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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chris_Nightwing" data-source="post: 5843054" data-attributes="member: 882">You have made a very well thought out proposal, which I really admire. Especially because you gave some thought to the mathematics of your system. I like the idea of rolling more dice to represent superior skill, however I will offer some comments:If the only way to increase your base modifier on a d20 roll is by training or increasing an ability, then the range of DCs that make sense in the game will be limited. This might not be a problem - it depends on whether you want the skill system to interact with the attack/defence system or not, and whether such bonuses increase all the time, or ability bumps exist. I definitely favour aligning the systems and reducing the bonuses you acquire as you level, but I fear that such a system isn't d20 enough, if you see what I mean? I'm not sure that a dragon with the same AC as an Orc (despite a wealth more hitpoints and superior damage) will give enough of a sense of achievement for most people as they grow in power (though really, this is a paradigm I would seriously consider working with).There's a bit much of a jump at the different skill levels and I'm not sure how DC of a skill check vs. 'level' of a skill check are supposed to interact. For me, the requirement for multiple successes suggests a complex check (such as your scroll deciphering), but would feel weird for say, jumping a gap, where the DC just plain increases the wider the gap is. I would require 1 success to achieve something, no matter what, but multiple successes might be needed to succeed at a complex challenge. Training grants a flat bonus to your die rolls, leaving untrained characters with limitations on how difficult a task they can achieve. Expertise and Mastery in a skill would give you an extra dice to roll for a check, making it much less likely that you fail easy (but numerically only highly likely) checks. You can aid someone to grant an extra dice (but you can't make them able to achieve a more difficult task), take longer for extra dice and so on. I guess this means that I break a skill check/challenge down into 'inherent difficulty' and 'peripheral complexity'. The added bonus of having more dice is, as you suggested, that spare successes could grant skill tricks, or in a complex check, carry over as a modifier to your next check.Your example is nice but it's hard to see why a skill check would require multiple successes all at once, rather than slow progress, one success at a time. Once the student has roughly translated the scroll, surely his master requires fewer successes to fully comprehend it? Such a task might be more like decipher script (translate), history (put in context) and arcana (understand the treasure) checks in series, depending on the skills available. If this was the case then multiple dice on deciphering might produce such a great translation that you get a bonus (+2 per spare success?) on the history check (or maybe you have a skill trick to grant an extra dice on the next stage even if you're not that good at the following skill).Skill challenges, as presented in 4E, were problematic because your best party member had a reasonable chance to fail a task - I think extra dice really helps prevent that, and allows for interesting 'spare success' mechanics. I also like the idea that a master in, say, picking locks, is actually really clumsy/stupid, so he struggles with amazing locks, but anything less and he's done it so many times it's trivial. It's a way to trade-off experience in a skill vs. natural ability that I think the +3/+5/+8 system that was mentioned in a WotC article misses out on.</blockquote>

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