D100 RPG’s are a favourite of mine, but early iterations and some derivatives have suffered from mechanical irrationalities that put me off them.
One in particular that always annoyed me is the linear chance of a critical success or failure regardless of character skill or task difficulty. This was carried over to early Scandinavian games in a d20 form being a 5% incremental simplification of these older D100 mechanics, that eventually became Dragonbane.
One of the issues with this simplification is a loss of nuance. With only 20 values rolled on a linear die, the many incremental values of d100 are lost.
I like Dragonbane. It is light and fun, almost the perfect Fantasy RPG, especially for casual players or people wanting to escape the “norm”, but for extended play these little things will annoy me, so I will need to apply some changes or the cracks will start to show.
In Dragonbane as written, a 1 on a d20 is always a Dragon (a good crit), a 20 is always a Demon (a bad crit). It makes the same assumption as its early BRP progenitor, a flat chance of extreme results regardless of character skill.
So it leads to these illogical outcomes;
A low skill character has the same chance of pulling off a considerably better result than a high level character?
A low skill character only has the same chance of mightily stuffing up as a near master?
A theoretical skill 1 test could only succeed as a crit? This one is irrelevant in reality, but still.
These have admittedly been looked at differently in newer games with various fixes, many of which can be ported to older games seamlessly.
Fixes.
Basic Test.
If 2d10 are rolled instead of 1d20. Reading a single “0” as 10, this gives us a range of 2-19 with an average of 11 (the average of multiple d20 and flat 3d6 rolls is 10.5, so same-same). Double “0’s” are counted as a “0-0” or a flat fail and of course a 1 is impossible to roll.
Skills are still capped at 18, although the odd 19 is allowed for “mythical masters”. The fail chance of a basic 18 skill test is now 3%, not 10% and with 3 as the usual minimum, there is a 3% chance of passing at that very low level, even a 1% chance of a miraculous crit.
This average sits perfectly well with the spread of skills, most starting characters having 8-12 skills in the 10-14 range, the rest of their skills land in the 3-7 range and their characteristics average about 12 (4d6 drop 1) with a range of 3-18.
Now a curve is introduced, there is less whiff, one of the biggest turn-offs for many with linear mechanic games and the mark of a less experienced character is a tighter skill focus.
Players can even chance a less than optimal character build as any value over 11 is stronger, but this early advantage, as will be seen below, will not grow as quickly.
In other words, the average test roll falls below the average characters characteristic or proficient skill value.
A shame to waste those cool d20’s or better to move on to smarter things (and maybe repurpose them)?
Critical Rolls.
Doubles are now critical effects, good ones if they pass, or bad ones if they fail the test, an “0-0” is always a flat fail or fumble (or a 20, it matters little). This is the same chance as the Dragon/Demon spread at 10% except that these are now aligned to the skill of the tester*.
I have not done the math, but instinct tells me that Boons and Banes will drastically altered this, which is not a bad thing. Why not have an exponentially greater chance of a good critical with a Boon or bad one with a Bane.
Good skills are more reliable, poor ones less so, allowing for more “mirth”.
Skill 14 for example, a common starting value for a primary skill of a proficient character, go from 70% base to 79% and can score a critical pass on double 1’s through 7’s, critical fails on double 8’s through 0’s, so a 7/3 spread over a possible 100 results.
If it is wanted or warranted, a small table of crit effects by value can give some nuance to the outcome of rolls with high passes and low fails being more effective. A “0-0” fail would be a simple fumble or flat fail, embarrassing to a master, but otherwise quite harmless, a “2-2” fail for a low level skill test might be naively catastrophic, a real “what…..?” moment as things fall apart, where as a “9-9” critical pass, only possible to an already recognised character rolling a 1%-er would be a legendary success like taking the head of a Troll off in one blow, something that players will talk about for years to come.
A skill of 14 now means that most can function perfectly well in their role only failing 22% of the time and critically failing 3%. Using a d20 means that they fail 30% of the time with a fixed critical fail range of 5%. If a character reaches 16 or 17, they are now exceptional, 18 is a grand master, a theoretical 19-if allowed, denotes a legend of their time (but still not infallible).
Boons and Banes.
This of course changes the Boon/Bane process and slightly softens it’s overall spread.
A Boon is applied by adding a third (or more) dice, then taking the best combination of two (players choice).
A Bane is applied by adding a third (or more) dice, taking the worst possible combination (which may be a critical fail, fail or a lower/non critical opposed pass roll etc).
As shown below, the actual Boon/Bane odds hardly shift, but the range does soften slightly*.
Advancement.
With a curve introduced to the advancement roll, there is a speeding up of improvement at low levels and a slowing down at higher levels. Characters can “round out” poor skills they take an interest in easily enough, usually by comically failing, a very Dragonbane vibe, but at very high skill levels they become incrementally harder to improve and extremely high skill levels become vanishingly rare. A venerable character in their “Master” phase would have 1-2 skill 18 skills, but probably time to retire.
The chance of improving skill 14 to 15 with the 2d10 curve is 21% as opposed to 30% with a d20.
Even numbered skills become mini milestones as they switch a critical roll from bad to good, a real feeling of breaking through to a new level of expertise which again aligns with the char-gen system (specialist proficiencies are always even starting values).
In the game as written more seasoned characters get more skills, not higher levels in their existing proficiencies, which leans directly into this thinking. They are even hinting that once a solid proficiency is reached, a character will more naturally “round out” their skill set rather than hyper-focus in on a few skills.
Inquisitive and adventurous types become the Rogue-like jack-of-all-trades with many stories to tell as they try out various things, the more conservative specialists will slowly improve their best skills, at the expense of “lesser” talents.
I like this improved depth but slowing of growth at higher levels, it feels like a more significant achievement balanced with a generally stronger showing of medium high skills. Faster improvement of low level skills gives an incentive to try possibly unwise, but play enlivening tests, which now almost act like flaws do in other RPG’s.
Opposed rolls.
Using “the lowest roll wins” for opposed tasks means the lower skilled character actually has the same chance of succeeding when they roll these lower winning values, ignoring the larger range the higher skilled character has. Yes, their chance of rolling a success is lower, but their chance of succeeding when they do is the same.
They may only have a skill of 3, but any time that is rolled it has a better than decent chance of beating the vastly more skilled level 16 character who succeed by hitting most of their range, but less effectively. This effectively means the higher skilled character is sweating on the lower skilled one failing their role, not the other way around.
It is an odd dynamic that they have fewer chances, but they are the good ones!?
Logic would dictate that the only time that lower skilled character should win, is when the higher skilled character fails or very rarely they both pass, but the lower skilled character still wins with a higher roll.
The highest passing opposed roll should be the winner, because it shows an exercising of greater mastery.
This all makes more sense!
So, there is a curve introduced, opposed and critical rolls are now skill aligned, but the overall chance of an exceptional or critical result and the Boon/Bane effect is largely unchanged. The main thing is, the game will be the same for all.
Will it break the game?
I have crunched the numbers and yes, if two identical sessions were compared there would likely be a mathematical difference in outcomes to them, the new mechanics making starting characters feel slightly better at what they do well and weaker at the things less familiar to them and that will also be highlighted in their growth path, but I am going to predict that the changes will align better with the Dragonbane “mirth and mayhem” vibe.
*Looking at the spread of 2d10 compared to the D20 version is revealing.
At skill 11 the spread is balanced at 29 with a Bane/55 standard/78 with a Boon, as compared to 30/55/80, but the spread in either direction changes considerably. At skill 8 it is 11/28/53 vs 16/40/64, so clearly tougher for a low skill test, but at skill 14 it switches to 57/79/93 vs 49/70/91, a clear advantage to a higher skill character.
This has to be weighed against the improvement roll and the skill aligned critical chance spread.
Competent characters are more reliable with their specialist skills, but their growth is slower, weaker skills tested are less reliable, but they will develop faster.
There is the option of reading 0’s as 0’s, but the odds lean heavily into the character.