[freeroleplay] Re: New FRINGE Mechanic
- From: Samuel Penn <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 15:28:47 +0000
Sorry for the delay, I've been busy house hunting.
On Thursday 04 December 2003 13:42, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> Samuel Penn wrote:
> >>* Roll a 1d5 (1d6 where 6 = 0) and add your Skill trait score. If the
> >>result is over the difficulty you succeed.
> >
> > This means difficulty 10 is impossible (this may be desired).
> >
> > It also means, that for difficulty X, you need to roll X+1. This
> > is (IMO) less intuitive than needing to roll X for difficulty X.
> >
> > d5 is less intuitive than d6.
> Another alternative would be to roll the difficulty or more, in which
> case a 1d5 would be fine and would give a perfect distribution (0-10).
> There would always be a chance you could fail or succeed at every roll.
I think this would be better.
> You're absolutely right, a d6 is far simpler and more intuitive than the
> d5. I like the d5 because it gives a nice, 'natural' range of 0-5.
> Another method of simplifying the d5 would be to determine that a 6 is a
> 'critical failure' or 'botch' and counts for nothing in the roll. Would
> this make it more satisfactorily simpler?
This gives a ~16% chance of a botch, which is a bit high. Personally,
I don't have too much problem with a d5 instead of a d6 (actually, it's
not really a d5, since there are still 6 possible outcomes, they're just
zero indexed rather than one indexed), but I think it is a move away from
the simplicity you seem to be after.
You could always relabel the die after all, to prevent confusion during
the heat of the moment.
>
> >>* To determine degree of success roll another 1d5 and add the Ability
> >>trait score. This gives you a degree of success between 0-10.
> >
> > This makes degree of success independent of the difficulty and
> > original roll. You also end up throwing away information. A player
> > who rolls a 5 on the initial roll, is going to be annoyed when
> > they then roll a 0 for degree of success.
>
> Good point. Thinking through the options, information loss is not
> desirable but not a major problem. This could be fixed by making the
> degree of success from the first roll carry over to add a bonus to the
> second roll. Of course, this would break the 1-10 range of the second roll.
>
> Some alternatives could include:
>
> * The degree of success in the first roll caps the actual success in the
> second roll. I.e. if you only roll 4 over the difficulty in the first
> roll, you can only score at most 4 in the second roll.
>
> * Degree of success gives the character a number of re-rolls in the
> second roll.
>
> All these seem a little clunky. Anyone else have any ideas?
How about capping the die roll to be no higher than the attribute?
So, the initial roll is "skill + max(attribute, d5)". This seems a
bit clunky though.
Penalties (if any) are reduced by the attribute?
Attribute gives you a dice pool, allowing you to reroll (or add an extra
die) once per session per point of attribute (for skills associated with
that attribute).
These allow the attribute to factor in without needing a second roll.
--
Be seeing you, web: http://www.bifrost.demon.co.uk/
Sam. jabber: samuel.penn@xxxxxxxxxx
Other related posts:
