M&M Dice Mechanic

Hi,
I’d like to know more about the dice mechanic in M&M. How you, Luke, came up with the idea for the dice chain (is that the right name?) and what this dice mechanic in particular can achieve for the game.

Thanks so far

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Hiya,
When playing (a lot) of Basic D&D, I got frustrated with the Thief class and the jump between x/6 and straight % rolls. I prefer the x/6 style because it’s chunkier for advancement and feels less technical. But it doesn’t scale well beyond four advances (or less if you include stat modifiers).

So when building a modified thief class, I realized that the step between 5/6 and ⅞ is 83.33% to 87.5%. If we jumped from a 5/6 skill to a ⅞ skill we could keep advancing, but at diminishing returns.

For M&M, I wanted to keep the core D&D skill system in order to maintain the flavor of the system. It was natural then to incorporate the progression of die steps with diminishing returns.

The secret flex in the system is not necessarily the advance up the steps, but the way penalties integrate. Once you pass 5/6, you advance by die steps. But penalties subtract from the target number on the current die, not the die step.

So a -2 penalty on 5/6 is 50%. But a -2 penalty from ⅞ is 62.5%. It’s a significant cushion from mishap.

Hope that helps.
-Luke

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