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<blockquote data-quote="Wil" data-source="post: 2804294" data-attributes="member: 3502">The thing is, I don't believe that there are a wide range of skill levels that people have.&nbsp; I feel it can be best represented by a half dozen or so broad levels, and that you really can't differentiate between fine levels of performance.&nbsp; Either someone does a job poorly, they do it adequately, they do it well, or they do it perfectly.&nbsp; I'm that way about the range of human ability - I just don't think there are fine variations in the range of, say, manual dexterity.&nbsp; Either you suck at it, you're average, you're good or you're really good.&nbsp; This is why SilCore, with the default range of attributes from -3 to +3 (although Silhouette originally went from -5 to +5) and 5 skill levels (6 counting unskilled) suits me just fine - because the base results meet my expectations of reality.&nbsp; I can easily manupulate those results using rules options to better simulate more dramatic (or cinematic) styles of play.&nbsp; A lot of it does boil down to player preference, but a good resolution system is going to a) provide a reasonable mathematical base for determing success or failue and b) be scaleable, or at least modular enough, to be able to accomodate varying levels of &quot;realism&quot;.If you look at a straight d20 + modifier system, it can be said to fail in at least one of those criteria.&nbsp; There is the same chance of rolling a natural 1 or 20 regardless of skill levels.&nbsp; With bonuses it may not be possible for a character to get below a certain roll, meaning that if you want &quot;fumble&quot; mechanics you need to say, &quot;If you roll a 1, no matter what your bonuses are, it's still a failure&quot;.&nbsp; Some people might say that a constant 5% failure rate is just too high in many circumstances (BTW, SilCore works around this by saying that if you roll all 1s it is a fumble, but you can still succeed at the task if the roll after bonuses dictate.&nbsp; So if you get a final result of 4 after rolling all 1s with a gun and it's enough to hit, you hit but your gun jams).&nbsp; It's one of the reasons that I dislike single die systems...even roll 3d6 and total the results (ala GURPS) is preferable because there is some amount of a curve.&nbsp; Note that GURPS does have more complex criteria to deal with minimum failure rates - the lowest roll to be considered a fumble is dictated by the skill level, so someone with a high skill needs a lower roll to fumble than someone with lower skill.&nbsp; Roll and keep systems are able to streamline this by moving the operation of &quot;compare roll to value determined by skill level&quot; into the actual die roll.Now that I think about, that would seem to me to be the ultimate goal of a die roll mechanic - to incorporate as much &quot;processing&quot; into the roll itself, and reduce special cases of how to read the die and modifications to the final roll as much as possible.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wil, post: 2804294, member: 3502"] The thing is, I don't believe that there are a wide range of skill levels that people have. I feel it can be best represented by a half dozen or so broad levels, and that you really can't differentiate between fine levels of performance. Either someone does a job poorly, they do it adequately, they do it well, or they do it perfectly. I'm that way about the range of human ability - I just don't think there are fine variations in the range of, say, manual dexterity. Either you suck at it, you're average, you're good or you're really good. This is why SilCore, with the default range of attributes from -3 to +3 (although Silhouette originally went from -5 to +5) and 5 skill levels (6 counting unskilled) suits me just fine - because the base results meet my expectations of reality. I can easily manupulate those results using rules options to better simulate more dramatic (or cinematic) styles of play. A lot of it does boil down to player preference, but a good resolution system is going to a) provide a reasonable mathematical base for determing success or failue and b) be scaleable, or at least modular enough, to be able to accomodate varying levels of "realism". If you look at a straight d20 + modifier system, it can be said to fail in at least one of those criteria. There is the same chance of rolling a natural 1 or 20 regardless of skill levels. With bonuses it may not be possible for a character to get below a certain roll, meaning that if you want "fumble" mechanics you need to say, "If you roll a 1, no matter what your bonuses are, it's still a failure". Some people might say that a constant 5% failure rate is just too high in many circumstances (BTW, SilCore works around this by saying that if you roll all 1s it is a fumble, but you can still succeed at the task if the roll after bonuses dictate. So if you get a final result of 4 after rolling all 1s with a gun and it's enough to hit, you hit but your gun jams). It's one of the reasons that I dislike single die systems...even roll 3d6 and total the results (ala GURPS) is preferable because there is some amount of a curve. Note that GURPS does have more complex criteria to deal with minimum failure rates - the lowest roll to be considered a fumble is dictated by the skill level, so someone with a high skill needs a lower roll to fumble than someone with lower skill. Roll and keep systems are able to streamline this by moving the operation of "compare roll to value determined by skill level" into the actual die roll. Now that I think about, that would seem to me to be the ultimate goal of a die roll mechanic - to incorporate as much "processing" into the roll itself, and reduce special cases of how to read the die and modifications to the final roll as much as possible. [/QUOTE]

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