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I've been working on my 3rd edition of The Artifact and one of the things I've been wanting to do is to reduce the presence of roll modifiers. I'm not getting rid of them entirely but I want to reduce the math required to play as much as I possibly can.

I have several solutions that sort of work and one that is simple and works, it's just. . . weird.

The Artifact system is roll under 1d100, that's not being changed. Normally to model that one roll is more difficult than another I'd write -20 (to the skill or attribute, not the roll). I want to change that to writing something like difficulty 5. The player rolls 1d100 by rolling 2d10, one is in the tens place the other is in the ones place and you get a number 1-100. (yes you probably know that already.)

What I think I want to do is say "This task is difficulty 5 (or 6,7,8,9)." and when you roll the 2d10, replace the lowest number with the difficulty number. So say I roll a 2 in the tens die and a 3 in the ones die. The 2 is low so it gets replaced by the 5 for a 53 (instead of 23).

I've been playing with this and it seems a bit maddening because some rolls are actually reduced by this mechanism (97 becomes 95 etc). Overall, statistically, each difficulty number bump up (5 to 6, 6 to 7) represents a 5% increase in difficulty. You wouldn't know that from the rolls though, they're all over the place. With a difficulty 9 a roll of 21 becomes a 29 but a 19 becomes a 99. It could seem random to a player even though statistically the average results of a diff 9 is 30% different from no difficulty. Individually the rolls can be significantly different ranging 80% in the worst scenarios.

Would this bother you?

I prefer percentile with mods, which is why Icar uses it. Your other idea would drive me nuts as you lose the main benefit of linear percentile: an intuition of what a 20% modifier means.

The way we get around the math problem in Icar is to write down the result of as many of the mods as you can outside of play time. For example, if a shooting Skill is 50% and the weapon has a modifier to hit of +20%, then the player needs to roll under 70%. In Icar, we write that figure down. In the vast majority of cases, that is the one they will use. Sure, if the skill increases during experience spending then you have to update your weapons but then that's once and outside of the action.

Sadly, this would get unwieldy for writing down every situational modifier, such as a negative mod for shooting a moving target.

Another good thing to do (I think you do this) is keep the modifiers to multiples of 5 or (even better) 10. This makes the mathematics much easier. That piece of advice might be handy for anyone else considering percentile.

I agree with Rob that this kind of defeats the point of a simple percentile system. Let me offer you three alternatives: eliminate small modifiers entirely, move the zero point, or alter what is considered adequate success.

Arguably, what denotes a skilled person in real life is that they know about the modifiers and actively compensate for them. A good welder knows about the different types of metals, flux, and how ambient moisture might affect the job, then prepares accordingly. Military snipers know are well aware of how temperature affects the barrels of their rifles while the average person would presume that isn't a major effect. Aside from a few unusual circumstances like being blindsided by a flash grenade, the listed skill percent stands because it is your ability to account for the situation.

To alter the zero point, consider the difficulties to the chance of succeeding with no skill, and then making skills the prime modifier. A hard task is 50% for the average person, a really difficult is 25%, however, a knowledgeable character gets to add twenty or forty percent to those numbers. This also lets the GM present things in "plain English" - "for most, there would be only a four in ten chance of completing the course, but as an ace pilot, (+40 skill), you double that." This would be a bit of a reversal of the process - rather than the skill (60) minus its dark (-10) and minus its raining (-10) [40% chance] - but rather it is dark and raining (20%), but you're skilled (+20) [also 40%].

The final option doesn't change the target number but does request a certain degrees of success. Think about jumping over a ditch - do you just catch the edge, land unbalanced, or barely slow down? Roll under, margin of success 20, and margin 30 or so in game. A wider crevasse, and the roll to clear it doesn't alter, but whether you'll still be running afterwards changes. Hitting the tank with a gun is easy, hitting a weak spot a bit less so.

I'm a bit unsettled by it myself. I'm actively trying to shake up my assumptions on the "best" way of handling mechanics. Getting rid of modifiers makes my life a lot harder because I'd be chucking decades of work but I don't want to shy away from something because it would be hard.

I might skip the idea of getting rid of modifiers but I didn't want to shy away from it if it made a better game.

So I think I'll use this somewhere else. It fits an idea I had a few months ago and the tiny spaces contest. That's right, I'll be using this for my core mechanic. Dun dun dun!

I use a roll under percentile system, but I pay attention to the disparity between the goal number and roll. Instead of adding modifiers on the rolls and goal numbers, you can just take the disparity between the roll and goal number and compare it to the combined modifiers to see if it meets or beats. That way the player only has to worry about making the roll and giving you the disparity number with any modifiers they know of. Then the GM, can make the final call when compare with the difficulty bias.

Example:

Skill level: 75 - Roll: 50 = Disparity: 25

If you had a difficulty on a task of 20 or lower, it would succeed. (By a prime disparity of 5, so you just met it.)


Most common tasks have a difficulty bias of 0. (The average character's skill rating without any skill points applied is 25%, they have in theory a 1 in 4 chance of successfully accomplishing most tasks without failure.)

It's worked so far and it allows the GM to still maintain a degree of secrecy about what ends up happening. Players may be a bit confused initially, but you just put the disparity in context of the quality of their character's effort towards the check. This also helps in allows players to gauge how to roleplay the results. I have had players shocked when their best efforts flopped and players amazed when their worst efforts actually work.

I do like the disparity thing. I've always liked systems like that. Onix, the "replace lowest" thing is, in my opinion, delightfully madcap. I'd play it, for sure, just to see how it felt. I love the idea of something suddenly, illogically, going HORRIBLY wrong. But as to how it'll hold up under a campaign's worth of playing, well... only one way to find out.

Well, I found a more comfortable home for it in Star Travels. I'm happy because I find it interesting if not slightly baffling and that matches the feel of the game.

I will admit that this would drive me up the wall ... however, I started thinking of how could this mechanic be used and have it be successful.

Zany madcap adventures where reality shifts? Kind of like something along the lines of Gamma World for instance?

Something that occurs to me, Onix, is that you could "fix" the modifier into place to make sure it worked exactly where you wanted it to work. Using Rob's idea, and the way that a 2d10 percentile works you could make sure that only single-digit difficulties modify the ones die, and double-digit difficulties affect only the tens die. Like so:

This might end up working like a modifier, or an artificial cap, but I thought I would at least suggest it.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I did find a facepalm simple solution to my problem. Understanding why what I'm going to use will work, requires understanding how The Artifact system is going to work and I don't think here is the place to get into all that. It wouldn't work in most game systems but in mine it works just fine. I'm tying things up on it now and I'll make announcements etc when it is done.