Frostmarrow
First Post
I like this, though I think that it may not be applicable in all situations. Sometimes a "bad thing happens" would be appropriate, as in the examples you gave, and sometimes I think more of a "moving away from overall success" would be more appropriate, as in a diplomatic encounter. (Although adding points back on to the difficulty of the check could certainly be defined as a "bad thing.")
As for doors and locks, I should have been clearer-- I just meant "Why would you make Break Down Doors check when you could just attack it?" Although it raises an interesting idea (that would drive the simulationists nuts)-- what if a door, for example, were a DC 10 door that could be opened either by 10 Pick Locks points or 10 Break Down points? Obviously these wouldn't both take from the same pool, but it would be a quick way to set equivalent DCs for every approach. This is just a random thought; I'm not convinced by it, since you could certainly put a cheap lock on a tough door or vice versa.
Let's imagine the party wants to persuade a duke to order more troops into the borderlands (because the orcs are better equpped and better commanded than popular opinon dictates).
I'd boil it down to this:
Sway duke, 15 hp. Bad: The duke has 5 available units of troops. Every round he will, in his mind, assign one unit to another task.
(Caveat: I'd much rather role-play this.)
On the first note, I think it would be kind of cool if the 10 hp door turned out to be a mimic with 10 hp and attack! A guard could require 10 "progress" points to convince and have 10 hp in a fight. I think this would lead players to trying different methods of overcoming challenges.
* Immediate skills would have 1 hp and the bad stuff would lead to failure.
* When resources are at stake every round some of the resources are lost.
* When sneaking a round with zero progress would set off the alarm.
–That last item is pretty usable when groveling in Illithid, don't you think?