Do we need a paradigm shift?

[Frances]

Reading through a number of items in this forum, I notice a distinct trend towards PnP oriented thinking. What I mean is, there is a tendency to try and make things simple enough that it would be easy to roll your d20 and get a result. AC from 1 to 8. Weapons doing 2-12 points of damage. That sort of thing.

It seems to me (since as I understand it, we're moving away from d20 rules), that it would be better to start thinking about a greater scale of things. Your armor class could be between 1 (for the vagabond rags) to 400 (for mithral full plate with tower shield, full helm, heavy gauntlets, etc.). Your weapon could do 1-2 points of damage (say, a bee stinger) to 100-200 points of damage (that blessed silver chased halbard made by a master weaponsmith on a very good day). This sort of thing.

This would allow for much greater variability in equipment choices, and in crafting. As a master weaponsmith, I create a longsword that does an extra 10 points of damage on hits, but a beginning weaponsmith's longsword does a standard amount of damage. That longsword I bought from the merchant in Hlint (assuming one is there) does 40-60 points of damage, but if I shop around, I find the merchant in Leringard is selling longswords that do 45-60 points of damage.

I think that d20 worked great for PnP, but if we've got computers doing all the math and die rolling, we could handle much bigger numbers.

[Dorganath]

If it helps, our systems in general don't look much like d20 at all. The numbers have larger ranges, the "to-hit" and damage calculations, for example, involve a variety of factors. This is just an example, but in general, our systems look pretty different from d20, and further...they'd probably not translate well to table-top gaming.

I think people are making suggestions from a d20-centric view because they know it and it's comfortable. To some degree, the concepts can be carried over, though adjusted for our rather custom systems. I think this is fine, as we're more than capable of converting and taking the ideas without requiring the mechanics.

[Script Wrecked]

One of the limitations of the d20 system is its rangeability regarding opposing levels; while the difference between two opponents is within the d20 range, the system works. However, once that difference is exceeded, the result is assured, either impossible or guaranteed.

This is due to adding all modifiers to the die roll. This creates a guaranteed minimum result. Once the guaranteed minimum exceeds the difficulty, the outcome is certain.

This is a result of using dice. The dice physically determine what can be rolled, and it is only natural to add modifiers after the die is rolled. However, this creates the above limitation.

Instead of adding modifers to the die result, the modifiers should modify the die roll maximum, viz, increase the range of the die roll.

Using the d20 paradigm by way of example, this way, instead of your tenth level producing a result range of 11-30 (1d20 +10), which is guaranteed to hit AC11, you get a result range of 1-30 (1d(20+10)), a 66% chance of success.

At twentieth level, the result range of 1-40 (1d(20+20)), a 75% chance of success. At thirtieth level, the result range of 1-50 (1d(20+30)), an 80% chance of success. At fortieth level, the result range of 1-60 (1d(20+40)), a 83.3% chance of success.

      |         AC
      | -----------------
Lv Mx | 11 21 31 41 51 61
=========================
 0 20 | 50  0  0  0  0  0
10 30 | 66 33  0  0  0  0
20 40 | 75 50 25  0  0  0
30 50 | 80 60 40 20  0  0
40 60 | 83 66 50 33 16  0
50 70 | 85 71 57 42 28 14
60 80 | 87 75 62 50 37 25
      | -----------------
      |   % success

With this mechanism, AC11 still retains some value, rather than becoming redundant at level 10.

This works whether using d20 or d100. If a modifier is added after the die roll, a moving band of workability is created. If the modifier is added to the die range, something a bit more rangeable is created.

Regards,

Script Wrecked.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Nice concept, Script.