Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 1566737" data-attributes="member: 5435">I tried this too in a HERO campaign I ran once, and it worked quite well.  I was finding that 3d6 didn't give enough variation in the dice.The problem I was having in the campaign was this: when there was a difference ofseveral skill/BAB/AC ranks between the PCs and the opponents, then the PCs wouldhit 99% of the time and the opponents would miss 99% of the time on 3d6.  The result was that I couldn't inflict much attrition damage on them from low-level opponents, and all the encounters had to be at the challenge level of a Big Boss to be any fun.Switching to 3d6 rolls in D&D might lead to the same behaviour.  You have to remember that almost all your rolls will be between 6 and 15, so you've actually cut the range of possible results on your dice in half.  Your lowly orc (BAB +3) cannotreasonably expect to hit ACs higher than 18, whereas with a d20 he can hit AC 20 15% of the time.d20 gives you lots of variation and makes long-shot rolls more likely (and the game a bit more exciting for that).  The downside is that small differences between characters in ranks/BAB don't have much effect.3d6 gives you less variation in rolls, and makes long shots very unlikely, very memorable, and something rarely attempted by the PCs.  The upside is that skill ranks have a huge impact on the probabilities; a difference of only one rank between PCs becomes really palpable.2d10 gives you something of a happy medium between the two.  Skill ranks increase in importance, you lose a little dynamic range in the results, butlong shots are still common enough that they can have an impact on the game.Threat ranges aren't difficult to deal with either.20 (5%) --> 19-20 (3%) or 18-20 (6%)19-20 (10%) --> 17-20 (10%)18-20 (15%) --> 16-20 (15%)17-20 (20%) --> 15-20 (21%)15-20 (30%) --> 14-20 (28%)You can always get a threat range within 2% of the original probability,and two of the most common are actually exact.  You can even keep therule "Keen doubles the threat range", which you can't in 3d6. You could even add a little extra spice at the top, such as :natural 19: roll twice for damage, take best result.natural 20: crit automatically confirmed.--Ben</blockquote>

Verification