Everything that can be done with a d20 can be done with 2d6 or 3d6, but what is more fun for players?
d20 gives you more space to add +1 mods when PCs level up, but +1 is barely statistically significant in that system.
I don't think we should waste time on anything that isn't statistically significant. Each +1 mod on a d6 is a full 15% increase, which gives us fewer but bigger steps.
For a variant of this system, you can add more d6s. Each d6 added increases the roll by almost a standard deviation, which could be a good way to differentiate between tiers of power. The strength of a commoner could be 2d6, strength of a hero could be 3d6, and so on.
One downside of building d6 dice pools like this is that you will have fewer levels with huge jumps in power between them, but maybe that's the point?
Another added benefit of d6 dice pools is that you can set a DC at 13, for instance, to make a task impossible for a commoner at 2d6 but doable for a hero with 3d6. This allows you to gate access to spells and abilities and make them mechanically accessible only at certain levels.
If you don't want to deal with such a huge DC range, you can keep adding more d6s to your pool, but keep the 2 highest. This will keep the range the same, but increase the mean. One downside of this system is that adding more levels ceases to have meaning after 6d6 because you roll so high, and basically everything becomes a crit. It doesn't scale well beyond 6d6.
The math is obvious to me, but what is mechanically more fun for players? What do you prefer? Why?
One thing that I still need to investigate is adding more dice to a "drop lowest" system.
This will increase the range of your rolls, which increases the scalability of the system by adding more meaningful steps beyond 6d6. The downside is that you end up rolling and adding a ton of dice, which can get annoying and complicated.
Here's the data all together.
Data is not analysis. You don't seem to have an actual thesis, you're just throwing numbers around.
>"you don't have a thesis"
>conveniently ignores "Everything that can be done with a d20 can be done with 2d6 or 3d6"
>"data is not analysis"
>conveniently ignores 8 reddit spaced lines of text
You need to get out of academia before you're a leech on society forever.
Roll 1d6 per rank in the trait. One success per 2 or 4, two successes per 6.
2d12
No.
This basically ends up being the same as 2d6, but with a greater range.
It will give you more room for scalability in the case of using the "drop lowest" method.
My problem with d12s is they're more expensive than d6s. A lot of people have d6s in bulk. A lot of people might only have one d12.
>more expensive
You can buy any dice in bulk online for dirt cheap, the cost difference is marginal.
>but I only buy dice in person
Then you're already choosing a more expensive option anyways, complaining that it's marginally more expensive when you're already ignoring the cheapest options is stupid.
Yes but also, there's another concern here. It starts to get awkward when you're rolling and adding up more than 5d12 at a time.
I suppose this can be partly mitigated by counting only successes or failures, but still, it's annoying.
$7 at any toy store.
Have you considered d66?
That's basically 1d36, with 2 different colored six sided dice.
That's completely mental.
So your range would be 11 - 66?
What would be the point of this? What does it do? I'm intrigued.
No, it would be
11-16 then
21-26
31-36
41-46
51-56
61-66
But i suppose you could count the 60s as 0s. Personally i hate it and think D66 is a totally misleading description because as best i can tell its just a d32 in base 6 notation. The only place ive ever seen it used is for rolling on tables for narrative games in age of sigmar where the actual spread of the dice doesnt matter, but it should basically just behave like a D100 rolled on 2D10 (except, you know, base 6 for some reason)
Traveller/Cepheus also uses it for tables. It's too awkward for anything else honestly.
I personally like d100 because it lets you add a lot of small modifiers here and there so they can become collectively meaningful, so you can give small reward for pieces of equipment, skills or even narrative. Yeah, sure, your pair of glasses give you +3 in perception, whatever, where a +1 on a d20 could be too much.
As a player, I like d10 because I always liked rolling with a high chance of critical success/failure. It means the story is going to go in radically unpredictable direction. That's why I don't really like Xd6 in general as a player. It feels boring because you can expect a mean result. I like them as a DM because it give me control over my player's results and make everything more predictable and doesn't throw too much wrench in my plans.
2d6 is still quite random but striking a nice balance. d20 fails you way too often when it shouldn't and often turns games into a slapstick clown show.
> d20 fails you way too often
This is more a consequence of setting DCs too difficult and/or not allowing players to build up circumstantial modifiers to hedge for success. A good GM is mapping appropriate distribution on to abilities to build circumstantial modifiers and their DC tables to make a d20 not feel so swingy and terrible. All that said, MdN systems allowing the GM to "automatically" map the curve do have a certain appeal but complaints about d20 "failing way too often" are really complaints about the game or gamemaster not allowing players to proactively engage in stacking the deck toward desired outcomes.
>but what is mechanically more fun for players?
A system where the rules interactions meaningfully model the kind of fictive actions they are interested in.
I hate to break it to autists but that's actually not a gap you can span by doing math.
> math does not influence weather or not rules feel meaningful.
The stereotypical autist loves math, but your misunderstanding of it is just another flavor of autism.
It's not, but if the math is wrong, the game will be broken mechanically, and not in a fun way.
The key is finding mechanics that reward players for behaviors that are considered "fun" (whatever that means to you.)
D100 roll under target number, target number is skill +- modifiers. Take DoS / DoF to determine severity.
Anthing else is just picking your favourite type of polyhedron.
Needs dumb hacks to account scores above 100.
>Verification not required
Just have 1s offset a crit.
Also I kind of like the idea of a dice pool where you have a base dice then your attributes/skills contribute different size dice and you keep the high 2.