Tell Me About Your Favorite Mechanics

[Jd Smith1]

Can't you still have that with prep between sessions increasing the dice type?

Except that the group generally transitions from one scenario to another during a session.

That still happens if they roll a lot of 1's. I guess the difference is you can't force it to happen. Although I suppose you could just have it automatically drop a dice type for particular events.

Simpler just to maintain actual counts. My players use Excel.

 

[Reynard]

Except that the group generally transitions from one scenario to another during a session.

Simpler just to maintain actual counts. My players use Excel.

To be fair, most folks won't consider needing to use Excel an argument in favor of.

 

[mcmillan]

Already been mentioned 13th age escalation die and Alien stress

The third edition of unknown armies does stats in an interesting way, with each stat part of a balanced scale. So being good at one makes you worse at another. For example the stat used for fighting was balanced by the one for social situations. Each scale was also linked with a stress type so passing stress checks made you "hardened" to that situation and shifted your stats

 

[Jd Smith1]

To be fair, most folks won't consider needing to use Excel an argument in favor of.

True. But the quartermaster finds it highly useful.

I run long-term campaigns, and I find that tracking equipment, rations, and ammo to be good for drawing the players into the setting, especially current events.

 

[Reynard]

I really like Affliction from Pathfinder (and Starfinder) to track Bad Things That Can Happen to PCs, like diseases and curses and such.

I also like Pathfinder Haunts -- actually scary things you can't just punch into submission.

 

[DeviousQuail]

Cypher crits and effort. Damage is a flat number based on the weapon or ability used. If you roll a 17 on the die you deal +1 damage, 18 gives +2, 19 gives +3, and 20 gives +4. It's a nice reward for getting those higher attack rolls. The game also uses effort so you can spend some of your Might, Speed, or Intellect points to increase damage or accuracy. I know some people would hate the idea of not rolling damage dice but it really speeds things up imo. One of the best complexity-to-depth ratio games I've run.

General and Advanced skills in Coriolis. Want to make a general skill roll? Go for it. Want to make an Advanced skill roll? Only if you have skill points in it.

Shoutout to Advantage/Disadvantage.

I'm also a fan of zones vs grid. Both work and I more often run games using grids because that's what my table likes. But when I get a chance to use zones I am happy.

 

[aramis erak]

I remember TSR doing that with 2e psionics checks too. One benefit was it allowed you to also have contests where the winner was whomever rolled high while still succeeding at the check, something easier to do than subtracting the results from their target numbers and comparing the size of the differences.

It's also the standard for Pendragon since 1E.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'm also a fan of zones vs grid. Both work and I more often run games using grids because that's what my table likes. But when I get a chance to use zones I am happy.

I've been playing some Five Torches Deep pure TotM/Zones and it's kind of refreshing.

 

[Aldarc]

I've been playing some Five Torches Deep pure TotM/Zones and it's kind of refreshing.

Zones are almost becoming the new norm in a lot of tactical play. I am almost curious how 4e would have looked like had it been written in terms of zones rather than squares, but the answer is probably that it would look like a lot of contemporaneous tactical TTRPGs.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Zones are almost becoming the new norm in a lot of tactical play.

Don't remind me. It was tedious work converting Twilight 2000 4e.