I like fumbles, failure, success and criticals. I like damage rolls. I'm happy to provide varying color commentary that has no mechanical effect based on the actual rolls made. I don't like vague and subjective degrees of success that have actual consequences, since it tends to undercut any ability to judge effectiveness objectively, and tends to either exaggerate or minimize the character's choices (of skills or tactics or whatever).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;815562I have to confess, though I've played systems that use "degree of success" mechanics* extensively in their core rules, I often forget about them. I don't mind the occasional special ability / spell that asks for such a check, but when a majority of rolls are asking you to track certain thresholds it kind of slips off my brain. Is it really so wrong to use binary pass / fail rolls and have the GM make a call as to what happens?

What do you think of these rules? Do you feel they are necessary, realistic, gritty, nuanced, etc.?

* How much your roll exceeds or fails the target number has a specific, quantified mechanical or in-universe effect.

I don't like them either, they take far too much mental effort to track on every die roll. I am ok with normal success & 'crit on a 20' type mechanics, but not 'double success on 10 over target number' type mechanics. Unisystem is terrible with its multiple success levels.

Earthdawn uses degrees of success very successfully ( ). The dice in the system 'explode', and rolling higher than the target number can grant degrees of success. The older editions used a chart with a scale for each target number (due to the non-linear scaling of exploding dice).

The new 4th Edition simplified this into, "One additional success for every +5 over the Target Number". This has changed the rest of the system in really good ways. Firstly, it totally does away with a chart lookup on the GM side, and lets GMs and even players calculate degree of success on the fly. This has sped up handling time and smoothed out a lot of the chrunchy-feel to the ED system. Previously, Armor (which directly reduces damage) was completely bypass-able with 3 successes (a hit +2 more). Now, each success adds +2 to the damage roll, effectively bypassing a portion of the armor, and thus keeping armor relevant when player's skill ranks are getting to the top end of the scale.

Quote from: S'mon;815727I don't like them either, they take far too much mental effort to track on every die roll. I am ok with normal success & 'crit on a 20' type mechanics, but not 'double success on 10 over target number' type mechanics. Unisystem is terrible with its multiple success levels.

Raises in Savage Worlds, Quality in James Bond 007, counting success in WoD or other dice pool systems?
Seems like what you don't like is the d20 implementation of degrees of success.

Clash hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that 99% of systems use degrees of success in combat. Its just an implementation issue.

I can imagine a task resolution mechanic where you rolled a skill and success allowed you to roll a "resolution dice" based on say the key stat fr the skill and you needed x many resolution points to resolve the issue.

So decypher a code : Roll versus crytpography skill. Success and then you roll a dice with a modifier for Int (or a different dice for different ranges) to generate points versus a target value for the task. A crit gives you a bonus dice... just like combat and damage vs HP

I like improvised assessments as (and only as) significant, often with a second toss - like many rules sets' damage rolls - weighted for the situation at hand.

I don't find that this hinders tactics, since I approach those from a role-playing perspective. Unless my character is Commander Data, precise probabilities are not relevant. The ref can inform me of "ball park" estimates as appropriate. I am not interested in playing a solitaire game of cooking up optimal stratagems in an ideal abstraction - but a fair number of people are, and it's nice that there are rules sets geared to that.

I don't mind it all, as long as A) it can be easily ignored in situations it doesn't apply, and b) it doesnt add any extra number crunching to task resolution.

While I really really liked the new die mechanic introduced in WHFRP 3rd edition, in running the game I was more than a little frustrated that DoS was always a factor. Soemtimes, as a GM, all I need to know is success/failure" or "yes/no". I didn't realize how often until a resolution mechanic actively interfered with that.

Quote from: Telarus;815824The new 4th Edition simplified this into, "One additional success for every +5 over the Target Number". This has changed the rest of the system in really good ways. Firstly, it totally does away with a chart lookup on the GM side completely, and lets GMs and even players calculate degree of success on the fly. This has sped up handling time and smoothed out a lot of the chrunchy-feel to the ED system. Previously, Armor (which directly reduces damage) was completely bypass-able with 3 successes (a hit +2 more). Now, each success adds +2 to the damage roll, effectively bypassing a portion of the armor, and thus keeping armor relevant when player's skill ranks are getting to the top end of the scale.

This is one change I'm not quite sold on, though I'm naturally reserving judgment until I have the chance to see how it shakes out in actual play. I really like the basic idea behind armor-defeating hits; IME they didn't happen all that often, and when they did it was pretty cool for the players to simulate the lucky blow that really struck home. Nor was it generally much of an issue on their end, as I felt there were plenty of other mechanics in the game that made wearing heavy armor less than ideal; far better to boost your physical defense and not get hit in the first place. I admit I haven't done much high-circle play, though, so I don't know how that may have changed things.

As for the OP, I'm largely in agreement with Will. Some degree of DoS is certainly better than a binary fail/succeed. That said, less is more. I think 3-4 degrees is the sweet spot; less than that obviously ventures into binary territory, more than that can quickly become fiddly and unwieldy.

I like them if they are open to taking a back seat to the game and not overly involved in figuring out.

Like, the Check Digit d6 of IN SJG is easy peasy: they say it doesn't always have to be used (unless Intervention, and even there there is discretion), and is immediately grokked (passed? failed? & how big's the CD number?). The biggest problem was how often it was incorporated into "spell equations" and the like. But other than that it did what I wanted.

Sometimes a task is simply a task. And sometimes a GM is empty or doesn't feel like adding more. As long as DoS can step back, and the players let it, it can be a fantastic tool.

I'm a WFRP 1e player and degrees of success aren't an explicit part of the rules but I think they're something people have always used in my experience. They were included in 2e. However, they're only used descriptively, and when you want to, and I think that works well enough. I don't think a rigid formula where you've got to make calculations or use charts etc is the way to go with this sort of thing. It all becomes too much of a fag.

Tristram Evans wrote:

QuoteWhile I really really liked the new die mechanic introduced in WHFRP 3rd edition, in running the game I was more than a little frustrated that DoS was always a factor. Soemtimes, as a GM, all I need to know is success/failure" or "yes/no". I didn't realize how often until a resolution mechanic actively interfered with that.

I've never actually played 3e. It's always been evident that it had some ingenious mechanics but ingenuity for its own sake wasn't really what I was looking for in WFRP, and I don't like the look of quite a few elements of it (and I wasn't looking for a completely different game). I wouldn't have anticipated the problem you describe at the time but some people who had playtested it extensively did come to exactly the same conclusion. The narrative dice pools actually made problems for them.

Quote from: woodsmoke;815912This is one change I'm not quite sold on, though I'm naturally reserving judgment until I have the chance to see how it shakes out in actual play. I really like the basic idea behind armor-defeating hits; IME they didn't happen all that often, and when they did it was pretty cool for the players to simulate the lucky blow that really struck home. Nor was it generally much of an issue on their end, as I felt there were plenty of other mechanics in the game that made wearing heavy armor less than ideal; far better to boost your physical defense and not get hit in the first place. I admit I haven't done much high-circle play, though, so I don't know how that may have changed things.

As for the OP, I'm largely in agreement with Will. Some degree of DoS is certainly better than a binary fail/succeed. That said, less is more. I think 3-4 degrees is the sweet spot; less than that obviously ventures into binary territory, more than that can quickly become fiddly and unwieldy.

I can understand wanting to see it in action. I've done a few small playtests with the pre-release ED4 Player's Guide, and I now like to think of it as, instead of one static rating to get an AD Hit, each type of armor has it's own Armor Defeating Hit rating (# of success to totally bypass), and now partial armor-defeating hits are possible. All while not tacking any additional mechanics onto the system. Just "Chainmail, Physical Armor: 7, Mystic Armor: 0, Initative: -3" like before.


Oh, one of the other games that has a cool degree of success mechanic is Reign (and any One Roll Engine game), where you have 2 dimensions of success (Width and Height), as you are matching numbers from a pool of d10s. So you could have a "2x1" (two 1s), or a "5x9" (five 9s) etc. Neat mechanic, as everyone throws their dice at once, then determine matches, which then determines how the round plays out.

Quote from: jibbajibba;815827Raises in Savage Worlds, Quality in James Bond 007, counting success in WoD or other dice pool systems?
Seems like what you don't like is the d20 implementation of degrees of success.

Unisystem is d10. But yes I'm ok with a die pool 'count # of successes' mechanic. What I don't like is having to refer to a chart on every attack roll to determine damage based off success level, as happens in eg Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

Quote from: Telarus;815920I can understand wanting to see it in action. I've done a few small playtests with the pre-release ED4 Player's Guide, and I now like to think of it as, instead of one static rating to get an AD Hit, each type of armor has it's own Armor Defeating Hit rating (# of success to totally bypass), and now partial armor-defeating hits are possible. All while not tacking any additional mechanics onto the system. Just "Chainmail, Physical Armor: 7, Mystic Armor: 0, Initative: -3" like before.

Huh. I hadn't thought of it like that. From everything I've read it's kinda' been sold as doing away with ADH in favor of the new success mechanic, which is why I wasn't on board. I'm willing to admit it could maybe be implemented better, but I like the idea behind ADH and thought the game would suffer a bit for their loss.

The way you explain it makes a lot more sense; 4e isn't getting rid of ADH, just adding some gradation to the way they work. Which actually sounds good to me.

Have you considered a career in marketing? Maybe working for FASA Games?

I'm fine with degrees of success as long as it matters. Its ok if some skills/tasks are simple pass/fail and others come with degrees of success/failure too. I'm not in favor of arbitrarily making it a universal part of a games mechanics just because.

I don't usually particularly like 'degree of success' mechanics; but if they're done right, in a way that doesn't require too much complexity, it can be OK.  I'm rather liking mongoose-trav's "effect" rules.

I don't like degree of success mechanics. They are almost always unnecessary, and just complicate the game. The only one I sorta like is a natural 20 crit.