Are different degrees of success in your opinion necessary mechanic?

>>51293723
>Are different degrees of success in your opinion necessary mechanic?
Yes. Succeeding by a small margin might only represent a partial success, whereas succeeding by a huge margin would be an exceptionally successful or productive roll. For example, while hunting game in a forest a partial success might indicate a scrawny rabbit or two, whereas an exceptional success might be a prime stag or boar.

The inverse is also true, degrees of failure matter as well. A partial failure could indicate that you merely didn't find anything while hunting, whereas a more dramatic failure might see you following tracks only to find an owlbear staring you in the face ready to pounce.

Binary success/failure is boring and unrealistic. Degrees of success are much better.

>>51293723
D&D already sorta has degrees of success with its crit mechanic; it's just kinda retarded to base it on the dice value instead of by how much it passes the DC.

>>51294572
Critical hits aren't really a degree of success mechanic. A character with a +0 to attack against an Armour Class of 19 hits on a 19 and get a critical hit on a natural 20. A character with a +10 to attack against an Armour Class of 19 hits on a 9 through 19 and gets a critical hit on a natural 20. In one case they beat the AC value by 1, in the other case they beat it by 11. The value by which they exceed their target's Armour Class does not increase the damage they deal, the only thing that determines a critical hit is random chance. Critical hits are therefore a luck-based mechanic, not an indicator of degree of success.

A proper version of critical hits as degree of success would be Pillars of Eternity, wherein your attack roll compared against your target's defence value to determine whether the attack misses, grazes, hits, or crits. The picture included is that chart; when accuracy and defence are the same you have a 15% chance to miss (grey), a 35% chance to graze (pink), and a 50% chance to hit (red). You can only achieve a critical hit (dark red) if your accuracy is at least 1 point above your target's defence value.

A tabletop game where degree of success equal damage would be Anima: Beyond Fantasy. It's a d100 system with Stat + d100 instead of roll under, and essentially for every 10 by which your attack exceeds your opponent's defence you deal about 10% of your weapon's damage. It's very slightly more complicated with armour but that's the basic idea. Weapon damage is pretty high compared to starting Life Points so taking a full hit (100%) can seriously hurt and possibly inflict grievous wounds or even instant death.

File: AccuracyMinusDefenceChart.jpg (37KB, 512x470px) Image search: [Google]

37KB, 512x470px

>>51294863
...and I forgot to include the chart. Here you go.

Degree of success mechanics can be great in tabletop games and a good way to make dexterity/agility/accuracy less of a God-Stat. So long as your damage stat adds a sizeable bonus to damage and dexterity's accuracy bonus is proportionally lower, it encourages people to take a more balanced approach rather than focusing on being super evasive warriors who never miss. It's also good at forcing attrition into the system, since most attacks will probably at least graze you. This can help push characters to want to resolve combat faster rather than slower, and prevents both them and enemies from 'turtling' since they'll likely be overwhelmed with minor injuries in short order.

You can also use degree of success to differentiate between blows that merely reduce stamina or your guard, blows that deal tangible damage, and blows that inflict clear and decisive wounds. The greater the accuracy roll is compared to the defence value, the more the attack was able to overcome or bypass the defender's armour and active defence. You could then have the attacker's strength be the metric to determine how grievous those wounds are, if you wanted to go with a system that avoid hit points entirely (like Mutants and Masterminds).

>>51293723
>Are different degrees of success in your opinion necessary mechanic?
No.

Success means success. There is some room for "skin of your teeth success," where you succeed but not without complications, but that's not really what you asked, because it's still success.

>>51294572
lol D&D

>>51293723
Mostly, no. In theory, the mechanic is neat.
In practice, most DMs won't bother to actually come up with graded successes at the best of times.
At worst, a shitty DM will use it to fuck players over even though the succeeded at the roll.

>>51293723
>but on the other hand I prefer for some reason d100 roll under systems.
D100 is nothing different.
Every 10 points of rolling over/under your status is one degree of success/failure.

No mechanic is necessary, however:

>>51294863 and >>51294945 are examples of degrees of success in both accuracy and damage. A homebrew I'm working on follows the accuracy rules of PoE almost exactly (at least in concept). Likewise, I've heard of plenty of unnamed games that follow Anima's degrees of damage.

Degrees of success actually works extremely well with 1d20 and similar high-variance dice. People often have the complaint that d20 is too swingy compared to something like 3d6, but that's more a function of the popular systems using the d20 OGL rather than the die itself.

Instead of trying to convert d20 into 3d6, it would be much easier to just add degrees of success into the roll results.

>>51295684
I agree that it can be abused by a shitty GM, but so can most mechanics. Degrees of success and failure can actually be a very handy tool for savvy GMs. You can use partial failures to have PCs Fail Forward, essentially letting them succeed at a cost. It keeps the action moving forward while maintaining consequences for failing, because without consequences there would be no point to having dice at all.

You can use dramatic successes to reward PCs for having great luck or investing in that skill or aptitude, letting them shine brighter than just say "Okay, you get what you wanted." Maybe throw them a clue or an extra bonus to a later action. You just need to be consistent and fair and it'll work just fine.

>>51297313
I'm totally in agreement with you, sir. My own system uses a d20 and a degree of success model for combat. To reduce 'swingyness' characters can fairly easy get the advantage / disadvantage mechanic from 5E D&D and roll multiple d20s, keeping the best or worst as the case may be. The first advantage is about a +3, the second a +5, and then a +1 for each beyond so multiple circumstantial bonuses have diminishing returns. It also means that you can't artificially gain a result higher than 20 + your bonus, which is good for hard-capping access to things like Herculean feats of strength and legendary applications of sorcery.

3d6 is perfectly serviceable but I personally dislike how it binds most results within a 7-14 range. You might as well use fudge dice (or 1d6-1d6) if you want so little variance. The d20 isn't swingy, it's merely good at plotting probability in 5% increments, which is -exceptionally- useful when you're trying to math the shit out of your system.