tibiotarsus:
Giving out degrees of sucess? As in, if you need 12 to succeed, you roll 16 and you can help one teammate, or you roll 20 and you can help two, but the individual rolling effectively gets a normal success, having used their competency at [skill] to help the others.
There are multiple intelligent things being said here, but this first one inspires me the most.
(Thinks...) ...Let's say...
Let's say player A is rolling dice-- to push a big rock out of the way, just for example, or push a dead tree over to try to cross a ravine or something.
Let's say that player A is stronger than average, and will roll 2d4 to try to succeed at this-- if the best result is 4, they succeed perfectly, if the best result is 3, they do it but there's a small complication, if the best result is 2, they fail, if the best result is 1, they fail and the situation gets worse somehow.
But suddenly, player B says "wait, I'll help."
OKAY, so I tell player B: "roll 1d4. If you get a 4 (and player A doesn't), player A will get 1 point added to their best result. If you get a 1, player A will get 1 point taken from their best result."
...I like this, because it means I don't have to think of something EXTRA to happen to Player B-- I'm still just dealing with Player A's roll, consequence-wise.
IF player B and player A are both really strong, I can change it-- say, I can tell player B to roll 2d4 too, and if their best result is 4, it helps A, and if their best result is 1 or 2, then it hurts player A's roll result.
Another reason I like it is that if there are 6 PCs, they can't all say "yeah, we'll all help!" and force every roll to succeed by strength of numbers. I mean, they CAN say "yeah, we'll all help!" but it won't force every roll (that they can conceivably team up on) to succeed by sheer strength of numbers.
So... it keeps "I'll help" from being overpowered, AND it's ALSO not exactly making more work for me. I like it.