[Forge-main] Re: [freeroleplay] Re: New FRINGE Mechanic

[Ricardo Gladwell]

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.

I think I had originally intended to use a normal 1d6 roll to determine 
outcome and forget to alter this part. Hence, rolling over a difficulty 
of 10 would be possible.

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.

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?

> > * 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?

--
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
address@hidden