How about a super-minimal buckets-o'-d6 system?
Stats start at 1d6 and can go as high as 3d6 without special bonuses.
Skills start at 0d6 and have no upper limit.
Roll any combo of stats and skills by summing all of the dice together and rolling that many d6. You take the highest value rolled. If you roll multiple 6s, add +1 per additional 6. So your results will range from 1 to the number of dice rolled plus 5.
The base difficulty is 4. If you can't beat a 4, you totally suck. If it's an opposed test, you have to beat your opponent's total. Otherwise it's common to need a 5 for something easy, a 6 for something hard and a 7+ for something really hard.
We could use some rule like if the number of 1s rolled exceeds the number of 5s and 6s, you botch. Dunno. It might be easier to just say that a final result of 1 is a huge botch, 2 is an awful botch, 3 is a nasty failure and 4 is just a failure. 4 = failure, less than that = botch. That makes the odds of botching 1 in
Damage from attacks is done similarly. You roll a bunch of d6. The normal amount is the weapon's base damage plus the margin of success of your attack.
The target will probably roll soak... that'll be their Toughness (or whatever stat) plus any armor dice. Eh, that might be too hard. It should probably be a flat, calculated value.
Flat bonuses are rare and are usually from edges. They represent a huge boost. High Beasts get an extra die in all racial skills, Low get an extra die and a flat +1 to the final result of all such checks.
Actually, Soak could use an alternate system. You subtract 1 from the damage level for every 6 rolled and you roll Muscles + Guts + Armor. This could be represented by saying that a Soak roll is difficulty 5 and your margin of success reduces the damage. Everyone will always have at least 2d6 to roll, but since it's two stats, they probably won't have a whole lot. The high difficulty makes it hard to soak a lot of damage.
A damage of 4-5 is a scratch and costs you a die from all rolls until the end of next round. 6 is a serious wound and costs you a die until healed. 7+ inflicts multiple wounds (lose result minus 5 dice in total). If these penalties exceed your innate Soak rating (not counting the armor dice), you're out of action. The penalties might not apply to soak rolls, but once they exceed that threshold, you're toast.
Simple penalties (like range adjustments) generally cost you dice. Close range, no penalty; medium range drop 1 die, long drop 2, extreme drop 2 and -1 to result.
Lots of things add dice... if you had a rating of 3d6 in knowledge about Zuba City, you could include that with all tests involving Zuba City.
The advantage of this system is that it's dirt simple and after the first few d6, adding more doesn't net you a whole lot, so combo skills would probably be okay.
Posted by Kiz at June 8, 2004 04:10 AMCommentsPost a comment