D&D General A d12 (not d20) D&D System?

[77IM]

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In some places, the d20 roll is replaced by a d12 roll as a form of penalty. For example, Batman can make a whopping five attacks, but if he makes that many, he rolls d12 instead of d20 on all of them. I theorize that the game does it this way because rolling d20-with-disadvantage 5 times would take forever, but you can roll 5d12 all at once. And maybe rolling 5 times but with, say, a -5 penalty, might be too much math.

Interestingly, a natural 20 is a crit, but on a natural 12, it instead allows you to roll again with a d20 and use the better result (and a 20 on that die is a crit).

 

[Horwath]

you could just turn d20 into d12+4.

average will stay the same, so DC's should not be a problem and having 5-16 is much more reliable than 1-20.

 

[DND_Reborn]

you could just turn d20 into d12+4.

average will stay the same, so DC's should not be a problem and having 5-16 is much more reliable than 1-20.

Part of the point is to reduce the cap, not just the range, as that accomplishes the goal of reducing success on rolls.

 

[jgsugden]

Kinda sorta, but not an offical one.

I built a 3d System. In the 3D system you roll 3 dice to determine success, and the amount by which you succeed will impact what happens on the success. The trick: The size of die you roll increases as you advance in power. d12 was the near pinnacle die - you generally could not really advance to a d20. When we used it, people fixated on getting to the d12s.

The first die was your inherent die, and it was based upon features you selected in character creation. It generally did not change throughout your adventuring career.

The second die was an attribute die, which was enlarged by developing one of your focal attributes. This changed during character creation, but also at milestones in an adventuring career. There were 8 prime attributes, and 28 derived attributes that were determined by combining dice - but they also started off with random modifiers that gave your PC more variation.

The third die reflected training. As PCs gained experience, they gain it in categories. Those categories could then be spent to develop skills that had those categories as a tag. If you stood in the back and fired arrows all adventure, your options to advance were limited. But if you engaged in swordplay, archery, stealth, spellcasting and negotiation, your options were more open. There were lot of skills that could be trained (each spell was a separate skill, but a spell was more of a spell family with different options available depending upon your roll... and powerful spells could often do very bad things to the caster on a low roll, making powerful magics enticing, but dangerous). If you had no training, you'd roll a d1 (which is just a result of 1).

Under the system, a very unsuited and untrained person might roll 2d4+1d1-1 (average 5) for a roll, while the most experienced hero might roll 3d12+3 (22.5 average) ... or even 1d12+2d20+3 (average 30.5) Really high rolls were exciting.

When running the system, I set DCs (I used a different name, but they were DCs) based upon the idea that easy things had a DC of 8, normal tasks a DC of 11, difficult tasks a DC of 14, etc...

The system worked well, and was evocative, but the group that knew it stopped playing together and new groups tend to want to use systems they already know, or that they've heard of before. Honestly, I liked it slightly more than a d20 system due to the bell curve and constant evolution, but not by so much that I'd advocate for it with players.

 

[NotAYakk]

Actually I looked at both, even 3d6-2 (for a range of 1-16). And 3d6 is too large maximum at 18, practically 20 from a d20...

Less swingy is actually a bad thing when you get into smaller ranges. It means a single point has more impact.

For example, with d12, if you need a 10 you have a 25% of success. Getting a +2 increases that to 41.7% (a significant increase, 16.7%).
Now, do the same numbers with 2d6. A 10 or better is just 16.7%, but the +2 increase jumps it up to 41.7% (a larger increase of 25%!).

So, a less swinging method causes greater increases. Also with a smaller die I don't want the extremes to be too unlikely, and for that a linear distribution works better IMO. With 2d6 a 12 (the maximum) is only 2.8%, but with d12 it is 8.3%.

3d6 is less swingy than 1d12.

Var(3d6) is 35/12*2 = 105/12, Var(1d12) is 143/12.

While the max range of 1d12 is only 11 wide, the SD of 3d6 is smaller than 1d12. In practice it means that that cases where 3d6 is farther away from 10.5 than 1d12 is farther away from 6.5 are quite unlikely.

A 12 on a 1d12 is +5.5 away from the mean. The chance that 3d6 is 5.5 or more away from the mean is (1+3+6)/6^3 or 4.6%. The chance that 1d12 is +5.5 or more away from the mean is 8.3%, not quite twice as likely.

 

[ART!]

Also, we have been doing critical damage (not attacks) for several months now and will never go back. Each new player that has joined us loves it and agrees it is definitely better than critical "hits".

Could you explain what you mean here? It this always letting damage dice explode?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Could you explain what you mean here? It this always letting damage dice explode?

Sure, be happy to.

Yes, damage dice (ALL AND ANY SOURCE) explode. If ANY die rolls a maximum, the entire damage is considered critical.

So, this includes smites, sneak attack, falling damage, fireballs, and so forth.

Features that add dice to critical damage (e.g. Brutal Critical) add additional dice.
If a feature or condition makes damage critical (such as being paralyzed), you automatically add one additional maximum die.

Champions who score critical damage gain additional dice. For example, instead of critical hits on a 19 or 20, a champion who rolls maximum damage gets to add two dice instead of just one for the exploding die. At a 18-20, the add three dice instead of just one.

For example, a champion (who would normally crit on an 18-20) wields a greatsword (2d6) and rolls a 3 and 6. Because he rolled the maximum 6, his damage is critical. Instead of rolling just one dice for the exploding die, he rolls three dice! If any of those dice are 6s, they continue to explode but only addition one die (not 3 again!). So, if the player rolls a 1, 2, and 6 on the three bonus dice, another d6 is rolled, with a result of 4. Total damage would be 9 (3+6) plus critical (1+2+6+4) = 22 damage, plus any other bonuses.

Obviously, since more dice makes rolling maximum on a single die more likely, it makes such things likely to be critical damage. A standard fireball is 8d6, so has about a 77% chance of gaining additional critical damage dice.

It should be noted, healing is also "critical" in that it can explode as well.

Finally, when you upcast a spell in our game, you don't gain additional dice. Instead, any additional dice are considered to be maximum. So, if you upcast cure wounds at level 2, instead of 2d8+WIS mod, you get 1d8+WIS mod+8. The second d8 is automatically an 8. This makes upcasting some spells viable, such as sleep.

 

[DND_Reborn]

3d6 is less swingy than 1d12.

Right, which is why I said it is a bad thing...

 

[ART!]

Sure, be happy to.

Yes, damage dice (ALL AND ANY SOURCE) explode. If ANY die rolls a maximum, the entire damage is considered critical.

So, this includes smites, sneak attack, falling damage, fireballs, and so forth.

Features that add dice to critical damage (e.g. Brutal Critical) add additional dice.
If a feature or condition makes damage critical (such as being paralyzed), you automatically add one additional maximum die.

Champions who score critical damage gain additional dice. For example, instead of critical hits on a 19 or 20, a champion who rolls maximum damage gets to add two dice instead of just one for the exploding die. At a 18-20, the add three dice instead of just one.

For example, a champion (who would normally crit on an 18-20) wields a greatsword (2d6) and rolls a 3 and 6. Because he rolled the maximum 6, his damage is critical. Instead of rolling just one dice for the exploding die, he rolls three dice! If any of those dice are 6s, they continue to explode but only addition one die (not 3 again!). So, if the player rolls a 1, 2, and 6 on the three bonus dice, another d6 is rolled, with a result of 4. Total damage would be 9 (3+6) plus critical (1+2+6+4) = 22 damage, plus any other bonuses.

Obviously, since more dice makes rolling maximum on a single die more likely, it makes such things likely to be critical damage. A standard fireball is 8d6, so has about a 77% chance of gaining additional critical damage dice.

It should be noted, healing is also "critical" in that it can explode as well.

Finally, when you upcast a spell in our game, you don't gain additional dice. Instead, any additional dice are considered to be maximum. So, if you upcast cure wounds at level 2, instead of 2d8+WIS mod, you get 1d8+WIS mod+8. The second d8 is automatically an 8. This makes upcasting some spells viable, such as sleep.

Thank you for the explanation! I like it!

This has the effect of making "smaller" dice more likely to get critical damage, so daggers and Magic Missile will have critical damage more often than shortswords and Acid Splash, and on up the die ladder.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Thank you for the explanation! I like it!

No problem, my pleasure. I love spreading good ideas.

We have a number of house-rules which at this point have become staple for any 5E game:

• Cinematic Initiative
• Critical Damage (Exploding Dice)
• Maximum Upcasting
• Going to 0 HP/ Dying

Frankly, no one in my group would want to play 5E without these rules now. I've had a number of people sit in on sessions as well and they took the ideas with them to try in their own groups. So far the response has been pretty good, which is favorable for when I release our 5E Mod (someday, right? LOL!).

This has the effect of making "smaller" dice more likely to get critical damage, so daggers and Magic Missile will have critical damage more often than shortswords and Acid Splash, and on up the die ladder.

Yep. In our recent campaign I had a PC do over 20 critical damage with a torch as an improvised weapon, rolling a series of 4's in a row! So AWESOME!

In the full Mod, armor (worn and natural, and some spells) provide damage reduction against critical damage. We been experimenting with other options as well, but nothing is set yet.