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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9410950" data-attributes="member: 907">Alternity was a little weird. It was fairly counter-intuitive that a plus modifier made things more difficult. Most roll-under systems add modifiers to the skill value (so if you normally have a skill of 14 on a d20 and you get a +2, you want to roll 16 or lower), but Alternity added its modifier to the die itself. This, together with the degree of success model (roll half your skill or less for a Good success, or 1/4 of your skill or less for an Amazing success) meant that the chances of special rolls were altered much more than the chances of a success itself (if your skill is 14, which is pretty high but not exceptional for a starting character, rolling d20+d6 if you have a +2 modifier does hurt some when it comes to regular success, but it makes it almost impossible to get an Amazing success by rolling 3 or less). In addition, the difficulties scaled a bit weirdly: going from 0 to +/- d4 was pretty chonky, then going to d6 and d8 were fairly small increments, but then it accellerated to d12, d20, and then multiple d20s).Alternity should, however, be lauded for its absolute dismissal of the d10 as the abomination it is. I don't think it's used anywhere in the whole system.It seems likely that Alternity served as a testbed for some ideas they had for a third edition (even though it was designed under TSR and not WOTC). Alternity stats were 4-14 though for humans, not 1-20.</blockquote>

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