Redesigning the Action Table

[etsmith]

I've gone and committed the darkest heresy: redesigning the Action Table. Over the weekend I doodled some idle mods to the probabilities of the standard chart until before I knew it I had created a completely new one. I whipped up a nice final copy in Open Office, and subsequently uploaded it as a PDF to Scribd. You can get a look at it and shudder in horror at:

www.scribd.com/doc/397823/ZephyrsActionTable

Ill enumerate the key changes and vainly explain why I made them.

Probably the biggest change I made was rebuilding the whole thing around 2D6 percentile. As an amateur designer, I've developed an aversion to specialty dice and am always looking for ways to maximize the use of standard D6's. Percentile 2D6 (which gives a flat range of 36 possible results) has been in my head for a while, but I hadn't found a practical way to make use of it till I thought of matching it to the chart.

Next I changed the colors and their meanings, since like others here I found 1 degree of failure and 4 degrees of success a little non-intuitive. I set it up as follows:
Black = Utter Failure, one that puts the character at an ongoing disadvantage.
Grey = Simple Failure.
White = Mixed Success, roughly succeed or get some bad with the good.
Gold = Full Success.
Red = Awesome Success.
No bonus points to Talislanta fans who recognize the progression.

I significantly altered the probability ranges. It struck me as a bit odd that in the original chart a weakling character (0 Prowess or Strength Talent) could arm-wrestle Hercules (30 Strength talent, I presume) and still have a 30% chance of some kind of success (assuming the pansy character would be rolling on the -30 column, after subtracting his Olympian opponent's rating from his own). I also didn't like how the probabilities of the chart plateaued so sharply at the extreme ends, rendering the differences between Ratings at high levels of little consequence.

Of course, I had to flip the chart, so that rolling high is good now (and with 2D6 percentile, snake-eyes are to be dreaded). Besides adding some design elements to make it easier to use, that's about it. Oh, I designed it with the assumption that I'd be using my "a column shift is a 5 point modifier to the Talent rating" house rule, mentioned elsewhere.

This is, as of yet, entirely ad-hoc and untested.

[The Fiendish Dr. Samsara]

Is it actually "percentile" with 2d6? Shouldn't it be...uh..."persextile" or something"?

Regardless, I like the look at first glance. The probabilities of the original have been bugging me a bit, but I didn't get anywhere towards fiddling with them. I'm still not sure what kind fo benchmarks apply, which hurts (is a 30 Strength a Conan? A 20? A 10? I dunno).

Love to hear how it works in play. Have you decided how Column Shifts work on this version of the Chart?

[etsmith]

drsamsara said:

Regardless, I like the look at first glance. The probabilities of the original have been bugging me a bit, but I didn't get anywhere towards fiddling with them. I'm still not sure what kind fo benchmarks apply, which hurts (is a 30 Strength a Conan? A 20? A 10? I dunno).

Glad it looks okay. And I know what you mean about benchmarks being unclear. In the original Conan game, quite a few NPC's, maybe even the majority, have Ratings in the 20-30+ range, but beginning characters aren't allowed starting stats above 5. I've been assuming the following benchmarks, based on certain mentions in the rules (like getting fame points for talents rated 20+) and they're reflected in my chart:

0 = untrained but not particularly handicapped either.
5 = solid demonstrable training but not noteworthy.
10 = clear expertise, enough to use this talent professionally.
20 = master status, renowned for this level of ability.
25 = pinnacle of mortal potential.
26+ = superhuman ability.

Love to hear how it works in play. Have you decided how Column Shifts work on this version of the Chart?

Yep, I use the same method I proposed in an earlier thread
(zefrs.proboards101.com/index.cgi?board=rules&action=display&thread=1191516371).
Succinctly, I read every call for a Column Shift to mean a +/- 5 modifier to the Talent used.

[markkrawec]

The new table looks interesting. I like the <-25 range where your only alternatives are mere failure or complete disaster.

Arm-wrestling matches and the like might call for opposed rolls rather than subtracting one rating from another. In a situation like that, how do you decide who's the "attacker" & who's the "defender"? So the puny man & the strongman would each roll & compare the degree of success obtained. Whoever got a better result would win.

As an aside, in the published adventures Conan's strength rating is 15. A tradesperson's professional Talent is rated 10.

Now that there are only three degrees of success, does that mean fighters can do only 1-3 points of damage? Or were you thinking of figuring damage differently?

[etsmith]

I don't think that maxing damage at 3 significantly alters things much, so that should work fne.

Altenately, I was considering using a 2D3 "min-max" mechanic.

On a successful attack, roll two dice and read them as D3's.

On a White result, base damage is the low rolling die.
On a Gold result, base damage is the high rolling die.
On a Red result, base damage is the total of the the two dice.

But, what with the extra roll and the halving, that may be more trouble than its worth.

[etsmith]

markkrawec said:

Arm-wrestling matches and the like might call for opposed rolls rather than subtracting one rating from another. In a situation like that, how do you decide who's the "attacker" & who's the "defender"? So the puny man & the strongman would each roll & compare the degree of success obtained. Whoever got a better result would win.

Yeah, there's different approachs to resolve it. One of the reasons I like the Action Table designs if that you can use them in multiple ways, different methods of rolling on the chart accenting things differently. The subtractive method just happens to reflect my "everything is about the protagonists" approach (also, its quick and highlighted the oddity of the chart ). If I wanted the match to be more important and dramatic, I'd probably declare that the two combatants' arms were working along an arc with six quadrants; each level of success means a move along the arc in the characters favor' which could lead to a nice back & forth.

[etsmith]

Poking around on the Scribd page were I originally posted the chart, seems someone entered an anonymous lengthy comment way back in October. Didn't notice it till now:

I like this but if I could suggest a couple of changes?

1) The colors. I'm thinking;
Black - Fumble
White - Faliure
Green - Partial Success
Yellow(or Orange ) - Full Success
Red - Critical Success

2) Go over the chart with a fine tooth comb and correct any anomolies. I haven't gone over it yet myself but what jumped out at me right away was the difference between having a talent of 4 or 5 was nothing except the guy with the 5 couldn't fumble. He doesn't succeed any more than the guy with the 4. With all the variations in success/fail possibilities, I think this could/should be avoided.

3) List the upper AND lower most numbers within the colored bars. For example a guy with a talent of 2 fails on a roll of 13-32 but you only list the '32' on the chart.

4) Critical Success' and Fumbles should expand more into the extreme talent ranges BUT have a rule that says that you must spend a Luck point to avoid the effects of the Fumble result ( for a guy with a high talent rating ) and a character with a really low talent rating must spend a Luck point to have the results of a Critical Success. So if Conan rolled a 11 for sneaking for example, he would normally just fail since his talent is so high. But with the added rule/chart mod he would Fumble BUT could avoid the fumble by spending a Luck point.

5) Not a chart suggestion per se but a rule suggestion. Since all characters are Human, they should automatic Talent ratings for certain Talents such as Strength and Toughness just for being an adult human. It's kind of silly by the book where you could have a Strength Talent of 0 and then just pump it up one day to 20. By nature, an adult human should have certain Talents starting at certain 'default' numbers. If you do this, just make sure your chart reflects this rule change. That's why I mention it here.

6) Lastly ( and this is just what *I* would do ) is change the chart to reflect that someone with a high Talent rating will not only succeed more often ( obviously ) but ALSO should have less chances of a Partial Successes. For example, take 2 guys. One has a high Talent rating and the other has a modest Talent rating. Overall the better guy might succeed 75% of the time and the lesser guy maybe 60%. Not a huge difference BUT out of the better guys 75%, only 15% of it is a Partial Success and out of the 60% success rate of the lesser guy, 22% of it will only be Partial. Those numbers of course are just made up to show my point.

I hope you find my observations usefull.

[markkrawec]

Point 6 is an interesting one. The original chart has gradually increasing ranges of success, but all widen at about the same rate. Maybe extremely skillful people, or those who are getting a big positive modifier on a task, should achieve complete success more often than partial. After all, they're extremely experienced or something is making the task unusually easy.

I don't think point 5 is quite on. The way I look at it, a value of 0 represents no training in a field; in other words regular human natural ability (much like the run-of-the-mill True20 human has 0's in everything.) Characters with a strength of more than 0 have built up their muscle power through training or hard labor, for example.

Point 4 is clever. It would dovetail nicely with Dr. Samsara's system of yielding to weaknesses to get luck points. So the heroes would spend their luck points to get out of trouble, then get back into trouble to get more points. It's perpetual plot motion!