Actually, no, I'm saying that, in general, the mechanics should have difficulty levels, excpet opposed rolls. Opposed value would replace Difficulty. Some systems do assume a basic level of difficulty and then apply an opposing result or value. EG, difficulty of swining a punch is X + opposing defence roll. But that seems like pointless busywork.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;596037Broadly speaking I expect them to have comparable stats.

Try mixing selection with dice rolls.
Effectively introducing meta tactics which hopefully mirror real tactics, into teh mix.

So for example in combat you may use Hit locations and allow a PC to guard a location specifically makign it harder to hit. You can do this either with the Hit location template drawn on each character cheet and use a token played from concealed or just number the locatiosn 1-10, 1-12 etc and use an appropriate dice.
You can take this all the way down an en-garde style route of complex combat manuvers if you like.

If that is too complex and you want fast combat you can think outside the dice. I create a card game in which combat was resolved through agents in play based on a prowess stat. Prowess ranked 1-5 There were 6 combat cards runing 4wounds , 3,2,1,1,0 and statted 5,4,3,2,1,1 The PC took all cards they were allowed to use based on their prowess (so a 5 rank prowess got all 6 cards and a 1 rank got just 2 the 0 and the 1) and in combat you both drew cards and the difference in damage was appleid to the looser. Weapons modified the final damage and some special attacks replaced certain cards.
It was quick efficient. Represented relative skill and was entertaining and tense in play.

Basically think outside a simple roll if you don't like it.

There are 2 real choices in any RPG mechanic from combat, to char gen, from skill use to magic. Either make it simple so it gets out of the way of the roleplay or make it enjoyable in and of itself. People don't mind chargen that takes an hour if its a really fun enjoyable hour (who hasn't made up Traveller PCs just for fun). In the same way if skill use if fun (for everyone not just the netrunner ) then it won't be a drag and can stand being more complex. If combat takes an hour but its excllent and exciting and everyone enjoys it then there is not a problem if it takes an hour and its a drudgery of rolling a d20 400 times to try to slowly wear down a beast then no one will enjoy it.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;596246Actually, no, I'm saying that, in general, the mechanics should have difficulty levels, excpet opposed rolls. Opposed value would replace Difficulty. Some systems do assume a basic level of difficulty and then apply an opposing result or value. EG, difficulty of swining a punch is X + opposing defence roll. But that seems like pointless busywork.

Well, the problem you might encounter is that when creating anything new, the checks of a creator set the difficulty for anyone else to understand it. That makes a basis of an opposed check, but how do you establish the required roll to make that concept initially?

Let's put you in the time of Tesla, Edison, and Marconi. You want to invent something, and the understanding of the age makes what you are working on cutting-edge. Assume that the vacuum tube exists, and you want to invent the radio. You have a reasonable chance to do this, as the science exists. A check is not required to actually do this in a system without opposed rolls, but how do you calculate and estimate time to develop this?

We'll use the Edison example again: It took him many of attempts, using many materials before he achieved the vacuum tube for a functional bulb that could ignite a filament without it instantly burning out, and then then thousands of attempts experimenting with materials for filament, from chicken-wire to human hair until he settled on carbon, and he had support from other scientists, most working without pay and constantly on the verge of leaving him; he almost lost everything he owned proving his concept.

There isn't an opposed check here unless you provide a difficulty level for this kind of task. You can call it 'initial opposition', 'transparent opposition', or anything you wish, but it is still a difficulty base in terms of system mechanics.

Now, in the same era, place someone who wants to create atomic fusion. This is several decades ahead of its time. How hard would it be to figure out the science and mathematics, and to develop all of the components required to make it work? What are you rolling against, or is it an automatic success?

Place yourself in the same era, and work on a ray-gun or mass-driver. Now you are working on something more-advanced than we have or use today. Is there an opposed roll? If so, how do you justify it, in a society where there is nothing of this kind to use as a basis for an opposed check?

Now invent a FTL space vessell. Is it an automatic success because there is nothing to oppose?

This is why there are steep difficulty increases, and in science checks, the difficulty is also based by the ambient technology rating of a society. The system theme does not preclude this type of story. In your original Superheros example, we can examine the work of Superman, The Flash, and most-importantly Batman. The former have invented technology, and crafted things.

In the case of Superman, the tasks are so simple that checks are seldom required; the Flash was a scientist before he was affected and gained his powers, and continued his career on the side to maintain his identity and his passion. Batman invented all of his tools, and his only power was his intellect.

All three needed to make checks that has no basis for oppositions, so how do you determine what kind of check they require to be able to carry out a task of complexity, or the time required, and how many attempts in experimentation it takes to do it?

The same goes for some passive skills. How likely is someone to notice a tiny, 4mm tall engraving of the word 'Kilroy' on a mural of a naked lady eating a snake in a temple in the torchlight, surrounded by other objects of value, without actively examining or searching for it?

Not very. Thus, we use probabilities to check if they stumble on noticing it by chance. How do you set an opposed roll for this? A check to hide it, perhaps, but it is mostly hidden due to conditional factors: The writer put it there in jest, but not necessarily to make it impossible to see, plus the dim-light and eye-drawing objects elsewhere.  (X|S)

Having tactics and so on affect the outcome for evenly matched opponents seem reasonable.

Bit  of a tangent, but one thing to note I think is that if you may not want  an attack vs. defense roll to be 50% likely to go in favour of the  attacker; it may be better for an attack roll to by default be only 20%  or 30% likely to succeed. Where the base chance of success is low, then positive modifiers become more beneficial; they give more of an  effect on the total percentage to hit, proportionally, and so makes a battle between evenly matched opponents less random.

Ran into a similar situation when designing my system.  What I found worked well enough and could be implemented as the mechanic for the whole check system.  The mechanic is roll-under.  This key point is the player determines the difference between the roll and goal numbers to get the disparity.  (Goal -Roll = Disparity)  This Disparity is considered the quality of the resulting effort of the check.  This Disparity is compared against a difficulty bias to determine if there's a success or not and to what degree.  The difficulty bias is typically "0", but can be adjusted as needed.  In situations of opposed rolls, the disparity of the opposing roll substitutes for the difficulty bias.

So two combatants are in a battle.  (I use a percentile system for skills.)

Attacker:  Skill (50) - Roll (23) = Disparity (27)
Defender:  Skill (40) - Roll (03) = Disparity (37)

Defender blocks the Attacker since Defender's Disparity (37) is greater than Attacker's Disparity (27).  So, the defender got lucky in this situation and was able to decently defend himself.  But, statistically the odds are still in the favor of the Attacker with a higher skill.

It's worked well enough in playtests and it allows you to derive a good amount of information from one roll.  Also, it still allows the GM the ability to obscure some of the mechanical details to keep players in the dark about whether or not they have actually succeeded.

Quote from: BubbaBrown;596469Ran into a similar situation when designing my system.  What I found worked well enough and could be implemented as the mechanic for the whole check system.  The mechanic is roll-under.  This key point is the player determines the difference between the roll and goal numbers to get the disparity.  (Goal -Roll = Disparity)  This Disparity is considered the quality of the resulting effort of the check.  This Disparity is compared against a difficulty bias to determine if there's a success or not and to what degree.  The difficulty bias is typically "0", but can be adjusted as needed.  In situations of opposed rolls, the disparity of the opposing roll substitutes for the difficulty bias.

So two combatants are in a battle.  (I use a percentile system for skills.)

Attacker:  Skill (50) - Roll (23) = Disparity (27)
Defender:  Skill (40) - Roll (03) = Disparity (37)

Defender blocks the Attacker since Defender's Disparity (37) is greater than Attacker's Disparity (27).  So, the defender got lucky in this situation and was able to decently defend himself.  But, statistically the odds are still in the favor of the Attacker with a higher skill.



It's worked well enough in playtests and it allows you to derive a good amount of information from one roll.  Also, it still allows the GM the ability to obscure some of the mechanical details to keep players in the dark about whether or not they have actually succeeded.

It's a reasonable enough idea, but ultimately it's just who rolls highest. That doesn't really represent the skill involved enough, is my point. There's nothing wrong with the idea.

As i consider it you could offset that with some form of tactical bonuses that offer greater reward for risk. Eg:

A cautious approach offers -10 on the roll, conferring greater chance for success against the target number in return for a lower chance of beating the opponent.
Conversely an 'all out' approach offers +20, throwing cuation somewhat to the wind and increasing the chance for a better opposing value at the expense of risking the target number.

Problem is that won't work for every situation and is incongruent with something like an 'all out' defence.

Quote from: MagesGuild;596397Well, the problem you might encounter is that when creating anything new, the checks of a creator set the difficulty for anyone else to understand it. That makes a basis of an opposed check, but how do you establish the required roll to make that concept initially?

That wouldn't be a strictly opposed roll. The creation effort is not opposed simultaneously, it has to come first. So you woudl make a roll against the requisite difficulty to create something, then, if and when it becomes necessary (such as testing the accuracy of a forgery), the result of that roll is the difficulty for the effort to test it.

Rollunder is a more straightforward premise, however its intrinsic problems are not so easily rectified. You could say that

Attack 50 vs Defence 40

is resolved by having the chance to hit increased by the difference, and conversely so the defence. So then it becomes:

Attack 60 vs Defence 30. This offsets the inherent bias toward the defender in such situations (defender succeeds if either the attack roll fails or his succeeds, the attacker only has one chance).

Let's say that instead of comparing skill results directly to each other you use a third value which represents the amount of 'work' that it takes to achieve a result and whoever rolls that total first achieves that result.

So let's say a 'run me thru' result takes 20. Each player rolls until one of them reaches or exceeds that value. However, perhaps a 'disarm' result is just 15, so as play progresses one or more of the players may decide that a disarm is a better result to go for, and not take a chance on being run thru.

This is what I was talking about when I said extended actions fit everywhere. More importantly, they replace difficulty with 'progress', which can go back AND forth. And I've found that this keeps my players much more engaged than single shot opposed rolls.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;596506Let's say that instead of comparing skill results directly to each other you use a third value which represents the amount of 'work' that it takes to achieve a result and whoever rolls that total first achieves that result.

So let's say a 'run me thru' result takes 20. Each player rolls until one of them reaches or exceeds that value. However, perhaps a 'disarm' result is just 15, so as play progresses one or more of the players may decide that a disarm is a better result to go for, and not take a chance on being run thru.

This is what I was talking about when I said extended actions fit everywhere. More importantly, they replace difficulty with 'progress', which can go back AND forth. And I've found that this keeps my players much more engaged than single shot opposed rolls.

But that assumes the difficulty for defending such a move is the same as the offensive difficulty, if both parties are competing to reach a point total first.
And not all actions make sense as extended actions; the combat itself might be seen thus, but the act of disarming someone isn't necessarily the case. One round the characte rmight try to disarm his opponent. Next round he might concede and just try and punch him in the face.

Might I suggest that you present your combat mechanic here, as-is for critique? Ihat way, we can all see what you have done thus far, illustrate where you may run into problems, and make suggestions for improvements.

I'll admit that to me, you seem to be going back and forth on how your system is working, and I'm getting a tad lost. You may even present different renditions of it to ask which of them people prefer to use. (X|S)

I don't actually have any mechanics yet. I've been back and forth because I can't really decide which would be best. Not just combat either.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;596476It's a reasonable enough idea, but ultimately it's just who rolls highest. That doesn't really represent the skill involved enough, is my point. There's nothing wrong with the idea.

Technically, it rewards the one that rolls the lowest... with the highest skill.  Both attacker and defender can roll the lowest possible with "00" (00-99 range), but the one with the highest skill is going to win out when it comes to determining the greatest disparity. The mechanic favors those with greater skills.

QuoteAs i consider it you could offset that with some form of tactical bonuses that offer greater reward for risk. Eg:

A cautious approach offers -10 on the roll, conferring greater chance for success against the target number in return for a lower chance of beating the opponent.
Conversely an 'all out' approach offers +20, throwing cuation somewhat to the wind and increasing the chance for a better opposing value at the expense of risking the target number.

Just add to the resulting disparity for a bonus and subtract for a penalty.  This way the player doesn't have to worry the addition and subtraction initially, but just getting that initial disparity number out from their roll.

QuoteProblem is that won't work for every situation and is incongruent with something like an 'all out' defence.

??  Worked well enough in combat and non-combat situations in my playtests, with both opposed and non-opposed rolling.  I'm curious as to where it would fail operate.  Could you think of an example?

Quote from: BubbaBrown;596557Technically, it rewards the one that rolls the lowest... with the highest skill.  Both attacker and defender can roll the lowest possible with "00" (00-99 range), but the one with the highest skill is going to win out when it comes to determining the greatest disparity. The mechanic favors those with greater skills.


Just add to the resulting disparity for a bonus and subtract for a penalty.  This way the player doesn't have to worry the addition and subtraction initially, but just getting that initial disparity number out from their roll.


??  Worked well enough in combat and non-combat situations in my playtests, with both opposed and non-opposed rolling.  I'm curious as to where it would fail operate.  Could you think of an example?

I was talking about rollunder in general. Wouldn't your idea be simpler if it was just who rolled highest? Then you don't need to calculate the difference.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;596615I was talking about rollunder in general. Wouldn't your idea be simpler if it was just who rolled highest? Then you don't need to calculate the difference.

Simpler, yes.  Thought about the blackjack mechanic and for what it granted, I lost a few bits I really liked and bits I have the options to do.

Rolling Low is Good, explanation is simpler for players.  The difference between the roll and goal number, both under and over turned out to be a great way for players to get hints on RP and determining how good or bad an effort was.  And with having some behind the scenes bits obscured, when a +40 awesome effort failed...  both character and player were honestly and genuinely surprised.  Many tense moments when flubs (-10 or lower efforts) turned out to not spell a character's immediate end.  (Like snapping a twig while sneaking and the tense moments of waiting to see if the nearby guards notice.)  Also, the ability to do overflows in either direction of the scale is a neat option.  So, when a player rolls "00", they roll again to see if they get any bonuses added on and similar (but in a negative way) for rolling "99".

In summary, the blackjack "roll under but close" mechanic didn't exactly grant me the features I really wanted.  Not to say, I couldn't get those features from the blackjack mechanic, but it the math to extract such was getting a bit more involved and not consistent with the theme.

Your idea is perfectly fine. Really whether it's who rolls lowest/highest disparity or who rolls highest is just personal preference.

I'm thinking I might stick with rollunder and develop the stance idea:

if you act cautiously you decrease your die result, if you act aggressively you increase it. Highest result is the winner (providing it's successful per se).

However there are two problems:

firstly, how to rationalise what happens if both rolls fail: if someone swings a sword and misses, meanwhile the defender fails his dodge roll...? I'm thinking of something called 'wrong footing' where both failures mean that both people, relative to their activities, misstep somehow; they overextend themselves or something.

secondly, there are some situations where the 'stance' seems incongruous. Eg, a person trying to sneak past an active guard. The sneak decides to be cautious, so he reduces his die roll by 20%, the guard (for the sake or argument) acts normally (no modifier). Now the sneak has more chance of succeeding in his roll, but if the guard also succeeds also then the sneak has more chance of being spotted...for being cautious?

Does that make sense? I rationalise it by satying that the sneak, relative to the guard, was lingering too long and got caught.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;596830Your idea is perfectly fine. Really whether it's who rolls lowest/highest disparity or who rolls highest is just personal preference.

I'm thinking I might stick with rollunder and develop the stance idea:

if you act cautiously you decrease your die result, if you act aggressively you increase it. Highest result is the winner (providing it's successful per se).

However there are two problems:

firstly, how to rationalise what happens if both rolls fail: if someone swings a sword and misses, meanwhile the defender fails his dodge roll...? I'm thinking of something called 'wrong footing' where both failures mean that both people, relative to their activities, misstep somehow; they overextend themselves or something.

secondly, there are some situations where the 'stance' seems incongruous. Eg, a person trying to sneak past an active guard. The sneak decides to be cautious, so he reduces his die roll by 20%, the guard (for the sake or argument) acts normally (no modifier). Now the sneak has more chance of succeeding in his roll, but if the guard also succeeds also then the sneak has more chance of being spotted...for being cautious?

Does that make sense? I rationalise it by satying that the sneak, relative to the guard, was lingering too long and got caught.

I would say that under that exact circumstance, the time you take to gin an advantage leaves you more open that segment to being struck. You take  10% penalty that round, while making some kind of observation or tactics check, and that check grants you a x% bonus, depending on how well you roll. This would be opposed by a GM-made tactis roll on behalf of your opponent.

So, let's play it out.

• A and B are fighting:
• A is trying to find a weak-spot, while B is just attacking.
• B either gains a 10% advantage in each segment that he is being observed by A, while A also attacks, or no advantage if A is observing but only defending (making no attacks).
• This way, you can choose to observe while attacking (which is distracting in the heat of combat), taking a penalty to defend, but still attack; or you can purely observe and defend, giving no advantage, and trying to gain one, but giving up attack actions in the process.
• A makes a tactics/observation roll, opposed by a tactics roll from B.
• If A succeeds, then he gains a 20% advantage on his checks until B takes the time to reverse the situation, spending a segment making a new tactics roll to compensate, during which he can defend but not attack.

Alternatively, the advantage (edge) might be the difference between the tactics roll of B and the observation roll of A:

• B rolls 40/100 (-60) in tactics. A rolls 20/100 (-80) in observation and gains a 20% edge.
• B Rolls 16/35 (-19) on tactics. A Rolls 18/40 (-22) on observation, gaining a 3% edge.

• This way skill matters greatly:
  
• B rolls 3/22 Tactics (-19)
• A rolls 18/90 observation/tactics (-72), gaining a 51% advantage until B corrects his stance, requiring the reverse of this process, which against a highly-skilled opponent, will be very hard, as the spread contrast will be hard if not impossible.
  

Using the example above:

• A rolls 1/22 tactics (-21)
• B needs to roll 70 or higher on his tactics roll (-20) to fail, so he has a 69% chance of maintaining his advantage.

Is this more fitting?

It also works for non-percentile systems, such as rolling the total of 3d10 with skills of 3-to-30, as long as you are rolling under a given value.

In fact, it has far more value with such systems, as the advantage is harder to achieve on dice rolls. Getting -4 to your rolls on 3d6 means that an average roll of 10 nets you a 6, which means you go from a 50% probability to an adjusted 9.3% probability. You want to keep maximum disparity low, so that it does not become essentially impossible to succeed. (Thus, 10d6/6-60 would make this a very broken mechanic.) Keeping it to three dice would probably be best.

The simplest way, when both rolls fail, is to compare either the whole value (lowest rolled numbers) or the spread/disparity between them to determine what happens. The alternative is to re-roll until someone passes one or the other. It is the inverse-issue of when both are successful in their checks, especially when both checks are identical, which for a 3d6 mechanic with characters of equal skill can happen with high frequency, especially, if both have a skill of (12) or higher.  (X|S)