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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 6065381" data-attributes="member: 87">A Possible New Core MechanicOver the last couple weeks my group now has two [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate] games including the Dusk one.  The old Dusk Player's Guide is falling apart so I need to reprint it.  To reprint it means consolidating the liner notes I've made for [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate], and while I'm at it I may as well remove the artwork that prompted the Cease & Desist.  Since my [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate] game still has at least another year I'm going to put out [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate] Dusk sometime next month and start a facebook group for it.Meanwhile, Next Dusk, which is what this thread has been about, may have gotten a new core mechanic inspired from the D&D Next playtest and a detour through my other favorite system - Savage Worlds.  As those involved in the playtest know, there are now skill dice.  My initial reaction - not D&D - set it down and did something else.  Then my brain got to thinking..In Savage Worlds you roll a die and a wild die for your skill checks.  Ability scores in Savage Worlds are largely meaningless beyond their ability to constrain and change skill point costs.  It costs twice as much to raise a skill to a higher die than your ability.Savage Worlds is a fun system, but it's math is awful and hard to predict, especially with its exploding die system. This unevenness precluded it from being a core system I'd want to use so I've been sticking towards something d20 related, but it's been there in the back of my mind.  Then about 2 hours after reading D&D next something clickedd20 + ability die + skill dieThere are five ability dice in Savage Worlds and also five skill dice (there's that number again) d4, d6, d8, d10, d12.  The addition of a d20 widens out the spread so that modifiers to rolls aren't as swingy as in Savage Worlds and the DM has a more logical set of difficulty classes, or target numbers, to choose from.So enough on how I arrived at this, here's an analysis of the candidate core mechanic above.  The system is ability centric.  Climb a wall?  d20 + strength die.  Balance on a ledge?  d20+dexterity die.  Skilled at climbing?  d20 + relevant ability die + climbing skill die.The difficulty classes fall on multiples of 3 and are based on who has a at least 50% chance at the check<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 9 - trivial - Anyone should hit this more than half the time, even on a check of sheer luck (d20 alone) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 12 - very easy - An unskilled character with minimal ability (d4) will roll 13 50% of the time. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 15 - easy - An minimally skilled character with minimal ability (d4+d4) rolls an average of 15.5, so can hit this DC half the time.  An unskilled character with excellent ability (d10) has similar but, thanks to bell curving, more variant odds of hitting the same. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 18 - moderate - An average skilled and abilitied character (d6+d6) rolls an average of 17.5, so can hit this just under half the time. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 21 - hard - Exceptionally ability and skill can hit (d10+d10) can hit this half the time.  The unskilled character with minimal ability hits this on a roll of 20 (since the d4 cannot roll less than 1) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 24 - very hard - With an average roll of 23.5 for d20+2d12 this DC is just slightly above what they can hit half the time.  The unskilled character with minimal ability can hit this but must roll 20 and 4, which is a 1 in 800 chance. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DC 27 - formidable - This is likely the highest DC that should ever be asked of characters under this system.  Because of how bell curves work, every point of DC raise past this point is an exponential increase in difficulty in the odds. </li> </ul>I've tooled around with this in my head some and discussed with my group.  It seems solid enough - thoughts anyone?</blockquote>

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