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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5602447" data-attributes="member: 58197">You're not talking about a 1d20 roll with the Arcana thing, though. That's a 2d20 roll. The fact that the d20s happen to be split up between two people is immaterial. You're rolling 2d20 in a system designed for 1d20, so naturally it creates problems. 4E addressed this by having "passive skills," where one person rolls 1d20 + skill against a DC of 10 + the other's skill. (Technically it should be 11 + skill, but I guess they decided the difference wasn't enough to worry about.)In any event, the size of the numbers doesn't really affect how the probabilities shake out. If the range of skill modifiers is +1 to +15 and you roll d20, it looks much the same as a range of +1 to +6 on a d8. If it's too small a range, you can just make it bigger. If you start using multiple dice, that moves you onto a bell curve and it does look different... but even though I share your intuitive sense that a bell curve is "better," I have never been able to come up with a convincing argument for it in practice. A plain old d20 does the job just as well, requires one less step in the game arithmetic, and is much easier to work with mathematically.</blockquote>