Examples of good non-combat resolution mechanics?

[Drolyt]

A lot of games (like D&D 3.5) have great combat mechanics, but I'm not familiar with many great non-combat mechanics. D&D 3.5 had single checks with huge variability, D&D 4e had one of the worst subsystems ever but in concept it was decent, although even if it worked you'd have the problem that it is basically down to magical tea party what the individual rolls mean in relation to overall success or failure. So anyone have some examples of non-combat minigames that don't suck?

[Username17]

A lot of games (like D&D 3.5) have great combat mechanics, but I'm not familiar with many great non-combat mechanics. D&D 3.5 had single checks with huge variability, D&D 4e had one of the worst subsystems ever but in concept it was decent, although even if it worked you'd have the problem that it is basically down to magical tea party what the individual rolls mean in relation to overall success or failure. So anyone have some examples of non-combat minigames that don't suck?

The basic system in Shadowrun 4/After Sundown is actually not bad. You roll a pile of dice and count the number that come up 5+. The more hits you get, the better you do. The effects one can expect out of getting a number of Hits are proportionately more awesome as the number of hits increases:

Hits:	Awesomeness
0:	Not Awesome. Tying shoes, climbing stairs.
1:	Completely Pedestrian. Driving a car, Throwing Darts.
2:	Professional. Don't try this at home.
3:	Hard. Don't try this at all.
4:	Extreme.
5:	Crazy Extreme.
6:	Super Human. Does not need disclaimers because it is clearly impossible.

This works. It's flexible, it's fast, and the results - while Magical Teaparty in nature - are usually clear enough that they don't make a lot of table arguments. It's not terribly tactical, and there isn't a lot of depth or give-and-take in it, but as a base system of "Can I do X?" it works pretty well.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Similarly, I thought that Shadowrun 4E's rules for extended (non-Matrix) skill checks could have been made to work with some more structure. As it stands however time progression of the game is too granular to really make it work. Shadowrun doesn't handle jumping from seconds or even minutes to hours -- let alone days -- really well. And unfortunately given the genre and gameplay assumptions I doubt that you could make a good extended skill check mechanic for that game that worked on time instead of failures. Think 4E skill challenges for the latter, but not ass.

But for other games in which you want to mark progression by time instead of by failures (like D&D) and with a game that doesn't have an ass time unit scaling system (so unlike D&D) I think it could be very helpful.

While Mutants and Masterminds d20 isn't particularly impressive, one key piece of insight they have in that game is the Time and Scale progression chart. I don't know if Champions or Gurps or some other game already implemented the idea, but my basic feeling is that no game with exponential power scaling (like D&D) shouldn't have some mechanic similar to that. D&D's unit scaling is complete bullshit and leads to some extreme weirdness like a cleric being able to contemptuously outfight and outclass any Naruto character yet also being unable to reliably level an inn in one blow, even with their best spells. A chart like that really would have helped the game a lot even if it would've only exacerbated the whole spellcasters > you problem.

While blurring the line between combat and non-combat mechanics, Shadowrun has seriously the best magic system I've ever seen. Even granting the fact that the magic system is tailored specifically to that game, a lot of the core ideas (such as Drain and sustaining rules) of the system kick so much ass that when people are talking of Shadowrun kitbashes or adaptations people are seriously okay with suggestions like 'to make the magic system work in this game, nerf the astral projection and summoning/possession rules'.

[hogarth]

D&D 3.5 had single checks with huge variability [..] So anyone have some examples of non-combat minigames that don't suck?

Note that having huge variability in your skill system is not a flaw if your game intentionally has huge variability in PC and NPC power levels (e.g. from Aunt May to Galactus).

The important things to have in a game system are (IMO):
[*]Have clear examples of what you can do with different degrees of success (e.g. the 3.5E Climb skill list of DCs).
[*]Stay away from having obligatory auto-failure results on skill checks (e.g.3E's "no auto-failure on 1" and "take 10" rules are a good start).

I think it's ironic when I see people complaining about the 3E D&D skill system from a "gamist" point of view, when I think it should be getting praise for all the things it did right from a "simulationist" point of view.

[Drolyt]

Similarly, I thought that Shadowrun 4E's rules for extended (non-Matrix) skill checks could have been made to work with some more structure. As it stands however time progression of the game is too granular to really make it work. Shadowrun doesn't handle jumping from seconds or even minutes to hours -- let alone days -- really well. And unfortunately given the genre and gameplay assumptions I doubt that you could make a good extended skill check mechanic for that game that worked on time instead of failures. Think 4E skill challenges for the latter, but not ass.

But for other games in which you want to mark progression by time instead of by failures (like D&D) and with a game that doesn't have an ass time unit scaling system (so unlike D&D) I think it could be very helpful.

I'll look into this.

While Mutants and Masterminds d20 isn't particularly impressive, one key piece of insight they have in that game is the Time and Scale progression chart. I don't know if Champions or Gurps or some other game already implemented the idea,

I'm... not sure. I've never played M&M, but in HERO (Champions) some things are naturally logarithmic in scale, like the body stat (basically hp) of objects, which is (if I remember right) log(the size of the object) (of course there was a table you looked at, but I'm pretty sure the progression is logarithmic). Since damage increases linearly the result is kind of what you are describing. Powers on the other hand don't work on a unified table, some work exponentially (I believe area of effect powers double in size for every +1/4 advantage or something like that) while others are linear (all movement powers) but there is an advantage called megascale that might be what you are talking about, every time you purchase it your power grows to a new "scale" (so a mile instead of a foot, 10 miles instead of a mile, so on and so forth). Actually, I think durations do work on a table like you are describing, so it goes from one segment, to one turn, to one minute, to one hour, and so forth (I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass). This is all off memory though, it has been a while since I've played.

but my basic feeling is that no game with exponential power scaling (like D&D) shouldn't have some mechanic similar to that. D&D's unit scaling is complete bullshit and leads to some extreme weirdness like a cleric being able to contemptuously outfight and outclass any Naruto character yet also being unable to reliably level an inn in one blow, even with their best spells. A chart like that really would have helped the game a lot even if it would've only exacerbated the whole spellcasters > you problem.

Damn it, finally I've found a forum where people get shit like this. Though actually assuming that chart worked off of damage alone it might help non-casters. Fighters would be a little more interesting if they could swing their sword so hard your castle implodes.

While blurring the line between combat and non-combat mechanics, Shadowrun has seriously the best magic system I've ever seen. Even granting the fact that the magic system is tailored specifically to that game, a lot of the core ideas (such as Drain and sustaining rules) of the system kick so much ass that when people are talking of Shadowrun kitbashes or adaptations people are seriously okay with suggestions like 'to make the magic system work in this game, nerf the astral projection and summoning/possession rules'.

I'll have to look into this.

D&D 3.5 had single checks with huge variability [..] So anyone have some examples of non-combat minigames that don't suck?

Note that having huge variability in your skill system is not a flaw if your game intentionally has huge variability in PC and NPC power levels (e.g. from Aunt May to Galactus).

The important things to have in a game system are (IMO):
[*]Have clear examples of what you can do with different degrees of success (e.g. the 3.5E Climb skill list of DCs).
[*]Stay away from having obligatory auto-failure results on skill checks (e.g.3E's "no auto-failure on 1" and "take 10" rules are a good start).

I think it's ironic when I see people complaining about the 3E D&D skill system from a "gamist" point of view, when I think it should be getting praise for all the things it did right from a "simulationist" point of view.

3e certainly doesn't have the worst system ever, but it doesn't scale well, a d20 roll often leads to ludicrous randomness (a difference of 19' on a long jump when the world record isn't even 30'), and it reduces everything to a single check. I'll be honest, it deserved praise 13 years ago, being relatively simple and yet producing sensible results out of the box. It is now time to do better.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually, I think durations do work on a table like you are describing, so it goes from one segment, to one turn, to one minute, to one hour, and so forth (I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass). This is all off memory though, it has been a while since I've played.

Fair enough. I'd be kind of surprised if M&M d20 actually did invent that idea, since almost everything else in that game is painfully derivative.

[Username17]

Yeah, in Champions, things opperated on an expanding timescale. Segment, Turn, Minute, 5 Minutes, Hour, 5 Hours, Day, 5 Days... and so on. It went out to stupid things like centuries and millennia. Similarly, Champions had range and vision penalties that were based on exponents, so with a quite handlable number of points you could get telescopic vision that let you read a newspaper on Pluto or microscopic vision that let you see quarks fusing.

This was all in a game that I was making characters for to pass the time after I had been made homeless by the 1989 earthquake, so it far predates Mutants and Masterminds. It somewhat predates 2nd edition AD&D, as these innovations were actually added somewhere in the development cycle of Champions 3rd edition (1984-1989).

-Username17

[hogarth]

3e certainly doesn't have the worst system ever, but it doesn't scale well, a d20 roll often leads to ludicrous randomness (a difference of 19' on a long jump when the world record isn't even 30'), and it reduces everything to a single check.

I'm not going to defend the "realness" of the numbers in the Jump skill; whether you think D&D characters should be able to bounce around like Tigger or not is a matter of taste. The important part is that players know which tasks are trivially easy, which tasks are safe if you're not under pressure, and which tasks are all but impossible.

This was all in a game that I was making characters for to pass the time after I had been made homeless by the 1989 earthquake, so it far predates Mutants and Masterminds. It somewhat predates 2nd edition AD&D, as these innovations were actually added somewhere in the development cycle of Champions 3rd edition (1984-1989).

Champions had some stuff that scaled up exponentially, but DC Heroes (1985) really picked up the ball and ran with the idea with the idea of measuring just about everything that way -- weight, distance, time, volume, money, information, etc.

[Drolyt]

3e certainly doesn't have the worst system ever, but it doesn't scale well, a d20 roll often leads to ludicrous randomness (a difference of 19' on a long jump when the world record isn't even 30'), and it reduces everything to a single check.

I'm not going to defend the "realness" of the numbers in the Jump skill; whether you think D&D characters should be able to bounce around like Tigger or not is a matter of taste. The important part is that players know which tasks are trivially easy, which tasks are safe if you're not under pressure, and which tasks are all but impossible.

I don't think you understand my problem. With a +10 bonus to jump checks you oscillate between a long jump of 11' and one of 30'. Which is weird. Actually, it is weirder if you have no bonus. You have a 5% chance of jumping 20', which is pretty damn good, and a 5% chance of jumping one fucking foot, which is nuts.

[Ice9]

D&D skills only work (to the extent they work) when they're being compared to a difficulty, not using the raw number for anything. So looking at a specific leap (let's say 10'), then an average person has a 55% chance to make it - which sounds better, because you can assume they failed in a non-stupid way if that happens.

Even then, it's still a lot of variability, because someone with no skill (+0) will sometimes roll higher than someone with amazing skill, natural talent, and assistance (+18).

Also Jump in particular sucks because it should scale more than linearly.

[Koumei]

The Debate rules in Exalted... okay, it drove towards something workable there, before flipping the car onto its roof at the last minute.

But there's definitely stuff to salvage there.

Basically, you roll "Join Debate" (see: Initiative), which is your "Notice that you're in a conflict" check, not your "move arms and legs fast" check. You can use Socailise to sneak up in conversation and get a surprise round, just like you can use Stealth to sneak up and gank someone.

Then you can make Investigate, Performance or Presence attacks - the main difference being "Get info out of them", "impress/convince everyone in the area" and "impose my will on this one dude". They can resist it with their Dodge or Parry Mental defence (refusing to engage you or making a counterpoint respectively).

So far, it's pretty basic - but so is combat: you make punch, kick or grapple attempts or use weapons, and they parry or dodge. Using Charms makes either one more special.

If you succeed, then one of several things happens:
[*]They spend a Willpower to resist it. The failure point of the system is that, putting Charms aside for now, if they use Willpower to resist it twice in a scene, they "wise up to you" or "lose patience" and the debate is automatically over with no winner. If Stunting didn't award Willpower and you could just keep going until they are all out or they literally break away from conversation and run (making it clear to all viewers who the loser is), that'd be better. I can't remember, but they might have to Channel a Virtue to do this (meaning it's limited over the course of a story, and they might gain Limit and potentially flip out into a rage).
[*]You start to erode one of their Intimacies or create a new one (ie they care more or less about a certain thing you choose).
[*]They do as you say for a bit.

That framework could be used and built upon to make a decent (albeit fairly simple) system. Not used as-is, of course.

[Aryxbez]

The more hits you get, the better you do. The effects one can expect out of getting a number of Hits are proportionately more awesome as the number of hits increases:

Though with tables like that, I've always felt the example or description behind each "category" needs more said examples and be explained more in depth. So to give a better idea of what each category was conveying from the designers. I've felt this notion with 3.5 PHB pg64 Table 4-3 "Difficulty Class Examples" not providing enough examples and DC variations. Well as with AFMBE's "Base Modifier Table" pg 94, for lack of description on names for modifiers beyond Challenging, like what the hell does"Very Difficult" and "Heroic" mean? Lastly, the Table provided by Frank, I'd say is a bit too vague from 2-6, or at least 3+ (unless gets explained in After Sundown better that haven't seen yet?).

[ishy]

D&D 3.5 had single checks with huge variability [..] So anyone have some examples of non-combat minigames that don't suck?

Note that having huge variability in your skill system is not a flaw if your game intentionally has huge variability in PC and NPC power levels (e.g. from Aunt May to Galactus).

The important things to have in a game system are (IMO):
[*]Have clear examples of what you can do with different degrees of success (e.g. the 3.5E Climb skill list of DCs).
[*]Stay away from having obligatory auto-failure results on skill checks (e.g.3E's "no auto-failure on 1" and "take 10" rules are a good start).

I think it's ironic when I see people complaining about the 3E D&D skill system from a "gamist" point of view, when I think it should be getting praise for all the things it did right from a "simulationist" point of view.

No auto failure is really good, but honestly I think take 10 is awful. Going from a 100% success chance to (possibly) a 55% chance is pretty harsh.
Whenever I see a climbing situation for example, everyone uses take 10 or someone is failing a lot. Often people refuse to climb while in combat because they have a good chance of falling while out of combat they just handwave it away.

[hogarth]

No auto failure is really good, but honestly I think take 10 is awful. Going from a 100% success chance to (possibly) a 55% chance is pretty harsh.
Whenever I see a climbing situation for example, everyone uses take 10 or someone is failing a lot. Often people refuse to climb while in combat because they have a good chance of falling while out of combat they just handwave it away.

I guess it's a matter of taste. I think hand-waving away an out-of-combat task of average difficulty is a good thing, not a bad thing. If our party is climbing a mountain (say), I certainly want to skip ahead to the interesting bits (e.g. potential avalanche, icy crevasse, yeti attack, etc.).

[Drolyt]

No auto failure is really good, but honestly I think take 10 is awful. Going from a 100% success chance to (possibly) a 55% chance is pretty harsh.
Whenever I see a climbing situation for example, everyone uses take 10 or someone is failing a lot. Often people refuse to climb while in combat because they have a good chance of falling while out of combat they just handwave it away.

I guess it's a matter of taste. I think hand-waving away an out-of-combat task of average difficulty is a good thing, not a bad thing. If our party is climbing a mountain (say), I certainly want to skip ahead to the interesting bits (e.g. potential avalanche, icy crevasse, yeti attack, etc.).

That's fine, but then when you face a task you can't beat on average and have to roll a d20 you end up with extreme variability on tasks that logically shouldn't vary that much. Take 10 is a partial solution, but it isn't complete.

[hogarth]

That's fine, but then when you face a task you can't beat on average and have to roll a d20 you end up with extreme variability on tasks that logically shouldn't vary that much.

It's perfectly logical to have a jump from "let's fast-forward through this routine-difficulty task" to "let's start paying attention to this more-than-routine-difficulty task" from a story point of view, IMO. You have to draw a line somewhere that says "I care about tasks that are THIS interesting" (either because they're sufficiently difficult or because they're happening while some other interesting activity is going on), so it makes sense to draw it at a medium difficulty level instead of an almost-but-not-quite-completely-trivial difficulty level.

[Drolyt]

That's fine, but then when you face a task you can't beat on average and have to roll a d20 you end up with extreme variability on tasks that logically shouldn't vary that much.

It's perfectly logical to have a jump from "let's fast-forward through this routine-difficulty task" to "let's start paying attention to this more-than-routine-difficulty task" from a story point of view, IMO. You have to draw a line somewhere that says "I care about tasks that are THIS interesting" (either because they're sufficiently difficult or because they're happening while some other interesting activity is going on), so it makes sense to draw it at a medium difficulty level instead of an almost-but-not-quite-completely-trivial difficulty level.

I don't disagree with you? Let me put it another way: rolling a single d20 is simply limited in how it can model situations. That was my only point, I'm not siding with the guy who dislikes take 10. It is a little clunky but I think it is a solid mechanic.

[ishy]

It's perfectly logical to have a jump from "let's fast-forward through this routine-difficulty task" to "let's start paying attention to this more-than-routine-difficulty task" from a story point of view, IMO. You have to draw a line somewhere that says "I care about tasks that are THIS interesting" (either because they're sufficiently difficult or because they're happening while some other interesting activity is going on), so it makes sense to draw it at a medium difficulty level instead of an almost-but-not-quite-completely-trivial difficulty level.

But take 10 means you sometimes suddenly care about the routine-difficulty task, not just a more-than-routine-difficulty task.

Say we have a climbing and suddenly harpies attack scenario.
Take 10 means that suddenly the cleric has a chance of failing the easy climb check he was making for an hour when the fighter gets attacked.

While a system that just doesn't care at all about the regular climb check and only calls for one when harpies attack you (or a landslide happens or whatever) seems like a much better solution to me.

[tussock]

The real problem that they make you roll checks way too often the set the failure chance way too high when you're not taking-10. Plus, take-20 and infinite repetition are ass: if you can eventually do something regardless, just give me a mechanic for how long it takes (which is maybe not "everything takes two minutes" hiding behind a massive wall of other rules).

Hobgoblins being the foolish consistency of small minds and all that.

[hogarth]

Say we have a climbing and suddenly harpies attack scenario.
Take 10 means that suddenly the cleric has a chance of failing the easy climb check he was making for an hour when the fighter gets attacked.

Right. And now it's interesting because it's happening in the middle of a fight scene, and fight scenes are interesting. (If you don't think fight scenes are interesting, then D&D is probably not the game for you.)

[Omegonthesane]

Say we have a climbing and suddenly harpies attack scenario.
Take 10 means that suddenly the cleric has a chance of failing the easy climb check he was making for an hour when the fighter gets attacked.

Right. And now it's interesting because it's happening in the middle of a fight scene, and fight scenes are interesting. (If you don't think fight scenes are interesting, then D&D is probably not the game for you.)

Depends on the failure state - if failing to meet the Climb DC per round means "You were too distracted by exciting things to make much headway, but maintain your footing", then it's acceptable for distractions to make you roll things.

[John Magnum]

Plus, take-20 and infinite repetition are ass: if you can eventually do something regardless, just give me a mechanic for how long it takes (which is maybe not "everything takes two minutes" hiding behind a massive wall of other rules).

Wait, what? You claim to want a mechanic for how long it takes, but you don't want the take-20 rule? What exactly do you think the take-20 rule is? I don't understand how it differs from what you claim to want.

[Drolyt]

Plus, take-20 and infinite repetition are ass: if you can eventually do something regardless, just give me a mechanic for how long it takes (which is maybe not "everything takes two minutes" hiding behind a massive wall of other rules).

Wait, what? You claim to want a mechanic for how long it takes, but you don't want the take-20 rule? What exactly do you think the take-20 rule is? I don't understand how it differs from what you claim to want.

It is clunky. First you figure out how long one check is (usually six seconds whether that makes sense or not) then you multiply that by 20. Besides that it is weird. The idea is that you try over and over again until you roll a 20. Which sort of makes sense for things like trying to jump high enough to grab something but for some things, like the search skill, it doesn't make much sense. I could get behind a rule for search that said "if your roll is x high it takes y time to find something with difficulty z and you only get one roll". Or even just gave you a flat time with no roll.

[tussock]

Just my general complaint that they went a bit far here and there with making everything run off the same d20+mods vs DC "check for failure" system (like the abominable turn undead table).

Another example; to use craft skill is to roll a huge bunch of d20's vs a ... no, you take ten and ... oh, you know what, it's actually d20+mods in gp per week, because that's all we care about anyway. Crafting shouldn't be a list of DCs that we never use, it should just be a list of times that we do use. If you want masterwork items to be hard for PCs (for whatever reason, fuck if I know), make them super-slow, and let high-skill people have a DC 20 check to reduce the time or something.

I mean, either you want a failure chance on searching for traps, or you don't. If you do, no rerolls can ever make sense. If you don't, stop writing rules that say you can fail if you forget to use the rules on some other page to ignore the rules for failing.


<sigh> Everything about traps in 3e is ass. They could've been cool resources for monsters and players setting up hard-points in the dungeon. With skills, rather than spells, for a change. Instead we get digging a pit taking years of labour and thousands of gp.

[silva]

Apocalypse World.

Any roll is a mini-game.