Die System I thought up

[Salsacookies]

I got myself a die calculator, and I've been playing with it some. While doing so, I thought up a way to handle stats.

There are two categories: Die type and Die amount.

The die types are: d4; d6; d8; d12; d20

The die amounts are: 1;2;3;4;5

You combine the two into one die roll.

Ex. You can have a 5d20, but no other die can have 5 or be a d20. You'd only be able to use d4,6,8 or 12 and 1 to 4 die for the other stats.

Correct
5d20;4d12;3d8;2d6;d4

Incorrect
5d20;4d20;5d12
Numbers already taken, must pick another.

As for stats, I found this system from another RPG that is genius, and I forgot what it was called. Anyways, I took it, and expanded it.

Fighty Guy: how warrior-ish you are.

Rogue-Like: how much of a rogue you are.

Sparkles: How Mage-like you are.

Holey Moley: How (un)holy you are.

Boy Scout:How much of a Ranger you are.

Technologic: how Steampunky you are.

Yes, there are six stats. You are entirely incapable of using something of that stat if you have no die in that stat, and trying to do something of those lines always ends horribly or humiliatingly.
0 in magic:Wands explode
0 in holy:gods are insulted by your prayers
0 in rogue: you fart while sneaking
0 in warrior: you can't even lift that sword for hobbits
0 in ranger: you get splinters while holding an elven bow
and
0 in Technology: dwarven guns blow up in your hands

So, anyways, what do you think?

 

[Salsacookies]

Found the game I copied from.

http://www.stargazergames.eu/games/warrior-rogue-mage/

 

[Jorick]

Hrm. This system is basically just forcing people to choose their class by dice, and they'd have to be a fool to not use the optimal 5d20, 4d12, and so on setup for maximum efficiency, unless your system is broken enough to allow them to game it and do everything in which case they should flip it and go 5d4, 4d6, etc. Depending on what kind of difficulty levels you apply to various actions, I see two possibilities for this system: the players would likely only have one or two stats that they can actually use in any reliable way, or if the DL is low enough they could flip the dice number order and have a damned good shot at using 5 of those stats successfully on the regular. Both of these come with problems.

If you have a high general difficulty level on rolls, then only one or two stats would be reliable for players. The reason for this comes from the very wide range of numbers available from those possible dice rolls: 5d20 gives you a range of 5-100, 4d12 gives 4-48, 3d8 gives 3-24, 2d6 gives 2-12, and d4 gives 1-4. You have to scale the DL for actions on that 1-100 scale, otherwise the 5d20 roll is an automatic success almost always and that's just ridiculous and breaks the game. If the general DL is high then nobody would go with anything other than the maximum potential dice setup unless they purposely want to make their character weak. Say accomplishing a slightly advanced task requires a roll of 30. Your god stat with 5d20 for rolls is a pretty sure thing for that roll, but your 4d12 roll is kind of hit or miss, and everything else is useless and you might as well not try. Say it's 20 for a basic action: 5d20 should get it, 4d12 will get it most of the time, 3d8 will have a fair shot, and the others are useless. This is basically a really awkward dice-based way of making people choose their class, rather than the loose "class" system of Warrior, Rogue, Mage. In that game the roll for every stat is just a d6 with stat modifiers added, so people have a chance to do minor things of any one of those stats but will want to invest heavily in just one or two to be able to do super cool stuff. In this dice system the stat modifiers are replaced with dice set choices, meaning that players are pigeon-holed into their one or two actually useful stats, AKA locking them into their main class and secondary class from the start. Why not just run with traditional tabletop RPG things where there's a line on the CS for the classes and then have the stats actually do more interesting things? High DL with this system would just be plain boring for anyone even slightly well versed in tabletop games.

Then the opposite problem would be if you had low DL values. Say it's 10 to perform a basic action, 15 to do something fancy. In that case, it would be possible to run with 5d4, 4d6, 3d8, 2d12, and d20 to make it so you've got 5 stats/classes in which your character is proficient. At that point the system becomes kind of silly because instead of players having to choose their class based on dice, they could really just say "nah, I wanna do everything but that one class" and have a good shot of being able to achieve it. The lack of stat modifiers (which you really shouldn't have if you're making people choose from a wide array of possible dice rolls for their stats) would mean you can't really put any controls on this. That Warrior, Rogue, Mage game works with the low numbers and no easy powergaming because everything is based on a simple d6 roll and stat points are bonuses to that roll; top level Mage spells require a roll of 13 to pull off successfully, meaning if a player wants to have a good chance of casting them then they need to invest heavily in Mage while ignoring the others. The consistency of the system makes it so there's not real opportunity for shenanigans, just straight up invest in what you want to do and then do it.

So overall I'd say this system is novel, but not very practical.

 

[Azathoth]

@Jorick, have you considered making a Die-System guide?

 

[Jorick]

@Jorick, have you considered making a Die-System guide?

I have not, and I'm not sure how useful such a thing would be. Maybe something specifically focused on using dice in a play-by-post environment could be cool, but for anything like doing a real tabletop RPG campaign my best advice would be "go find an existing game/dice system you like and use it, novelty < elegance." Most of any such guide would be explaining why good systems work and talking about the math of dice rolls, and I don't know how many people would care to read it. :P

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

Seems far too open to min-maxing abuse.
Put 5d20 in one stat, 1d4 in the dump stat, done.

Plus the variance in numbers here is so high that the system would need to have a way to make really low rolls still be useful for something.
And really high rolls not being game breaking.

 

[Rain of the Night]

I do have an table-top RPG system that could work very well for PbP. It only uses 1d20 and has no 'hit points' or 'armor class' or 'stats'. The system is narrative based, so it's to help the fluidity of the story telling and explaining the actions that occur for the sequence over rolling stats and saying hit or miss.

HeroQuest

 

[Ner0]

Hmm, From what I can see the main problem with this system is DL Levels.

If you want to avoid that you can just create a lvl up system that maintains a constant level of difficulty. This way players are always challenged and min maxing can be avoided.

Let's say that everyone starts with d4 in all stats but their main class stat, which would be a 2d6.

Then you could do a campaign with dl levels that are fair for that number of dice.

Against a basic enemy:

let's say that on non main stats a 1 or 2 is a fail, a 3 or four is a success.

then on your main stat a 2-6 is a fail and all other numbers are successes with varying degree's of awesome.

You could of course scale DL levels with enemy/task difficulty.


Then at the end of the campaign just have your players level up, let them increase on of their secondary stats and their main stat to 3d8 and then two more secondary stats to 2d6. This allows multi classing, you could also have the option of trading in your secondary stat level ups in order to unlock a 4d12 in your main stat.

Then just scale your DL levels to match the dice numbers. Also keep in mind that the more complex a task or challenging an enemy, the higher the failure rate. A Mage with 5d20 would have a higher DL number just because he is casting more complex spells. Now, if he is just shooting magic missiles his failure rate will be next to zero, but his damage out put would also be low.

That's how I would do it anyways xD