Critical on a 1, Fumble on a 20

[Ian Cooper]

With the switch to 'high roll wins' it feels as though it also makes logical sense that the highest roll under the number is a critical.

So, instead of a critical on a 1, a critical is a roll of exactly the TN. A 1 is a fumble. This makes higher rolls consistently better. It also fixes abilities of 20 as they now make a difference, because you can roll a 20 and critical.

 

Has anyone played this way?

[soltakss]

I haven't played that way, but it makes sense.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Has anyone played this way?

I considered briefly, but decided not to go that way.

We had some debate early on in my games about the high roll wins as it does change the percentage likelihood of getting positive results (and there's definitely some corner cases that skew it).

It would be useful to really get a good understanding of how percentages track for each.

[Zit]

14 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

With the switch to 'high roll wins' it feels as though it also makes logical sense that the highest roll under the number is a critical.

So, instead of a critical on a 1, a critical is a roll of exactly the TN. A 1 is a fumble. This makes higher rolls consistently better. It also fixes abilities of 20 as they now make a difference, because you can roll a 20 and critical.

 

Has anyone played this way?

What if if roll 1 with a 1M ?

Another way would be to simply ignore 20s and directly jump from 19 to 1M.

[Mugen]

21 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I considered briefly, but decided not to go that way.

We had some debate early on in my games about the high roll wins as it does change the percentage likelihood of getting positive results (and there's definitely some corner cases that skew it).

It would be useful to really get a good understanding of how percentages track for each.

Well, the good news is that in both cases, the character with the highest ability rating has the best chances of success.

However, with high roll wins the chances of success of the highest ability are better than with low roll wins.

The problem with low roll wins is that, if the character with the highest ability rolls above his opponent's skill, it's his opponent roll alone that will decide who is the winner.

[JonL]

I use critical on rolling your ability rating exactly and fumble on 20, a-la Pendragon. It is not only more coherent with high-roll wins, it also gives room to award tied criticals to the higher roller. For the case of ratings of exactly 20, I have them continue to crit on a rolled 19 and treat a rolled 20 as a regular fail rather than a fumble.

The one case I haven't quite come to a conclusion on is comparing criticals where one party to the conflict has a mastery edge and rolls lower than the one who doesn't. That is to say, is one party has a 17 and rolls a 17, and another has 6w and rolls a 5, which one has a marginal victory? I could see either answer being valid so long as it's applied consistently, but I'm not sure which one I like more.

[Mugen]

38 minutes ago, JonL said:

I use critical on rolling your ability rating exactly and fumble on 20, a-la Pendragon. It is not only more coherent with high-roll wins, it also gives room to award tied criticals to the higher roller. For the case of ratings of exactly 20, I have them continue to crit on a rolled 19 and treat a rolled 20 as a regular fail rather than a fumble.

The one case I haven't quite come to a conclusion on is comparing criticals where one party to the conflict has a mastery edge and rolls lower than the one who doesn't. That is to say, is one party has a 17 and rolls a 17, and another has 6w and rolls a 5, which one has a marginal victory? I could see either answer being valid so long as it's applied consistently, but I'm not sure which one I like more.

In this situation, I'd say High roll wins.

Or low roll if you use Low Roll Wins, like in HQ2.

Edited October 24, 2016 by Mugen

[JonL]

Which is the high roll though? You could look at it as crit on 17 beating crit on 5, or just as reasonably look at it as crit on 25 beating crit on 17. 

The question also becomes becomes relevant for situations like a success on 8 under 13 vs failure-bumped-to-success on 7 over 5w.

I lean towards the marginal victory going towards the side with the mastery advantage in principle, but if so that means that the person on the lower side of a mastery mismatch is going to never squeak out a marginal victory over someone with a mastery advantage ever, which I'm not sure I like.

[jajagappa]

Leaving aside the crit question, I play high roll wins whether straight success on 8 vs. success on 7, or success on 8 vs. failure-bumped-to-success on 7 over 5w.  That seems to work fine (particularly as masteries already have enough advantages).

[JonL]

The more I think about it, the more I think that may be for the best. It allows for someone on the wrong side of a mastery to sometimes squeak by a Marginal Victory on matched success grades if they roll well and the opposition rolls poorly. It seems that there ought to be some chance of that from a dramatic standpoint. 

[Mugen]

On 25/10/2016 at 9:05 PM, JonL said:

Which is the high roll though? You could look at it as crit on 17 beating crit on 5, or just as reasonably look at it as crit on 25 beating crit on 17. 

Why would you treat a bump given by a mastery differently from a bump given by rolling a critical ? If you consider that a "bumped 5" is equivalent to a 25, then a bumped 17 is a 37.

If you bump the 5 AND add 20 to the roll because of the mastery, you're basically counting the mastery twice.

I think the system is less confusing if you forget the concept of "bumps" and use a success-counting mechanism instead.

-Your base success number is equal to your masteries.

-If your d20 roll is inferior to your ability TN, add 1 success. If it is equal to the TN, add another success (total 2). If it is equal to 20, subtract 1 success.

-If you scored more success than needed, you get a victory, whose quality depends on the number of extra successes.

-If you scored a number of successes equal to the required number, compare the dice results to determine the victor.