alternative method of testing

[narsilion]

Hi everybody.

Here is my proposal of changing method of testing. It needs rolling three dices instead of two, but allows not to use the tables.

I made an image, just to avoid using to many words - as my english is rather mediocre. I have atached pdf with full version of this infographic.

BRP-test.pdf

P.S. sorry my english - i've been actively using it (not just reading or listening) in school, and it was about 15 years ago...

[eric71]

a nice crunch reducing option,interesting.

Edited February 21, 2011 by eric71

[pansophy]

interesting alternative, really. Since I do not have a problem calculating 20% or 5% on the fly I won't use it, but it might be a really interesting option for some people.

[Chaot]

First off, welcome to the boards.

It is a neat little system but I tend towards PCs with skills above 100% and I either calculate it in my head or have the player mark down their Special success next to their skill percentage.

If you're interested in some D00 dice tricks narsilion, you may want to check out Unknown Armies. It's a great game and it has nifty things like flipping your roll so that a 63 becomes a 36 and calculating doubles as criticals, so if a character has a 50% and rolls a 33 it's a critical success, but if the roll a 66 it's a critical failure.

[narsilion]

I've just found some information about Unknown Armies - and it sounds interesting.

In fact, i was using some kind of "flip-floping" during my CoC campaigns:

test is difficult - roll d100, treat bigger digit on the D10 dices as "tens"

test is easy - choose lower digit and treat as "tens"

normal test - normal d100 roll

BTW, according to "alternate method of testing" topic:

Is here anybody who still uses resistance table instead of rolling d20? The probability stays the same, d20 is much faster...

i mean: instead of using resistance table:

1) substract 10 from active characteristic

2) add d20 to it

3) if the total is higher than passive caracteristic = succes

This is faster than finding in the table (and sometimes you must find the table first) and the probability is strictly the same: "Every point the active factor exceeds the passive factor by adds 5% to the chance of succes" etc.

Edited February 22, 2011 by narsilion

[deleriad]

I must admit that when running BRP for new or non-gamers I use doubles as criticals. I tell them that a double is "twice as good or twice as bad" as normal. Personally I don't use the resistance table and I do make extensive use of "blackjack" style opposed skills.

One little quirk with OP's system is what happens at high and low values. E.g. if your chance of success is 5% then your chance of a critical is actually 1/400 (5%*5%) rather than standard BRP of 1/100. That's not a bad thing but it is a thing. Note that with *2 modifiers it is actually quite easy for a starting BRP character to have a skill of 120 or 140% so the skill+d20 method may struggle more often than expected.

[Al.]

I think that the OP's idea is rather neat. I even think that it would work rather well with skills over 100% if using the old RQ rule about excess points being subtracted from the opponent's skill and making the assumption that we then test against what is left.

[pansophy]

d20+'rest' seems valid at a first glance. I simply do not like the d20 as it looks to much of a ball to me.

But sometimes I only roll the 'tens' die for skill checks. The 'ones' die simply does not make sense if a NPC has 'flat' skill values (e.g. 30%, 40% ...). If the chance of a critical/special success occurs, I roll the 'ones' die to check for it.

[vagabond]

I must admit that when running BRP for new or non-gamers I use doubles as criticals. I tell them that a double is "twice as good or twice as bad" as normal. Personally I don't use the resistance table and I do make extensive use of "blackjack" style opposed skills.

One little quirk with OP's system is what happens at high and low values. E.g. if your chance of success is 5% then your chance of a critical is actually 1/400 (5%*5%) rather than standard BRP of 1/100. That's not a bad thing but it is a thing. Note that with *2 modifiers it is actually quite easy for a starting BRP character to have a skill of 120 or 140% so the skill+d20 method may struggle more often than expected.

It's not a quirk. Crits are 5% of skill level, not 5% flat. So, if your skill level is 100%, your crit level is 5%, but if your skill level is 70%, your crit level is 5% of 70%, or 3.5% (round whichever way you prefer). So, if your skill is 5%, your crit level is 5% of 5% or .25%. GMs can choose to make 01 always crit (standard), or judge that at a skill level of 5%, there is no chance to crit (non-standard).

I hate doubles being crits BTW. Makes no sense if your skill level is 98%, and failure rolls of 99 or 00 mean you fumble/critically fail. No chance for a normal failure. One would think such a highly skilled person who, though rarely fail, when they fail, fails "spectacularly".

BTW, the OP method for quick resolution works OK for skills over 100 - for example, if skill is 200%, then a crit is achieved on a 1 or 2 on the d20, and a special is achieved on a 3 - 8 on the d20. For skills between 100% and 200%, one needs to decide how to round things off.

Ian

Edited February 22, 2011 by vagabond

[deleriad]

It's not a quirk. Crits are 5% of skill level, not 5% flat. So, if your skill level is 100%, your crit level is 5%, but if your skill level is 70%, your crit level is 5% of 70%, or 3.5% (round whichever way you prefer). So, if your skill is 5%, your crit level is 5% of 5% or .25%. GMs can choose to make 01 always crit (standard), or judge that at a skill level of 5%, there is no chance to crit (non-standard).

I hate doubles being crits BTW. Makes no sense if your skill level is 98%, and failure rolls of 99 or 00 mean you fumble/critically fail. No chance for a normal failure. One would think such a highly skilled person who, though rarely fail, when they fail, fails "spectacularly".

BTW, the OP method for quick resolution works OK for skills over 100 - for example, if skill is 200%, then a crit is achieved on a 1 or 2 on the d20, and a special is achieved on a 3 - 8 on the d20. For skills between 100% and 200%, one needs to decide how to round things off.

Ian

Well the rules as written clearly say that on a skill of 5% your chance of a critical is 1%. Likewise, on a skill of 100 your chance for a fumble is 1%. You can compare the OP's system to your personal house rules but it seems to make more sense to compare it to the actual rules.

Using a doubled range on the d20 is one possible answer but as I said, using BRP raw then someone with a skill of 60% performing an easy skill is going to end up as 120% so my take on it is that you would end up messing around with changing the critical and special spread quite frequently. At that point it may be more trouble than it's worth.

As for 'hating' doubles as criticals. Again RAW the chance for a fumble with a skill of 100 is 1% (4% fail, 1% fumble) while with doubles it is (3% fail, 2% fumble). You could easily understand that as saying that when someone is that good then a failure usually only occurs because something unusual has happened. Personally, as a GM I don't automatically equate a fumble with incompetence. Sometimes it seems to make more sense that a situational factor occurred: e.g. slipping on a patch of oil just as you took aim. Still and all, I usually only use doubles with new players or non-roleplayers because I have a mild preference for using crits as 1/10th and there's no particularly appealing way to handle skills over 100.

[narsilion]

I like using doubles as criticals. Especially the version used in WFRP 1ed to resolve fumbles with weapons: the lower fumble digits, worse the effect.

That is very intuitive and funny: only a real ignorant (or muff) can get 11 fumble (needs to have attribute 10 or lower) and even the best of the best could get 99 or 00 fumbles.

So 11 was something like "you cut your leg off with your axe" or "you shot yourself in the back with your bow" and 99 or 00 was something like "slipped, you cannot parry or dodge next round".

Quickly we started to use similar rules for ctritical succeses (11 - very good, but even ignorant can achieve this, 88 - man, everybody can see that you're good).

One little quirk with OP's system is what happens at high and low values. E.g. if your chance of success is 5% then your chance of a critical is actually 1/400 (5%*5%) rather than standard BRP of 1/100. That's not a bad thing but it is a thing.

I know about it. This is exactly what I didn't like in standard BRP and one of the reasons why i have started searching for something diffrent than table.

I use d100+d20 because I mostly play in CoC, and i don't meet skills over 100 so often

IMHO there is enough room between 0 and 100 to mirror differences in PC's abilities. That's why i like d100 mechanics.

But if the chance is bigger than 100%, do you really need to roll?

The only reason I see, is checking "was it good, special or critical?"

I thought a bit how to resolve it - well, there is the way: I propose splitting the percentile chance.

For example, let's say you have skill=143.

First of all, split it into 100% and 43%.

Then roll d20 for first 100%, to check special (20%) and critical (5%).

If you did not achieve it, roll d100+d20 for remaining 43% to check your additional chance for critical or special.

You can even use 00 on d100 as fumble, if you like. (I don't like)

I did not calculate the chances yet, but it seems enough close to the general idea of BRP rules for me.

Edited February 23, 2011 by narsilion

[vagabond]

Well the rules as written clearly say that on a skill of 5% your chance of a critical is 1%. Likewise, on a skill of 100 your chance for a fumble is 1%. You can compare the OP's system to your personal house rules but it seems to make more sense to compare it to the actual rules.

Err, if you read what I wrote, you would see that I mention "GMs can choose to make 01 always crit (standard)" - as in that is the standard rule. I then present an option.

Using a doubled range on the d20 is one possible answer but as I said, using BRP raw then someone with a skill of 60% performing an easy skill is going to end up as 120% so my take on it is that you would end up messing around with changing the critical and special spread quite frequently. At that point it may be more trouble than it's worth.

Again, as I said, you would have to deal with rounding when exceeding 100. The price of simplification is losing granularity. By the rules, a 60% skill attempting an easy task rolls as 120%. A crit is 5% of 120 or 6%. Using the OP's method, and choosing some reasonable rounding, a skill roll of 120 would crit on a 1 and special on a 2 - 5 on the d20. Again, I said the OPs method handles skill rolls over 100 OK, I didn't say I would use it.

As for 'hating' doubles as criticals. Again RAW the chance for a fumble with a skill of 100 is 1% (4% fail, 1% fumble) while with doubles it is (3% fail, 2% fumble). You could easily understand that as saying that when someone is that good then a failure usually only occurs because something unusual has happened. Personally, as a GM I don't automatically equate a fumble with incompetence. Sometimes it seems to make more sense that a situational factor occurred: e.g. slipping on a patch of oil just as you took aim. Still and all, I usually only use doubles with new players or non-roleplayers because I have a mild preference for using crits as 1/10th and there's no particularly appealing way to handle skills over 100.

I stick with RAW - 96+ is always a fail, and 00 is always a fumble. For me, math is pretty easy, and 5%, 10% and 20% are no brainers to figure out, so I stick with RAW again. And, after years of playing Stormbringer and Elric!, skills over 100 work just fine for me as written. The chance for crits and specials increases, as well as the option to split attacks and multiple ripostes. But, to me, a fumble happening with greater frequency when an extremely skilled character is involved seems illogical. If anything, a higher skilled person should fumble less frequently. Again, fumbles are "spectacular failures" according to the book, and the result of "Bad luck, incompetence, or Murphy's Law". Why should more competent characters suffer a higher ratio of such failures? Again, IMHP< and RAW agrees with me, the higher skilled characters should suffer from such failures less often.

Ian

[deleriad]

But, to me, a fumble happening with greater frequency when an extremely skilled character is involved seems illogical. If anything, a higher skilled person should fumble less frequently. Again, fumbles are "spectacular failures" according to the book, and the result of "Bad luck, incompetence, or Murphy's Law". Why should more competent characters suffer a higher ratio of such failures? Again, IMHP< and RAW agrees with me, the higher skilled characters should suffer from such failures less often.

You appear to be conflating two different arguments here. I was comparing the chance to fumble in different systems.

In the OP's system, the fumble chance for someone with 100% skill is 0.25%, while RAW the chance for a fumble for someone with 100% is 1% and using doubles as fumbles the chance for someone to fumble is 2%.

The again, if using doubles for crits/fumbles you are using a 1/10ths system rather than the 1/20ths system of BRP RAW. Therefore a crit/fum probably needs to be about 1/2 as powerful as in RAW. I personally wouldn't use doubles for crits in a setting if I routinely expected skills to be 90+ because I think the ratio of crits to fumbles is too low for 90%+.

I would also say that the OP's system for crits/fumbles is actually more granular for skills in the 0-100 range than the RAW is with the drawback of the big breakpoint at 101%.