It wasn't swinginess in general... it was the swing between different PCs.
The difference in attack bonus between PCs was usually at most like three points. Most PCs would have a +3 in their primary ability score plus their prof bonus plus then maybe another point or two for some other feature or item. So the PCs were all like +5 to +8 in attack bonus, which meant the die roll was much less a factor in how often each PC would hit compared to each other. It was much harder to notice during the game if/when the low attack bonus PC was hitting (due to the die) more often than the higher attack bonus PC.
But when we talk about skills... a PC's ability score + proficiency bonus for any skill could much wider... say be between -1 to like +7 or +8 (especially if you brought Expertise into it.) So when you add in the d20 to those numbers... you could get times when it was very noticeable when the -1 PC would succeed on a roll when when the +7 PC didn't. For example the low score PC rolls a 17 and subtracts 1 for a 16, while the high score PC rolls a 4 and only gets to 11. For things like skills (where the amount of rolls at our table for any one skill occured MUCH less often than the total amount of combat rolls), it became much more noticeable and memorable when the good PC blew it while the bad PC succeeded. And that didn't feel right.
Had we made Perception checks with the same frequency that we made attack rolls... over time the averages would come into play and the +7 Perception PC would be blowing the -1 Perception PC out of the water more often than not. It would feel like the proper person was succeeding when they should. But because we weren't making any one specific skill check with the same frequency as attack rolls... the opportunity for a botched high PC coupled with a massive low PC success was much more likely to be something that occurred and just felt wrong. And thus... by rolling 2d10 instead and condensing most die rolls into the 8-12 range... when you'd add in the flat bonus it reduced the swing that we didn't want-- high score PCs failing on checks that low score PCs made.
It was really all about table perception and what we all saw of what was happening when we sat around it. A bell curve die roll with a wide modifier bonus meant the better people made checks / worse people didn't more often. A flat distribution die roll with a narrow modifier bonus meant everybody was failing and succeeding relatively evenly all the time (which made sense since they all had just about equal modifiers give or take a point or two.) And this is admittedly something that is quite possibly specific to our table and does not / would not bother others. Which is fine. No solution will be a solution for everyone.
Last edited:
