Unenlightened newbie here stepping into the realm of RPG design for the first time. Be gentle. Unless I make a complete fool of myself and get beligerant, in which case take me down a peg or two.

I'm currently working on a unique (hopefully) RPG system of my own devising. While I've played and GMed in the past, in my current area there are few people around I can get feedback from about the system. Hence I turn here.

My current concern (believe me, in the future there shall be many) is about the baseline mechanic I am using. I'm trying to make a system based on the style used in fantasy martial arts action films. The baseline mechanic I'm concerned about is the one I'm using to represent 'competing' checks, that is anything where two people are competing, such as debating, fighting, racing, whatever. The mechanic works as such:

Whenever two entities are competing, the relevant statistics of the two are used to work out their dice pool. In the example of entity A attacking entity B, entity A would use their attack score, entity B would use their defence score. Each entity's player would roll 1d6 for each point in their attack or defence pool. The totals are worked out as such.
Each result of 1 is worth 0.
Each result of 2, 3 or 4 is worth 1.
Each result of 5 or 6 is worth 2.

The scores are tallied up. The person with the highest score is considered the winner. In some occasions (such as combat) the difference between the scores is considered. In the event of a tie, it is considered that neither won (so for combat, the defender effectively 'wins', while in a debate neither side can prove themselves just yet). A normal human dice pool would be between 1 and 3, a skilled martial artist may have a pool in combat stretching up between 6 and 9, and a god-like martial artist doing his speciality may have a pool stretching up over 10.

My concern: I do like the mechanic as a whole. For me it captures that sometimes the attacker doesn't win because he did great, sometimes the defender just screws up. At the same time it captures an enormous range of potential scores while keeping the normal score firmly within a certain score. Someone rolling 5 dice will likely have a score of about 5 or 6, but in the event of great rolling can reach all the way up to 10.

But every time I look at it I wonder if perhaps it may get a bit clunky. Combat will consist of maybe two of these styles of rolls (attack vs defense, damage vs resistance) from each combatant, which could lead to things getting bogged down and slowing down too much.

Do these mechanics seem sound, or am I overcomplicating things?

Nothing wrong with it pinciple. In practice it would be nice to get sme specially numbered dice to save the complexity of the counting which may well become tedious.

You probably need to do some of the math to make sure it behaves as you hope at the extreme ends. What are the chances of a 2 dice guy beating a 4 dice guy? How good do you have to be to stand a say 10% chance of beating a 9 dice guy? that sort of thing.

Another thing is how do you work on non-opposed rolled. So how does the mechanic work when you are climbing a wall, or making a sword, or listening ro a conversation behind a door. Do you need a number of sucesses (would seem the obvious way) and what is that target going to be?

Sounds like it would work a lot like d6 Star War's core mechanic in practice. Nothing wrong with that, but might be easier to just add up the numbers of the regular d6's.

Quote from: Daztur;390860Sounds like it would work a lot like d6 Star War's core mechanic in practice. Nothing wrong with that, but might be easier to just add up the numbers of the regular d6's.

I actually think the OP method is mathematically cleaner as the ranges are much smaller (4d6 yeilds a range of 0 - 8 as opposed to 4 -24) but needs some investigation and as I said a few special dice with the correct number on them would help.

Thanks. While I have some head for figures, I can't quite wrap my head around sitting down and calculating all this out manually. I recall hearing a few times about a dice-rolling site that calculates out the mathematical elements of particular dice rolls, but I can't for the life of me remember the site name or find it.

As for non-opposed rolls, I've worked out something for them. The "competitive rolls" are standard for opposing rolls, but for normal I just use a fairly simple "Static roll" check, of the relevant statistic + d6 comparated to the required result. Since the stats used in this game have such a wide range (it goes from 1 to 10, with 2 being a normal person), many RRs will be below 6 or so, making them possible for everyone, and easy for experts in the field. Of course, some (such as barehanded punching open the gate of a fortress) would require an RR above 14 or so, making it impossible without a near god-like stat.

The only thing that sticks out for me is the very low chance for outright failure (i.e. no successes).  That might be fine, depending on the theme of your game, but you might lose the opportunity to run a low-powered version of the game unless you change the die-face/success pattern.

Quote from: winkingbishop;390864The only thing that sticks out for me is the very low chance for outright failure (i.e. no successes).  That might be fine, depending on the theme of your game, but you might lose the opportunity to run a low-powered version of the game unless you change the die-face/success pattern.

That was where I was driving as well. In an opposed roll no failures is fine as its all relative. In a fight , even a really crappy fight between 2 three year olds armed with celery sticks, someone wins. But for non opposed roles ther eneeds to be a divider.
The suggested skill check of skill +d6 v target is an odd choice as its a toally different mechanism to the opposed rolls. I woudl use the same mechanic (ie dice pool) but with a set number of sucesses for trivial, simple, moderate and difficult tasks. You could then run complex tasks like making a sword with a required number of successes but allow multiple rolls to indicate time.

I understand the concerns about just how different the static and competing mechanic are, they seem like something you would find in two different games. In the document I'll have to describe my reasoning for it.

The competing system was originally created for combat. As mentioned the system is designed to emulate martial arts action, and in many of those movies the emphasis seems to be as much on the defense of an individual as their attacking prowess. So this mechanic is meant to give the defender something to do, a chance for their years of learning to defend themselves to be represented as more than the attacker having to roll slightly higher. From there it was extrapolated out into any competing challenge.

So the baseline concept behind the mechanic was to give players - both when defending and attacking - the chance for glory with high rolls, while at the same time allowing for complete disaster. After all, that's half the fun of RPGs, the times when things take a left turn down chaos-lane instead of the right down easy-street. However the chance for absolute disaster is kept small, since I wanted the emphasis to be less upon the possibility of one side screwing up, and more upon the possibility of one side performing excellently.

The difficulty, of course, is that with such a small chance of failure and the probability firmly within the middle of the bell-curve, is that rolls against a static required-result are all but pre-determined, with the only ones really up in the air (baring disaster) are rolls with a target result slightly higher than the dice pool. So with the static check, I went with the simple "related statistic + d6" method simply for ease.

However, I'm now pondering just how many static checks there would be. Far fewer than I would have expected. Creating something, such as art, metalwork, etc, would be static checks of course. Unless the DM found a way to represent what they were compared to as part of a competitive check, such as the average audience's expectations, or the quality of the metalwork equipment (high quality = low competive check, so the better the equipment, the higher degree of success). Even tests such as trying to resist the effects of a poison could use the poisoner's skill in the area as a competitve check.

Edit: Additional: Something I forgot to mention: When creating the static system, I was in the middle of worrying that my competitive checks were too involving and would slow gameplay down. So for the static check I went for something simple that could be done easily and moved on from. After all, it's no fun spending that much effort just to determine your expert ninja is outwitted by a wall he cannot climb.

You could keep the same mechanic in both combat and non-combat rolls by giving even static challenges a die pool.  That might be a tough pill to swallow for some and create some consistent-reality issues, but it would at least use the same mechanic.

Quote from: winkingbishop;390996You could keep the same mechanic in both combat and non-combat rolls by giving even static challenges a die pool.  That might be a tough pill to swallow for some and create some consistent-reality issues, but it would at least use the same mechanic.

While I entirely understand where you're coming from (by keeping consistency with the mechanic, it simplifies things and prevents issues of disagreement within a group over which mechanic should be applied in which instances), I am hesitant to do that. Currently the static checks and the competitive checks are designed around different circumstances.

Competitive checks are designed where there are two individuals competing, and as in this setting, a difference of one in their relevant statistics is a big deal, therefore the mechanic is designed so that one makes an even bigger difference than normal. If someone with an attack of five is attacking someone with a defence of six, the attacker is an a genuine disadvantage unless they have some trick up their sleave. In addition, the competitive check is more complicated and is deliberately constructed so that it is essentially a 'roll off' between individuals.

The static check follows the more traditional RPG system of one die roll determining victory or defeat. I want the game to feel like the true 'challenge' comes from other people. There are non-living obstacles in the way and so on, but these are a one-dice-occasion, where one dice is rolled and if it works, good, if it doesn't, they move on. There is no time lingered and spent over just how badly the Ninja failed to climb the wall, or the warrior failed to cut down the bridge supports.

In essence, the competitive check represents when a moment should have some element of emphasis or dramatic feel to it. The static check represents the characters doing small (but potentially failable) things to lead up to that.

I worked on a game system years ago that used your same base mechanic but I used;

  1-3 = zero
  4-5 = 1
     6 = 2

  I found this spread to work best.

  It worked just fine, but yes, sometimes it got a bit tedious to roll for, let's say 12 goblins attacking a group of PC's.  Not complicated, just a PITA sometimes.

  I alternated between using static numbers for unopposed rolls and rolling for the difficulty numbers ( just like an opposed roll).  Could never decide which I liked better but soon dropped the system because I got tired of dice pools.

I plan on including a 'group combat' rule. After all, in the movies I emulate there's often large examples of huge numbers of people losing in a fight against one martial artist.

Being in a group will effectively just limit the number of attacks made between 10 people and one martial artist to 2 (one attack from each side) as opposed to 11 or so. I'm still working on the specifics, but I currently plan to have the group entity's attack score increase slowly with more point joining, and their durability increase a bit faster.

Here's a program to help you check your probabilities:
http://anydice.com/program/13c

Quote from: isomage;392205Here's a program to help you check your probabilities:
http://anydice.com/program/13c

Dear sir.

You are awesome.

Sincerely

The Internet.

Edit: Additional: Already this program has been a great help. I've tweaked my baseline combat mechanics and leveling progression based on what it's told me. I've altered the baseline combat mechanics so that an exactly equal result of attack and defense will result in defense winning, but an equal amount of effort put into advancing attack and defense will result in a higher defense total. I'm not explaining it incredibly well, so here's an example.

At level 10 with a medium rank of attack in the character class, they have a class attack and defense ranking of 7, this is permanent and does not change outside of gaining levels. If the character then uses a martial art with a medium level of attack and defense, their MA attack is 4, and their MA defense is 3, for a total attack of 11 and defense of 10.

If someone with attack 10 tries to hit them, they're have a worse than even chance (roughly 43.5% according to Anydice). However if someone who has put equal effort into attack as this character has into defense tries to hit them, they have a better than average chance (58% according to Anydice).

tl;dr version: Dude, you're a legend. Site has proven itself worth it.