Right, we went with a threshold/success approach : you roll 20 D20 dice, and everything under your skill level is a success. You need to score more successes than the target number to succeed. That doesn't make for a super readable log, but I will color the successes and failures differently on top of giving the tally.
Cool. Glad to read it. That's a lot of dice! Why 20? Is that pool fixed or does it get modified? I'm a mechanics junkie and would love to learn more.
I'm still not sure about 20, I was considering 12*12 for readability, but that would reduce the range of possible stat values (but 12 is still large enough!).
There were two main reasons for going with rolling a fixed number of dice and counting successes unver a given threshold:
- The average score(number of successes) is equal to your skill level.
- The variance remains relatively similar over all values. The chance of failing if the threshold is 2 over your skill level doesn't change too much, whether it is 4 vs 6, or 8 vs 10. It makes it a bit easier to intuitively know how likely you are to succeed (ie, 2 over your skill level is roughly 5% chance, 1 is 20%). It is not true very close to the extremes, though.
- It is still possible to get all possible mes regardless of your skill level (ie, you can still score 0 with a skill of 12, or 12, with a skill of 2, even though these are lottery level odds).
Counting successes is a good device, particularly in plot oriented RPGs when players are most up against a challenge rating (CR). Does Zodiac Legion use opposed rolls, or is everything against a target number? Would you be kind enough to provide an example resolution for a melee or spell attack?
The first version used opposed rolls, but now, in melee, the threshold is the opponent skill, as it makes the roll much more readable to the player (before and after the roll itself):
So, in this example, Taurus has a base attack of 7, with 2 comrades supporting him against his opponent to the right, for a total attack score of 9
The opponent is supported by the footman to the South, so he gets 1 support bonus, for a total defense of 4 (in melee, the defense score is the melee skill of the character + a possible weapon/shield bonus).
That leads us to a target number of 5 to hit. To crit, the attacker needs 3 more successes, and would crit on 8 (but I am thinking about changing the way crits work):
So, Taurus rolls his 20 dice, and any which will turn up with 9 or less will be a success:
If he scores 5 successes, it will be a hit. The more successes the higher the damage, which gets maxed on a crit (on top of a weapon dependent bonus).
If he scores 8, it will be a critical hit.
The reason we want to change the critical hit system is that given that the outcome is mostly predictable, the characters and up in situations where they'll be almost guaranteed to crit, or not to crit at all, so we wanted to change it so that each success would allow a crit roll (with possibly multiple crit effects to choose from if several rolls turn into a crit):
For instance, if you roll 3 successes, you'd roll for crit 3 times:
If first roll is "stun", and the two others are "no crit", the stun effect would be applied to the target,
but if the first roll is "stun", the second is "broken hand", the player would get to choose the effect he prefers.
