@Runescryer Interesting way of approaching this. A lot of the inspiration for my structure comes from how some distributed systems are done for larges enterprises. A core repository for assets, then purpose driven areas where those assets are applied.I admit I don't know what inspired the design originally, I'd be tickled if we're all just cribbing design notes that comic book companies made in the 50s to figure out which universe Bizaro was from.

@ThatGuyThere Actually, the average number of successes for someone rolling 9 dice 4 times is around 15 because of exploding contributing more than you think (http://anydice.com/program/bd0a. Thanks to Misadventure for pointing me to the site).

And while things like 9-again may not contribute too much to a roll by the time all is said and done they contribute a great deal more than you might think. After all, someone with 6 points in combined skill and attribute will roll 54 dice (assuming a +3 equipment bonus) so at the end of the day an extra 10% here and an extra 5% there adds up to a lot of successes.

But the real point of this thread wasn't to quibble about how much ability A helps or how many extra successes ability B will generate. It's just to figure out what the theoretical pools (and any roll modifiers) should be.

At present I think I'm more or less in line with your estimates. I'm actually ranging from 4-8 dice with the 4 dice being the skill level of your average entry level professional. These are the guys on the construction crew that do the real simple jobs. You have them handle the framing and drywall when the job is easy but in the spots where those tasks get tricky you have someone who's been doing the job for a couple of years now come in and handle it. 6 dice are your true 'average professionals' who are fully trained. They've been doing the job and 95% of the time if you want the job done you call these guys in. 8 dice are the true experts. Not necessarily world-leaders in their field but they are they guys who get called in to do jobs that even your normal professional would consider to be difficult.

Then what I did was I figured out the average number of successes for 1 to 6 rolls as an extended action using a rote action for 7 dice, 9 dice, and 11 dice. I assume that the vast number of extended roll activities your average professional does are rote actions. Sure, the tailor needs to modify the pattern for the custom fit jacket they are making and everyone's body if a slightly different shape but they've done so many jacket alterations, plus they have the time to sit down and work out any tricky areas that might exist, that it is still a rote action for them.

Then I figured out how many rolls you would expect someone normally doing that job to take. If your 'average professional' would take 1-2 rolls I used the average number of successes for 7 dice because the average person doing that job is a bit less skilled. If it was 3-4 rolls I used the average successes for 9 dice and if it was 5-6 rolls I used the average number of successes for 11 dice.

This seemed to work really well because the guys with the 4 die pool could nearly always accomplish the '2 roll' task (99.96% of the time). It might take them twice as long to get it done (because they had to make four rolls) but they would nearly always be able to, much like you would expect in real life. Meanwhile the odds of that person pulling off a '3 roll' tasks is about 50/50 (meaning that they were around 75% likely to succeed if they took 3 times as long as the 'fully trained' professional. Meanwhile the 'fully trained' pro with their 9 die pool would nearly always accomplish a '4 roll' task (99.21% of the time) but dropped to around 50% odds of succeeded at a '5 roll' task.

I love this! This is what I have been looking for in MU*s. It ties skill development to time rather than vague xp, and it creates projects for people to engage in while limiting them to how involved they can be. I think FutureMUD was going to have something like this but that project has gone quiet. It's also similar to Arx's investigations and tasks system, only all tied up into one streamlines system.

As for giving players benefits for playing, I have always said that if you have to be incentivized to play a game, it's work not a game, so why are you playing it?

The only bonus I consider giving players is something like "bennie points" or what Firan called CP. Turn in so many of them and you get a one to three scene GMed plot focused on one of your character's or a fancy item that doesn't give any stat boosts but looks nice and is unique, etc.

@Arkandel said in Social Combat: Reusing Physical Combat System?:

@surreality Yeah, some amount of flexibility might be a good thing anyway even if it increases complexity, for very specific cases.

For example you might want to have two rolls - a Persuasion one to convince Molly you it's okay if you just go into her boss' office for a minute to drop off a memo and a Subterfuge roll to make it sound like you'd be in trouble if she told on you ("sighs I forgot to do it last night, I'm so dumb!") to keep her quiet. Failure on either could produce different results - not being allowed into the office, or letting you in but telling her boss afterwards to cover her ass, or both.

This is kind of what the Doors system tries to represent in its short-term version.

Convincing her to go into her boss's office to drop the memo is one Door, and convincing her not to tell ony our for "forgetting" is another Door.

@ThatGuyThere said:

When it interferes with rp rather then facilitates rp is my answer, granted i know that is horribly imprecise and will differ for each game but that is also the truest answer I can think of.

Yep. And it's easy to have a 'too much' situation where adding more helps: eg, you've got obfuscate code, but no code to allow people who ICly can see through it to see through it. Either don't code obfuscate and have everybody roll and ICly behave as if they really can't see it if they fail, or add code to give them as have the right powers an automagic chance of seeing through it.

I once had a character who was shot with a shotgun his first hour on the grid. The PC who shot him said that he wanted to hit him over the head with the gunstock, not shoot him, but was told that the code demanded that he shoot once he'd wielded. I think in that particular case the GM was just being silly, but that sort of thing does happen. It really mucks up the game for me if I'm told I cannot do something that's possible in the imaginary world because the code won't support it.

@HelloRaptor said:

In a few months SHH's power curve will resemble TR's.

A few months? I dunno, I started with Gnosis 1, so just getting to 5 is going to take a full year. Even somebody who started at 3 due to being a full mage transfer is looking at 6 months minimum, and that's just to get to 5.

'A few months' seems to be understating it pretty heavily. This isn't a complaint, mind. I'm not 100% on the current system, but I don't really feel like 6 to 12 months is too long a wait for Gnosis 5.

Yeah, you're right, I was thinking of transfers. For those going from 3 to 5 (which is a reasonable and often used 'max' cutoff point for Mages, it probably varies for other spheres whose numbers I haven't crunched) it takes about half a year. And I mean in MU*ing 6 months isn't that terribly long.

For someone just starting it'll take a while, barring outside catch-up mechanisms, to get to the same place. As noted elsewhere XP isn't the limiting factor on SHH, it's the delay timers. I've put in several spends and I've made about half of what I've spent back already.