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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9098534" data-attributes="member: 70468">Just to clarify, I would not call my homebrew system’s approach “roll to cast”. As I understand it, that’s usually about using a check to see if the spell happened (such as mentioned by [USER=96233]@DaedalusX51[/USER] in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-skill-system-is-one-dimensional.699295/post-9097951" target="_blank">post #24</a> for DCC or how Shadowdark handles casting or a myriad of other games). I’m just having spells use skill checks like combat specialities use skill checks like how other actions use skill checks. The difference from a spell is what gets used as the method (i.e., your Mage rank versus some skill or speciality). Making it an extension of the skill system avoids problems like the classic knock spell where it just succeeds, making having someone who can pick locks pretty pointless.There seem to be a couple of issues at play here. The first is granularity. If skills are just about whether you do a thing, then their ability to affect the overall situation is going to be limited. Spells, on the other hand, tend to tell you what happens. They give the players the ability to assert control over the game in a way that skill checks lack.The second is that skill checks are being made reactively. The player may be setting up the situation that results in the check (“I sneak over there! <gm> Okay, roll Dexterity (Stealth)”), but they don’t have a lot of control over what happens. As you observe, the spell caster can proactively address the situation (“I cast invisibility! <gm>Okay, you’re insivible now.”).The way I handle this in my homebrew system is by making skills more effectful and intentional. Instead of having checks called by the referee, the player sets stakes. What I mean by “stakes” is they say what they hope to accomplish. After stakes are set, the player specifies the method (skill) and approach (attribute), and the referee indicates consequences (explicitly, but implied ones are okay as long as they’re obvious). If the roll succeeds (even a Mixed Success), the player gets what was at stake. The referee cannot screw them out of it. That should give skills more oomph like what spells have had traditionally (though obviously stakes need to make sense and can’t be stupid stuff like jumping to the moon).I should note this isn’t a new approach. It’s inspired by other games. I think it could be adapted to D&D, but I expect you’ll find some people who like or prefer the way things work currently, and it won’t work well with certain types of play (particularly those where having the DM curate the experience is important and desired).In my homebrew system, classes in the expert group (such as thieves) can spend MP to add an extra die to their roll. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤔" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png" title="Thinking face    :thinking:" data-shortname=":thinking:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />Pretty much everyone is going to do some bits of magic (except for barbarians, who eschew magic and have no MP and can never have any MP). That’s just how the setting works (if it’s magical, it uses MP; if it uses MP). The plan is for various classes to interface with it in different ways, but right now there are only the ones we need to play and a list of class ideas without any mechanics attached.My first D&D was also 3e, but I missed most of the culture of play surrounding it. I played with a group that (I now recognize) was mixing 2e and 3e. Their game was also almost pure hack and slash, so other stuff tended not to come into play. It was certainly jarring the first time I actually had to RP a situation. After a few of us split off, we just did our own thing. What exposure I got to ideas outside of our group was from discovering OSR stuff online (like Grognardia), which influenced my thinking on how play should go.</blockquote>

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