Skill System Suggestions

[Nytmare]

The awkward part was having to use DM fiat to keep the swimming player alive because of a series of bad rolls with a slightly below average chance of making those rolls to begin with. I'm not sure how the rolling could have been different to keep the drama but not kill the player, which is why I started this thread to begin with.

The skill system I've been trying to hammer out for the last 4 or 5 months uses a graduated scale instead of a binary pass/fail scale. So a player could outright fail, succeed but something else bad happens, succeed, or critically succeed. Those complications and the resulting extra layers of decisions can be mechanically driven.

Do you want to try to take off your armor or swim with an additional penalty? All your thrashing has attracted sharks... You dive into the water but when you come up you don't see where your friend is...

Is that a way for you to keep drama in the die rolls without outright killing your players?

 

[sheadunne]

The skill system I've been trying to hammer out for the last 4 or 5 months uses a graduated scale instead of a binary pass/fail scale. So a player could outright fail, succeed but something else bad happens, succeed, or critically succeed. Those complications and the resulting extra layers of decisions can be mechanically driven.

Do you want to try to take off your armor or swim with an additional penalty? All your thrashing has attracted sharks... You dive into the water but when you come up you don't see where your friend is...

Is that a way for you to keep drama in the die rolls without outright killing your players?

It certainly can be.