Homebrew - Controlling Success Die
So a lot of d10 games have a success system where a roll of 7 or higher is a success while 6 or lower is simply a failure. These systems also have a tendency to increase the number of dice rolled by a lot. Some games have you rolling 20 or even 30 dice at a time.
I have a few possible solutions to help this problem. I'm open to OTHER solutions as well if anyone else has any ideas. These are not meant to be entirely new rules but are instead meant to be possible variants applied to existing ones.
DICE POOL vs. RESERVE
Split the number of dice you roll in two. One is a dice roll pool (round this half up) and the other is a reserve pool (round this half down).
Your reserve pool represents "rerolls" that you can use. After you roll your initial dice pool, you can reroll any number of them, even reroll the same dice multiple times until you get a result you want. Each reroll uses up a point from your reserve pool. When you reroll a dice, you take the new number, even if it was worse. You can reroll the same die multiple times by spending multiple reserve points and you just keep the last one rolled. Once you are out of reserve pool points, you calculate the number of successes normally. If all your dice are successes and you still have reserve points left, you can spend the remaining reserve points to turn a 9s into 10s (1 point per die) or 8s into 10 (2 points per die) or 7s into 10s (3 points per die). Note that a 10 has a possibility of exploding in some games (in which case you'd roll to see if it does) while in other games it counts as 2 successes. In some games 10s have no special benefit and left over reserve points are wasted.
ACROSS THE BOARD CAPS
All stat caps would be across the board for humanoid characters. So the highest stat you can have is 5 + double your lowest stat. This forces characters to spread out their stats after a certain point instead of focusing them. This makes the character progress a bit more balanced in manner and makes them more rounded "demigodlike" and less munchkiny "million damage with this sword but I couldn't read, write or beg for a copper piece to save my life". Skills/abilities would use the same cap based on stats, not other skills. Temporary bonuses from special abilities/charms/spells/etc. would also have a flat cap of (existing stat) or +2, whichever is better. So if you had STR 3 and MELEE 3, your STR+MELEE = 6 and thus temporary modifiers could never make it exceed (3)+(3)+6= 12. Monsters don't face this restriction, a GM can still make them as he sees fit.
NO MULTIPLIERS
Number of dice should never be multiplied. Any time an effect would do so, it instead increases your stat by +1 or increases it to a flat 3 dice/3 reserve, whichever is more of an improvement.
Anyone have other ideas to help stem the tide of d10s in success games? And don't say "flat caps", "roll less dice" or "use smaller numbers", as that is meaningless dribble for those who aren't inventive or creative enough to come up with anything useful.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:55, Tue 10 Feb 2015.