Alternative ability check mechanic?

[cavetroll]

This is not related 5e. Lets say I want to make a skill in check in Strength. I have a 14 out of the usual 3-18 starting values.

But I don't want to have a small plus, I want to use the full 14 value because the difference between a 14 and a 9 strength is huge.

Rolling under your stat seems pretty natural way of using the number.
But I do like how 5e managed to make it so you always need to roll high and I think that is a worthy goal.

Fair enough so we need to reach some arbitrary ability check number AC20.

For someone with 9 strength you need 11, for our 14 strength we need a 6.

---
Now say its a contested check and its contested by someone with 14 strength.
We can alter the check by <contested str>-9 so AC25 if their strength is also 14.

What do you think, smooth enough or you seen something better?

 

[Jer]

Rolling under has fallen out of favor because 20s are fun to roll and people like the idea of unbounded scores, but there's nothing wrong with a good roll-under system. Especially if you're going to end up setting a cap of 20 for your difficulty number to roll over - that already limits your stats to a max of 19 realistically. With a roll under system I personally like to set the crit value to be "you roll equal to your target" rather than rolling a 1 to get that feel of "rolling high without going over" but it does mean that your crit value floats depending on what you're rolling and can add a bit of complexity to things.

For a contested check in the roll over system, why not use a contested roll, highest total wins? Unless you want a system where the players make all the rolls (which, fair enough I like those systems) a contested roll is usually more natural in that situation than adjusting the difficulty on the fly. (You can also think of it as the opponents setting the difficulty numbers for each other if you prefer that interpretation).

 

[Ovinomancer]

You seem to have reinvented THAC0.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Look up the game Symbaroum. It’s exactly how they do it. It’s very close to D&D but the mechanics are different. I haven’t played it yet but it looks good.

 

[cavetroll]

For a contested check in the roll over system, why not use a contested roll, highest total wins?

of course that makes way more sense !

 

[John Dallman]

The way I do this, playing OD&D and AD&D1e, is to roll d6s against the ability. For example, if someone needs to roll vs their WIS 12, they roll several d6 in order: say they roll 3, 4, 5, 2: the first three dice add up to a number equal to the ability: they've made a 3 dice WIS roll.

This has several advantages over a d20 roll. There are readily comprehensible difficulty levels: almost anyone will reliably succeed in a 1 dice check and most characters will pass 2 dice checks almost all the time. 3 dice checks are challenging for normal people, but PCs with high abilities manage them readily. 4 dice checks are getting hard, and 5 dice checks are challenging for people with 17-18 in the relevant ability. These also give you a way to deal with non-weapon proficiencies: a task that's core for the NWP gives you three bonus dice, something that's closely related gives you two dice, and something where it would be helpful gives you one bonus die.

Yes, this involves rolling low and not using d20s for everything. So what? Having mechanics where the characters have a good idea of what they can do matters a lot to me more than purism about dice sizes.

 

[cavetroll]

The way I do this, playing OD&D and AD&D1e, is to roll d6s against the ability. For example, if someone needs to roll vs their WIS 12, they roll several d6 in order: say they roll 3, 4, 5, 2: the first three dice add up to a number equal to the ability: they've made a 3 dice WIS roll.

This has several advantages over a d20 roll. There are readily comprehensible difficulty levels: almost anyone will reliably succeed in a 1 dice check and most characters will pass 2 dice checks almost all the time. 3 dice checks are challenging for normal people, but PCs with high abilities manage them readily. 4 dice checks are getting hard, and 5 dice checks are challenging for people with 17-18 in the relevant ability. These also give you a way to deal with non-weapon proficiencies: a task that's core for the NWP gives you three bonus dice, something that's closely related gives you two dice, and something where it would be helpful gives you one bonus die.

Yes, this involves rolling low and not using d20s for everything. So what? Having mechanics where the characters have a good idea of what they can do matters a lot to me more than purism about dice sizes.

I like it, rolling d20 for everything isn't always great, in 5e it was very confusing understanding saving throws vs skill checks.

Your system is pretty fun, I might use thanks!

 

[Nikosandros]

The way I do this, playing OD&D and AD&D1e, is to roll d6s against the ability. For example, if someone needs to roll vs their WIS 12, they roll several d6 in order: say they roll 3, 4, 5, 2: the first three dice add up to a number equal to the ability: they've made a 3 dice WIS roll.

This has several advantages over a d20 roll. There are readily comprehensible difficulty levels: almost anyone will reliably succeed in a 1 dice check and most characters will pass 2 dice checks almost all the time. 3 dice checks are challenging for normal people, but PCs with high abilities manage them readily. 4 dice checks are getting hard, and 5 dice checks are challenging for people with 17-18 in the relevant ability. These also give you a way to deal with non-weapon proficiencies: a task that's core for the NWP gives you three bonus dice, something that's closely related gives you two dice, and something where it would be helpful gives you one bonus die.

Yes, this involves rolling low and not using d20s for everything. So what? Having mechanics where the characters have a good idea of what they can do matters a lot to me more than purism about dice sizes.

This is interesting. Do you roll one die at a time and stop when you exceed the abilty score?

 

[John Dallman]

This is interesting. Do you roll one die at a time and stop when you exceed the abilty score?

Basically yes, but there are speed-ups for that. If you're rolling against an ability in the 12-17 range, you can roll the first three dice together, because you're bound to succeed in a 2 dice roll, and the total is all that matters for those three dice, without worrying about the ordering.

On Roll 20, if you ask it to roll a bunch of d6, it gives them an ordering, and you can just read across until you exceed the ability.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The way I do this, playing OD&D and AD&D1e, is to roll d6s against the ability. For example, if someone needs to roll vs their WIS 12, they roll several d6 in order: say they roll 3, 4, 5, 2: the first three dice add up to a number equal to the ability: they've made a 3 dice WIS roll.

This has several advantages over a d20 roll. There are readily comprehensible difficulty levels: almost anyone will reliably succeed in a 1 dice check and most characters will pass 2 dice checks almost all the time. 3 dice checks are challenging for normal people, but PCs with high abilities manage them readily. 4 dice checks are getting hard, and 5 dice checks are challenging for people with 17-18 in the relevant ability. These also give you a way to deal with non-weapon proficiencies: a task that's core for the NWP gives you three bonus dice, something that's closely related gives you two dice, and something where it would be helpful gives you one bonus die.

Yes, this involves rolling low and not using d20s for everything. So what? Having mechanics where the characters have a good idea of what they can do matters a lot to me more than purism about dice sizes.

I'm a little confused on your NWP rolling.
3 bonus die on top of your normal die for a core NWP when you are trying to roll low why?

And are you trying to get degrees of success like in VtM?