Howdy!  I haven't been by here in over a year, but I have had an idea which should at least be interesting to kick around.  

Most RPGs have task-based rolling.  You roll to hit, you roll a move silently to get past a certain guard, etc.  This idea would involve scene-based rolling.  The DM describes a scene to you, you come up with a plan to deal with it, you roll the dice, and then you and the DM figure out how reality has screwed up your beautiful plan.  

I'm not going to go into my whole game idea in a single post, but suffice it to say that a character will have a small die pool to roll to complete a task.  By "small" I mean usually less than 10 dice.  (I play Exalted mostly, so that *is* a very small pool of dice to me. )  So far, fairly standard sort of thing here.

The core of my idea, though, is that every result you get on your die roll has a meaning.  This idea uses d6s for the die rolls.  On a roll of 5, you get 1 Success for your plan; on a roll of 6, you get 2 Successes.  As with most die pool systems, you add up your successes and the more you have, the better your plan succeeds.

Here's where I switch things up.  Rolls of 1-4 also have a meaning.  On a roll of 1, you make a Mistake.  If your roll is unopposed (for example, you're trying to forge a sword), mistakes are subtracted from your successes.  If your roll is opposed, though, your mistakes aid your opposition -- they are added to their successes.  And vice versa -- so your plan could end up succeeding because of the Mistakes the opposition makes.

A roll of 2 creates an Obstacle which will require another die roll.  For example, you are trying to sneak through a castle to spy on the Big Bad Evil Guy and his henchmen making their plans; a typical obstacle might be a locked door that you have to get around.  The difficulty of an obstacle roll would generally be 2 for every "2" you rolled.  Obstacles can produce further obstacles, but the DM is advised to not let that happen more than once, unless you want to be sitting there rolling all damn day long.  

A roll of 3 is a Complication.  It doesn't directly affect the die roll, but the DM introduces something new to the scene that he hadn't described earlier that makes the character's life more complicated.  For example, you sneak in and listen to the plans, but you discover on the way in that there is a very angle war troll amongst the guards.  Better hope you roll well on the way out!  

A roll of 4 is an Assist.  Again, it doesn't directly affect the die roll, but the *player* gets to add something to the scene that wasn't there before.  For example, as you're sneaking in, one of the guards sees you -- and winks.  He's actually a double agent!

On both 3's and 4's, the more dice that show up that way, the bigger the Complication or Assist.  And on an opposed roll, the player benefits from complications and suffers from assists.

I'll grant that die rolls in this system would be individually more complicated.  There would be a lot fewer of them, however, and the number of dice would be limited to keep them from getting *too* complicated.

In any case, I'd appreciate y'all kicking the idea around.  Does it sound good?  Bad?  What haven't I thought of?

The concept is cool.  But I think more than 3-4 dice and play will spend too much time translating the dice.  I like the idea of multiples adding to the strength of the event instead of adding new events to limit the complexity.

A side effect is that more dice, which is generally considered more skill, doesn't increase chance of sucess that much. 1-3 are bad and 4-6 are good.  I'd combine 2 and 3 into one thing, then either have 4-6 be success or 3-4 be assist.

The obstacles seem over-powered.  On a flat distribution of a six-die pool, you're going to get three successes (the 5 and the 6) minus one mistake ... two successes net, plus a difficulty-two obstacle.

That means that the successes you generate would be just barely enough to beat your own obstacle, which basically means that you're treading water.  Flip a coin ... maybe you'll overcome the obstacle, maybe you won't.  As Nicephorus points out, the number of dice in your pool doesn't (to my eyeball estimate of the probabilities) change that likelihood away from 50/50.  Your pool will matter for beating the first difficulty (the one assigned independent of your pool) but will be a wash against the complications created by that roll (which are naturally scaled to your pool itself).

The obstacles require *another* die roll.  Your successes on the first die roll don't get "used up" on that roll.  Mistakes reduce sucesses, but the obstacles create a new die roll where you calculate successes seperately.  Using my example above, you'd roll a sneak check first and you might have an obstacle of an open locks check.  The open locks check would be rolled independently.  The number of successes you need come from the first roll, but you're rolling another set of dice.

As for the time -- yes, this would take more time to implement.  But it would involve fewer die rolls in total.  You don't roll to sneak past each guard; you roll to sneak past all of them to get to your goal.  So it's not like you're replacing every roll you'd have in a game like D&D or Exalted with a roll like this; you'd be replacing a *set* of rolls with a single roll like this.

I like scene-based rolling, wherein a sneak roll will last for the entire scene.    It's bad enough when you have a party of 5 trying to sneak past anything, as 5 rolls will leave someone hanging low.  All the extra stuff you suggested seems a little over the top.  Of course, I don't like when dice rolls change the reality of the world (eg: you rolled a 5, 6, 5, and a 2... oh yeah, the door is locked now )

I'm fairly certain that the DMG for 3.x suggests players only make a single move silently roll for sneaking around.

Quote from: CyberzombieThe obstacles require *another* die roll.  Your successes on the first die roll don't get "used up" on that roll.  Mistakes reduce sucesses, but the obstacles create a new die roll where you calculate successes seperately.  Using my example above, you'd roll a sneak check first and you might have an obstacle of an open locks check.  The open locks check would be rolled independently.  The number of successes you need come from the first roll, but you're rolling another set of dice.

Yes, I get that.  What I'm saying is that the number of successes you need on the second roll is going to be predictably very close to the number of successes you are likely to get on that second roll.

If you roll six dice then you will need to get two successes on your second roll (which is your average on six dice ... three minus the one mistake).

If you roll six thousand dice then you will need to get two thousand successes on your second roll (which is your average on six thousand dice).

So you're pretty much looking at a statistical toss-up on that second roll ... assuming that the dice pools are roughly the same for the first and second roll.  If the dice pool on the second roll is higher (i.e. you deliberately go in with a low stat, and get a complication aimed right at your higher stat) then you've got a good chance.  If the dice pool on the second roll is lower than your first (i.e. you went in with your specialty, but now you're rolling with a less-commonly-used skill) then you're probably hosed.  Otherwise ... flip a coin.

Do you take my meaning now?