traveller Skill system - Alternative D100

[2330ADUSA1]

Hello everyone,

Ok I have played Traveller now for almost 36+ yrs and have tried to wrap in many different rules and etc from other game systems. Now I have many "House Rules" that I use within my campaigns, the following is the Skill system that I use with my own GM'd game. My current group of 7 players have been with me for 11+ yrs and we played a Traveller campaign for 7+ yrs, and a 2300 AD campaign now for 3.5 yrs.

I base my Skill system off of a d100 or percent system.

I try to keep it all basically simple. Add together the score for the three stats that a skill is based off of and that gives you the base score, then for each Level within a skill a character has that adds in 5% more to the skill score.

Example: Say we have a PC with a skill of Comms, the three stats that would be used to gain the base score would be; Intelligence, Education, and Dexterity. Lets then assume that the PC has a skill of 10 in each stat, so that would be 10 + 10 + 10 = 30. Lets then say that through their background role-up they end up with a Comms III skill leve so that 3 levels relates to 3 x 5 = 15%.

So the players starting skill score would be 10 + 10 + 10 + 15 = 45%

Next the Modifiers that might get applied are the following:

Difficult task: -20%
Standard task: No Modifier
Easy task: +20%

So the system is pretty simple to run and understand for GM's and Players all. With the above example for trying to do a Standard task, the player on d100 roll would have to roll a 01% to 45% to accomplish the task. A failure would be on a roll of 46% or greater.

Now if the task fails, either you can have the player role again on d100 to determine weather they know it failed and or why. That happens if they roll once again their skill roll percent or under it's roll. Some times the GM can roll this instead and this does helps the player to better roleplay the situation if they would think they did something correctly and they really did not or etc.

Now I also have a experience point system inwhich we also use too, and this allows a player to slowly gain experience points in which to increase their stats or skill scores as well too. We also use a alternative combat system as well too that is also based off of a d100 % too.

I have GM'd now Traveller for well over 25+ yrs and have come up with a whole House Rules systems that I use for Traveller based games and D&D (vs 2.5) style fantasy campaigns. As a GM my goal is roleplaying and having fun, if my players are having fun then so am I. I perfer simple systems that allow for better game play, and easy for players to understand and enjoy game playing. I have always collected everything I could find and have been extremely luck to always have the funds and time to buy alot of things. My Traveller library is huge and I view it all as a resource for me to beg, borrow, and steal from to add to my own campaigns. Alot of my own House Roles come from many other game systems that I have borrowed from and modified to fit and work in these situations. My system does work and well and if your a roleplayer, it makes it alot easier to focus on doing that when you don't have a Law Library to drag behind you to tell you how to scratch ones own ARSE<vbg>!!!

Penn

 

[locarno24]

Interesting.

I've played quite a few D100 systems (Dark Heresy and its assorted spawn being the big one)

The system you're describing is certainly simple enough. I'd say I have one big 'like', one big 'dislike' and one observation:

Like:
Multi-attribute skills. I get that few skills are exclusively connected to a single stat. Awesome piloting, for example, is a combination of DEX (for the reactions required) and END (to take the G-forces involved without it affecting you). Also, because you need to have three high stats, not just one, it means that it's difficult to be awesome at something you're not skilled at.

Dislike:
Single attribute skills. Some skills really don't have three relevant attributes (I suppose you could add either INT or EDU to the above, but it feels a bit of a flannel). The problem is, you need three relevant stats or else your success chance is penalised.

Observation:
One thing (neither really and advantage or a disadvantage) about a 2D6 compared to a D100 is that it's biased. This means that the more you move away from 50%, the faster odds stack up or drop away. That means Comms5+ is achievable for everyone, trained or not, whilst Comms 9+ really requires a professional. I quite like that, you might not. One thing that isn't reflected in what you're discussing is that skills don't make much difference on the D100; Skill/3 is supposed to be top-class professional and can swing the chance of success by 50% or more.

 

[rust]

I like d100 systems very much, mainly because of their greater
granularity and because a percentile success chance is easy to
understand for the players, and therefore often convert other
systems - including Traveller - to our modified BRP system.

The fastest way to convert 2d6 skill levels to 1d100 skill levels
is by using the table "Probability of Success" on page 49 of the
Mongoose Traveller core rules, although the results are not ful-
ly compatible with the BRP system ("untrained" / -3 would still
give an 8.33 % chance of success, while a base chance in BRP
would normally be between 01 % and 30 %, depending on the
skill).

 

[2330ADUSA1]

OK as to the base role, I as a GM have decided that I take the three most likely character stats that make sense to base a skill off of. Some times depending on what the skill might be I have to use two character stats and double one twice to gain the three character stats base. Next skills are level 0 to 10 a master, since I also have a Experience point system, this allows for ingame character growth.

Basically every gaming session each player has a chance of gainng up to 5 exps. The break down is awarded based on 1-2 pts for roleplaying, 1-2 pts on encounters durring the session, and +1 bonus pt for given situation actions. Now average player gets like 3 pts per session, and the players can then allow their exps to sit or put towards improvement.

For every level of a skill, they must dedicate 20 exps, and must ingame do things to work/study/show why they could or are working on a skill level. Once they get a additional skill level, this gives them a +5% to their base skill check role. For me a Level 0 is a total newbie and every action is always considered the next harder task type. Next levels 1 to 3 are beginners, and they end up having to make more rolls to see if they can do something. Next levels 4 to 6 are poficiently trained, and they are concidered capable trained and have to make alot less common skill rolls to do things that are standard tasks. The next level 7-8 are considered skilled people and are wiz kids in the skill. Easy tasks are no longer needed to be checked, and many or most standard tasks are giveme situations with no roll needed. Finally levels 9 and 10 are masters in the skill and these people are skill gods in that skill and are know for their ability in that skill as well too. Also note that some combinations of others skills can depending on the given situation add a bonus to ones skill roll as well too.

Next a player can also collect 50 exps and up a character stat as well too, I allow a stat to be able to be pushed up to a 15 as max, and/or increased up to +3 pts higher than what their scores stats were rolled in the beginning. So if a player started with a 10 in Intelligence, they could increase it to a 13 max in game. In my many years of GMing I have only ever seen one player increase a single stat by three, and that player played his character for 7 yrs and never missed a game. Most players work on skill levels mostly, or my modified combat system which is yet another Home Grown House system as well too.

My system works pretty well and is easy to GM and for players to actually play. Allows them to focus more on roleplaying, playing the situations and having fun. These are my goals durring the game, not beating players up with rules

Penn

 

[locarno24]

OK as to the base role, I as a GM have decided that I take the three most likely character stats that make sense to base a skill off of. Some times depending on what the skill might be I have to use two character stats and double one twice to gain the three character stats base. Next skills are level 0 to 10 a master, since I also have a Experience point system, this allows for ingame character growth.

Fair enough - as I said, they're just observations and that's a nice enough approach to cover the problem

and must ingame do things to work/study/show why they could or are working on a skill level.

Good. It always irks me when people magically become competent in a new language...
One trick which I saw which always seemed sensible was asking people to note the number of times they'd been called on to check a particular skill - after a certain number of skill checks (with successes and particularly hard checks counting double) they moved up a skill rank.

These are my goals durring the game, not beating players up with rules

Agreed. Paranoia has it the right way, to my mind - if the players can play a mission and enjoy it without knowing the rules at all, you're doing it right; overly granular rules invites abuse by rules lawyers ("I use this psychic ability, stacked with this skill, this special action and this piece of wargear, all from seperate sourcebooks, which in combination means I get a flobberty-gadjillion points of effect and kill your battle-armoured commando outright in a single unaimed snapshot. Where's the loot?")

 

[Sturn]

Dislike:
Single attribute skills. Some skills really don't have three relevant attributes (I suppose you could add either INT or EDU to the above, but it feels a bit of a flannel). The problem is, you need three relevant stats or else your success chance is penalised.

There's an easy fix for this. If only one attribute applies to the skill, insert it 3 times. If you think only EDU applies to a Research task, apply EDU as all 3 of the attributes. You could also do something like using EDU x1 and DEX x2 (total of 3 attributes) when using Vacc Suit to quickly put on a suit.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

 

[lastbesthope]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

You can build the "curve" into the chart.

LBH

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

You can build the "curve" into the chart.

LBH

Can you give an example?

 

[rust]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

It depends on what you use a d100 for. Used for the probability of a
success, it works perfectly well. For example, if a character has a skill
of 65 % and a d100 roll of 01 to 65 means a success and a d100 roll
of 66 to 00 means a failure, the success chance is 65 % - I see no way
how a curve could improve that.
A d100 is less useful for other purposes, but most of the d100 systems
use other dice in such cases. For example, in BRP the attributes of the
characters are determined with 2d6+6 or 3d6, because here a curve ma-
kes sense to establish average values.

 

[lastbesthope]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

You can build the "curve" into the chart.

LBH

Can you give an example?

Well yes 2d6 isn't too easy to map onto d100, but it's close

Comparing d100 to 2 d6

0-2=2
3-7=3
8-15=4
16-26=5
27-40=6
41-58=7
59-72=8
73-83=9
84-91=10
92-96=11
97-99=12

Had to reduce slightlythe odds for everything except 2, 7 and 12, but do you see hwo it would map now? You simply map the results you wanted for the 2d6 results oto the listed d100 results. Like I say, it's not perfec because 100 doesn't divide by 36, but it's quite close.

LBH

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

D100 means die roll results can be anywhere on the chart. There's no curve. I'm not a fan of the D100.

It depends on what you use a d100 for. Used for the probability of a
success, it works perfectly well. For example, if a character has a skill
of 65 % and a d100 roll of 01 to 65 means a success and a d100 roll
of 66 to 00 means a failure, the success chance is 65 % - I see no way
how a curve could improve that.
A d100 is less useful for other purposes, but most of the d100 systems
use other dice in such cases. For example, in BRP the attributes of the
characters are determined with 2d6+6 or 3d6, because here a curve ma-
kes sense to establish average values.

A D100 doesn't make sense for a skill roll though. Joe Shmoe has a skill of say 70% at something. But a D100 roll doesn't care what his skill % is or what his success rate is at using that skill. It will roll a 1 just as often as a 99. A bit too random.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Well yes 2d6 isn't too easy to map onto d100, but it's close

Comparing d100 to 2 d6

0-2=2
3-7=3
8-15=4
16-26=5
27-40=6
41-58=7
59-72=8
73-83=9
84-91=10
92-96=11
97-99=12

Ok. You're just switching out the dice. You still have the 0-99 range, which Traveller doesn't use. And using 2d6 would make even less sense for those numbers.

 

[rust]

Joe Shmoe has a skill of say 70% at something.

With a skill of 70 %, Joe Shmoe has a 70 % chance that the result
of a d100 will be 70 or lower (a success) and a 30 % chance that it
will be 71 or higher (a failure). The probability of the dice results is
exactly equal to Joe Shmoe's skill and success chance.

 

[locarno24]

A D100 doesn't make sense for a skill roll though. Joe Shmoe has a skill of say 70% at something. But a D100 roll doesn't care what his skill % is or what his success rate is at using that skill. It will roll a 1 just as often as a 99. A bit too random.

You can always match an equivalent success probability - in Mongoose traveller, a guy with an average stat and skill level 2 or an above-average stat and skill 1 (i.e. competent professional or gifted amateur) has a 72% chance of success, as described above, so his odds of success in '2330ADUSA1 Traveller' where he's rolling a D100 and needing 70-ish or less is about the same.

One thing to note is that (assuming the same stat range) - you'll be getting 25%-ish (assuming average stats of eight or so) from your stats, so will need 55%ish from your skill levels and bonuses to get the same odds of success.



In terms of not matching probabilities (which may be intentional), the issue is not that Joe Smoe has a 70% success chance from stats A, B, and C and skill X. The incompatibility from a 2D6 bias comes when you compare Joe Smoe's odds to the less competent Dead Fred, with stats D, E & F and skill Y, and Awesome Ned with G, H, I and Z. Because a D100 is linear, Joe will get the same percent increase in pass chance over Fred as Ned will over him.

With a 2D6, if it's an easy-ish task, the difference between Fred and Joe will be massively more than Joe and Ned (which is right to my mind because for a routine task, even a little training helps massively - the difference between a teenager and professional programmer won't be that much if the task is "use microsoft word"), whilst for a difficult task the reverse is true (which is again right to me as for something like open heart surgery, having done a first aid course will provide no meaningful assistance whatsoever).

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Joe Shmoe has a skill of say 70% at something.

With a skill of 70 %, Joe Shmoe has a 70 % chance that the result
of a d100 will be 70 or lower (a success) and a 30 % chance that it
will be 71 or higher (a failure). The probability of the dice results is
exactly equal to Joe Shmoe's skill and success chance.

Yes. It does sound nice when I use "%" to describe both the character's chances and the die roll type.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

You can always match an equivalent success probability - in Mongoose traveller, a guy with an average stat and skill level 2 or an above-average stat and skill 1 (i.e. competent professional or gifted amateur) has a 72% chance of success, as described above, so his odds of success in '2330ADUSA1 Traveller' where he's rolling a D100 and needing 70-ish or less is about the same.

One thing to note is that (assuming the same stat range) - you'll be getting 25%-ish (assuming average stats of eight or so) from your stats, so will need 55%ish from your skill levels and bonuses to get the same odds of success.

How do you handle critical successes and failures using D100? Or do you?

 

[rust]

How do you handle critical successes and failures using D100? Or do you?

There are several methods to handle this. My favourite method is
to declare that all results which can be divided by 5 are special re-
sults, those below the character's skill level are Criticals while tho-
se above the character's skill level are Fumbles.
For example, in the case of a character with a skill of 70 % the re-
sults 05, 10, 15, etc., would be Criticals, while the results 75, 80,
85, etc., would be Fumbles.
The advantage of this method is that Criticals become more likely
and Fumbles less likely when the character's skill improves.
However, there are a couple of other methods, too. The most sim-
ple one is to declare that results of 01 to 05 are always Criticals
and results of 96 to 100 are always Fumbles.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

The most simple one is to declare that results of 01 to 05 are always Criticals
and results of 96 to 100 are always Fumbles.

Without a bell curve, the chance of rolling any of those numbers is always the same though. A D100 kind of trivializes such rolls.

 

[rust]

Without a bell curve, the chance of rolling any of those numbers is always the same though. A D100 kind of trivializes such rolls.

Well, the most simple method to determine a Critical or a Fumble
with a 2d6 system is to declare that a 2 is a Critical and a 12 is a
Fumble. The probability to roll a 2 or a 12 with 2d6 is always the
same, too, roughly 3%. That a 2d6 system has a bell curve does
not make here any difference at all.

But, as mentioned, I do not like or use such a simplified method,
neither with a d100 nor with 2d6 or 3d6, I prefer one where the
skill level influences the probability of a Critical or Fumble (see
anove). This can be achieved equally well with or without a bell
curve.