A digression into penalties.  

One of my least favorite things about systems is penalty math. I think the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic in 5e is a stroke of genius. It's also one that doesn't really translate to a 3d6 roll-under system.

The Penalty Ladder
For every element in a scene that complicates a task, take one step down the penalty ladder. Some elements, like darkness or long range, add more than one steps. Only count up to three elements. If there are more than three, pick the three worst elements.

Each step down the ladder adds a penalty die. This is rolled along with your regular task check.

Step   Penalty Die
1   ***    1d2
2     ***  1d4
3    ***   1d6
4   ***    1d8
5    ***   1d10
6    ***   1d12
7    ***   1d20
+1    *** 1d20 + (start the cycle again)

For example, Staff Sergeant Tammy Killdozer is a highly trained Marine with a Shooting skill of 15-. All things being equal, he can hit a target in a combat situation 95% of the time.

He's opening fire on the Ayatollah of Rock 'n Rolla, leader of the terrorist organization GLEE.  Aya is over 500' away, putting him at long range with Sgt. Killdozer's handy All American 5.56 Boomstick. This is two Penalty steps.  The GM also mentioned that the Ayatollah's Infi-doomer attack chopper has kicked up a lot of dust, and the GM rules that the dust is worth +1 to the ladder.  Even worse, Sgt. Killdozer took a ricochet in the ribs, and while he doesn't have time to bleed, his blood is making time. That's worth another 2 step on the Penalty ladder, for a total of 5 steps.

He has to roll 3d6+1d10 and get under his skill. Now Sgt. Killdozer's 95% chance to hit drops to 45% chance to hit.

But wait, there's more!

Sometimes two highly skilled opponents can fence for what seems like hours, their respective defenses and offenses so high neither one can get a clean hit in.  

Well, if you're feeling salty, you can willingly take a Penalty die to inflict the same Penalty on your enemy's defense.

So let's say our leader of the Americommandos has cornered the Rock God of Jihad in his secret mountain base. They enter mortal combat, Sgt. Killdozer with his trust baseball bat, and the Ayatollah with his scimi-guitar. They both have 18- in their respective skill, and under normal circumstances, neither is going to get more than a glancing blow here and there.

But that's quitter talk, and Real Americans Don't Quit! Sgt. Killdozer puts his faith in Jesus and his body in Kevlar. He opts to take a 1d12 penalty to his attack roll-- but so does the Ayatollah. It's a high risk, high reward maneuver, and it pays off.

"When you get to hell...tell 'em Tammy sent you. There will be a line. Probably some people you know."

Holy Gurpsternity Batman!
The example is fun though.
If you have a level-3 penalty (+d6) gotta be careful to colour-code it or something so that a '6' doesn't count as a crit? (Maybe you wouldn't mind so much if it was a voluntary extra d6, but for most penalties it'd be bad).

Yeah, throwing a couple levels of Penalty aren't that big a deal if you've got a skill over 15, but they're pretty catastrophic for lower skilled characters. That 50% success rate you have with a 10- turns into a 15.9% chance with a d6 penalty. Mathematically, it doesn't actually matter which die is the Critical Die, so long as it's a d6 and declared before the roll. I'd imagine it's just easier to make the crit die a different color and stick with that.

I gotta say, bell curves do so much of the heavy lifting it actually makes most of the math intuitively fit with people's expectations.

Sorry, had the dum when I wrote the above. After not reading the intro for awhile I'd misremembered the rules from "one of your dice is the critical die" to the roll being critical if any one of the d6s is a 6..

Just wondering now if by any chance you've seen Dragon Age (the pen and paper version)? It uses 3d6+mods and has a stunt system where there's a unique dice + you get stunt points equal to the roll if you roll 'doubles' on 3d6. It actually wouldn't need the unique die though, adopting something like that you could have a setup where you have no unique die and have a 'crit' on doubles but with 'stunt points' equal to just the matching dice result, so that you get slightly more common "crits", but varying crit strengths (from 1-pt to 6-pt). A critical in combat then might just add say +1-+6 for instance.

I've been busy at work lately, and haven't had as much time to work on the game as I'd like. I've managed to put together an introduction, which I'll post the Google Drive link for shortly, but for now, I'm wrestling with a couple problems that are coming to the forefront.

We'll call this first problem the Issue With Powers. Because I'm taking a lot of my inspiration from point based games like Hero, GURPS, and Mutants and Masterminds, powers are essentially collections of effects with point values attached to them. However, the thing I want to avoid is the tedium of figuring out the point values of powers.

Naturally, some powers are going to be more useful than other, so some kind of point value in inevitable.  But rather than have the players break out a calculated to find the point value for a Ray of Frost that can freeze a patch of ground or slow down a ticking bomb or slowly, slowly cool the air around you until the whole town snows, it's better to have a robust way for characters to perform stunts like that.

Nonetheless, when players are building powers, there has to be some way to adjust power levels to take into account limitations and extra abilities.

I'm currently (as in, just this exact moment) thinking it might be easier to just give free ability ranks for limitations, and cost ability ranks for additional abilities.

For example, let's say you have The Olympian, the result of mad science gone awry, a near invulnerable collection of fullerene and carbon nanotubes in the shape of a man. He had Invulnerability at rank 20. The player decides that he produces horrible waste products that need to be contained or else they poison the people around him. Somehow, through some chart somewhere, the GM decides that this is worth 5 ranks, and the player now has Invulnerability Rank 25.

Or let's say we have Zeb Walker, a cyborg with a big ass rail gun for an arm. The Player decides that it does 25 Penetrating damage, but he wants it to ignore armor, he has to drop 1 level for every 2 points of armor penetration. He opts for damage of 20 with 10 pts of armor penetration: enough to take out most military vehicles.

Blood, guts, bullets and desperation - How to Make the Other Guy Kick the Oxygen Habit.

1. Hit First.
Combat starts at the first shot fired, or the first punch thrown. Once a character declares that they are attempting to harm someone, everyone rolls 1d6 and adds their Reflex to it.  The character to initiated combat rolls 2d6, keeping the highest die and adding it to their Reflex.

This number is amount of time on the Action Clock. The character with the highest number gets to act first.

If more than one character is acting in the same beat, the character with the highest Dexterity acts first. If both characters have the same Dexterity, the character with the highest Intellect goes first.

Each action costs a certain number of Beats from the Clock. Once you have acted, subtract that cost from your current Beats to find out when you act again.  The three typical action speeds are:

Reaction - 1 Beat - Defending, Diving for Cover, Resisting some effects
Quick Action - 2 Beats - Drawing a Weapon, Disengaging from close combat, Quick Attacks.
Standard Action - 3 Beats: Moving and attacking.

After the first person acts, the GM will count down from the current Action Beat until she reaches a player with the matching Action Beat.

Unlike most actions, Reactions can be played before your Action Beat is up. However, each Reaction you take moves your next action down by one beat.

As long as you have at least a single Beat left in the round, you can take a Standard Action.

Some abilities and effects can cause you to lose Beats. For example, getting stunned from a Serious Injury costs 1d4 beats.

If nobody makes an attack on the last three Beats on the clock, the combat has entered a Lull. During a lull fighters might circle, jockey for position, or take a moment to catch their breath. Combat begins again just like the initial contact, with the initiator of combat gaining a slight advantage. Aggression pays off.

On the other hand, if the fists and blades and bullets are still flying willy nilly, everyone rolls 1d6+ Reflex to find the new initiative order.

2. Hit Hard

Making an attack is a task check like any other. Roll 3d6 (plus any penalties) and try to get under your skill. If you roll a '6' on your attack roll, the hit is critical and the base damage is doubled. A pistol that does 4+1d6 does 8+1d6.

Quick Attacks: You can shave a few tenths of a second off your reaction time by adding a Penatly Level to your attack in exchange for the action becoming a Quick Action. The trade off, of course, is an inaccurate attack, but it can be useful to push the pace of the action.

Penalty Trades: Quick Attacks are just one way to make a Penalty Level work for you. If you come up with a clever trick or stunt, the GM may allow you to take one or more Penalty Levels and apply those levels to any one of the following. (Hint for GMs: Let them do this.)

Armor Piercing: Roll the Penalty Dice and ignore that many points of armor (unless the target has no gaps in the armor.)
Enemy Defense: Apply the same Penalty to Enemy Defense.
Enemy Attack: Apply the same Penalty to the next Enemy Attack
Damage: Add the Penalty Dice to the attack's Damage.

There are probably a few more, and of course, if you can come up with a good one, go for it.

3. Don't Get Hit
After an attacker declares who they're hitting, the hitee gets the option of Defending. This turns the Attackers simple test into a Contest. As long as you succeed in your skill test, even if the Attacker has a higher critical die result, you only take half effect. So a sword that does 5+1d6 does 2+1d6 damage.

There's a catch, though: you have to defend with the same skill that the attacker is using to attack. You may be the finest swordsman in all the land, but if you've never encountered a war flail before, you have to fall back on your general Weaponry skill to defend yourself.  

Likewise, this is a great way to gain the upper hand on a foe that is out-defending you. If your sword fight is at a stalemate, bringing in a dagger or unarmed combat might be something your enemy isn't trained for.

Critical Hits on Defense: If you score a critical hit on defense (the Attacker misses and you roll a Critical), you can immediately take a Quick Action as part of your Reaction. It still deducts from your next Action Beat, but because it is part of your Reaction, just upgrade to 1 Beat cost to 2 Beats.

Defending Missile Weapons
Typically, Missile Weapons cannot be parried like blades and fists (with exceptions to follow).

I'm actually still working on the mechanics here, but they are more based around how close you are to cover and I haven't decided if I'm going to use a generalize abstract "Area" system like FASERIP or real world measurements like GURPS.  There are a lot of advantages to Area systems, but more than one oddball corner case that's stuck in my craw.

Avoiding Missile Fire

The thing about missiles, their primary function, is that they're really bloody fast. So fast, in fact, that a regular jerk-off has like, %0 chance of dodging a bullet.

They've got a few options though. They can hit the deck, get some cover, or move to grappling first.

If you hit the deck, you make yourself very, very small and think flat thoughts.  Your nose better get intimate with Mother Earth, real fast. Hitting the deck is a 1 Beat reaction, and adds +1 Penalty step to the target's attack. Not great in and of itself, and it takes 2 Beats to stand up, but it can save your life at range.

If you dive for cover, make an Agility test. On a successful roll, you get behind it the nearest cover. The level of cover is dependent upon the cover available in the area and how well you roll. On a successful Agility test, you duck behind the nearest cover. If you roll a critical success, you manage to really hunker down, and increase the level of cover by one. If you critically fail, you're stuck out in the open with your wang in the wind, and the shooter gets a Bonus level to their aiming skill.

Cover adds a penalty level to attacks against you : Light (less than 1/2 person covered), Medium (covers about 3/4's person), Heavy (just a single area visible), or Total (they're back there, but you can't tell where). Each level adds one step to the Penalty ladder.

Now, what about nonhuman total badasses? Well, if you have superhuman intelligence or dexterity, you can just straight up dodge certain things.
Missiles come in categories: Thrown, Subsonic, Supersonic, Hypersonic, Explosive, and Energy Weapons.

For every 10 points in either Intelligence or Dexterity, you can attempt to dodge an additional category of missile weapon. Anyone can dodge thrown weapons. At 10 INT or DEX, you can dodge arrows, crossbows, and pistol rounds. At 20, you can dodge rifle fire, even at range. At 30, you can dodge hypervelocity rounds like rail guns and explosive fragments. At 40, you can actually ride an explosive wave. At 50, you can dodge any Energy weapon in atmosphere. Nothing can dodge a laser or energy weapon outside of an atmosphere.

Also, here's the character sheet!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0QGoyHBMghLME5xRG8wZXFfQjg/view?usp=sharing

Ah, on second thought, I might need a intermediate category between Thrown and Subsonic. The difference between an arrow (300 fps) and a 9mm bullet (1000 fps) is so significant that it merits it's own group.

(If I wanted to be a total nerd I'd have the player compare the velocity of the projectile to it's associated rank on the Master Table, but that's really annoying and fuck that.)

It's been a while, but I've been running a playtest of New Standard using the alpha ruleset for the past month or so.  The game is set in the Attack on Titan anime universe. If you're not familiar, the world is a anachronistic 16th century Germany where, one day, 20 foot tall giants appear and begin eating people. The giants don't seem to be intelligent, and can only be killed with a slice to the back of the neck, severing the spinal column. Society collapses and the few remaining people live behind massive walls.

The players all created two scouts each because I wanted the freedom to execute characters without it being too much of a big deal.

Character creation was entirely randomized, and it took about twenty to forty minutes for all four players to create two characters each. My random character system allows me to generate point buy characters incredibly quickly, while keeping the same point totals for all characters in the party.

On entering the game, they are presented with a mission: there is a small town a day's hard ride outside the walls where the first Titan was killed. Rumor has it that this Titan did not dissolve into smoke like the others. Their goal is to head to the town and return with a sample of this aberrant Titan.

I offer the players a choice: they can travel at night when the Titans are mostly dormant and arrive in town during the day, or they can travel during the day and risk more encounters, but get to town at night when the Titans are dormant.

The team decides to head out at night, and encounter only two dormant Titans. They push the horses hard, exhausting them to reach the town before dawn. There is a 100 yard field surrounding a wheel and spoke town arrangement. In the center is a 50-yard tall church tower, partially destroyed by an ancient Titan attack.

Once in town they see a big 30-ft tall Titan lounging in the ruins of an old beer hall. The team leader dispatches a pair of scouts to cut it down before it wakes up, while the other scouts make their way to higher ground.

We begin with our first roll of the night: a Stealth tests to sneak up on the slowly rousing Titan before it wakes up. One of my design goals in New Standard is more of a meta-rule. The player fails their Stealth check. I propose two options, neither of which the player wanted: the giant is rousing and may have heard them. The player can either rush in and engage a potentially aware Titan, or hang back and wait the Titan out.

The player feels like waiting out a 30' tall human eating machine is a bad option, and rushing it is the lesser of two evils. The combat begins, and the two scouts have little problem keeping out of the reach of the giant, but in order to dispatch it, they have to risk it's reach. One of the characters gets hit with a grazing attack, flinging him into a wall and breaking a couple ribs.

Once they kill the Titan, the group only has a moment to catch their breath before they hear the sounds of an aberrant titan clambering around the town. (Aberrant Titans are any that display unusual behavior-- in this case, it runs on all fours faster than a horse.)

The team leader uses his Logistics skill to assist in setting up an ambush. Logistics is a high-level skill that represents the character's ability to plan ahead and organize groups. While the player is the one that comes up with the plan, it's the Logistics skill that makes sure all the pieces are in the right place when it comes time to execute the plan.  A failed Logistics roll means that your sniper shoots too early, or the scout doesn't make it to their overlook position in time.

The ambush is set up correctly, with one bait scout drawing the giant into an open street and two snipers attempting to cripple the titan with musket balls to a knee. As the bait realizes that the Titan can keep pace with his 3d Maneuvering gear, the two snipers decide that they need to shoot at the exact same time. The head sniper makes a Logistics test and fails.

Instead of firing at the same time, they fire at their normal initiative count, which gives the Titan an action between shots.  To make matters worse, the first sniper misses the moving, 1-yard high target at 60-yards. Not really a surprise.

The Titan turns on them and closes the distance quickly, nearly on top of them with it's movement.

The second sniper opts to take evasive action, clearing as much distance as possible with her gear. She fails an Agility test, critically fails it, in fact, and slings herself against the ground, rolling her ankle and slowing her down.

The first sniper takes off in the opposite direction while the bait goes hell-for-leather to try and save the first sniper.

The Titan bites at the second, grounded sniper, just barely missing as the sniper scampers away. The first sniper realizes that his buddy is soon to be Titan food, and with a heroic cry of "YOLO", launches his maneuvering spikes into the back of the Titan's head. He uses the power of the gear to sling himself at the Titan's weak spot, nails his Agility roll to avoid turning into a wet spot on the back of it's head, and deals a killing blow with the twin swords that mark a scout.