GuernseyMan
Mongoose
I've been quite vocal on the forum about my reluctance to use boon/bane in my game. I have had a really good think about it and come up with the following:
My problem with Boon/Bane overall is that it is a tool which is designed to solve a problem which shouldn’t exist in a well-designed game. Traveller was one of the earliest roleplaying games and didn’t come under the scrutiny that a game would get today.
Rolling 2d6 does not give the sort of granularity which is needed once you start looking at modifiers. There are only 11 different results between 2 and 12. If we begin with a base target number of 8 then we only have to increase by 5, to 13, for the task to become impossible. Equally dropping the target by 6, to 2, will give an automatic success.
Individual DMs rarely get to that but combinations can very easily get there. The boon/bane method of combatting this is an extra step on top of the starting difficulty number and DMs and is just an attempt to reign in the size of the modifiers.
My plan, for my game, is to increase the granularity of the rolls. There are two ways to do this:
1. Increase the size of dice rolled. 2d8 gives 15 granularity and 2d10 gives 19.
2. Roll more dice. 3d6 will give 16 separate results (3 to 18 inclusive).
My choice is the 3d6 route. This increases the granularity by 5 points which can have quite a marked effect on the game. In order to balance the increased rolls I would like to increase every target number by 3½, the average roll of the extra d6. I can’t unfortunately so I’ve decided on adding 3 to all the difficulties across the board. This means that the vast majority of the checks become easier as can be seen in the attached table:
http://s11.postimg.org/x58x1mjbn/Capture.png
The widest difference is in the middle as expected where the new system would make checks succeed almost 10% more often with much smaller gains as you near the end of the chart.
The advantages are apparent. Toward the high end of the table tasks which were previously impossible are now just extremely unlikely, still worth a roll. At the low end of the table you actually need to get to a difficulty which would have been 0 to have a guaranteed success. Effectively this adds 3 points to the top end and 2 to the bottom end which, in my experience, is just enough to cater for the base difficulties and DMs.
Disadvantage: “It’s not Traveller canon/tradition”. Well, neither is boon/bane.
The other disadvantage is that it obviously changes the chances of success. If you really want to debate whether a moderately skilled and educated person has a 41.7% chance of fixing a fusion reactor or a 50% chance then that’s fine. I will not join in that discussion.
As said this is something I will try with my group but I thought I would share it with the community.
My problem with Boon/Bane overall is that it is a tool which is designed to solve a problem which shouldn’t exist in a well-designed game. Traveller was one of the earliest roleplaying games and didn’t come under the scrutiny that a game would get today.
Rolling 2d6 does not give the sort of granularity which is needed once you start looking at modifiers. There are only 11 different results between 2 and 12. If we begin with a base target number of 8 then we only have to increase by 5, to 13, for the task to become impossible. Equally dropping the target by 6, to 2, will give an automatic success.
Individual DMs rarely get to that but combinations can very easily get there. The boon/bane method of combatting this is an extra step on top of the starting difficulty number and DMs and is just an attempt to reign in the size of the modifiers.
My plan, for my game, is to increase the granularity of the rolls. There are two ways to do this:
1. Increase the size of dice rolled. 2d8 gives 15 granularity and 2d10 gives 19.
2. Roll more dice. 3d6 will give 16 separate results (3 to 18 inclusive).
My choice is the 3d6 route. This increases the granularity by 5 points which can have quite a marked effect on the game. In order to balance the increased rolls I would like to increase every target number by 3½, the average roll of the extra d6. I can’t unfortunately so I’ve decided on adding 3 to all the difficulties across the board. This means that the vast majority of the checks become easier as can be seen in the attached table:
http://s11.postimg.org/x58x1mjbn/Capture.png
The widest difference is in the middle as expected where the new system would make checks succeed almost 10% more often with much smaller gains as you near the end of the chart.
The advantages are apparent. Toward the high end of the table tasks which were previously impossible are now just extremely unlikely, still worth a roll. At the low end of the table you actually need to get to a difficulty which would have been 0 to have a guaranteed success. Effectively this adds 3 points to the top end and 2 to the bottom end which, in my experience, is just enough to cater for the base difficulties and DMs.
Disadvantage: “It’s not Traveller canon/tradition”. Well, neither is boon/bane.
The other disadvantage is that it obviously changes the chances of success. If you really want to debate whether a moderately skilled and educated person has a 41.7% chance of fixing a fusion reactor or a 50% chance then that’s fine. I will not join in that discussion.
As said this is something I will try with my group but I thought I would share it with the community.
