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I have a lot of changes I want to make, but I figure on getting feedback on individual pieces.
Today I want feedback on a few main dice mechanic options.
Option 1) 3d6 Basically as Unearthed Arcana has it. Replace the d20 with 3d6, and adjust criticals according to either maintain 5% base crit chance by expanding the base crit range or don’t change crit range but make crits more potent instead.
Option 1b) Use the above except for attack rolls, adding more consistency to most checks but leaving attacks to still roll a d20 and thus be more wild.
Option 1c) Use 3d6 except for when threatened/in combat/etc. Differs from 1b in that all checks use a d20 under combat conditions, or as a lesser option, when threatened (threatened = someone could actually attack you if you provoke an AoO).
Option 2) 3d12 I like this idea because d12s are my favorite dice and I never get to use them. But this requires basically doubling all DCs and adjusting a few other numbers. Gives greater granularity, which has benefits and drawbacks. I like the idea, but I also know that it means numbers can go from a few dozen to nearly a hundred regularly.
Option 3) Roll a d12 plus two stat based dice. Basically you add two ability score modifiers to every check, but the modifiers are dice. This requires rescaling ability modifiers so there are no negatives and the average score of 10 is a d4 modifier.
This has the awesome effect of allowing the same skill to feel different when used differently as instead of always being the same ability score, different abilities can be called for as modifiers with the same skill.
For example, heal might be wis and dex for first aid (dex being for steady hands, quickness, and control) or wis and cha for long term care (cha being about dealing with the patient) or wis and int for treating deadly wounds (int being for diagnosis and understanding as well as figuring out the best treatment application). This adds so much differentiation without adding a bunch of new mechanics.
This option also means you really see how much your ability scores are helping your checks.
Please tell me what you think of these options, especially if you try any of them.
my first question is: Why? What is your goal? Are you simply wanting to use different dice? or are you wanting to shift from a linear set of changes to a bell curve? Are you wanting more granularity in the characters abilities?
I understand the desire to do so, but one of the great things about d20 is that it's complex enough to be fun, but simple enough to not become burdensome. Everything in d20 is a single dice roll, plus a calculated bonus, against a target number, moving too far away from that mechanic is IMO unadvisable.
First, I play a less common playstyle. To me, mechanics are game support, not game definition. If you read Alexandrian’s article Calibrating Your Expectations, his description of 3.x as casual simulation and how the mechanics map to real world expectations is the fundamental core of why I use mechanics at all instead of simply going freeform. But the more modern systems have continually move away from that towards a more gamist style of play.
Thus I want to go back to 3.5 and update it while actually maintaining the casual simulationism, and apply some alterations to better fit both my playstyle and the types of campaigns and campaign settings that I run.
And yet I do want players, so I need to balance out what I want to accomplish mechanically with getting players.
In particular relevance to the main dice mechanics, I prefer two things, A) a bell curve, and B) obfuscation of counting success percentages. The latter because I notice that people tend to get distracted by the mechanics more when they can easily calculate the exact percentage of success instead of doing what we do in real life and rely on a quick judgement and gut feeling from a rough estimate. IE looking to jump a gap, people don’t know what the exact chance of success is, but rather they need to compare to what they have jumped in the past, what they know they can do as a rough imprecise judgement call. Mechanics help greatly in adjudicating such situations and also in communicating, but mechanics also tend to distract from the world milieu that is being communicated about.
my first question is: Why? What is your goal? Are you simply wanting to use different dice? or are you wanting to shift from a linear set of changes to a bell curve?
Should be answered above, but to recap, want a bell curve. Also incidentally supports the mathematical foundation of mapping numbers to description.
Are you wanting more granularity in the characters abilities?
I’m a bit on the fence on this. I kinda want more granularity, especially as that helps what I want to do with progression later, but I feel like it will come at a negative in terms of actually using the numbers at the table when making checks. I also really like the idea of using d12s more, but this is not a make or break issue for me.
I understand the desire to do so, but one of the great things about d20 is that it's complex enough to be fun, but simple enough to not become burdensome. Everything in d20 is a single dice roll, plus a calculated bonus, against a target number, moving too far away from that mechanic is IMO unadvisable.
Having played with 3d6 plenty, I don’t see it as any less simple than a d20, unless you want to start looking at the %s of success to make your choices.
As for simplicity overall, my end goals for the system is to be about equal in simplicity but shifting things around, reducing things in some areas while adding things elsewhere, hopefully will balance out in terms of simplicity.
For example, using option 3 for the main dice roll comes with the ability to use a single skill with many different combinations of ability scores, adding tons in terms of depth and descriptive power without adding any character sheet, or character build, complexity at all.
In general games have shifted focus away from pseudo-realistic models towards simpler, expectation confirming rules.
Yea, and I hate that. The psuedo-realism modeling is the foundation of why I use mechanics. Without that, mechanics are nothing but a distraction and a detriment. To the style of play I desire at least. I do see how other styles can benefit, but I don’t want those other styles.
At this point it is about creating a computer model of your game so it can perform the modelling/rule adjudication for VTTs.
And I really don’t care here. The housekeeping a computer can do is either to be removed, used primarily by me and not the players, or is something everyone should be paying attention to and making meaningful, possibly strategic, choices about, and therefore should not be taken care of in the background anyway. IE, how many rations do you have. If we are tracking rations, then the players should absolutely be seeing and dealing with their rations getting used up or the whole point of tracking rations disappears. It’s like cash vs card. Using cash activates parts of your brain that a credit card doesn’t, and that’s very relevant when crafting an experience.
Switching from d20 to 2d12 would be pretty simple, give the desired bell curve and IMO come close enough to maintaining the crit percentages with almost no other changes made to the system.
It sounds like however that the mechanics are inconsequential to you, in that case I recommend the Ars Magica system.
If you want granularity and realism, Rolemaster is my go-to.
Switching from d20 to 2d12 would be pretty simple, give the desired bell curve and IMO come close enough to maintaining the crit percentages with almost no other changes made to the system.
It sounds like however that the mechanics are inconsequential to you, in that case I recommend the Ars Magica system.
If you want granularity and realism, Rolemaster is my go-to.
It’s not that mechanics are inconsequential, it’s that mechanics fill a different role in my playstyle. Most look to mechanics as a sort of definition of how to play and what they can do, but I basically play freeform with mechanical support.
Rolemaster is certainly interesting, but it’s too nitty gritty. D20 has a better balance between ease of play and simulation.
Ars magica goes back to the same problem I have with dnd 5e and pf2 and others, it breaks the connection between numbers and the world.
As for 2d12, it throws the numbers off at the low end. Instead of commoners needing several body slams to bust down a good door, it becomes a coin toss instead. That difference of 3 points matters a lot at the low end.
I appreciate the suggestion but it was an option I already explored and discarded. I hope my explanation above shows why.
I’ve thought of it before and dismissed it, but at this point, it’s not about the dice probabilities, rather, it’s about the feel and ease of understanding, about which option is going to be better enjoyed by players.
Oh, and plenty of other things are going to be changed, I’m just trying to get feedback on individual parts at the moment.
it’s about the feel and ease of understanding, about which option is going to be better enjoyed by players.
IMO, your comment here is critical to a good game. You need to keep everything to a single type of die roll (everything in d20 aside from damage, is a d20+bonus vs a target number) IMO, you need to keep a system similar to this. you can change the die roll itself, and you can change where the bonus comes from, but do it the same for everything in the game.
I've played systems where your bonus is a dice roll + bonuses from 2 stats, it works well, especially in descriptive games where you can choose which 2 stats you use as long as you can justify how they apply to the situation.
As for wanting a bell curve - the only way to do this at the table top is with multiple dice that you add together.
I agree, hence me narrowing things down to three options I presented in the OP. My hope was for more feedback to help select which of those three to go with, but personally I like option 3. I’d definitely want to hear from anyone having tried any of these options.
I might run some short games trying them out to get more direct feedback but any games I run would be a bit slow moving at the moment.
I agree, hence me narrowing things down to three options I presented in the OP. My hope was for more feedback to help select which of those three to go with, but personally I like option 3. I’d definitely want to hear from anyone having tried any of these options.
I might run some short games trying them out to get more direct feedback but any games I run would be a bit slow moving at the moment.
So IMO the 3 methods you list either require too many modification, or are too complicated.
1) 3d6 give you 3-18, so while it's a good bell curve, it really changes the values for crits (16-18 for roughly 5%, 15-18 for roughly 10%) this seems clumsy and possibly difficult to remember.
2) 3d12, I've already mentioned 2d12 and you dismissed it due to how it affects commoners, I would expect this to be dismissed for the same reason.
3) d12 plus stat based dice - I HATE HATE HATE systems that do this, it really slows down the game to have to figure out which dice or how many dice I get to roll for different types of events. keeping things simple - a SINGLE (this can be multiple dice for percentile, or bell curve etc) dice roll, plus a bonus that's ALREADY calculated is fast and easy - is IMO the best methodology.
I've play a lot of different systems, and by far the best ones are all roll a dice, add a number, compare to target number.
the worst are add up how many dice you get, roll dice, count successes, compare to a success value, or compare to an opposed roll.
1) 3d6 give you 3-18, so while it's a good bell curve, it really changes the values for crits (16-18 for roughly 5%, 15-18 for roughly 10%) this seems clumsy and possibly difficult to remember.
Not sure why this would be the case, d20 already has crit ranges, so it’s not really any different to say a crit is X+ on a d20 vs 3d6. Supposedly using the 3d6 alternate rules was the most common houserule in the 3.x era. I’ve played with it in real campaigns as a player on multiple occasions and even in the gurps rules as well with no issues of this at all among the other players/gms.
2) 3d12, I've already mentioned 2d12 and you dismissed it due to how it affects commoners, I would expect this to be dismissed for the same reason.
Actually this does not have that issue, primarily because it requires changing the entire number scale by a simple multiple of two, whereas a 2d12 causes problems if you don’t change the whole number scale and trying to alter the whole number scale to fit 2d12 is vastly more complicated than simple doubling.
3) d12 plus stat based dice - I HATE HATE HATE systems that do this, it really slows down the game to have to figure out which dice or how many dice I get to roll for different types of events. keeping things simple - a SINGLE (this can be multiple dice for percentile, or bell curve etc) dice roll, plus a bonus that's ALREADY calculated is fast and easy - is IMO the best methodology.
I suspect you just haven’t found good techniques for it. Technique can make a truly massive difference in hiw easy or hard mechanics are to use. Savage Worlds has different dice for different stats and that goes very well. No one I know has difficulty figuring out the correct die to roll. If this troublesome for you, then you might just keep the dice on your character sheet next to their stat, then you can just look at your sheet and grab the die sitting on that stat. I say this because you really should try Savage Worlds at least once. It’s a good system. Of course SW operates on the highest die out of a pool of rolled dice, which can explode, but hey, it works pretty well.
In the end though, none of these really require extensive alterations. The first alters crit ranges but nothing else. The second doubles all the reference values/DCs. The third requires the weirdest changes but all it actually takes is altering the ability score modifiers.
The said, I will eventually have a set of extensive changes anyway, and this is just me trying to get more feedback by handling changes piecemeal.
So, anyone willing to playtest any of these in a short module?
Bell curve option. Replace D20 with 4D6-3.
Less fumbles and crits, if you want that.
Bell curve option. Replace D20 with 4D6-3.
Less fumbles and crits, if you want that.
I’m curious, why this? What’s your thinking that leads to this option over those in the opening post?
I’m curious, why this? What’s your thinking that leads to this option over those in the opening post?Bell curve option. Replace D20 with 4D6-3.
Less fumbles and crits, if you want that.
my guess is that it gives a bell curve option, but keeps the roll numbers of 1-21, which is essentially 1-20, so nothing else needs to be changed.
my guess is that it gives a bell curve option, but keeps the roll numbers of 1-21, which is essentially 1-20, so nothing else needs to be changed.I’m curious, why this? What’s your thinking that leads to this option over those in the opening post?Bell curve option. Replace D20 with 4D6-3.
Less fumbles and crits, if you want that.
Perhaps, but it complicates every check with subtraction, shifts the median value (small amount but still does), and completely ignores the existing official bell curve option that is established as the expectation of the actual designers. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it. 3d6 is just plain easier, fits the designers expectations much better, and the one change it requires is a nonissue as players regularly deal with crit ranges anyway.
If I recall correctly, 3d6 was the original planned roll to begin with but switched to a d20 because you got crits more often which was seen as a benefit.