Unified resolution (+ roll high)

[mhd]

I'm going to experiment a bit with a unified resolution mechanism, and would be interested in hearing from others who have experiences in that sector.

 

Right now I'm planning to use the combat resolution mechanism for everything (as per APG2 9), but with rolling high being rewarded. If I'm not getting anything wrong, that would come down to the following formula:

 

Skill Roll: SV + 3d6 > 10 + DV = success

Combat Roll: OCV + 3d6 > 10 + DCV = success

 

So far, so good. I'm wondering a bit about how to handle skill challenges. Stealth vs. PER is pretty common in my game, and I'm currently thinking about whether just to let the more active participant roll (i.e. the one using Stealth), or instead go by the mantra that in doubt, it's always the players rolling (i.e. they roll for Stealth if sneaking up on someone, they roll for PER if some thugs do the same to them).

 

Right now I don't see any particular downsides to doing this, maybe apart from some handwritten adjustments to the HD character sheets. We're not playing HERO that long, so the transitional pains should be minimal.

[TheRealDeal]

I am not sure you will get much out of this other than perhaps a more pleasing feel to you about how it is now always better to roll high. One thing that I like, coming from a d20 world, about the fact that in HERO you want to roll high some times (damage and effect dice) and low other times (attack and skill checks) is that you get a sense of balance in that all die results matter, there are no universally bad results (like in d20 low results on the dice are pretty much always bad). It also helps to mitigate the subjective bias we all experience of tending to only recall the bad results ("I always roll low!") by having the result desired (high or low) change based on what is being done. So you can see that you are complaining both about "always rolling low" and "always rolling high!" at the same time! This can help you to recognize that you really are not under some divine curse to roll poorly, but are just perhaps particularly afflicted by the "I like to feel sorry for myself" condition:) I know one of my players has noticed this for himself.

 

But one issue you will face if you do this, is that of critical successes. No longer can you use the somewhat elegant method of rolling half or less what was needed on the 3d6 to achieve a critical success. How will you now determine such? You will have to come up with another house rule for that. I like the default HERO method because as your skill gets better so also does your chance for a critical success (since half of a higher value also get higher and thus more likely to achieve). It will be a bit harder to simulate this same idea for your always roll high system.

 

As for the issue of Opposed Rolls, coming from d20, I just have my MapTool set up so it not only shows if the roll was a success or not, but shows by how much it succeeded or failed. For example, if you have a Skill of 12- and the 3d6 roll was 10, you would not just see "Success", but "Success (+2)". Or if you rolled a 15, you would see "Failure (-3)". This then allows me to quickly compare 2 rolls and oppose them against each other. The one with the greater degree of success (or perhaps lesser degree of failure if applicable) wins and ties go to the higher skill or in the case of a tie there, the Active Agent (the one who is initiating the action, so the Attacker, or the Sneaker, or the Lockpicker, etc). This also allows me to call for a roll and apply any modifiers to it, after the fact to speed up things or whatever. So if there is a +2 bonus to a check and the result came up "Failure (-2)" I would declare it a success, since adding 2 to that would turn that into an exact Success. I also can show the potential for Critical Success this way. If the MapTool code sees that the 3d6 result was 9 or lower (I do not allow rolls of 10+ to achieve critical success, since I go with the idea of 18 always fails, so a 9 is the highest roll able to achieve a critical success if you needed an 18 or higher), it gives an extra bit of information. So in the above example, of a Skill 12-, if the roll was say a 9, since that would be a critical success if the check gained a +6 bonus or more (since a +6 bonus makes a 12- into a 18- where a roll of 9 then becomes a critical roll) it would show in the output: "Success (+3), Critical Success (-6)". This tells me that the roll succeeds, even with a -3 penalty, and is a critical success if the roll gained a +6 bonus somehow (such as for an easy task).

 

So my point is that you do not need to change the default HERO to work in opposed rolls, just have a player tell you how much they succeeded by (or failed by) and you can use that to compare to the opposing roll. Say you make a guard's PER roll and get Success (+2) in secret of course. Then the PC makes a Stealth roll of only Success (+1). They may be happy with that roll, but you know that it fails, however, as long as they are 9 meters or more away from the guard (which would impose a -2 penalty to the guard's PER check due to range) they are successful, but the moment they get closer than that, he notices them. This does not give anything away to the player, and they have to just go with what they know and play it that way. They may think their +1 success lets them get close and will be shocked when it fails:)

 

Overall, except for the critical success issue, I do not see a down side per say to using the d20 model of high always wins, but it will impose a bit more work on changing the default material and require a new rule to handle critical successes, so it seems like extra effort, and if you think it is important enough to you, I guess it is not overly burdensome.

[mhd]

To be honest, I very rarely find myself using critical successes, and don't use critical hits at all. Partially because I rarely see a point, as I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a reason what a "critical" success would be, as opposed to just grading it by your margin of success/failure. Maybe I missed something, but I can think of few skills where this is explicitly mentioned. Breakfall comes to mind, and I think you get a PRE bonus for a marvelous Oratory.

 

And the other contributing factor is that I prefer players if they just tell me their margins on a straight roll and I go from that. Which makes calculating critical successes a bit hard, as the players don't have the necessary information, and I would need a "rolled 11, succeeded by 2" for every throw. Sure, it's not the biggest of problems, so if this would be a more intrinsic element of the game, I might worry. The way it handles right now, I wouldn't be missing a lot. Probably wouldn't hurt a lot if I'd replace "succeeds by half" with "succeeds by 5" in some places.

 

And you're definitely right about "feel" of rolling, for some it might be a relief if "cursed" dice won't ruin their game, but it's hard to please the superstitious. For me, it's mostly about the unified system between combat and skill rolls. Whether that unified system is roll-high or -low doesn't matter as much.