Given all the trolling "how do I make ____ not suck" threads at the moment, I feel like right

now is JUST the time to try to talk about a dice system I'd like to try. I figured "how much worse could it get?" My system tries to emulate the feel of how real actions succeed, both in statistics and in areas of expertise. Anyway, the basics: -At its core, it's a 2d6 system. One die is negative, one positive. You combine them, and this is your roll. This gives a 0 average, with a -5 min and +5 max -When players level up, they can spend experience in stats or skills. When you spend on a stat, you get an extra positive d6 to roll, when you spend on a skill, you get a higher die to roll instead of your initial d6. When you roll, you take the highest result of your positive dice, and combine with the -d6. -When you take several related skills, you have several dice for those skills, and if you make a check that relates ALL of those skills, you can roll all of them at once, giving you several chances to roll as high as you can (more related skills, more chances of success). -Skills are broken up as such: Stats (least specific) > Skill Groups > Skills > Abilities > Advanced Abilities (very niche abilities) -Skills get higher dice for higher levels of specificity, as these skills are less universallyusable. Your knowledge of a specific local cult will be useful in less situations than your knowledge of religion in general, but for the same amount of time spent studying, you will have a greater depth of knowledge of the more specific subject. (Tradeoff between specificity and usability) d6 added to roll (stats) > d8 added > d10 > d12 > d20 (advanced abilities) Next I talk about how I balanced against players jumping straight up to the highest-level abilities. This system was somewhat unbalanced; it favored players taking a bunch of abilities or advanced abilities without taking the preceding, more general trainings. I wanted to allow players to do this, as anyone can attempt to learn anything at any time, while their success generally depends on their aptitude for that sort of skill. To fix this in a way that emulates real life, we implemented a critical failure system. If a player takes Agility > Swift Weapon Training > Dagger Specialization > Dagger Throwing, then they are generally successful in their attempts to throw a dagger. They

will roll a d6 for agility, a d8 for swift weapons, a d10 for dagger training, and a d12 for dagger throwing, with no risk of critical failure. For each preceding level of training that a player DOES NOT take, they open themselves up to a +2 increase to their critical-failure-margin. As in, a player who takes Agility > Swift Weapon Training > Dagger Throwing, they will critically fail at the throw if the d12 for dagger throwing rolls a 1 or a 2. If they only take Agility, they will critically fail on anything 4 or below. If they do not take anything BUT Dagger Throwing, they will critically fail on anything 6 or below, not to mention the negative d6 that persists in all of these rolls.

Next I will cover some examples of how rolls work. So, from the previous post, let's take the example of the player with: Agility > Swift Weapon Training > Dagger Specialization > Dagger Throwing. They are attempting to hit a target with their dagger. They will roll: Negative-1d6 Positive- 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12. They rolled -6 on the negative 1d6 1 on their +1d6, 6 on d8, 4 on d10, and 11 on d12. They take the -6 and add to the +11. Their effective roll is a 5. The added skills show themselves as a safeguard against that 1d6, as their roll would have been negative given the +d6, d8, and d10 without the d12 to save it. Now let's take the player with ONLY Dagger Throwing training. They are attempting to hit the same target. They will roll: Negative- 1d6 Positive- 1d12 They rolled a -2 on the negative 1d6, and a 10 on their d12. Their effective roll is a +8. This is an example of how even someone not trained in anything else, when trained in one skill can still succeed at that skill. But let's try that again, throwing a second dagger.

They rolled a -2 again on their negative 1d6, and a 6 on their d12. They would have, given training in the preceding skills made this throw with a +4, but given their unfamiliarity with daggers, swift weapons in general, and even agile tasks, they flub everything BUT their dagger throwing technique, and critically fail. Next we talk about opposed checks. Opposed checks replace the negative d6 with the opposing player's roll. Let's say one player is lying to another about the price of some artifact. The liar is trained in Charisma > Speech Skills > Barter > Price Bluff (or something, I haven't even BEGUN to make the skill list, and it would be the lion's share of the system) The buyer is trained in Intelligence > Knowledge:Trade >Knowledge:Artifacts (I would like to point out that the parts of a roll from each level are not necessarily related. Like knowledge: artifacts is not a subset of knowledge: trade. They are just related for this roll) The liar rolls: 3, 7, 1, 6. The buyer rolls: 1, 2, 2. The liar who is considered to be making the check, takes the 7. The buyer, opposing the check, takes the 2 as a -2. Combine the roll and the opposing roll and the outcome of the situation is a +5 in favor of the liar. This system really makes roleplaying easy, as you can get specific when you interpret the rolls: The liar was okay with his general air of charisma, was an exceptional speaker, bad at the bartering leading up to the fairly good job of bluffing the price. It was his exceptionally eloquent speaking that convinced the buyer, who was unable to intelligently assess the situation, knew little of trade at this moment, and knew even less about the artifact. I've yet to really "fix" combat, as far as what each player rolls, but I've come up with an "advantage" system. I've playtested with pretty much a sliding scale, centered at 0 and moves 5 (arbitrary number, I'm trying to find an attribute of each player to determine how many "advantage" points they have) points in each direction. -One direction is one player, the other direction the other player.

-Each player has an attacking stage while the other defends in a given round. -One player (primary) attacks while the other (secondary) defends. Then the secondary player counterattacks, and the primary player defends. -When one player beats the other player's roll by a certain amount, then they "press their advantage". They move the slider against their opponent by the number they beat that player by. They are literally pressing their advantage, pushing their opponent on the defensive, attempting to get a hit in. When they reach the end of their opponent's sliding scale, they have essentially pushed their opponent to the point where they can no longer defend against damage. -I don't know how I'm going to do damage, but weapons will have at least two attributes: how well they can be used offensively- essentially will factor into how much you roll to fight for your advantage, and how much damage they do when they DO hit the opponent. Something like a dagger will not be very useful in fighting for advantage, but can get in between armor plating, and so can do massive damage if given the chance, while a shield can be used very effectively to bash an opponent off guard and get the advantage, but can do almost nothing to damage an armored opponent.