rampaging-poet wrote:Also, if you only get "experience rolls" when the GM says you do anyway, it's easy to replace the entire concept with a more honest and straightforward rule: telling the GM to just hand out free skill points whenever he feels they're appropriate.
More or less how RQ6 works and the mechanic is far more transparent. MC determines the rate at which the PCs should advance in competency and hands out X number of Development rolls at appropriate intervals during the campaign. All characters get the same number of Development rolls, with PCs with high Charisma getting a bonus (like one).
There is not an explicit tie, ES-style, to only improving what you use. You can use these points toward improving your Strength or Constitution, learning new skills, improving existing ones, or even other things like binding spirits (Shamanism).
Skill improvements are similar to how they've worked in the past. You try to roll over your skill and if successful increase it by 1d4+1. If unsuccessful, the skill increases by 1.
Additionally, all fumbled skill checks since the last Development phase get a free +1% increase. Multiple Fumbles don't get stack.
Back to OP
I don't see a big win on flipping to Skill+d100 and roll over. Admittedly, I have not given the issue as much thought as some on this board. I've played a bunch of skill percentage games and stolen a couple rules from a few sources to make some calculations easier.
When crits are a percentage of your overal skill, I go with a magic number in the 1's die. In HarnMaster, for example, crits happened 20% of the time. So the magic numbers were 0 and 5. In RQ6, Crits happen at 1/10th your skill. So if the result is less than or equal to the value of your Skill's 10's digit, you crit - No Math.
Skills over 100%. Drop the hundreth value and grant an automatic degree of success for each 100% dropped. So a guy with 70% versus someone with 170% are both trying to roll under 70%, but the the second characters gets a free degree of success.
Difficulty grades. - I haven't tried this, but I have been thinking about it a bit. RQ6 suggests that extremely difficult tasks should reduce skills by a percentage. For example, a Hard task should reduce your skill by a third. I don't like this at all and am thinking of replacing the idea with something from HeroQuest -
When a task has a difficulty greater than "Standard", the Skill check becomes an opposed roll as if there was an autonomous agent working against you.
Code: Select all
Average Task Standard Roll
Tough Task Opposed Roll vs. 25%
Challenging Task Opposed Roll vs. 50%
Formidable Task Opposed Roll vs. 75%
Heroic Task Opposed Roll vs. 125%
This feels like a good idea, but then doesn't actually help if the contest is already an opposed roll, such as combat. The optional rule in RQ6, is to use simplified penalties to Skill for each degree of difficulty, so a Hard Task would be -20% to your skill. Subtracting from the 10's value of your Skill to reflect difficult seems pretty simple.
