Reduce everything to 3d6 and curse the results

[hcobb]

Make all rolls 3d6, but apply a one point "curse" adjustment to the roll (not the stat) for each die over.

So when swinging a battle axe at DX 9 against a typical goblin witch doing a Dagger Mastery defend you need to roll 9 (-2 for mastery) or 7 on three dice, but add 3 to the rolled number before comparing. Ergo the pips on the dice need to total to 4 or 3. So you have no chance of a double or triple damage result and only a 1.85% chance of hitting her, while you have a 10% chance to drop or break your weapon.

[phiwum]

I guess I'm not clear what problem is solved.

We are, of course, discussing auto success and failure for additional dice and what the appropriate values should be. Your suggestion gives a different mechanic which comes with different values, but are they better or not?

[hcobb]

My proposal is to toss out the multi dice tables and reduce everything to the 3d6 results.

[Kieddicus]

Ohh... I like this idea a lot.
The odd crit tables for non-3d rolls always bothered me.
This also helps fix the fact that rolling 2d is pretty much an auto success.

[Terquem]

It has always, to me, been a little wonky that the game uses different approaches for adjusting the chance of success or failure
Method 1 - adjust the target number. This is done a couple of different ways, by directly modifying the target up or down or by applying a modifier to the roll off the dice.
Method 2 - adjust the random distribution of numbers where success or failure are decided by adding or subtracting whole dice.
And - sometimes both

[hcobb]

My suggestion splits before and after roll adjustments.

Before: adjusts the target number to roll.
After: adjusts the amount rolled.

[Steve Plambeck]

I prefer Henry's method as well. No tables to remember, and very precise control too. If the number added to the roll is small (1), you only slightly tweak the result away from critical success towards critical failure; if the addition is big (3) you take away critical success entirely and make the roll much more dangerous to even attempt (just have to decide what you'll do about results that go off the high end of the scale, because you now might roll a 19, 20, etc on 3d6).

[JimmyPlenty]

As much as I can appreciate it, rolling more dice is easier to me in general. Also, rolling only 3 dice takes away the tactile feel of having to roll more dice.

(in a way, i wish we could roll more dice as a bonus and less as a penalty)

Also, the chart isn't that difficult. For the base auto fail anyway.

Auto Fail from 3 to 4 dice is +4 (20), then +2 more for every die added.

The way it is worded in the book makes it seem hard to memorize. I think the line above could use work, but is close to the idea of that whole chart.

I feel the same way about the dagger damage / HTH table and the paragraph below it. Should be simpler to understand.