In my vagabond way I happened to stumble across BareBones Fantasy (BBF for short). Whereas Crowfield started an attempt of a fantasy campaign that mirrored the play experience of Traveller, BBF is attempt to convert the old Star Frontiers rules to fantasy. I should probably do a review of it at some point.
Like Star Frontiers, BBF’s core mechanic is the percentile roll. As I said before, I hate percentile rolls. Hate them. I feel that most percentile rolls can be converted to d20 rolls, making everything simpler and faster. Because BBF has a semi-permissive license, I decided to spend some time to convert the game to use the d20 instead.
One neat thing that BBF does is say that any roll of doubles is a crit. If the roll would have been a success, then it’s a critical success; a failed roll would be a critical failure. For example, if Jalice’s lock-picking chance is 68% then a roll of 66 (or 55, 44, 33, etc.) would be a critical success while a roll of 77, 88, or 99 would be a critical failure. While this makes crits a little too frequent for my liking, I like how the scale slides based on the character’s skill as well as the intuitive “doubles = crit.”
It’s impossible to translate that to a d20. Rolling a single die rules out doubles. Ways of adjusting what numbers are crits based on skill level while keeping the crits to 10% (or less) of the rolls also proved impossible.
That led me to think about other ways to do it. The idea I finally came up with was a paradigm shift: Why do crits have to be random? Let the player decided when they’d want a crit!
Crits on Demand
The system would work like this. Whenever the player wants/needs a crit they simply declare “I’m taking a crit.” He has to declare this before the dice are rolled.
If the roll is a success, then it becomes a critical success and the player has to forfeit one experience point.
If the roll is a failure, it becomes a critical failure (i.e. a fumble), but the player gets an experience point as a consolation prize.
Going Off the Idea
I toyed around with that idea for a few days, but I think I decided that I don’t like it. From a gamist perspective it sounds ok, but I think the joy of a crit is the way they pop up unexpectedly. When you invoke one yourself, I think that the thrill of the spontaneity will be lost.
Am I right?
An interesting idea! Converting the randomness of a crit to a risk/reward system.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your conclusion though - crits by nature across media are random and unexpected by nature, which makes it exciting and tense.
It could also lead to unenjoyable gameplay moments where someone who has decent lockpicking just constantly declares they get a crit on low-skill locks, and then the new Baseline becomes having all these critical successes which will wear down both the DM and the fun of the game itself.