0.435%
22 0.362%
23 0.302%
24 0.252%
25 0.210%
26 0.175%
27 0.146%
28 0.121%
29 0.101%
30 0.084%
31 0.070%
32 0.059%
33 0.049%
34 0.041%
35 0.034%
36 0.028%
37 0.024%
38 0.020%
39 0.016%
40 0.014%
41 0.011%
42 0.009%
43 0.008%
44 0.007%
45 0.005%
46 0.005%
47 0.004%
48 0.003%
49 0.003%
50 0.002%
51+ 0.01%
I am interested to hear what others think.
Nothing says mythic to me like needing to turn to a probability spreadsheet on a smartphone.
Nothing says mythic to me like needing to turn to a probability spreadsheet on a smartphone.
Rolling a regular d20 isn't mythic either.
The mythic part comes from the potential results, using my proposal ANY number is possible. Think about what that means, on a regular day your mythic character might be able to leap over a house, but every now and then he can leap the grand canyon. Your mythic character is always strong enough to arm wrestle an ogre, but every now and then he can pick up a dragon and throw it. The catch is that you just never know when you might be able to draw on that amazing well of power. That to me is far more mythic than simply giving mythic characters bigger bonuses.
"Crap, I left my iPhone at work. Game cancelled, let's play something simple instead, GURPS or Rifts maybe?"
If I had to bet my life on someone having quick access to a laptop, tablet, PC or smart phone I would definitely pick a gamer. Put a group of gamers in one place and the probability of someone having one within easy reach is practically 100%.
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"Crap, I left my iPhone at work. Game cancelled, let's play something simple instead, GURPS or Rifts maybe?"If I had to bet my life on someone having quick access to a laptop, tablet, PC or smart phone I would definitely pick a gamer. Put a group of gamers in one place and the probability of someone having one within easy reach is practically 100%.
You're obviously not familiar with the "video games killed Gary Gygax so no electronics at my table or else" branch of our community.
You're obviously not familiar with the "video games killed Gary Gygax so no electronics at my table or else" branch of our community."Crap, I left my iPhone at work. Game cancelled, let's play something simple instead, GURPS or Rifts maybe?"If I had to bet my life on someone having quick access to a laptop, tablet, PC or smart phone I would definitely pick a gamer. Put a group of gamers in one place and the probability of someone having one within easy reach is practically 100%.
No I'm not familiar with them, they sound a little strange so perhaps they might actually like rolling hundreds of dice unnecessarily?
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Rolling a regular d20 isn't mythic either.
The mythic part comes from the potential results, using my proposal ANY number is possible. Think about what that means, on a regular day your mythic character might be able to leap over a house, but every now and then he can leap the grand canyon. Your mythic character is always strong enough to arm wrestle an ogre, but every now and then he can pick up a dragon and throw it. The catch is that you just never know when you might be able to draw on that amazing well of power. That to me is far more mythic than simply giving mythic characters bigger bonuses.
The trouble is that this means mythic deeds often won't be attempted due to vanishingly unlikely odds of success, while you'll usually get your random absurdly high number when it isn't needed.
If you roll a die fifty times before getting a 1 on your check to jump over the canyon, and that happens to be what is needed for you to get over the canyon, then great for you. But if that 1% event didn't happen to occur exactly when you needed it, you'd fall and go splat on the groun- er, take some falling damage and live, but now be stuck at the bottom of the canyon and separated from the party. With odds like that, you probably wouldn't even be attempting to jump over the canyon in the first place.
Meanwhile, most rolls you attempt can succeed on far less than a 50, so your super-success will be essentially wasted most times it comes up. If you got your 50 on an easy Acrobatics check to hop onto a table, then congratulations, you seriously hopped on to that table.
What you're proposing is very mechanically clunky, doesn't reflect how actual myths work, and doesn't produce the desired in-game results.
The solution to making characters more mythic beyond just giving them bigger bonuses is to give mythic characters interesting abilities that aren't just numerical bonuses, not to give them more "bonuses" rolls but in the form of a new die-rolling mechanic that makes them unable to roll above a 4 more than 50% of the time.
How about something simpler? A d6 for each point in your skill total? 5's and 6's get you one point, and 6's explode(you get to roll another die for each six)? You then add it to your skill total.
Rolling a regular d20 isn't mythic either.
The mythic part comes from the potential results, using my proposal ANY number is possible. Think about what that means, on a regular day your mythic character might be able to leap over a house, but every now and then he can leap the grand canyon. Your mythic character is always strong enough to arm wrestle an ogre, but every now and then he can pick up a dragon and throw it. The catch is that you just never know when you might be able to draw on that amazing well of power. That to me is far more mythic than simply giving mythic characters bigger bonuses.
The trouble is that this means mythic deeds often won't be attempted due to vanishingly unlikely odds of success, while you'll usually get your random absurdly high number when it isn't needed.
If you roll a die fifty times before getting a 1 on your check to jump over the canyon, and that happens to be what is needed for you to get over the canyon, then great for you. But if that 1% event didn't happen to occur exactly when you needed it, you'd fall and go splat on the groun- er, take some falling damage and live, but now be stuck at the bottom of the canyon and separated from the party. With odds like that, you probably wouldn't even be attempting to jump over the canyon in the first place.
Meanwhile, most rolls you attempt can succeed on far less than a 50, so your super-success will be essentially wasted most times it comes up. If you got your 50 on an easy Acrobatics check to hop onto a table, then congratulations, you seriously hopped on to that table.
What you're proposing is very mechanically clunky, doesn't reflect how actual myths work, and doesn't produce the desired in-game results.
The solution to making characters more mythic beyond just giving them bigger bonuses is to give mythic characters interesting abilities that aren't just numerical bonuses, not to give them more "bonuses" rolls but in the form of a new die-rolling mechanic that makes them...
Agreed. Give them special abilities, or let the gestalt. And I am of that no electronics at the table, DM. Your character sheets and dice both must be able to be inspected my myself.
Electronics other than the dm provided theme music, take away from immersion. We get together to role play. And I don't have an electronic character sheets that has my homebrew rules on it.
Nothing says mythic to me like needing to turn to a probability spreadsheet on a smartphone.
And here I was thinking nothing says mythic more than watching someone make 15-50 dice rolls, one at a time, because combats are more mythic the longer they take due to rolling more dice.
Rolling a regular d20 isn't mythic either.
The mythic part comes from the potential results, using my proposal ANY number is possible. Think about what that means, on a regular day your mythic character might be able to leap over a house, but every now and then he can leap the grand canyon. Your mythic character is always strong enough to arm wrestle an ogre, but every now and then he can pick up a dragon and throw it. The catch is that you just never know when you might be able to draw on that amazing well of power. That to me is far more mythic than simply giving mythic characters bigger bonuses.
The trouble is that this means mythic deeds often won't be attempted due to vanishingly unlikely odds of success, while you'll usually get your random absurdly high number when it isn't needed.
If you roll a die fifty times before getting a 1 on your check to jump over the canyon, and that happens to be what is needed for you to get over the canyon, then great for you. But if that 1% event didn't happen to occur exactly when you needed it, you'd fall and go splat on the groun- er, take some falling damage and live, but now be stuck at the bottom of the canyon and separated from the party. With odds like that, you probably wouldn't even be attempting to jump over the canyon in the first place.
Meanwhile, most rolls you attempt can succeed on far less than a 50, so your super-success will be essentially wasted most times it comes up. If you got your 50 on an easy Acrobatics check to hop onto a table, then congratulations, you seriously hopped on to that table.
What you're proposing is very mechanically clunky, doesn't reflect how actual myths work, and doesn't produce the desired in-game results.
The solution to making characters more mythic beyond just giving them bigger bonuses is to give mythic characters interesting abilities that aren't just numerical bonuses, not to give them more "bonuses" rolls but in the form of a new die-rolling mechanic that makes them...
I think many players would agree with you that this dice rolling system in isolation would be too fickle for mythic characters. There also needs to be a mechanism to allow mythic characters to stack the odds in their favour so to speak. The idea I had in mind was that they could spend mythic points to ignore rolls of 1 as they occured. So for example: Hercules wants to jump the grand canyon. He starts rolling and a 1 turns up after only 4 rolls. He is going to fall well short (literally) so he spend a mythic point and keeps rolling. Gets another 7 rolls before a 1 comes up giving a total of 11, still not enough. He spends another point gets another 5 rolls off and is now up to a total of 16, still well short. Finally he spends another point and this time hit the jackpot, 24 consecutive rolls before a 1 shows up yielding a total of 40 and he has made the jump after spending 3 mythic points. Phew! That was close, he better not try that stunt again in a hurry.
A system like this could explain why a character like Hercules is strong enough to risk holding the entire heavens on his shoulders for a short time but prevents him from casually hurling mountains around.
I wouldn't go so far to say it is a completely different system. In a mixed party the non-mythic characters would still follow the core rules and would have a single d20 acrobatics roll to try and clear that same canyon.
Isn't this suggestion weaker than rolling a d20?
Your average is lower, and a natural 1 is now roughly three times more likely.