Dice Systems - Basic Roleplaying
Recently I've started getting into a lot more board games, of various designs. My group has one person who hates the d20 system, and absolutely loves Basic Roleplay's System. This is because, to him, its easier to succeed in Basic Roleplay than it is in the d20 system.
When I had tried to point out the slight flaws in that argument, I was presented with things like "No its easier because..."
But lets explain here, Basic Roleplay, or BRP, uses a d100 system. This gaming system is suppose to be a very simple way of playing a game, and it is. For that I commend it very much. And I might be viewing it from tinted glasses as I'm lacking the actual book for the system, and only have been playing in the games he created. Which while they can be fun, lack a certain something.
Lets start off with character creation, BRP is a blend between point by and dice roll, which could leave you sorely lacking in ability. Some DMs might take pity on your poor soul, others not so much. You roll four or five stats with 3d6, and the last three with a 2d6+6. Some other 'power levels' might have different methods of rolling, but we've not quite experienced those yet.
Now each of your stats have derived stats, things like Luck, Know, Effort etc. As well as some skills that directly are affected by your stats. Such as own language, dodge and gaming.
You might have options to pick races (up to the GM) and you'll typically pick some sort of class (again, up to the GM)
Your EDU stat allows you to put points into your class skills. Or sometimes you'll have a preset number. Again, up to the GM. If EDU is used for this, you get skill points of 20xEDU
Your Int stat allows you to put points into not class skills. Which is 10XInt amount of points.
Then a skill can only max at 75% with all bonuses and modifies at creation. I'm a little hazy on these details as its normally not something that comes up.
Now if you want to skill, lets say you're a cloak maker, you can put 70 points into craft cloak, and with the skill's base stat, you'll fail 25% of the time.
On the flip side, at least by how my GM was doing it, it means that 75% of the time you'll get a check (To level the skill) and only 25% of the time will the check succeed and give you skill points.
This is were I start having a problem with the system. Replace Craft Cloak with whatever skill you want, the result is the same. 1/4th of the cloaks you craft fail, now its up to the DM to say how bad you failed you failed. Which could be anything from a poor hemming, to you accidentally made a shelf instead, or on the most extreme end, you pulled an itchy and scratchy and made the cloak out of your own skin.
And worse, you only get better on 25% of the sessions you made a cloak.
I don't know about you all out there, who are reading me again, but I seriously wouldn't want a doctor that kills his 1/4th of his patients and has a very hard time learning from his mistakes. Especially when you've got a 1% chance that the doctor ends up making the human centipede out of the patient instead of just simply pulling little Susie's wisdom teeth.
When you do finally hit 100 ranks in a skill, that is pretty much it. You can't really get higher. You're at the peak of your ability. You've still got that 1% chance of turning the patient inside out, but at least you can heal most patients, until of course the DM decides you've been having it to easy and makes all the checks "hard" (You've got to get under half your skill.)
