Let's face it, having to do two digit subtraction every time you succeed or fail greatly slows down things.

Here's a faster system:

--------------

Calculating Degree of Success

Roll, the dice,if you succeed, take the tens digit and add one. That is your degree of success.

This produces almost identical results to the standard system.

Example:

You need a 47 or lower to succeed.

You roll a 32.

Your degree of success is 4.

-------------

Calculating Degree of Failure, method 1

Roll the dice. If you fail, subtract the tends digit of your roll from the tens digit of your target number, then add one. that is your degree of failure.

Example:

you need a 47 or lower to succeed

You roll a 62

Your degree of failure is 3.

This makes it harder to have a degree of failure of 1. Total degrees of failure over all rolls is increased.

Example of this:

You target number is 59.

It's impossible for you to have a degree of failure of 1, since a failing roll of 60 comes out as a degree of failure of 2.

-------------

Calculating Degree of Failure, method 2

Roll the dice. If you fail, subtract the tends digit of your roll from the tens digit of your target number. If this result is 0, then add one.

Example:

you need a 47 or lower to succeed

You roll a 48

Your degree of failure is 1.

This expands the range that can result in a degree of failure of one.

Example of this:

Your target number is 50

Any roll of 51 to 69 counts as a degree of failure of one.

---------------

Would recommend method 2 for calculating degree of failure, so that failed tests are more forgiving.

Let's face it, having to do two digit subtraction every time you succeed or fail greatly slows down things.

Roll, the dice,if you succeed, take the tens digit and add one. That is your degree of success.

A roll of 01 to 09 is 1 degree of success. So the only real change is reducing the chance of a 1 degree of success roll from 10% to 9%. That's why the total degrees of success that are generated by this system and the original are almost identical.

Sample table, at target number 53:

------RAW-----------    ------Proposed-------        
Roll    DoS   Occurs    Roll    DoS   Occurs
44-53    1    10/53     01-09    1     9/53
34-43    2    10/53     10-19    2    10/53
24-33    3    10/53     20-29    3    10/53
14-23    4    10/53     30-39    4    10/53
04-13    5    10/53     40-49    5    10/53
01-03    6     3/53     50-53    6     4/53

So, the actual change is you go from 10 chances to get a DoS of 1 and 3 chances to get a DoS of 6 to 9 chances to get a DoS of 1 and 4 chances to get a DoS of 6.

And here's what the failure table looks like:

-------RAW---------   -Proposed (Method 2)-        
Roll    MoF  Occurs   Roll    MoF  Occurs
54- 62   1    9/47     53-69   1    16/47
63- 72   2   10/47     70-79   2    10/47
73- 82   3   10/47     80-89   3    10/47
83- 92   4   10/47     90-99   4    10/47
93-100   5    8/47    100      5     1/47

So the worst failure possible is reserved for rolling 100, and the rest of your chance of max failure is moved into MoF 1.

A roll of 01 to 09 is 1 degree of success.

Yeah, I had a brainfart in regards to Test successes. Apologies - I guess it shows that my BC group is currently on hiatus!

Still, it's a bit weird that you are basically incentivising rolling as close to the "target number" as possible, rather than making the lowest result being the best possible outcome. That's just gut-feeling, though (as your table shows) ... your idea is interesting, at least for players who consider the RAW method of defining degrees cumbersome.

As long as the results are the same, who cares if rolling 01 or just under your target number is better?

The whole point is to avoid the 'slow' 2 digit subtraction needed under RAW to generate DoS or MoF.

To see what I'm talking about, here are two lists of 20 target numbers and rolls. pick one, and time how long it takes you to find out the following:

Success or failure?

Degree of success or margin of failure

Then pick the other list and do it the other way.

[sblock]

target  roll
 6       31
23       51
96       69
33        4
28        9
50       93
60       72
44       63
62       42
99       77
100      77
83       51
30      100
56        9
44       34
97       57
95       85
100      27
33       73
95       13

[/sblock]

[sblock]

target  roll
79       43
30       65
15       47
34       78
93       36
18       45
29       41
85       47
22       71
 3       23
89       90
93       60
46       16
16       96
51       41
68       13
21       60
99       39
83       25
27       27

/sblock]

Another option is to invert everything. You roll d100 and add your skill rating as a modifier. The default DC is 100, and can be modified up or down by certain circumstances at the exact same rate as the existing rules would modify your skill rating, just to the DC instead. Counting up is much easier than counting down.

What crusher bob is talking about is basically isomorphic to the original methods. The benefit is that depending on how you map dice results to outcomes, you can make it easier to process that result during play. Oddly enough, Eclipse Phase is a d100 game that uses this method, and having run both it and Black Crusade I can safely say that the former method - what crusher bob is proposing - is notably less cumbersome to work with.

Sure, there are the edge cases that result when your TN reaches or exceeds 100, but that can just be fixed by adding the remainder to your roll so long as it isn't 00 (autofailure).

What crusher bob is talking about is basically isomorphic to the original methods.

It's difficult to say exactly what you mean by this since my proposition is a statistically identical inversion of the default system, which I'm pretty sure in mathematical terms is an actual literal isomorphism.

I was referring specifically to the mechanism for determining DoS.* It's only not a true isomorphism on the edge cases of multiples of 10 (as noted above). By the original method, with TN 53 rolling 44-53 grants 1 DoS with a 10-point range; with the new method, rolling 01-09 grants 1 DoS with a 9-point range. If you instead grant additional DoS at 11, 21, etc. (offsetting things by 1) then the dice-to-DoS functions are exactly isomorphic.

What you've produced is also an isomorphism of the original dice-to-DoS function; isomorphisms need not be unique, merely structure-preserving and invertible. And while it is easier to describe, you still have the problem of needing to perform a goofy calculation in your head. (Adding two-digit numbers is not hard, but it is time-consuming.) With the above method, all that's needed is a comparison.

*Alternate Method 1 of calculating DoF is actually the DH2E way, funny enough, and it's a bit different but again easier to calculate.