Skills House Rules and Considerations?

[Ndreare]

I recently introduced another group to Hero and the players dilike the roll under system. I am bouncing around some ideas in my head for house rules on skills/ combat to make them a roll high system and what considerations I should include.

 

The framework I came up with so far is the following. But I am sure others have put a lot more thought into it and know what I am overlooking. I am trying to make it so I can still use all the published material without conversion efforts.

 

 

Combat
Attacker rolls 3d6+OCV.

Target to Hit = 10+DCV. (This would work like AC in D&D or Parry in Savage Worlds, players should easily adjust to it.)

Example you have an OCV of 7 and roll a 13 to hit for a total of 20. Your target has a 6 DCV for a 16 target. Since 20 is equal to or greater than 20 then you hit the target.

 

 

Skills

• Passive Rolls: The GM may use a Passive score when not wanting to let the player know a roll is needed or a player may use a Passive roll value when the roll is not contested by another character. A characters Passive skill value is the skill level listed on the character sheet. (Example a character with Familiarity hasa passive skill of 8, a character with Dex 13 and 3 points in Stealth has a passive skill of 12.)
• Active Rolls: If a player is asked to make an active roll they subtract 10 from their Passive skill value, roll 3d6 and add the result. 
• Auto Failure and Auto Success: an unmodified roll of 3 always failes and an unmodified roll of 18 always succceeds. If an 18 should not succeed the GM should not have allow a roll.
• Critical & Exceptional Success: A total roll of 5 or more above the target value is considered Exceptional and the GM should interprit it is a favorable way. A total roll of 10 or more above the target is considered a critical success and the GM should interprit it as such. In combat a critical success allows the attack to have the maximum possible effect.

 

 

Skill Difficulties (Champions Complete pg 23)

The difficulty to perform an action is based on the level of skill needed to perform the task reliably. reference Champions Complete page 23.

DESCRIPTION DIFFICUILTY

• Familiarity 9+
• Competent 11+
• Skilled 12+
• Very Skilled 14+
• Highly Skilled 16+
• Extreamly Skilled 18+
• Increadibly Skills 20+
• Legendary 22+
• Superhuman 25+
   

Edited September 21, 2023 by Ndreare

[Duke Bushido]

You might want to reverse the values column.  As you have it listed, familiarity is the best thing going.

 

 

[Cloppy Clip]

Sorry, I'd missed this thread when it was recent, but I think this idea could work well, especially if your players are more used to games like D&D that use a roll over scheme. I would caution that requiring 5 and 10 over for exceptional and critical successes is quite strict on a 3d6. If you wanted the equivalent to needing a 15 or a 20 on a d20 then +2 and +5 might be better targets to with for now.

 

Thinking about characteristic rolls, you might want to adopt the D&D system of having scores and modifiers where 10 is +0, and every 5 points up or down (rounded so you get the same breakpoints at 3s and 8s) add or subtract a point of modifier. That way you could have skills become a case of paying 3 points to get your modifier to rolls, and 2 points to add +1 to the skill roll. You could then convert the Champions Complete table by subtracting 1 from the Skill Rolls to get your TN, since an 11- in the old system would be a +0 here, balanced against a TN of 10.

 

That's all I can think of for now, but good luck with developing this and I'd love to hear more.

[Doc Democracy]

I found, in this situation it was indeed all about presentation.  I fixed on the idea of rolling 10 or higher, when no modifiers were active, to be a success. 10 is the normal difficulty.

 

Everything on the character sheet was presented as +something.  So Stealth +2 meant that when rolling stealth you rolled 3D6 and added 2.  I had hero character sheets, Stealth +2 equates to a 13 or less roll, Stealth +4 would equate to 15 or less.

 

A difficult (+3) task meant the difficulty number rose to 13.

 

I also worked on campaign average for combat.  The average was CV 5 for a heroic fantasy.  So melee attack +3 was OCV 8 and parry +4 was DCV 9.

 

Combat worked the same as skills with defensive numbers adding to the difficulty of a combat task. In the above example attacking at +3 meant rolling 3D6 and adding three to beat a combat difficulty of 10+4.

 

Sheets looked VERY similar to D20 stuff but it was pure 6th Edition HERO they were playing.

[the_blunderbuss]

I've done exactly as Doc Democracy comments: everything is target 10, most things are presented as bonuses or penalties to the rolls. It's worked like a charm so far. It is a fairly simple thing to do assuming you understand the probabilities involved. The only thing that I feel benefits from a little chart is something to create the equivalent probability to "succeeding by half" which is, again, fairly simple to develop.

 

A few examples:

- Attribute rolls with an Attribute value of 8 to 12 are +0 to the roll (these are the default so it's best to make them +0)

- Attribute rolls with an Attribute value of 3 to 7 are -1 to the roll

- Skill default is -6 to the roll

- Skill familiarity is -3 to the roll

- Skill opened normally defaults to the equivalent Attribute Roll

- Buying a +1 to a Skill Roll gives you (literally) +1 to the Skill Roll

- Combat rolls are 3D6 + OCV against 10 + DCV

- Rolls can be modified by positive circumstances (adding to the roll result) or negative circumstances (subtracting from the roll result.) Use the same number you used before to modify the TARGET of the roll, to modify the RESULT of the roll now.

 

And (for the most part) Bob's your uncle.

[Doc Democracy]

Oh.  I forgot.  I did not write down characteristic values.  STR of 10 was not worth writing on the sheet, it is default implied.  A STR of 15 or 20 was written down as STR +1 or STR +2.  This was useful as it neat STR bonuses to a skill roll could just be added, it also meant hitting someone was a matter of adding that many dice to the damage roll.

[Ndreare]

Thanks for the feedback. I am thinking we will go to roll high next session. I will try the +3/+5 levels and see how it works. The group is coming out of D&D, so they do prefer the roll high system. 

 

I will tweek it a little based on this feedback. But I think I will go 11+ as success instead of 10+, just so the unmodified die roll is 50/50. I am planning to allow them to Take 10 on non-contested rolls, so the differnce between 11+ and 10+ would make a differnce once penalties are applied.

[Doc Democracy]

Have a look at the character sheet template I was thinking of using...

 

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by Doc Democracy

[Cloppy Clip]

Best of luck with your next session! If you make any tweaks based on feedback, please post them here as I'd love to know how it goes and what, if anything, you'd change.

[Doc Democracy]

Seconded.

[Duke Bushido]

Tardy to the party, but the most common skills-related house rule I do is to eliminate characteristics bases.  All skills start at 8-; buy up from there.