I've been playing and loving DCC, but one mechanical issue keeps cropping up for me: the lack of meaningful difference between characters of wildly different attribute levels making attribute or skill checks.  For example, a character with strength 9 trying to lift a heavy gate rolls 1d20 and a character with almost double that strength (strength 17) only rolls 1d20+2.  That means the strength 17 character is only effectively 10% stronger than the strength 9 character.  Am I missing something?

The most intuitive way I can think of to rectify this is to bring back roll under attribute checks.  Thoughts/comments?

The strength 9 character has no business trying to lift steel gates and should stick to jars of pickles like the rest of us humans that don't lift weights every day.

That said I think DCC relies more on the "your no hero" model and you have to pay attention to the DC you set to tasks. If you reasonably expect one character to be able to lift the gate then set the DC to 15 and that +2 modifier becomes more than a 10% bonus while still being near impossible for the strength 9  character.

Keeping with the gritty concept, lifting a gate should be a group task in reality. Give a +1 for every  character helping and if they are trying to lift a DC 20 cloud giant gate they may still have a chance.

I once had a 0 level party that had a farmer with a pony and another character with a chain use those to open a gate in Sailors on the Starless Sea. They rolled a 1 and the pony broke it's leg and had to be put down. They finally burned the wood gate down.

Life is tough and characters are expected to burn abilities to accomplish the impossible.

If none of that works for you.... you may want to try roll under ability.

Urggh....I always rely on roll under checks in other FRPGs,  and I'm trying to do my DCC campaign by the book.  It's always a mental hiccup for me to assign a DC for tasks/checks.  

I can't see it breaking the game if you used roll under.  Perhaps a game where a skinny weakling can lift a heavy gate if they roll high enough on a d20 is more OTT/pulpy?  

I don't know about 3.5/d20 so I assume that's where the mechanic comes from?

Also, setting a DC does have the benefit establish a permanent difficulty that is set for the forseeable future for that task.  Roll under checks with Strength, for example, are a little odd because it might be that a character with Strength 3 could open the gate 'this time', so given infinite time he'd be able to do it.  Where as if the gate has a DC 22 modified by Strength to open it, it's never happening for him.

This is a standard issue problem with all games that are part of or descended from the D&D family of rules. Is there anything more irrelevant than your attribute scores in OD&D? And they don't mean much more in most other editions/versions. Generally something that boils down to a 5-10 % difference across most of the range of the stats.

This is usually dealt with through rationalizations and clunky patches to the rules. Why or why didn't anyone involved in the official versions of these games consider something obvious, like rolling under your stat for various things.

Quote from: Larsdangly;756572This is a standard issue problem with all games that are part of or descended from the D&D family of rules. Is there anything more irrelevant than your attribute scores in OD&D? And they don't mean much more in most other editions/versions. Generally something that boils down to a 5-10 % difference across most of the range of the stats.

This is usually dealt with through rationalizations and clunky patches to the rules. Why or why didn't anyone involved in the official versions of these games consider something obvious, like rolling under your stat for various things.

I think ability score checks were official in 2e, and they appeared quite frequently in 1e modules from TSR. And were the basis of the NWP system originally in latter day 1e  (also the skill system in BECMI), each skill was associated with an ability score and to use the skill, you rolled under it.


Anyway, what I do in my game is simply use the whole ability score.

Like if the DC to open a door is 20, you'd roll a d20, add the ability score, and if the total is more than 20, it's open.

Because really, most the time you want the PCs to succeed at such things.

Seems to me that 'Level' is the primary attribute that determines how good a character is at doing something - that is, experience comes before raw ability. Good Ability scores give quicker advancement (prime requisite XP bonuses, in S&W at least), so in an indirect way, ability scores do give you better chances to do things over time.

The problem with ability score roll-under is that it doesn't take into account experience. I like the Blood & Treasure checks which are based off saving throws and class.

Quote from: JeremyR;756653I think ability score checks were official in 2e, and they appeared quite frequently in 1e modules from TSR. And were the basis of the NWP system originally in latter day 1e  (also the skill system in BECMI), each skill was associated with an ability score and to use the skill, you rolled under it.


Anyway, what I do in my game is simply use the whole ability score.

Like if the DC to open a door is 20, you'd roll a d20, add the ability score, and if the total is more than 20, it's open.

Because really, most the time you want the PCs to succeed at such things.

They were and are. Besides, it's like % roll, except one die, no ones place funky tricks necessary, and in 5% increments. So it's even better in my experience.

Quote from: AndrewSFTSN;756561I don't know about 3.5/d20 so I assume that's where the mechanic comes from?

"d20+ability modifier + other bonuses, roll high" is pretty much the core idea of 3E, yeah. I'd never noticed before but DCC has a slightly different modifier table - in D20 the modifier is always [stat-10]/2, round down so in 3E a 9 is -1, 16 is +3.
I assume its deliberate to make sure the crummy 3d6 in order characters aren't too weak, but using roll-under could work for some checks. Or d20 + a stat mod of [stat-10] would be the same odds but consistently roll-high.

i use dcc as it is. only confusing part is that luck is always, as far as i understand, roll under stat. this confuses some of my players.

I prefer the system as it is; however, in my DCC game in that kind of scenario I'd let warriors try to lift a gate or bend bars as a "mighty deed".