Magical roll and attack roll

[steph]

One think i love in rolemaster is: the roll mean something. When you cast a spell better your roll is more difficult gonna be the resistance roll. Better your attack roll is better is the result. In your fantasy game do you have something similar? If you need to hit a 5 DCV and you hit 8 or if you make your magic skill roll by a large success is it change something ?

Hope i am clear 

English not my first language.

 

Steph

[Nolgroth]

I understand. Hero doesn't natively support incremental effects based on a Success roll. You could simulate this by using a variant of Standard Effect. If you succeed, you do an average of 3 on the dice. Per each +2 you succeeded over what is needed to hit, you improve the average by +1 point. That will make damages more predictable, but will also reduce the number of rolls you have. If you are talking about defenses when you refer to "resistance" you could also conceivably use a similar mechanic; define the highest level of defenses and average it out with success and increasing the defense by +1 per every 2 better you roll by.

 

If you are talking about having an open-ended result, I would be aware of CSLs, PSLs and Skill Levels that could completely skew the results and make wizards really powerful.

[Wardsman]

One think i love in rolemaster is: the roll mean something. When you cast a spell better your roll is more difficult gonna be the resistance roll. Better your attack roll is better is the result. In your fantasy game do you have something similar? If you need to hit a 5 DCV and you hit 8 or if you make your magic skill roll by a large success is it change something ?

Hope i am clear 

English not my first language.

 

Steph

 

5th editions Ultimate Skill has such rules plus other ways hacking or adapting the skill.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/86-hero-system-skills-pdf/

 

One I'm using is reducing the time needed to something is reduced by good rolls.

Another one I plan use is a bonus effect based on the power skill roll effect.

[Outsider]

HERO already favors high OCV, and has several mechanisms already in place to convert high OCV into more damage. The existing methods all incorporate the trade off where one's chances to hit go down in exchange for increased damage such as with levels used to increase damage and aimed shots.    Adding a method by which high OCV adds to damage without decreasing odds to hit seems like it would result in CV being not just good to have, but all that really matters.

[Doc Democracy]

There have been a couple of proposals of this kind on the boards which have been discussed extensively as to the desirability and practicality of this.

 

I am currently enamoured with dice pools and allowing good attack rolls to add to the damage dice pool.  If your attack is 12D6 and you roll well, you might get to roll 15D6 but you only count the best 12.

 

This does, as Outsider notes, further enhance the value of OCV (and thus DCV as its counter - perhaps suggesting that DCV should be cheaper than OCV...)

 

Doc

[bigdamnhero]

In theory, I love the idea that a better-than-needed attack roll should result in more damage. After all, shot placement is the biggest single factor in how much damage a shot does. But in practice, it means that OCV is all you need and nothing else matters as much. I've tried to incorporate various house rules over the years, and most of them we eventually decided weren't worth the effort and screwed up game balance. It's one of those RPG-vs-reality things.

[NuSoardGraphite]

The critical hit/success optional rules help simulate this concept quite well.

 

Basically, if you roll lower than half your chance to hit or succeed, the roll is a critical success. For example, if your chance to hit was an 11 or less, a roll of 5 or less is a critical success. As the roll gets higher, the chance increases signidicantly. Boosting your chances to 20 or less yields a critical hit chance of 9 or less!

 

The effects of a critical success vary depending on your action, but in general if it is some kind of dice action such as an attack or Entangle or Transform etc, then the Dice are automatically maxed out for the effect. Thus a 6D6 energy blast on a critical hit automatically causes 12 Body and 36 Stun. A 2D6 Entangle is automatically 4 Body and a 3d6 Transform is automatically 18 "body". Other effects are generally determined by the GM, but can include such benefits as reduced endurance expenditure or a small boost in power to represent the increased effects of a crit.

[Lezentauw]

I have a thought that I have been playing with for a bit, which I plan to test out this weekend.  If you hit by +4, any die rolled that results in a 1 becomes a 2.  If you hit by +8, any die rolled that results in a 1 or 2 becomes a 3. 

 

I thought about something like Doc's idea, but to me that would over reward the high OCV character.  If the character wants to do more damage, they will have to target a hit location or allocate some CSL's for extra DC.  My current thought is a way to prevent a really good hit from just doing minimal damage.  But, as Outsider already stated, even my idea may swing the balance to the high OCV character concept...

[eepjr24]

I have a thought that I have been playing with for a bit, which I plan to test out this weekend.  If you hit by +4, any die rolled that results in a 1 becomes a 2.  If you hit by +8, any die rolled that results in a 1 or 2 becomes a 3. 

 

I thought about something like Doc's idea, but to me that would over reward the high OCV character.  If the character wants to do more damage, they will have to target a hit location or allocate some CSL's for extra DC.  My current thought is a way to prevent a really good hit from just doing minimal damage.  But, as Outsider already stated, even my idea may swing the balance to the high OCV character concept...

It will for sure increase the value of DCV. I would also tend to favor spells with Change Environment that cause -Range Modifier, since all they have to do is move it up 1 level to save 1 body and 2 stun on the average 3d6K attack, in addition to the normal possibilities of generating a miss.

[Doc Democracy]

I have a thought that I have been playing with for a bit, which I plan to test out this weekend.  If you hit by +4, any die rolled that results in a 1 becomes a 2.  If you hit by +8, any die rolled that results in a 1 or 2 becomes a 3. 

 

I thought about something like Doc's idea, but to me that would over reward the high OCV character.  If the character wants to do more damage, they will have to target a hit location or allocate some CSL's for extra DC.  My current thought is a way to prevent a really good hit from just doing minimal damage.  But, as Outsider already stated, even my idea may swing the balance to the high OCV character concept...

 

I have been here - you might even find a thread about it way back when.

 

I am not sure that creating a pool where you add a die for every +4 is more of a reward than converting all 1s into 2s.  You would be adding another bit of calculation to the process - whereas my current thinking means that if you have 2 bonus dice for the damage pool - you simply remove two of the lowest rolls prior to counting up the 12D6 damage.

 

Both systems increase the damage done if the roll is good, both put an additional premium on OCV (and conversely on DCV).  Mine lets you roll more dice, yours gets you to do a little bit extra calculation.  I know what my players prefer!  :-)  

 

Let us know how you get on, my lot hated the additional bureaucracy of converting 1s to 2s or 3s depending on the roll.  Not yet tried the dice pool idea.

 

 

Doc

[Chris Goodwin]

One of the Advanced Players Guides talks about this as well.  I don't recall which one off the top of my head though.

[Wardsman]

I have been here - you might even find a thread about it way back when.

 

I am not sure that creating a pool where you add a die for every +4 is more of a reward than converting all 1s into 2s.  You would be adding another bit of calculation to the process - whereas my current thinking means that if you have 2 bonus dice for the damage pool - you simply remove two of the lowest rolls prior to counting up the 12D6 damage.

 

Both systems increase the damage done if the roll is good, both put an additional premium on OCV (and conversely on DCV).  Mine lets you roll more dice, yours gets you to do a little bit extra calculation.  I know what my players prefer!  :-)  

 

Let us know how you get on, my lot hated the additional bureaucracy of converting 1s to 2s or 3s depending on the roll.  Not yet tried the dice pool idea.

 

 

Doc

Like I said before Ultimate Skill has a few ideas on this.

[Savinien]

People are still talking about HERO on this board? Awesome! You guys are great.

 

Math is fun. If we didn't like it we shouldn't be playing this game.