So I'm tinkering around with a game design which requires attributes to be rated as die types (Think Witch Girl Adventures, if you're familiar with that system); the core mechanic is "die type plus skill rating versus difficulty rating", with difficulty either being a static target (Against the environment, or a character not actively resisting you) or another roll+add.

Example: I have Dexterity D6, and Play Darts 1. If I am playing darts against a clone of myself, we both roll D6+1 and the highest roll wins.

However, I need a mechanic for unskilled tests (Where the character doesn't have an appropriate skill), so; which of these mechanics feels "fairest" as a player, simplest to adjudicate, and makes skills feel rewarding?

* You just get to roll your attribute die (Simplest, but it makes the first skill rank less of a "step up" over being unskilled, and I like that step)
* You roll your attribute die and subtract 1 (In effect, making "unskilled" the same as "skill -1". This makes that first rank a bigger boost over being unskilled; it's effectively two ranks for the cost of one.)
* You roll your attribute die but, if you roll the highest value, it counts as 0 (Mathematically identical to the second option, but players have been conditioned to be happy about max die rolls, and this might seem more vindictive than I want it to be.)
* You roll your attribute die but, if you roll an even number, it counts as 0 (Similar to, but more extreme than, the third option. D3 is the only die type in the system with an odd number of faces, so this would effectively make it identical to a D4 for unskilled tasks, but I'm not really worried about the low end of the attribute curve, as the rolls are likely to be too low to pass anyway, without skills.)

After writing this, I actually think I like the look of option 2 the most, but... anyone else have any thoughts on the matter?

Well I sort of dislike #3 and #4 for similar reasons since they're slightly counter-intuitive, since higher isn't always better, either from the maximum failing or from a lower odder roll being better than the one a player got.
'Even rolls count as 0' is much more extreme a penalty than just maximum failing, of course.

#1 and #2 are both OK. If you want a more serious penalty for untrained use than #1 provides, you could potentially add some sort of botch rule where if a character is untrained a '1' is a disastrous failure, even though there isn't a flat penalty.

For #2 Adding a penalty for untrained use makes sense if you want to handicap unskilled use. On the minus side, its possible some players may tend to forget negative modifiers.
In at least one system I've seen [LegendQuest], the system built off unskilled penalties in a couple of places by 'cross-matching' penalties between skills in some circumstances. In that system for example a character skilled in using a bow but unskilled in Ride takes their -1 to Ride checks and also applies it to archery rolls when on horseback.

I can suggest a (possible) an option 5 as well which would be 'if you're untrained, reduce your die size by one step (d8 to d6, d6 to d4, etc). Thats a -1 penalty to the average except from d4 to d3, but with maximum result reduced by 2.

Unskilled tests might roll a single die of the next lowest rank, e.g. Dexterity d6 and no Darts skill gives you 1d4.

Quote from: The Butcher;461165Unskilled tests might roll a single die of the next lowest rank, e.g. Dexterity d6 and no Darts skill gives you 1d4.

This is how I would handle it -

Although I think it would be better to make it positive:

Lower the die value of the attributes and let characters use a larger die for being skilled.

From your list of possibilities, I agree that #2 is the best and #3 and #4 aren't very good.

I prefer #2. But #1 works also. I think they are simple, intuitive and make logical sense.

Thanks for the input, guys! I think I'm going to go with #2, but it's been an interesting discussion.

Quote from: The Butcher;461165Unskilled tests might roll a single die of the next lowest rank, e.g. Dexterity d6 and no Darts skill gives you 1d4.

Quote from: Cranewings;461169Lower the die value of the attributes and let characters use a larger die for being skilled.

These totally hadn't occurred to me! I do really like no skill = smaller die as a mechanic; it's simple and involves no maths. It does fail at the low end (D2 unskilled would drop to 0), but that's not really a problem (D2 being the system's lowest attribute value).

It's probably not something I'll use for this particular project, but I can see it being useful for something else, so thank you

How about roll 2 dice and take the lower for unskilled?

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;461290How about roll 2 dice and take the lower for unskilled?

-clash

That's how I would do it.   Though I'd also have a clause in that some tests simply can't be tried if you aren't trained in it.

Quote from: flyingmice;461290How about roll 2 dice and take the lower for unskilled?

-clash

That is how we handle unskilled rolls in network and it seems to be about right in practice.

Quote from: flyingmice;461290How about roll 2 dice and take the lower for unskilled?

Yep.

Quote from: flyingmice;461290How about roll 2 dice and take the lower for unskilled?

-clash

That's another great mechanic! I'm actually using the opposite (Being skilled lets you roll two dice and pick the best, not being skilled is just one die) in another project, though, where I think it fits a lot better, and I can give the mechanic the attention it actually deserves.

Lady Bird, any links to your work?

Quote from: Cranewings;461634Lady Bird, any links to your work?

No, I don't at the moment.

The second project that I mentioned was on hiatus due to OU Assignment Hell and me losing a memory stick with the latest version on it; it had gone to my local testing group, and we'd had a read through and identified the biggest problem points with this pre-alpha version, but I hadn't yet corrected everything we had discussed. That set me back about a fortnight, and then I sulked about it for a couple of months.

Assignment Hell should be over in the next few days, though, and then I've got time to dig in and write. I've been asked to test it at our club soon, so I'm hoping to have something alpha playtestableable by early July, and then our PT game will start mid/late July, ish.

(Basically: I'm happy with the core mechanics chapter. Combat needs clarification, as I hadn't got down on paper how I visualised the game working. Fluff needs quite a bit of work, and I'm waiting to write the magic and vehicle parts after making sure that the core mechanics work in play.)

That's cool. GL

You might want to take a look at Classic Deadlands or Savage Worlds.  Might find some inspiration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Worlds