Cinco: Away From D20

Aspect bonuses put players in an awkward position. You could want a new aspect, but starting a new one with +1 or even +2 will be less helpful than investing in one of your existing aspects—especially when you need a +4 to see more successes than outright failures. The choice is to optimize or not, which is a trick question that misdirects player creativity. 5e has a similar trick with ability score increases, with each class having an ability which you would be wrong not to prioritize. This trick is neither fair nor fun. It's opaque and imposes strict expectations on characters. It causes players to fall into the trap of making obvious non-choices or else, knowingly, make their character relatively 'worse' at the game.

It's no help to us that, at least, the vast majority of tabletop systems have formal trade-offs between different stats which make them worthwhile in different situations. This is its own can of worms, but at least these worms justify each other. There is no similar justification when players "define" the usefulness of their own stats. We must keep removing optimal non-choices to find out where interesting, real choices might be.

This results in a separate problem. The D20 is so granular that any modifier must be great enough to impact the odds, but having one modifier of a non-unit quantity (+1) feels arbitrary. Like, okay, let's just say every aspect gives you a +5 bonus. Why? Doesn't that feel awkward? Could make it a random quantity, so now an aspect gives you D6 to a relevant D20 roll, but now you're rolling two (or more) different dice and adding them together. Doesn't fix that, half the time, you have to bargain for success—and without a source of bonus dice, you have only a 5% chance of success.

D&D introduced the D20 for precise, transparent, and extendible combat simulation, a definite improvement over 2D6 rolls in Chainmail at the time. It now serves neither of those functions, and has become a vestige of the game's genealogy. What I've arrived at is something similar to Trophy Gold or Blades in the Dark. Add 1 die to your hand if:

• The action is possible, if difficult, for a normal person.
• You have an aspect which comes in handy.
• You spend 1 inspiration or have triggered a feat.

Toss your dice, and read the highest: 6 is a success; 4–5 is a bargain; and 1–3 is a failure. I experimented with an alternate range where all results are equally likely with 1 die, but this prolongs encounters to a stupid degree which is undesirable. On the other hand, the range above lets us (again) use heart-quantities that are equal or proximal to classic D&D hit dice (although it's better if you improvise encounters based on the demands of the fiction).

For comparison, the range is similar to a 2-in-6 roll except that the bargain helps alleviate the impact of failure. Another impact is that the power disparity between character levels has totally dropped, meaning either that features will provide the boost or simply that character growth is truly horizontal rather than vertical.

Update: The equal range isn't too bad if you (1) decrease hearts and (2) de-emphasize inspiration. Might prefer it!