Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Judge Dredd]

He is assessing a DC 0 task, vs 18 skill with a +6 modifier. It is impossible to roll a 24 on a D20. The rule, whether of house origin or game origin, gives a +6 bonus when an expert is doing an easy task, per the text he provided.

How is that much different than d20+mod vs target number? This is sounding a lot like THAC0 where it's the same end result, you just do the maths backwards.

In the case of a 90% chance, it doesn't matter if you're trying to roll more than 2, or less than 18. The end result is still the same.

One reason I like it is there's no trouble setting a DC. Everything is Normal, Hard, or Extreme, and it is mathematically impossible to have better than a 50% chance of a Hard task, or 25% on Extreme.

I could be wrong, but again, DnD has this. At least if you're playing it fast and loose. The DCs for a check are 8, 10, 12, 15, 18. In CoC terms, Normal would be 12, Hard 15, Extreme 18.

Now, the twist here is that, in CoC, it's impossible to have a better than 50% of something. Which I guess you want? I tend to favour the opposite where someone with skills should succeed more than they fail.

Part of the reason it's hard to find players for Tiny d6 (and a lesser degree, Savage Worlds) is the "swingy" ness of it. In the case of tiny d6, 5+ is a success, and need 1 success per roll. I've seen combats where multiple turns go by of everyone shooting past each other. Part of this is dumb tactical choices on the part of the player (focus then shoot, not shoot shoot). But in a game where your only three options most of the time are 33%, 50%, and 70%, players find the dice unreliable. The other extreme, making a success 4+, have a knock on effect. The lowest things can go is 50%, so they spam obviously bad checks. At worst, it's a coin flip.

I just want to chime in with the observation that D and D 5e has no scholastic or lore based skills that would inform players about the hazards of the world around them.

That's more a bad thing with DnD having no use for non-combat skills in general. SW and PF2 have ways to use things like Intimidate or Taunt in combat. There is no mechanical means of using lore and no in game benefit for doing so. Some kind of study action that reveals HP or gives bonuses on that monster until the next rest could be something that would make it actually useful.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

How is that much different than d20+mod vs target number? This is sounding a lot like THAC0 where it's the same end result, you just do the maths backwards.

In the case of a 90% chance, it doesn't matter if you're trying to roll more than 2, or less than 18. The end result is still the same.

Yes, the low roll good vs high roll good is entirely arbitrary if it is just inverted. Although in the case you speak of, you want to roll less than 19 or less than or equal to 18 if you're going off that specific example. There is no compelling argument to make low rolls preferable or high rolls preferable, the odds remain unchanged. Whatever subjective argument gives you a preference for one over the other is valid enough for your purposes, as people don't really need to justify their subjective preferences at all.

My note about the +6 bonus was to make the note that it took the target number from 18 or less to 24 or less. I *also* misspoke, as failure would require rolling a 25 on a D20, which is impossible. Read the initial text again. The character has expert distinction with skill level 18 and is doing an easy task with DC 0. The condition is that the expert distinction adds 6 to his role OR subtracts 6 from the DC, take your pick, they are identical scenarios for the reason you stated. The +6 (on a D20) turns the success rate from 90% to 100% in the case that was initially cited.

 

[AnOminous]

I wasn't kidding earlier when I said just use Call of Cthulhu. It's simple.

My main change to a basic skill system is using skill trees, where you could get 0-100 in the general skill and then skills in more specialized areas of the same skill. So at 100 you'd basically automatically do any basic level task. But I'd assign a difficulty, also in %, to any specifically important task that was relevant. That would be subtracted from the base chance of success.

But if it fell into a specialty, and some also went up to the full 100 or higher, or just up to 50 or even 25, you'd add your base skill to the specialty and that would be your base chance, so you'd have some chance of achieving tasks with over 100 difficulty.

I think I ripped this off some other Chaosium game, maybe the original Ringworld.

You also need high trust players that aren't out to exploit.

I actually somewhat encouraged a level of gamesmanship. I mean it's a game. But the high knowledge players who exploit game rules but fuck it up? They get no mercy, unlike the flailing noobs who are acting without knowledge.

My only real rule on that issue ever was "is this guy fucking it up for everyone else or are they in it for the fun too?"

 

[Rick Nekieta]

My only real rule on that issue ever was "is this guy fucking it up for everyone else or are they in it for the fun too?"

The litmus test to this is if they get sour when someone out loopholes them or do they tip their hat like a true sportsman?

 

[strawberry15]

This has been a problem since D&D 3rd edition, because for skills, having modifiers that range from -10% to +115% or more is an unintelligible design space, because what it does is make it impossible to construct a task where the best character is highly likely to succeed, and the worst character is highly likely to fail. Even with the 1/20 house rule, it's unsatisfying because you're just clipping the chance of success at 95%.

Percentile systems like Cthulhu and dice pool systems both work far better than d20 for resolving skills. There's really no reason D&D has to use d20 for skills.

D&D's skill system has so little connection with combat that I think it would be easier to just wholesale use a different game's system than try to make d20 not be shit for skills.

Writing this from a broken phone and without my glasses, so sorry in advance for all the horrible typos i may inflict upon you.
This is why i like ad&d and castles&crusades siege system.
In ad&d you have non weapon proficienies which are like mostly non combat things like agricilture, mining, pottery etc. Some.are useful in downtome (gemcraft, herbalism, healing etc) some are useful in dungeons( ancient history/languages) some arr useful in combat(blind fighting, tumbling but those are rare). When we play ad&d 2e, we rarely use skills and mostly use intuition, creativity, methodology etc. There is no sense motive, if you believe someone is lying that someone is lying.
Those nwp are rolled against your stat. The dc is your stat, and you need to roll lower on d20 to succeed. For example you roll for dancing and it is using dex, if your dex is 14 then you need to roll lower than 14. Some.proficiencies raises or.lowers the dc to imitate a hardness, or ease to do the task.
Thief skills are special to thoef class, they are percentile skills, and they are raised at ecery level and scales well.


In castles and crusades you do not have skills but all tasks are commected to one stat. Every class has one stat their primary and every characted choses one othert stat as their other primary. For example a fkghter has str as primary stat, and play can choose one of the other 5 stats to create a fighter he likes ( wise fighter, quick fighter etc) if a challange is not on your prime skill, the dc is 18, if it is to your prime skill, it is to dc 12. Pass the sc and it is cool. I love both of them tbh.

 

[Ghostse]

For all the percentile cucks, I'm just going to say that D20 is percentile just gated at 5% increments. If you really care about +-4% ...fucking lol.
The real difference with CoC and D&D, especially post-3.5 D&D, is the incredibly tall ceiling vs. CoC. Also the fact D&D designers even as early as 2e had to give meaningful progression every level as characters rise in power. CoC your character never levels up, they slowly erode until they die, go insane, or both.

3.5 mostly kept that insane ceiling fuckery confined to skills by having the BAB that only was used in combat. 4e & 5e broke that with "+1/2 level" proficiency to everything.
You could get around this with a logarithmic progression, making it take additional points to gain actual bonuses as you go up the chain, but that's hard to balance and harder to get people's heads around than you'd think, to say nothing of trying to balance it.

edit: Also 1 fail/20 success, I don't do that for skills; also some of that is on the GM. Your score is you score, though situationally I might add in some extras on a nat 20.

Dice-pool tards all i can say is I don't like working with Dice pool math. I can see how players would give no fucks but i dislike it as a DM very much. Multi-D6 bell-curve is fucky enough. But that's clearly just personal preference.

One good metaprinciple that I encourage in all GMs and can apply to any system is, if it is easy to do so, allow any lateral adjustment the player wants. For example, you get +1 or +2 for lore rolls in a certain subset at an expense of -1 or 2 in another subset. Any reasonable, small lateral trade that distinguishes the player from the general archetype is always good by my estimation. The only hazard/counterargument is that this can NOT be offered to complete min/maxxers who are only going to specialize in the task at hand and will try to stack this multiple times. Set a reasonable limit on customizations. On the other hand, being the specialist FOR the nuanced case might explain why they were chosen over similarly powered colleagues. You're slightly more knowledgable than the average fighter, but you always have to roll 2D20 when attacking and if one of them is a 1, that is your result, drastically increasing chances of a fail and slightly diminishing the average roll. You are slightly less effective than the average fighter at combat, but this is reflected in a bonus to scholastic pursuits. I like lateral house customization if it is limited in scope. You also need high trust players that aren't out to exploit.

I've never had any players suggest those trade off (only "I should have +5 because my background says I'm the best") but I'd allow it.
I like to borrrow from 4e in those situations which is "only one bonus per source"
So I might grant them a free feat to handle the adjustment, but if they try add another feat to try to up the bonus, I'd tell them only the greatest bonus applies.

Also, as you say, I'd reserve right to pick where their trade off comes from.

 

[robobobo]

I kinda like dice pool systems, but can get why some people are turned off by it. I'd suggest something like Savage Worlds in that case, as that's two dice and a target number; can't get a whole ton more straightforward than that. It's one of the most rules-light systems you can find without getting into the "just make something up I dunno lol" of PbtA and its ilk.

 

[Corn Flakes]

How is that much different than d20+mod vs target number? This is sounding a lot like THAC0 where it's the same end result, you just do the maths backwards.

In the case of a 90% chance, it doesn't matter if you're trying to roll more than 2, or less than 18. The end result is still the same.

The difference is that unless you do bounded accuracy DCs can keep going up to the stratosphere as characters scale up and that can be a problem if you're trying to keep non-combat actions relatively grounded.

A skill system that's analogous to a percentile system has the benefit of having a well-defined maximum and minimum range. There's no "a DC 20 check is borderline impossible for a level 1 character but trivial to a level 12 character", and you get to decouple combat ability from non-combat ability. Not every game is going to want that, but if the 3e/Pathfinder skill system isn't what you want, and the 5e system feels way too fucking simple (because it is), bolting on a roll-under system is a good solution that's still at least using a d20.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

First they turned orcs into Mexicans because white Karen's said orcs were a stand in for niggers. Now tranny barbarians. I swear I didn't know better. I might think someone working on 6E D&D is intentionally making fun of woke culture.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

Who is D and D 6e for? Well, it wouldn't be hard to figure out. You only have to ask the 31 people who purchased it.

 

[That Guy Who Likes The Chili]

View attachment 7057839
First they turned orcs into Mexicans because white Karen's said orcs were a stand in for niggers. Now tranny barbarians. I swear I didn't know better. I might think someone working on 6E D&D is intentionally making fun of woke culture.

Nigger with Spacebuns carrying a pack overflowing with stolen loot, and her lesbian cottage-core lover named "Cornflower". These look like NPCs I would come up with as a joke for a one shot that takes place in fantasy Portland or something.

 

[strawberry15]

3.5 mostly kept that insane ceiling fuckery confined to skills by having the BAB that only was used in combat.

Problems with 3.5 skill system:
people can start with stupid skill distribution, which can be fixed with ease.
fighter having 2+int mod amount of skills, which is the most stupid thing you can have.
In 3.5 people can have insane +35, +55 etc to a specific skill check because the game doe snot distinguish between rp skills, combat skills and dungeon skills. in ad&d for example, romeving traps, hiding in shadows etc are thief skills where as dancing is a general skill. 3.5 was the age of minmaxing, Clerics would not buy religion skill and instead use their sp on stupid skills for stupid benefits. this can be fixed by dm simply saying (ok guys this is a role playing game, please buy some skills that would help your character to feel more living. Cleric ffs buy some religion skills or do not play a cleric. also you can all get sme nice skills. Rogue you stole a big diamond, i reccomend you to get some crafting skills so you can cut these diamonds and discreetly cut them and sell them. Fighter, you are rich, go get a rat farm and raise rats (animal handling+ profession) so you can use CLEAVE.

When you lover the magic level in your game, it is more managable, but also very unforgiving. 3.5 wants you to stack many consumables, magical items etc so people only focus on magical items or other shanenigans. this results in them disregarding n meaningful mundane interaction with the world. If they interact with the mundane, and if they are rewarded for mundane (requires patience) the skill distribution also becomes better. otherwise there is no reason for a fighter to invest in farming, crafting etc if they are not that integral and can be shugged off with one or two sentences. And when they do not invest on it, they will just buy bloff for feint, escape artist for some other shanenigan etc.

the only unforgivable thing is giving 2 skill points per level to fighters. those stupid bonus feats are not worth it man!
Pathfinder also gave them horrble skill abilities. I can understand you giving casters less skill points but cmon man!

 

[Judge Dredd]

View attachment 7057839
First they turned orcs into Mexicans because white Karen's said orcs were a stand in for niggers. Now tranny barbarians. I swear I didn't know better. I might think someone working on 6E D&D is intentionally making fun of woke culture.

View attachment 7057861
Nigger with Spacebuns carrying a pack overflowing with stolen loot, and her lesbian cottage-core lover named "Cornflower". These look like NPCs I would come up with as a joke for a one shot that takes place in fantasy Portland or something.

Yes. I talked about that buried in a wall of text earlier. But I agree with the videos conclusion. That being they're trying to court the modern audience (albeit 12 years too late). Using the same tactic that killed Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who, and many other franchises. Seeing the old fans as "locked in" who will buy dogshit in a bag provided it has a brand logo on it, while new fans will want the DnD "lifestyle brand" of shoes, handbags, and supplementary junk.

Of course, this doesn't work. The "modern audience" doesn't exist. And if it does, they don't spend much on "product". New people have no reason to buy their ugly handbags and shoes because it has a logo on it that is meaningless to them, and the products are generally low to mid quality anyway.

Then there's the elephant in the room. DnD isn't just chasing the modern audience, they're chasing the female modern audience, focusing on elements like playing dress up and talking about feelings.

And then there's the other elephant in the room. The reason the diversity is so bad is to keep sensitivity readers and consultants employed.

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

I'm a real percentile nigga since my first real RPG game ever was Black Crusade and the longest game I ever run was Only War. I've just used that general system so long it's comfy.

D20 isn't too hard or different. You just want high roll, and some semantics/maths come out different. I haven't really done D&D since every single GM has turned me so hard off I avoided the game and system completely until recently. I've gone over running Starfinder. I get the idea of their ever growing formulas for checks, but I want a simpler "This is easy, this is medium, this is hard, this is basically impossible" DC levels. As the PCs level the basic stuff becomes easy but you won't really progress story or character wise by only doing things that require a simple check. IDK. I'm trying not to schizo ramble too much.

Now I have a question: Is Zweihander's system based on Warhammer Fantasy RPG's earlier editions (2 specifically)? I recall hearing it was, but that could be another game entirely.

 

[strawberry15]

I'm a real percentile nigga since my first real RPG game ever was Black Crusade and the longest game I ever run was Only War. I've just used that general system so long it's comfy.

D20 isn't too hard or different. You just want high roll, and some semantics/maths come out different. I haven't really done D&D since every single GM has turned me so hard off I avoided the game and system completely until recently. I've gone over running Starfinder. I get the idea of their ever growing formulas for checks, but I want a simpler "This is easy, this is medium, this is hard, this is basically impossible" DC levels. As the PCs level the basic stuff becomes easy but you won't really progress story or character wise by only doing things that require a simple check. IDK. I'm trying not to schizo ramble too much.

Now I have a question: Is Zweihander's system based on Warhammer Fantasy RPG's earlier editions (2 specifically)? I recall hearing it was, but that could be another game entirely.

It is based on warhammer. it is as system agnostiv as possible but it is a warhammer rip off. the system is nice, the author is not.
The bounded accuracy in it actually works. Action economy is also nice.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

Sorry not sorry, systems that give the target a chance to parry/deflect/dodge/mitigate damage by way of a die roll are better than just "roll to hit" systems. Rolling poorly to dodge > being completely helpless as the adversary rolls to hit. You can add this into D and D by simply replacing AC with AC - 10 + 1D20. 45% of the time, the defender does poorly and is easier to hit. 5% of the the odds of the attacker are unchanged. 50% of the time, the defender is in a better position than RAW. As long as you apply it to both PCs and NPCs, the playing field is kept even with defenders benefitting equally across the board. The effect is marginal, as hits will land slightly less often on both sides, but to an equal degree.

 

[p1138]

the only unforgivable thing is giving 2 skill points per level to fighters. those stupid bonus feats are not worth it man!
Pathfinder also gave them horrble skill abilities. I can understand you giving casters less skill points but cmon man!

Pathfinder did at least come up with background skills in Unchained in an attempt to try and alleviate the problem. Appraise, artistry, craft, handle animal, a handful of knowledge skills, linguistics, perform, profession, and sleight of hand are just a separate skill category everyone gets 2 points for at every level.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/background-skills/

But even then, that really doesn't help an INT+2 fighter at the end of the day, since they still won't have enough skill points to be STR or DEX based, avoid putting a bunch of ability points into INT to gain more skills per level, and then have a CHA bonus worth a shit to be able to actually make use of things like intimidate and have points to put in it while also having basic survival skills, being able to climb a fucking tree or fence, and maintain a perception bonus worth a shit.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

There is a mechanic I designed that I have never tested. I call it Cinematic Fighting rules. The design of the rules is simply to guarantee an extended fight scene between the main protagonists and the main antagonist. Both protagonist and antagonist get a certain number of plot armor points. Arbitrarily, let's set it at 100. Every time that a hit would have been scored, you calculate how many it hit by and subtract it from plot armor points instead. If you succeeded by 6, the enemy's plot armor points go from 100 to 94. Nat 20s get double consideration. If, in the aforementioned example, the target number was 14 and it was exceeded by 6 with a natural 20, 12 points would be subtracted instead of 6. This guarantees that there will be many rounds of successful dodges and blocks before actual blood starts to flow to mimic something like a 5 minute duel at the end of a movie. It is not meant to be realistic, it is meant to be cinematic. Olympic fencing doesn't go 5 minutes, but the end duel of Three Musketeers does. I am trying to emulate the latter.

Additional mechanics I was considering was: a) a bonus to all attack/defense rolls when properly motivated (fighting better when you realize you are fighting the man who killed your brother) and b) a bonus to all attack/defense rolls when there is a plot armor point differential of sufficient magnitude (if one party, attacker or defender, protagonist or antagonist, were a victim of outlier bad luck, this would prompt a catch up to prevent an runaway victory and keep the final tally close) and c) an extreme bonus when out of plot armor points, to try to deplete the advantage of the the top party. If both parties are out of plot armor, it is just RAW fighting.

This is meant to prevent the anticlimatic lucky shot resolving the epic showdown in a single round and keep players rolling and rolling before they can possibly accomplish their objective, to emulate the final climactic scene of a movie. This would only be kicked in in critical battles to prevent massive slugfests with mooks.

Thoughts?

 

[Corn Flakes]

That's just HP without rolling for damage.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

That's just HP without rolling for damage.

Sort of. The damage to plot armor points would be determined by degree of success. The point is to extend fights while giving advantage to neither protagonist or antagonist. Assuming protagonist and antagonist both have extremely high skill levels, this is guaranteed to go on for a while, dragging the fight across multiple locations and encouraging use of terrain to achieve advantage/disadvantage, allowing for the things you see in movies. Whether that is desirable is highly subjective, but I like the idea of some fights playing out like a movie while keeping the stakes for both parties every step of the way. People who prefer quick resolution in all cases would obviously not care for this mechanic.

Added in edit: It occurs to me the same effect could be achieved just by giving massive defense bonuses to both parties, making hits rare and not all "back end loaded" at end of combat (a common movie trope, to be fair). Simply adding +10 (or whatever) to both parties defense rolls or +10 to both parties AC in the case of a "roll to hit" system would also achieve the same end without having to do a whole new mechanic. Again, subjective preference. Both parties might still have to score an average of 5 hits, but most rounds will go with successful block, successful dodge, etc. You could introduce terrain and morale modifiers to encourage both protagonist and antagonist to maneuver for advantage, meaning that the party who gets the advantage is the one who is able to get under the skin of the other. Since most movie fights are allegorical for and inspired by a philosophical conflict, I do like this. Others might not.