PDA

View Full Version : Non d20 conflict resolution system.



Fri
2016-01-10, 03:25 PM
Hey guys and gals.

Can you give me summaries of conflict resolution mechanics from as many rpgs as you can remember other than d20's "roll a dice, add bonus/penalties, compare it to opponent's rolls/static difficulty?"

Maybe "conflict resolution" is not the right phrase, since I'm not just thinking about physical, mental, or social combat. Also things like crafting, mapping, whatever. I'm actually more interested in those non conflict stuffs, but most of the time it's really conflict resolution against static difficulty. If there are some systems with more interesting things, feel free to tell me.

Be as concise or lengthy as you want.

Example (talking out of my mind about things I can't really remember well):

In Exalted, conflict resolution is done by rolling dice pool. You roll seven or whatever d10, and the more of that dice that's higher than 7, the more successful you are. You then compare it to static difficulty or opposing roll.

In LotW, conflict resolution is also done by dice pool, but it's using pairs. You roll d10s, note how many same face you have. The more similar number the better it is. You can then assign some for major action, and some for minor actions (with ways to get more actions). The better your character is, the more dice you roll. So for example, you got 444662, you assign the three 4s as thirty-four to punch your opponent as major action, and the two 6s as twenty-six to try to assess his combat style as minor action. You then compare this to static difficulty or opposing roll.

In FATE, you roll some fudge dice, special dice that only have either -1, 0, or 1. You then add the result with your skill, and compare it to static difficulty or opposing roll.

Of course, if you think there's some more important things on top of the dice rolls, feel free to mention it as well. For example, you might think that aspects is integral part of dice roll in FATE, so you can mention a summary of how it works. Things like that.

Thanks in advance!

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-10, 04:12 PM
Let me see...

Qin: the Warring States uses a paired dice mechanic. You roll two d10s of different colours and subtract the lower from the higher, before adding your stat and skill bonus to see if you beat the difficulty.

Shadowrun 3rd edition resolves things via dicepool. You roll a number of d6s equal to the most relevant skill or Attribute you have, and compare each to the difficulty, with every die beyond the difficulty improving your success. Dice explode to reach difficulties higher than 6.

In Legend of the Five Rings you roll a number of d10s equal to your stat plus your skill, select a number equal to your stat, add together the selected dice, and then compare them to the target number.

Steampunkette
2016-01-10, 04:47 PM
White Wolf uses a dice pool of d10s.

Anything over a 6 counts as a success.

10s count as a critical success: 2 successes

1s count as a botch: Not only does that dice fail, it takes away 1 success.

Each task, based on it's difficulty, requires a specific number of successes to complete. Simple tasks require 1 success. The more difficult tasks take 7 or more.

You determine your dice pool by choosing a stat and a skill or ability, add them together and that's how many dice you use.

For example, let's say you're following another car and you want to avoid detection. Add your Driving Skill plus your Awareness Stat. Then roll.

Slipperychicken
2016-01-10, 05:13 PM
Some games use card decks, and there's a horror game that uses a jenga tower.

This one wild west game, I think it's called Aces and Eights, uses something called a shot clock to determine hit locations.

Grinner
2016-01-10, 05:52 PM
Wushu: Say some stuff, and roll a pool of dice equivalent to the number of things you said. Each resulting value less than or equal to the "Trait" being used in the stuff you say is considered a success. For unopposed actions, you need only one success. For opposed actions, you need more successes than your opponent.


...and there's a horror game that uses a jenga tower.

Dread: When your character does something, pull a block from beneath the topmost complete layer and place it on the top. If the tower doesn't fall over, your character succeeds. If the tower does fall over, your character dies.

Alternatively, you may voluntarily topple the tower, giving a total success at the cost of dying.

solidork
2016-01-10, 06:03 PM
Apocalypse World engine games roll 2d6 + Stat. Generally speaking, 10+ is "Yes", 7-9 is "Yes, but..." and 6 and below is "No, and..."

CharonsHelper
2016-01-10, 06:19 PM
There are systems where the combatants roll opposed rolls and one of them is hit each turn rather than going against passive defenses. (Makes sense to me for melee especially.)

Yuki Akuma
2016-01-10, 06:24 PM
Nobilis/Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: Spend an amount of Will equal to 0, 1, 2, 4 or 8 (out of a maximum of 8) and add it to your skill rating, then compare to the success chart to see what effect your action has. In Opposed rolls, highest score wins - although modified by situational bonuses (Edge) as well as innate defenses (Cool). After finishing an action you spent at least 1 Will on, you get 1 Will back, so your reserves of Will dwindle during the day. Sleeping gets them all back.

Grinner
2016-01-10, 06:48 PM
Nobilis/Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: Spend an amount of Will equal to 0, 1, 2, 4 or 8 (out of a maximum of 8) and add it to your skill rating, then compare to the success chart to see what effect your action has. In Opposed rolls, highest score wins - although modified by situational bonuses (Edge) as well as innate defenses (Cool). After finishing an action you spent at least 1 Will on, you get 1 Will back, so your reserves of Will dwindle during the day. Sleeping gets them all back.

Alternatively, you may perform miraculous actions if you are capable of performing Aspect miracles. Miracles of Aspect 0 through Aspect 2 give a static bonus to your skill rating and ignore expenditures of Will. At At Aspect 3, you can perform actions with flawless timing. Aspect 4 and above, you stop operating on a human scale entirely.

SimonMoon6
2016-01-11, 11:15 AM
The DC Heroes RPG by Mayfair has the following system:

Roll 2d10. Add the results. If you rolled doubles (other than double 1's which is an automatic failure), then you roll the dice again and add them to the previous roll (and this can continue forever with enough doubles).

Then, take the values you are using (an "attack" value and an "effect value", like using DEX to hit and STR for damage, but could be other things) and compare with the values that you're competing against (which could be things like DEX for dodging and BODY for taking damage). Cross-reference the results on a pair of tables. The first table tells you if you succeeded ("hit") at all. It tells you what numbers you need in order to hit, which would be an 11 or higher for combatants who have equal DEX. It also gives you some idea how well you did (if you rolled well enough to hit someone in a higher column of entries, you get one "column shift" for each such column.)

Then look at the second table to determine how well you actually did, possibly how much damage you did (in combat) but could also reference other values for success. You cross-reference numbers on a chart again (like STR vs BODY) and see what the default amount of damage might be. Then, you apply those column shifts you got (if you rolled well) to add extra damage beyond the default amount.

And then that's it. And that handles every kind of conflict resolution, whether it's physical combat, persuasion attempts, detective skill rolls, stealth skill rolls, mental combat, mystical combat, etc.

Airk
2016-01-11, 11:50 AM
The term you are looking for is "task resolution". And there are almost as many different methods as there are games. Here are a few off the top of my head.

Tenra Bansho Zero uses a pool of d6's equal to your stat, where you try to roll equal to or less than your skill, and count successes to compare to your target or your opponent.

Ryuutama uses two stats for each roll - you roll the die associated with your stat value (4,6,8,10 or sometimes 12) and add the two dice together and compare to the target or your opponent.

The One Ring uses a Die of Fate (d12) plus d6's equal to your skill rating. Roll them all and add them together, compare to the target number. Any 6's on the skill dice improve your level of success. Rolling a "Gandalf Rune" (or an 11, on a standard D12) means an automatic success, rolling an Eye of Sauron (or a 12, on a standard D12) counts as a zero on the d12 with potential for worse failure.

Beat To Quarters uses decks of cards - the GM turns over a Card of Fate and then the player draws a number of cards dependent on their abilities. Cards which match the suit of the CoF are successes, Cards which match the number of the CoF are critical successes, and getting an exact match for the card is a "Perfect Success"

Golden Sky Stories, you compare your stat to the target number (or your opponent) and then choose whether you want to spend enough Feelings to increase your stat (temporarily) to beat the target.

Blades in the Dark uses d6's equal to your action rating (with some options for increasing). Roll the entire pool and keep the best result - 1-3 is basically a "fail", 4-5 is a partial success, 6 is a success, multiple 6s is a critical.

World of Dew uses a pool of d6's; You set aside dice as "wagers", then roll the remainder, add them up, and try to beat 10 (and also beat your opponent, if any). If you beat 10 (and your opponent, if any), you can narrate the results of your action, and add one additional detail for each wager you set aside.

Mouse Guard uses a basic d6 dice pool system, where you roll dice equal to your skill rating, with 1-3 being a failure and 4-6 being a success and compare your number of successes to your target.

In Shamblington, you roll 4dF; +'s allow you to add beneficial results to your actions, -'s allow you to avoid negative effects, blanks are bad.

Khedrac
2016-01-11, 12:57 PM
Chaosium Basic Roleplaying (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest etc)
roll D% to get under skill number, occasionally modified. <5% of success chance = crit

Top Secret SI
Don't recall this very well as it has been decades but I think it was:
roll d% to get under skill number, doubles are crits (eg 11, 22) the higher the roll the better when opposed.

Traveller - is a variant of roll + mods to beat static.
2D6 + skill number to beat a fixed target (target number depended on difficulty)

Lost Souls
roll D% and reference a table based on skill/stat to get a ranking from Poor to Excellent. Tasks have a difficulty ranking on the same scale, equal or beat to succeed.

ICE (Rolemaster/MERP/Spacemaster)
roll D% and add a skill, reroll and add for 96-00, reroll and subtract for 01-05. The higher the better. For combat consult a table with has results against different armors, table includes when crits occur.

Tunnels and Trolls (could someone expand, I never played this) Also a variant of roll + mods to beat opponent.
Roll you bucket of D6 and compare to opponents bucket of D6 - higher roll wins.
Note by bucket of D6 I am told it could easily be over 20 dice each

neonchameleon
2016-01-11, 12:58 PM
The term you are looking for is "task resolution". And there are almost as many different methods as there are games. Here are a few off the top of my head.

Not going into the Task Resolution vs Conflict/Stake resolution can of worms...

But adding another few.

Cortex+ - standard polyhedral dice pool. Your result is the sum of your two highest numbers. Each 1 in your dice pool represents a Complication either appearing or getting worse.

Vampire LARP: Paper/scissors/stone

One Roll Engine: Roll your dice pool, look for the biggest, highest set.

Feng Shui: Add the results of an exploding positive and negative d6 to your skill (exploding: if you roll a 6 keep that and roll again).

Diana: Warrior Princess: Roll dice equal to your skill. 4+ is a success, 6s explode.

Edit:

Star Wars (FFG) and WHRP 3E: Custom dice marked with symbols for successes/failures and lucky/unlucky.

GrayDeath
2016-01-11, 01:59 PM
Dying Suns: Roll a D20 UNDER Skill+Attribute+other Bonuses, where you gain stronger successes the closer you are to your number, matching the number is a Great Success.
Fun as hell, but horrible for calculations. ;)

Anonymouswizard
2016-01-11, 02:45 PM
Star Wars (FFG) and WHRP 3E: Custom dicemoney grabs marked with symbols for successes/failures and lucky/unlucky.

Fixed that for you :smalltongue:

GURPS: roll 3d6, try to get as far under the skill as you can. Also, you probably don't have the skill, try defaulting (no, seriously, there are 400 skills in there, I suggest leaving 5CP free so you can buy those basic skills that come up in the first session but you forgot about).

Airk
2016-01-11, 03:54 PM
Not going into the Task Resolution vs Conflict/Stake resolution can of worms...


I don't think there's a can of worms to open here, unless you can point me to a game that uses a conflict resolution system for making maps. ;)

AMFV
2016-01-11, 03:57 PM
I don't think there's a can of worms to open here, unless you can point me to a game that uses a conflict resolution system for making maps. ;)

Dawn of Worlds

Airk
2016-01-11, 04:07 PM
Dawn of Worlds

A) That's not really the kind of "making maps" I had in mind - I was thinking of a CHARACTER making a map.
B) Doesn't Dawn of Worlds just use a turn taking system? That's not really... any kind of resolution system.

Edit: Though in keeping with the thread, please post how Dawn of Worlds does things. :)

AMFV
2016-01-11, 04:08 PM
A) That's not really the kind of "making maps" I had in mind - I was thinking of a CHARACTER making a map.
B) Doesn't Dawn of Worlds just use a turn taking system? That's not really... any kind of resolution system.

Joke, it was a joke.

Edit: Although a turn-taking system is a sort of resolution system, the one who goes first has precedence, the one who goes last gets the final say.

Airk
2016-01-11, 04:10 PM
Joke, it was a joke.

Everyone knows there are no jokes on the Internet, only cat memes.



Edit: Although a turn-taking system is a sort of resolution system, the one who goes first has precedence, the one who goes last gets the final say.

True!

Telok
2016-01-11, 07:17 PM
Hero system is 3d6 under a number, 3 always succeeds and 18 always fails. Followed by up to 30d6 (normal games won't get that high, abnormally silly can go over 200 but then you just start taking averages) for effect levels in combat or for SFX. Skills are just a straight roll, possibly opposed but that's resolved by margin of success.

I saw a system once where there were 5 or 6 'stats' and you assigned a single die to them from d4 to d12 and added situational modifiers. I don't recall the exact details or the name.

The Amber diceless system is predicated on bidding points and narrative advantages or disadvantages.

I once saw a homebrew system that required identical dice of different colors for everyone and an enclosed rolling area because initative/advantage indicated who rolled first and bumping dice was part of the strategy.

There was a wild west cowboy system that used playing cards and poker hands, except when playing poker in character.

Arbane
2016-01-11, 10:14 PM
There was a wild west cowboy system that used playing cards and poker hands, except when playing poker in character.

Deadlands, probably. (It also used dice and poker chips.)

The steampunk(ish) game Castle Falkenstein just used playing cards.

The Dying Earth RPG uses just D6s - roll one, on a 1-3 you fail, on a 4-6 you succeed. But you only have a limited number of dice you can use or reroll (though rest and leisure refresh them), so convincing other people to do things for you is a valuable skill.

Spartakus
2016-01-12, 10:33 AM
Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye)! Best mechanic for this I've tried.

Every skill is tied to 3 atributes that usually are somewhere between 8 and 18. Roll a d20 for each atribute and try to roll lower or equal your atribute value. Use ranks in the skill (skillpoints) to reduce a die roll. Quality of success is determined by number of unused skillpoints.

Has a nice propability distribution and your ability to do something is primarily determined by your ranks in a skill.
Sadly it uses a completely different system for combat. At least until 4.1, havn't seen 5.0 yet

Red Fel
2016-01-12, 01:31 PM
Ironclaw: Rather than having fixed values in a given skill, attribute, or what-have-you, you're given a die size. With point-buy, you can increase the dice size of your physical and mental attributes, your profession, your skills, and even your race. These values may be added to any relevant roll. For example, say you have a Body score of d8, a Profession (Boxer) score of d6, and a Brawling skill of d6. You get into a brawl. You roll them all - 1d8+2d6 - towards your successes. Suppose instead that you have a Mind of d6, a Profession (some kind of mystic) die of d10, a Race (something attuned to the stars) die of d4, and a Fortune-telling skill of d4. You need to read the heavens for an omen. That's 1d6+1d10+2d4, each success adding to your total. This system allows not only for binary success (i.e. success vs. failure), but also degrees of success (i.e. each success does things better).

Because Ironclaw's combat system uses highly lethal wound levels, this also allows for chunky giblet overkills.

With respect to skills, you can also declare a "favored use" of a given skill, which allows you to reroll a 1. So if, for instance, you have a d6 in Brawling, you can declare "Favored Use" with punches, and reroll a 1 on a Brawling roll that involves punches. Favored weapons (with respect to a specific weapon, such as "my longsword," not just a general type of weapon, such as "longswords") count as favored uses. This declaration can be made at any time, even in the moment of reroll, although it cannot be reassigned later.

NichG
2016-01-13, 01:52 AM
I tried to come up with a system where both the statistics of the outcomes and the complexity of the rolling procedure were scale invariant (the standard deviation is a fixed fraction of the mean result). You can get that in success-counting systems but the die pool gets bigger, so it takes progressively longer to roll.

The result was something of the form: Skill * (Roll + Constant)

We used Constant=5, and the die used for Roll was based on the character's (static) attributes.

This has the property that Skill 5 versus DC 30 will have the same statistics as, say, Skill 5000 vs DC 30000. So in principle this works well for games with really huge scale ranges over the course of play.

neonchameleon
2016-01-13, 06:25 AM
Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye)! Best mechanic for this I've tried.

Every skill is tied to 3 atributes that usually are somewhere between 8 and 18. Roll a d20 for each atribute and try to roll lower or equal your atribute value. Use ranks in the skill (skillpoints) to reduce a die roll. Quality of success is determined by number of unused skillpoints.

Has a nice propability distribution and your ability to do something is primarily determined by your ranks in a skill.
Sadly it uses a completely different system for combat. At least until 4.1, havn't seen 5.0 yet

Interesting because that system would be a deal breaker for me. Three double digit subtractions, and one final subtraction for the skill points mean that it's slooow. Rolemaster slow (roll a d100, add your skill, and look up the result on a chart).

Spartakus
2016-01-13, 10:18 AM
Interesting because that system would be a deal breaker for me. Three double digit subtractions, and one final subtraction for the skill points mean that it's slooow. Rolemaster slow (roll a d100, add your skill, and look up the result on a chart).

Well, it is certainly slower then d20 but not by much. Usually you roll 3 dice at once and just look if any show high numbers, because lower then 8 is usually a succes anyway and 2 dice above 17 needs a really high rank to compensate. Also it doesn't have modifiers that apply depending on circumstances (like +2 against Magic or poison). Just a difficulty modifier determined by the DM (well, there are but not as regularly as in d20).

Edit: To be honest, it gets incredibly slow if people start to calculate what they need to roll for success before rolling.

Airk
2016-01-13, 03:15 PM
Interesting because that system would be a deal breaker for me. Three double digit subtractions, and one final subtraction for the skill points mean that it's slooow. Rolemaster slow (roll a d100, add your skill, and look up the result on a chart).

Yeah, I wasn't going to criticise, but my first thought reading that was "That sounds AWFUL" >.>