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Action! System 2

The folks at Gold Rush Games seem to be gearing up for version 2 of their OGL Action! System rules. (See the forums, cannot link to them from work)

As they are asking for feedback, I offered one suggestion and plan to offer another one.

Stats Do Not Make Sense
Looking at the rules, a person with a STR score of 4 can dead lift 100kg. A person with a STR of 8 can dead life 300kg.

Yet the stronger person, though three times stronger, does twice the damage.

Looking to the range of the superhuman:

A person with a STR of 10 can dead lift 200kg. A person with a STR of 20 can dead life 6400kg. The second person is 32 times stronger than the first, yet does only twice the damage.

I reworked the STR attribute to follow a logarithmic progression so that twice the strength (as measured in amount a person can dead lift) meant twice the damage. Four times the strength, four times the damage. It’s not perfect. So far those with average or slightly above average strength cannot hurt another person in a fist-fight. (Yes, this is a large problem).

Chances of Success

Seeing if you are succesful in a task is straight forward:

Atrribute score + Skill Score + 3d6 roll = number to compare against Target. If the target number is 12 (Easy), you have an Intelligence of 3 (normal) and a Computer Skill score of 3 (Amateur, but received training and hands-on experience), you have to roll a six or better to be successful.

Looking at the set of target numbers you have:

Average/Easy 12
Tricky 15
Challenging 18
Difficult 21
Demanding 24
Extreme 27
Legendary 30

Assuming attribute of 3 and skill of 3, you need to roll 6, 9, 12 ,15, 18 respectively. Extreme and Legendary things are just out of reach.

The odds for success of an average person are:

Average/Easy 95.3% chance of success
Tricky 74.0% chance of success
Challenging 37.5 % chance of success
Difficult 9.25% chance of success
Demanding 0.4 % chance of success

Big jump from Tricky to Challenging. Determining Tricky or Challenging is a judgement call. Dude, what a big shift.

The issue comes from rolling 3d6. You have a 1 in 4 chance of rolling a 10 or 11. So if you need a roll less than 12, your chances are good. Need 12 or more? Well, there’s the cliff, take a flying leap.

My suggestion was changing to 2d12, then the probabilities even out. However, I know they are trying to stick to d6. Using 2d6 makes it worse. Using 4d6 doesn’t help much.

Anywho, that’s my semi-annual foray into RPGs.