Adding "Degrees of Success" to D&D

>>48634008
Dropping damage dice sounds like a pretty stupid idea.

>>48634061
Why's that?

I'd like the significance of "Yes, I rolled an 18+10 vs his AC of 21!" to mean something, and I'd like to do away with the possibility of "Yes, I rolled a crit!" followed by rolling all 1s for damage.

I simply don't see the reason a second roll is needed or beneficial other than 'muh tradition'

>>48634008
>the attack roll would tell you both *IF* you hit, as well as how much damage you do based on your degrees of success and what you hit with

Why? At this point you're editing so much to the base of the system that you'll have to redo huge portions of the base game. I mean, each spell and attack of each class, each monster you want to use has to be completely overhauled to make it work with homebrew. It makes the system so different that you may as well be playing something other than DnD.

>>48634008
For every 3 points above or below the difficulty number you get one degree of success or failure.

>>48634184
>"Redo huge portions of the base game"

Would you though?

I was contemplating a single change.

You'd take the average damage for any damage dealing effect, roll your attack roll, and then based on the result of the roll and the average damage, scale it up or down.

Why wouldn't that work? It sounds easy enough.

>>48634212
Yes, something like this, to start with.

Would that be so problematic in use?

>>48634212
Or make it every 4 or 5 points and then damage is basic weapon damage times DoS + any other modifiers. At least HP Bloat then isn't a huge problem anymore. It's just very lethal for low levels.

>>48634222
Not problematic at all, it just unbalances everything. Combat becomes an entirely new game. To hit bonuses and high base damage become super-relevant.

But for normal skills, this can be introduced immediately.

>>48634008
For skills, you could say "Any check that fails by 5 or less can be salvaged if you sacrifice something else." That something else could be time, hit points, spell slots, a limb, a party member, gold or a magic item.

For attacks, "Any attack that misses by 5 or less can either deal half damage to the target, or half damage to yourself and full damage to the target." This one makes the game more lethal.

>degrees of success
>removing damage rolls
>Fantasy setting

There is already a game that has all of that. It is called Warhammer Fantasy Role play 3rd edition.

>>48634008
I think it's a bit extreme to drop the damage dice, but why not have it so that for every degree of success on an attack, you get to roll an extra set of damage dice, then pick the highest? So with a longsword, if I hit with two extra degrees of success, I would roll 3d8, pick highest? Not a HUGE bonus, but should be exciting enough, especially at lower levels.

As for skills, I'm currently out of ideas.

>>48634258
>To hit bonuses and high base damage become super-relevant.

I mean, they already are?

>>48634801
Justify this claim pls.

>>48634821
Your damage already depends on having as high to-hit and damage as possible.

All this does is increase the average damage done in combat, since you still deal some pittance damage on a near miss, and deal more damage on a good hit.

>>48634850
And if it didn't increase average damage?

Because to me that just seems like a matter of calibration.

>>48634222
> You'd take the average damage for any damage dealing effect, roll your attack roll, and then based on the result of the roll and the average damage, scale it up or down.

You'd still need to implement different scalings per class (possibly even per subclass) to make sure that highly accurate classes don't suddenly start doing way too much damage per attack.

>>48634945
>doesn't work for existing classes because too much accuracy/ac variance.

Hmm. Hadn't considered that.

Not for Pathfinder then.

What about in 5e?

Maybe just my personal wip fantasy heartbreaker.

>>48634565
or The One Ring

>>48634008
It's called a crit.

>>48634008
>Yes yes, I know, D&D is bad and I'm bad for playing it.

The fact that you feel the need to lie like this just to throw off the trolls means that the trolls have really gotten out of hand.

>>48635322
Well, two levels of success is not want is meant by degrees of success.

>>48635029
That's why I said that the balance of everything changes. And changes against the magic user, btw. So it's not a bad rebalance per se. How do you plan to deal with sneak attacks?

>>48634008
Maybe, but the next logical step is going to be removing weapons almost entirely and just basing the damage on how high above the AC you hit. Maybe keeping simple/martial and one-handed/two-handed. I wouldn't mind that, to be honest.

But as >>48634184 says, you're going to be altering a core system fairly significantly, so you'll have to rebalance things quite extensively and correct all the issues that pop out when you shake it.

What about spell damage, especially ones without saving throws like Hunter's Mark?

>>48634008
I don't know about removing damage rolls, but I took a stab at something similar to what you want.

>steal apocalypse world's system.
>If you roll less than or equal to 5 under the target number, you can choose to succeed, but the DM gets to qualify your success with a disadvantage, or NPC based counter (such as an enemy monster counter attacking, or a fumble after success, or in diplomacy, the shopkeeper agreeing to sell, but only if you do X first, etc, etc).
>If you roll more than 5 under the target number, you fail, and the DM gets to give you a disadvantage.
>If you roll 5 or more over the target number, you succeed, and you get some advantage.

If you roll 9 or below, you fail with some disadvantage.
If you roll either 10, 11, 12,13,14, you can choose to succeed, but with a disadvantage.
If you roll 15, 16,17,18,19, you succeed.
If you roll 20 or more, you get an advantage.


If you can't tell, I like the *world type games.

>>48636005
oops, I messed up copying/pasting this. The second block of text (it isn't greentexted) was an example, with 16 as the AC you were trying to beat.

>>48634169
>Says he likes D&D
>Doesn't care about tradition
Admit it, you're too lazy to learn a new system that actually does what you want, you fuck.

>>48634008
Dude, just go play another system that actually does what you want instead of trying to contort a system that was never built with that sort of thing in mind.

>>48636735
stop shitting on players that are trying to be creative/do their own thing.

>>48636944
I can put rims and a spoiler on a Honda but that doesn't make it a sports car

stupid bitch

>>48637146
what if I like my honda and I enjoy doing body work on it? so piss off.

>>48637647
Stop biting at trolls.
Especially trolls that need to fling shit everywhere because they think that that's how they'll get people to play the crap games that only they like.

I did something similar for my homebrew. Every 2 over the target number increases the dice of damage rolled by 1 category, every 1 under it reduces the dice by 1.
It makes things like a 1d12 and a 2d6 more distinct from each other. Also, average damage goes up and it makes high attack or high ac characters much more powerful than weaker ones.
Though in my game, difficulties and AC are a penalty to the roll and the target number is always 10. It makes it quicker to work out "how much you beat it or lost" the roll imo.

Sometimes I do degrees of success with ability checks. You rolled 3 under the DC? You make progress, or perhaps complete the task with a negative rider. Not something like "You unlock the door but your bad luck had spawned spiders" but "The door can now be opened, but there will be an audible noise if you do so."
Alternatively, if they roll far above, perhaps add an extra benefit to the task.

>>48634008
The damage dice thing is complicated and dumb.

The degrees of success thing has been done since forever by decent DMs. It's literally replicated by responding to a player properly. Using 5e: When asked "can I do X?" You say "Yes" or you say "Roll for X with advantage/disadvantage"
>success with a high roll "you succeed and..."
>success but close "you just manage to..."
>failure by a little "you just can't quite..."
>failure by a lot "you fail and..."

And if the roll is particularly low or a fumble you add a little humor in the result even if they succeed. For example, if a player rolls a 1 on Strength(Ahletics) to hop a waist high wall on his movement during his turn but passes the DC5 check you can say he tumbles end over end and still bounces to his feet in an awkward maneuver that worked out in the end.

>>48635964
I was thinking each attack would have a base damage value based on what the average damage roll is.

>>48636800
>>48636735
None of the other systems I've played allow me to use my d&d monster manuals.

And I've played lots of other games, my favorites being sr4e/5e, and Runequest, and gurps

>>48638729
>>48638708

Basically this. For skills and general rolls it's something you should probably always do ad hoc, even if the different types of success or failure are more nominal than anything.

Even if it's just lip service, it gives the impression of more weight to every die roll and less of a simple dichotomy of results. Plus it can help keep pace and attention, and help keep players feel properly engaged.

And as for damage, that's quite a change. It might be better to start with the mechanic in a vacuum, make sure it works well and scales well, and then see about adapting 3.5/5e to *it* rather than vice versa. You have to make sure classes, weapons, armors, spells, and monsters of all stripes still make sense with that system--it's definitely a substantial undertaking.

>Man, I really like tabletop games!
>But I don't like D&D
>Let's completely rewrite D&D, since no other systems exist!

Why do people continue to do this?

>>48634008
check out true20

>>48634008
>Yes yes, I know, D&D is bad and I'm bad for playing it.

/thread

Degrees of success can easily be houseruled in, and literally every single group I've been in has done so, though usually not explicitly so. Almost every GM will acknowledge the difference between barely succeeding or succeeding by an overwhelming margin, even if it's just a narrative difference.

Using hit dice for damage seems like a bad idea though. Not that it can't work, but D&D just isn't designed to be played like that and it would require significant effort to change the entire combat system to accomodate for that change mechanically and still make sense.

>>48638729
>if a player rolls a 1 on Strength(Ahletics) to hop a waist high wall on his movement during his turn but passes the DC5 check
Honestly, if the player would still make the check on a 1 I wouldn't even make them roll for it. It just pointlessly slows things down.

>>48639858
Because some people have fun doing so

>>48640160
Players don't know the DC anon, so if they want to do something risky the roll itself makes them think they accomplished more for the task. Things only slow down when you start having to interpret rolls, which this is not the case.

I doubt you switched to electronic dice and that saves far more time.

>>48634008
>None of the other systems I've played allow me to use my d&d monster manuals.
Is it really that hard for you to just port over the monsters you want, instead of rebuilding dnd 3.x or 5e?


You'd already have to rewrite the monster statblocks just to fit these new rules into dnd, so it's not like you're saving yourself any work here.

>>48639858
I like d&d just fine, and I play other games often enough. In particular I'm fond of gurps, rq, sr4/5, and cinematic unisystem.

I just also house rule games i play, including d&d.

>>48643173
Yeah, the goal was 100%to use them as is , without adjustment.

>>48640160
Maybe just skills.

>>48634184
>>48634061

Nah, I think it could work, but you need to change the perception.

What about something like
>If you MEET the armor class, you do the lowest possible damage with the attack.
>If you beat the AC by 5, you do completely average damage
>If you beat the AC by 10, you do max damage

Or something like that?

Instead of bitching your special snowflake system doesn't get enough attention, why not solve the problem? Why are you even bothering to post? Posts like yours are barely worth /v/ level.

Don't damage rolls and critical hits already represent degrees of success?

>>48645182

He wants degrees of success related to PC skill and the d20 roll. So critical hits do (they're a degree of success above the others), but he's bothered that succeeding with an 18 is the same as succeeding with a 10.

>>48636735
My players are too lazy to learn a new system.

Every time I say "let's try FFG Star Wars/Shadowrun/*world/etc, they're like "DM, why don't you just adapt those rules you like into DnD" instead?

Well now I am. I'm calling these fags' bluff.

So basically you want mutants and masterminds?

>>48645648
That must suck for you bro.

I just made the thread because I thought i had a neat house rules idea.

Hey OP, your idea is perfectly valid and you should do it. I've said the same thing before when I was playing XCOM

>>48647507
I want to take one of the things I like from m&m and add it to d&d.

It would be much harder to start from m&m and change everything i don't like about it than to take the elements i do like and add it to a game i prefer.

>>48649871
What does xcom have to do with anything?

>>48649888
>Standing point blank next to enemy
>95% chance to hit
>Miss, and it means I don't hit a fucking thing

I was using a shotgun. XCOM is a turn based combat system with similar roles for hitting and missing.

It should have done 95% of the damage instead of a binary hit/miss result

>>48650822
Oh. Yeah, I've not played it. That does sound annoying, and is basically the same as my d&d complaint.

>>48650822
>He doesn't only take 100% shots
get gud

>>48650863
No such thing in d&d.

You always fail on a 1