I'm kicking around a mechanic tweak and would like y'all's take - in a d20 based RPG with a difficulty reduction mechanism, would you prefer spending a resource to lower a task's difficulty, or spending a resource that lets you roll an additional die (d2, d4, or d8, depending on how much you spend)?

My intuitive reaction is that it's a bit weird to give players control over something that's normally out of their hands (the DC/TN of the check), but not out of the ordinary to give them a bonus, especially if it falls in line with what the system already offers. If you've already got a system for boosting checks, you might as well use that. Advantage, disadvantage, consistent use of +2/+4 bonuses. If it's similar to the rest of the system, it'll be more likely to stick in the player's heads, and they'll be less likely to ask you to remind them about it.

My take is that difficulty is determined by the objective, the means to achieve it, and the tools used. Boosting the check fits with the approach, "I take a running start to shoulder the door open." Lowering the target feels storygamy, "turns out the door is rotten and the hinges are weak." No, it either is or it's not, but that is for the GM to know and reveal to the players. Spending a consumable resource to boost the character's action, whether its a potion of strength or straining to exhaustion, fits well within roleplaying. As for whether it is a flat bonus or a bonus die depended on how modifiers are implemented within the rest of the game. Generally, dice stacking is not a d20 feature.

Affecting the TN feels more metagamey than gaining a bonus. It feels like you're affecting the game at a deeper level even though it really makes no difference from a mathematical perspective.

Numinera/ Cypher system's core D20 mechanic revolves around the first idea, if you wanted to see it in action.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on March 27, 2023, 09:25:34 PM
Numinera/ Cypher system's core D20 mechanic revolves around the first idea, if you wanted to see it in action.

Yep!  That's what got me thinking about it.  Whether the difficulty is lowered or a bonus is added is almost irrelevant since the result is the same - the pc now has a greater chance of success.

I think paying for a bonus or bonus die makes a lot more sense.  While it's mathematically equivalent, having to track a DC differently makes you subtract and keep bonuses around.  For instance, say it's a DC 22 check, but you don't want to tell the PCs.  Three of them are trying, and you have to remember that the one who spent it is targeting 18.  Even if you can offload that work to him and tell each of them their DCs, there's the possibility of crosstalk confusing someone.  The drunk guy announces a success because he heard the 18 but not the 22, etc.

Also if the PC is spending a resource, it should make his attempt better.

Finally, when players announce what they get, they need to announce a second piece of information.  Would you rather hear "I got a 23" or "I got a 19, but remember I spent four ki"?

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on March 27, 2023, 09:25:34 PM
Numinera/ Cypher system's core D20 mechanic revolves around the first idea, if you wanted to see it in action.

Sounds somewhat similar to Modiphius' 2d20 mechanic too.

And we hate that system. You're so dependent on tracking and using the metacurrency, it's an accounting game - you don't have time to role-play at all. 

We pretty much dislike and end up accidentally or intentionally ignoring any sort of metacurrency.

YMMV.

I will say, that, a difficulty reduction mechanic makes sense to me as usable resources, and it seems more fitting in a game where improvements of the character's dice rolls are less common.
For example, going from +3 to some skills to +10 after gaining some levels can feel like too great of a progression.    But going from being able to afford very few reductions in difficulty, to being able to afford more frequent reductions in difficulty by use of resources seems like a more sustainable loop of challenge and choices for the player to make.

Quote from: Tait Ransom on March 28, 2023, 09:46:22 PMWhether the difficulty is lowered or a bonus is added is almost irrelevant since the result is the same - the pc now has a greater chance of success.

This is true, but players are not computers. Doing it differently does evoke different "feels" in practice. Gaining a bonus feels like something related specifically to your character, and thus tightens your mental focus on that character as your avatar; applying a penalty to lower the difficulty feels like a change you're applying to the world in general, and diffuses your focus on the character by broadening it to apply to the overall situation. The overall probability has not changed but how the player experiences that probability definitely does.

I am, unsurprisingly, in favour of the add-the-bonus-die option.

I prefer spending a resource to gain a die.

It's more intuitive. I scratch the resource off my character sheet and I get a die in return. I can physically (or virtually) hold the die and it reminds me of the resource I just spent. Reducing a number that's in the GM's head doesn't have the same effect.

Thank you so much, folks!  I was leaning towards the extra die, and y'all have helped me clarify why.

I think there are probably some times when reducing the difficulty might make more sense, but I doubt that any of them are generic or broad.  Certainly not in a "have some abstract game currency that is used to shift the odds in my favor" way.

If you have a very specific resource, that in some cases can be used to remove a fairly specific penalty, then that makes sense.  It's just that most of the examples that immediately spring to mind are not limited resources, where using it removes it. If can manage to attach my grappling hook to a rope, and then toss it to the next ledge, the climb is less difficult.  However, it would be equally less difficult for me if my buddy who is a great climber goes up first and manually attaches the rope.  And likely we can take the rope with us.  And if we can't, it's not because of some abstract "consume the resource on use" mechanic, but because the circumstances of the climb means that we need or want to leave it.

It doesn't hurt to file the difficulty reduction idea away in case it matters in such specific cases.  Just don't force it, if none happen to arise.

Difficulty adjustment mechanics run the risk of devolving into relativism too quickly for my taste -- the idea that the difficulty of a task is relative to the skill of the user. Games that have fallen into that trap break spectacularly in play in my experience, due to cognitive dissonance.

Quote from: Tait Ransom on March 30, 2023, 10:36:34 AM
Thank you so much, folks!  I was leaning towards the extra die, and y'all have helped me clarify why.

The problem that I've encountered with spending a resource to gain a bonus is that in the vast majority of cases, the bonus won't affect the outcome. Either they would have succeeded anyway or they fail their roll by so much that the additional bonus didn't matter.

Instead, if the players fail the die roll by a small amount (4 or less on a d20 for example), I give the player the ability to explain what advantage they had that would cause the check to have succeeded. This is a replacement for all modifiers and things like Advantage. By limiting this to only the situations where the bonus would actually matter, you end up saving significant time as you no longer need to decide on the exact value of any situational modifiers for every single roll. And if you were using a resource, this also means that the resource is more powerful and you need to hand it out much less often.