There's a RPG system I really like that uses a unique mechanic that makes critical success/fail results kind of hard.

I came up with a possible critical system for it that I'd like people here to look over for possible flaws.

Basically the system uses a dice pool like mechanic and roll over. You take a number of d6s equal to your skill plus you stat after any mods and roll, but you generally keep only the best three dice and try to equal or beat the difficulty level. You can have up to a +2 mod on your dice roll, so you will often keep your best 3 dice +1 or 2.

A typical difficulty level for a typical task is 7, an average task.  A level 11 task is hard, a level 17 is heroic and 19 is considered 'impossible" but can be done with a 3d+2 roll that goes very well.

A person can get by with a skill as low as 2d, as long as he never faces a real challenge. A day to day driver might have like 2d+1 or 2d+2 as a drive skill and as long as he doesn't face a real challenge he can drive day to day.

4d+0 is considered the minimum to be competent or professional. A 6d+0 skill is considered equivelant to a college PhD in a field. Most people can;t get a total roll higher than 8d+2 unless they really specialize and put a lot of effort into it.

I wanted a critical that was based on your total skill level as the better a person is the more he should critical succeed and the less he should critical fail. Likewise someone with low skill should have the opposite.

So I ruled out a clockwork critical system.

Anyway, I ended up with this: When rolling, add 3 distinctive dice to your pool. They can be a different color or size, or both. If you succeed at your roll, look at the 3 different dice,which don;t count as part of your roll. If the total is equal to or less than your total number of dice rolled, including any you dropped to get a modifier, you make a critical hit.

A person rolling 3d is going to have about a .5% chance of a critical success. A person rolling 6d is going to have about a 10% chance of a critical success.

A crit fail is when you roll at least 6 less than you needed, making it easier to crit fail extremely hard tasks, or if you fail and half or more your total dice rolls are ones.

Technically I know a guy rolling 1d would have a 1/6 change of crit failing with a 1and a guy rolling 2d would have a 1/3 chance of getting haldf his dice ones, but people will rarely if ever roll a single die and if they do they're hopeless at the task and unlikely to succeed in any event, plus a guy rolling 2d has a better chance of success and less of failing in the first place.

That system sounds reasonable - higher skill levels and beneficial circumstances will mean a higher chance of a critical success. The only question I have is on the disconnect between number rolled and the presence or otherwise of a crit. Does margin of success matter in this system?

It sounds like EABA to me? I've been considering picking it up - any good?

EABA is very good; consistent, logical and easy to figure out and work with. The supplements are mostly very good, too (Stuff! is highly recommended, as is Code:Black, NeoTerra and Dark Millennium, among others). EABA v2 is under construction and supposedly almost ready.

Quote from: dbm;590038That system sounds reasonable - higher skill levels and beneficial circumstances will mean a higher chance of a critical success. The only question I have is on the disconnect between number rolled and the presence or otherwise of a crit. Does margin of success matter in this system?

It sounds like EABA to me? I've been considering picking it up - any good?

Yes, it is EABA. As to margin of success it matters in some cases like contested rolls. In one EABA game you could get levels of critical failure but not success by failing a roll on a certain skill by larger and larger amounts. So one skill in an EABA game had a crit fail system but no crit success.

As to the number rolled affecting a critical success given it's a roll over system that was problematic.  I mean, if you have like 4 dice and are rolling vs a level 18 check, almost impossible to make, making a crit on 18 would make every success at that level a critical one.

And on the record, EABA is a great system.

Quote from: Sandepande;590113EABA is very good; consistent, logical and easy to figure out and work with. The supplements are mostly very good, too (Stuff! is highly recommended, as is Code:Black, NeoTerra and Dark Millennium, among others). EABA v2 is under construction and supposedly almost ready.

Greg Porter has the core system of EABA 2 almost ready, but he will not release it until he has a couple world books ready to release for it. He's working on a superhero setting and a hard SF setting and when those are ready to go out the door he'll release EABA 2 and then the new world books.

Another note on the critical idea is that in EABA you can opt to drop a die to get a +2 mod on a roll. Say your expert shot had a total of 6d+0 and was getting ready to take a shot. He could drop one die and roll 5d+2, which you almost always do since it gives a higher average than the best 3 of 6d.

So, an issue arose in that "What's the point of raising a a skill from 5d+2 to 6d+0 if you're going to be rolling 5d+2 anyway?" A fair question that till now had no answer.

Under the critical system, if you drop a die for a +2, you still count that die when checking to see if you got a critical. So the guy who had 6d and dropped one to get a +2 mod still has a  small but noticeable advantage over the guy who had 5d+2. He has a slightly greater chance of critical success.

Quote from: red lantern;589981I wanted a critical that was based on your total skill level as the better a person is the more he should critical succeed and the less he should critical fail. Likewise someone with low skill should have the opposite.

I'd disagree with this. The thing about having a high skill level is that you can succeed regularly at tasks that someone with a lower skill level would need a critical to achieve. My preference is for critical rolls to be independent of skill levels but for success or failure to be relative to what you're trying to achieve.

Of course in my system you have to declare an open ended roll before there is ever a chance of a critical success or failure, so that makes a difference too.

However the upshot is that someone who rolls their open ended critical at a lower skill level (say base ten) might roll a 25 on a skill check (very difficult). Someone with base 20 would roll that routinely, but if they decide to aim for something past 30 difficulty (nearly impossible), they've succeeded at an incredible task.

It would be the difference between leaping onto a semi-fast moving train and landing on a 120km/h speed train with a motorbike for example. A critical failure in both cases is likely to be messy, the difference would be in how spectacular the mess gets.

The chances of a critical success or failure are thus the same at both levels, but the effects of a critical success or failure are substantially different. High skill levels are their own reward.

Quote from: red lantern;590151And on the record, EABA is a great system.

The question I have is where does it fit on the Simulation <-> Cinematic spectrum? I already had GURPS for the realistic end, and I'm looking for something which handles cinematic better by default.

The answer is "it depends".

EABA has a lot of optional and advanced rules. If you want to run it as cinematic, leave out some of the advanced and optional rules, use the default recovery times which are more cinematic that realistic and use the turn scale and modifier as a cinematic device.

Cheers, I'll probably check it out when V2 is available.