A true D20 game system? Has anyone ever thought about trying this?

DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin
I was chatting with a couple guys in my group yesterday and we came up with an idea. I am certain others have had similar, so this probably isn't anything "new", but I was curious about it and wondered if anyone had ever tried it.

The idea is this: DND with no dice except the d20.

Ability scores: point-buy, standard array, or random by a table using the d20.
Money: average + d20 or max, or maybe something like anything from 2d20 to 10d20?
Attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks all use d20's already.
Damage is always average, so you wouldn't roll for it. If you wanted it random, you could do something like d20-10, d20, 2d20, etc. however you want.
Spells could work in a similar way.

Now, personally, I know a lot of players like rolling different dice, so I am hardly saying I think this is the future of DND or anything, I'm just curious if anyone ever tried something like this idea?
 

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I would miss rolling for my HP. Taking average for that works, obviously. Done it often enough. But rolling it at every level is a thrill.

I would also miss rolling for damage, healing potions, spells. We even roll the 8d6 for Fireball, even though that appears to almost always be within 5 damage points of the average of 28.

Personally, it wouldn't be for me. But I must admit, it would probably speed things up considerably.
 

I played around with a system where skills (including attack skills) ranged from 1-20. To succeed you had to role UNDER your skill. So, the higher your skill, the easier it is to succeed. Difficulties raised or lowered your skill. So, you always wanted to roll low.

In the end, 3.0 came out and we stopped making the game.

Percentile works better for that kind of mechanic anyways anyways.
 


Satyrn

First Post
I long ago played a game called Donjon that, as I recall, used pools of d20s for everything. Oh. And not just 1 pool. Like, when you attacked a Monster, you rolled a pool of d20s against a pool of d20s rolled by the DM, and the more of your d20s that rolled higher than his highest, the more successful you were.

Anyway, I think the only place that you didn't use a d20 was for ability scores, in which case you rolled 3d6 and used the median result.
 


Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
I guess I’d ask why? Changes are made to fix problems. What is the problem being solved here?
 

DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin
Changes aren't made just to fix problems. People change things all the time. If you are looking for a problem, though, this would be a quicker system and even easier to learn.

But to answer your why? I respond: why not?

Anyway, like I said I might suggest it just for a one-shot and see what everyone thinks.
 


DND_Reborn

The High Aldwin
Well, ok then. Have fun! :)

LOL Thanks! Just so you know I appreciate your approach. We've had a lot of house-rules in our game and the DM goes back-and-forth on some of them, ultimately sometimes deciding the change in the rule is simply not worth having to remember we have a rule for it. After the chat I had with others, we just thought it might be fun to try.

Once we do, I'll post some feedback on it in case people are interested.
 

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