Critical systems in different d100 games

[Atgxtg]

12 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

Yes, I mention that in that my original post... and divided about it...

Me too. I fear that it would make a 30% difference a commanding advantage. That could be bad for "heroic underdog" situations where the PCs confront a more highly skilled bad guy. It probably would take a lot of the risk (and thus excitement) out of PC vs mook conflicts. 

In some ways this is similar to how Masteries work in HeroQuest. Perhaps HQ could provide the solution, too., Hero Points. If Hero Points could be spent to bump up success levels, we'd have a counterbalance to big skill differences. It could also be used to ramp up the dramatic tension, with an overmatched PC holding off a more skilled adversary by burning through Hero Points.

 

Oh, and just to toss out another variant, and one that I believe I've mentioned elsewhere, we could always just use the 1s digit for the success level. That would give us up to ten possible success levels and an equal number of failure levels (more if we do something like odd or even for the tens die). For instance we could do something like:

0= best result (i.e. critical success/fumble)

1-2= second best (i.e. special success)

3-7 = average result (average success)

8-9 = marginal result (marginal success)

So if someone had a skill of 57% and he rolled a 34 it would be a a normal success. If they rolled a 59 it would be a marginal failure.

Obviously we could add more that four success levels or change the bands to 0-1/2-4/5-8/9, flip it 9/7-8/3-6/1-2, or whatever.With a slight tweak we could even get the same breakdowns as in standard BRP, Stormbringer, etc. Note that if we tie things like damage done, damaged parried, distance moved etc more directly to the success level if desired. We could even treat extended tasks as require a certain number of success levels, and then keep a running tally. --Just throwing it out there as a possible game mechanic that doesn't require math.

 

 

 

 

[Lloyd Dupont]

cool ideas... 🙂

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

cool ideas... 🙂

In that case, since I'm on a roll, one thing that BRP doesn't have but could work, would be the idea of raises. Basically, someone takes a penalty to a skill roll but gets a higher Success Level if they succeed. This would be similar to your "make by 30" idea but a bit more controlled as the bump up in SL would be more by design that by chance. It would be nice since not only would it reduce the chance of the inevitable "01" by a mook killing off a PC, but it would also work out pretty well for PCs who are over-matched, as the higher skilled NPC might play it safe and take the sure thing while a PC might have to risk the lower percentages to have a chance of winning. 

[Lloyd Dupont]

Interesting... 
I am already using the general idea of sacrificing 5SR for 10% bonus...

Mmmm... I might put that in my wanna be list of stunts.. which might or might not see the light of day if I got it long enough... 
(and yes I did look at the pirate supplement, but only a few stunt took my fancy, and I need some non combat one)

[Mugen]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

In that case, since I'm on a roll, one thing that BRP doesn't have but could work, would be the idea of raises. Basically, someone takes a penalty to a skill roll but gets a higher Success Level if they succeed. This would be similar to your "make by 30" idea but a bit more controlled as the bump up in SL would be more by design that by chance. It would be nice since not only would it reduce the chance of the inevitable "01" by a mook killing off a PC, but it would also work out pretty well for PCs who are over-matched, as the higher skilled NPC might play it safe and take the sure thing while a PC might have to risk the lower percentages to have a chance of winning. 

It's not really simple to decide the right value for those "raises", as it's will always be a benefit for characters with maximized chances of success, but a debatable one for characters with lower skills.

If my skill is high enough that my chances of success remain superior to 95% after I took it, you're basically giving me free levels of success. And I might even consider going down to 90 or 85% and still get a good reward/risk ratio.

On the other hand, if the cost for extra success is too big, characters with low skill won't take it. Are you going to reduce your skill by 30 just to get an extra success, for instance ? But if you put a lower malus, you give more extra free LoS to highly skilled characters.

An "open-ended" system was used in old french d20-roll-under game Celtic Legends. If you rolled "1", you could re-roll the die and add the second margin of success to the first. But it's in fact just another way to implement critical success, and it's also more beneficial to highly skilled characters.

[Atgxtg]

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

It's not really simple to decide the right value for those "raises", as it's will always be a benefit for characters with maximized chances of success, but a debatable one for characters with lower skills.

Not it isn't really simple, especially when "the right value" could vary from GM to GM. Yes there is a risk of higher skilled characters being able to "run the table" by taking low risk raises or even free raises if skill exceeds 100%. It's one reason why I think A Hero Point mechnaic to buy raises/success levels would be needed - as least for PCs and VIP NPCs.

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

If my skill is high enough that my chances of success remain superior to 95% after I took it, you're basically giving me free levels of success. And I might even consider going down to 90 or 85% and still get a good reward/risk ratio.

Yes and that is why I think Hero Points are required to offset this somewhat. Keep in mind though that in RQ2 or RQG that excess skill would come off of the opponent's skill, which can be just as severe. For instance 120% vs. 80% in this variant could be 90% with one raise vs. 80% which is isn't much worse than RQ2's 100% vs. 60%

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

On the other hand, if the cost for extra success is too big, characters with low skill won't take it. Are you going to reduce your skill by 30 just to get an extra success, for instance ?

Yes, if you need to. It would depend a lot on what the difference in success levels is worth. For instance, let's say that you've got a character with 40% skill facing off against someone with 120%. The 120%er takes a raise, so the 40% character ir probably going to have to take a raise to have a chance of winning. Other he will still lose 2:1 even if he succeeds. 

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

An "open-ended" system was used in old french d20-roll-under game Celtic Legends. If you rolled "1", you could re-roll the die and add the second margin of success to the first. But it's in fact just another way to implement critical success,

That's similar to what Rolemaster does.

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

and it's also more beneficial to highly skilled characters.

Sort of. I'd say it actually benefits NPCs. My reasoning is that probabilities being what the are eventually even low skilled characters will roll crticals. Since criticals in BRP games  tend to be rather deadly  even to highly skilled characters, then the rule will lead to PCs taking more crtical hits, making the game more lethal to them. That's kinda true for all critical hit systems.

Now yes the same holds true for the NPCs, but so what? Most NPCs the PCs fight are essentially disposable. No one really care if Trollkin #3 or Bandit #2 survive and show up for the next game session. We care if the PCs do. So in the long run a crtical hit rule probably hurts the PCs more than it helps them, just becuase they will get more attacks rolled against them than any NPC ever will. 

SO the rule should probably be looked at from a PC vs NPC view rather than high skill vs. low skill. From that viewpoint I think something like Hero Points would be required to balance this out for the PCs. 

But ultimately these are all difference ways of handling oppsed skills, critical hits and degrees of success. I don't think there is one single best way to do that, just several ways,. each with their pros and cons. 

 

 

 

[Lloyd Dupont]

5 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Since criticals in BRP games  tend to be rather deadly  even to highly skilled characters

I am making my own combat system (I mean similar to all those D100 games around, with some personal touch), at any rate, about BRP specifically, crit attack vs normal defence: normal damage and armor applies. So not that bad really...

Edited September 11, 2021 by Lloyd Dupont

[Mugen]

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's similar to what Rolemaster does.

It's more a mix between RM's open-ended rolls and RQ crits, as your chances to benefit from this rule are equal to 1/20th of your skill.

Plus, what you'll get from that second roll is limited by your skill, contrarily to RM, where the second roll will add 1d100, no matter what your skill is.

[Mugen]

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes, if you need to. It would depend a lot on what the difference in success levels is worth. For instance, let's say that you've got a character with 40% skill facing off against someone with 120%. The 120%er takes a raise, so the 40% character ir probably going to have to take a raise to have a chance of winning. Other he will still lose 2:1 even if he succeeds. 

Oh, you mean Legend of the 5 Rings style raises ? I thought that you wanted to use it in conjunction with the 1 success/30 points.

In my understanding of your proposition, if a character with skill 40 took a 30% malus to get a raise, he only had 10% chance to get 2 successes instead of 10% chances to get 2 success, plus 30% chance to get 1. If your skill is 120, on the other hand, you only lose 5% chance of success (in case you keep a maximum chance of 95%) for 1 success.

[Atgxtg]

15 hours ago, Mugen said:

Oh, you mean Legend of the 5 Rings style raises ?

Yes.

15 hours ago, Mugen said:

 

I thought that you wanted to use it in conjunction with the 1 success/30 points.

No as an alterantive to. The main difference would be that a character would have to declare/try for the increased success level rather than it be automatic. That would prevent major characters from being taking out by a lucky "01" from "Rubble Runner Three" or some such.

15 hours ago, Mugen said:

In my understanding of your proposition, if a character with skill 40 took a 30% malus to get a raise, he only had 10% chance to get 2 successes instead of 10% chances to get 2 success, plus 30% chance to get 1. If your skill is 120, on the other hand, you only lose 5% chance of success (in case you keep a maximum chance of 95%) for 1 success.

Yes that would be bad. The idea was as an alternative.

If I were to combine the two then I'd make the raises cheaper that the automatic. Say -15% or -20% instead of 30%. That way the 40% character would have to decide between rolling unmodified, with a 10% chance of 2 success levels and a 30% chance of one success level, or take a raise for a 20% chance of two success levels. Something like that could get interesting with player having decide between playing it safe and getting their automatic success or taking a risk for potentially greater results. I'm not to sure about -20/30% though. I'd probably want to test out a few values and see what seems to work best. The goal would be to make the choice between automatic success and taking raises a bit difficult.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Atgxtg

[Atgxtg]

17 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

I am making my own combat system (I mean similar to all those D100 games around, with some personal touch),

Yeah, I know, based on some of your other threads. That's why I throwing out everything so that you have lots of options to pick and choose from.

17 hours ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

 

at any rate, about BRP specifically, crit attack vs normal defence: normal damage and armor applies. So not that bad really...

In that case what is the benefit of the critical? How is it better than normal attack vs. normal defense?

[Lloyd Dupont]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, I know, based on some of your other threads. That's why I throwing out everything so that you have lots of options to pick and choose from.

In that case what is the benefit of the critical? How is it better than normal attack vs. normal defense?

yea... something didn't add up indeed.. 

I was too focused on Cyberpunk 2077 and not enough on BRP. In case of crit attack vs normal defense, you got normal success, reduced by armor AND the special effect 🙂 

[smiorgan]

Stormbringer 1-4 eds.

Critical 10% of skill.

Fumble. 99-00 for skills under 50%, 00 for skills over 50%.

[Mugen]

On 9/10/2021 at 2:20 PM, Atgxtg said:

Oh, and just to toss out another variant, and one that I believe I've mentioned elsewhere, we could always just use the 1s digit for the success level. That would give us up to ten possible success levels and an equal number of failure levels (more if we do something like odd or even for the tens die). For instance we could do something like:

0= best result (i.e. critical success/fumble)

1-2= second best (i.e. special success)

3-7 = average result (average success)

8-9 = marginal result (marginal success)

So if someone had a skill of 57% and he rolled a 34 it would be a a normal success. If they rolled a 59 it would be a marginal failure.

The problem I see with this method is that you'd have very different results, depending on the units of your skill.

Skills with values that are multiples of 10 will have a linear distribution, as, obviously, he's going to have as many successes with 1s or 0s as the second digit. With other unit digits, you'll have more lower results than higher ones. Obviously, if your skill is 41, you'll have 1 more possible result where you roll 1 than if it is 40.

You could roll a 3rd d10, like in C&S, and possibly use mechanisms such as dice swapping, or reducing your chances of success to have better results.

[Atgxtg]

10 hours ago, Mugen said:

The problem I see with this method is that you'd have very different results, depending on the units of your skill.

Yes and that's deliberate, thee idea is to replicate the 1/10th skill game mechanic without the need of a table. So a Stormbringer style critical (1/10th skill) could be replicated by using one number (say 0, 1 or 9 depending of if we want a lowvalue or high die to be better), a RQ critical by using one number and only the evens (5% chance) and a special success (20% skill) could be replicated by using two numbers (say 1 and 2 or 7 and 8). 

Thus the chances of getting an above average success level would increase as skill increases. Also the chances of getting a fumble would decrease at the same rate. This lets us ditch the table and math, and makes it easier to use opposed rolls, as it would be the same game mechanic (ones die) used to determine success level. 

[olskool]

Since we use the Combat Special Effects from MYTHRAS in our game, we went with the following chances.  Please note that we divide our SEs into these three ranges as well.  

Basic Success: Roll under skill.  No additional effects.

Special Success:  1/2 Skill (rounding up).  PC gets to pick from some of the more basic effects like enhanced damage, trip, and redirect foe.

Outstanding Success: 1/10th Skill (rounding up).  PC gets the better effects like Slash, Impale, Crush, Disarm and Stun Foe. 

Critical Success:  Doubles UNDER Skill with 00 being "zero,zero" NOT 100.  PC gets the best effects like Riposte (return an attack free), Sunder Weapon or Armor, Bypass Armor, and Compel Retreat.

Fumble: Doubles OVER Skill with 00 being "zero,zero" NOT 100.  PC gets to pick his opponent's fumble and GM picks the PC's fumble.

For Skills over 100% (which we rarely have because we do Skills improvement like Runequest 3), on a DOUBLES result, you DO NOT Fumble IF you roll a Double that's under the total of your Skill - 100, and DO Fumble if the Double rolled is OVER the total of Skill-100.  

Keep in mind that one of the reasons this works is because we are using Special Effects that the player chooses and having 4 Levels of success makes the choice of Effects more "gated" which reduces choice and speeds up play.

. 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by olskool
Added a thought

[Nikoli]

Hi,

I’ve also been thinking of math-challenged players, which I think is important now that we understand dyscalculia etc.

I wonder if 1/10th of a skill would be good for specials, round down, as it’s easy to eyeball (72% = 7; 77 = 7; so only full tens get the special) AND double rolls under the skill equal criticals (so a 66 would be a critical).
 

Or the reverse (doubles for specials, 1/10th or less for criticals). Judging by comments above on odds, this means both have similar chances of occurring, but they are via different mechanics which are easily seen. So there would be a 2/10 chance of a good result, either special or critical. 

Now that I think of it, I like the 1/10th as a critical, since it’s low; the double as a special, since it’s kind of special. 🙂 

They’d be easy to understand.

(Using both specials and criticals is something that Magic World does. Not every game is likely going to need to do that. But I like both of them for added degrees. If one thinks 1/10th is too much for such a critical, one can always make it the chance of a critical, with a Luck roll to see if it’s ACTUALLY a critical; otherwise it’s a regular special. That would bring the odds down a bit, but it would still be easy to understand at the table. Come to think of it, 1/10th as a critical/special could work too. With Luck determining which occurs in game. Make the Luck roll, you get a critical. Fail, it’s a special.)

Another way is just to take the tens and double it (70 = 7x2 = 14; 77 = 7x2 = 14), ignoring the units. That’s a special. And for criticals, halve the tens and maybe round down (70 = 7/2 = 3; 77 = 7/2 = 3). I guess that might be easy enough. That would be 1/5th for specials, 1/20th for criticals.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Nikoli

[Baron Wulfraed]

53 minutes ago, Nikoli said:

I wonder if 1/10th of a skill would be good for specials, round down, as it’s easy to eyeball (72% = 7; 77 = 7; so only full tens get the special) AND double rolls under the skill equal criticals (so a 66 would be a critical).

Counting 00 (as low, not 100 high), there is one "double" for every 10 values, so for someone with (for simplicity) 100% skill, you are granting 10 specials (10, 20, 30, 40, ..., 80, 90, 00) and 10 criticals (11, 22, 33, 44, ..., 88, 99, 00).

 

53 minutes ago, Nikoli said:

 

 

[Nikoli]

58 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Counting 00 (as low, not 100 high), there is one "double" for every 10 values, so for someone with (for simplicity) 100% skill, you are granting 10 specials (10, 20, 30, 40, ..., 80, 90, 00) and 10 criticals (11, 22, 33, 44, ..., 88, 99, 00).

 

Yes, that’s almost the idea alright. I’d count 00 as high though, because I think most people do. There’d be 9 criticals (if using doubles) since at 100% skill, 00 would still be a fumble. And 8 if 96 to 00 is always a failure; which I like. So 99 is also off the cards then. That makes 8 criticals (doubles) and 10 specials (01, 02, 03, etc., to 10). But if not using 96 to 00 as a failure, it would be 9 criticals. 00 would still be a fumble. But only having a fumble and no failure is why I like 96 to 00 as failures, regardless. Given that the odds for criticals is then reduced, I guess the double fits the critical better, and the 1/10th the special.

[soltakss]

5 hours ago, Nikoli said:

I wonder if 1/10th of a skill would be good for specials, round down, as it’s easy to eyeball (72% = 7; 77 = 7; so only full tens get the special) AND double rolls under the skill equal criticals (so a 66 would be a critical).

That is how I do it for Mythras and Legend, I simply use the tens digits as a Critical.

So, 72% criticals on 01-07, 115 criticals on 01-11, nice and easy.

 

[Raleel]

8 hours ago, soltakss said:

That is how I do it for Mythras and Legend, I simply use the tens digits as a Critical.

Do things under 10 critical?

[soltakss]

On 1/7/2022 at 3:54 PM, Raleel said:

Do things under 10 critical?

01 is always a critical, for me, so yes.

[Mugen]

On 1/7/2022 at 8:51 AM, soltakss said:

That is how I do it for Mythras and Legend, I simply use the tens digits as a Critical.

So, 72% criticals on 01-07, 115 criticals on 01-11, nice and easy.

 

Yes. Simple, and scales naturally with skills above 100.

[g33k]

On 9/10/2021 at 9:15 PM, Lloyd Dupont said:

(and yes I did look at the pirate supplement, but only a few stunt took my fancy, and I need some non combat one)

I would just use Blood Tide's Stunts (assuming that's "the pirate supplement" you meant) as a model for creating whatever stunts you wanted.  Similarly, I'd look at d20/D&D3.x/PF "Feats" to inspire some stunts.

Cast a really wide net, to find inspiration; because finding interesting non-combat bits can be challenging!

[Lloyd Dupont]

Yes the "pirate supplement" was blood and tide, couldn't remember the name just then! 
And yes, the idea also crossed my mind to be inspired by D&D and Cyberpunk 2077, which give me some more cool broader ideas.. 🙂 
I am growing the number of stunt slowly... I also need to change my expectations, I tend to make my own life difficult, sigh....