Acoma wrote:
So in Dragon Warriors we make ability checks by rolling under the designated characteristic, or automatically succeeding if the characteristic in question is higher than or equal to the difficulty rating. This means that ability checks are very binary in nature - you succeed or you don't. Is there a way, without modifying the rules of DW too heavily, to denote degrees of success on an ability check (you did it, you did it really well, etc.)?
This would also come into play if two characters are having, for example, an arm wrestle and need to make contesting Strength rolls. How would you do this?
Every task in DW is binary
except combat, for which Health Points determine gradual success (or failure). You could introduce a similar thing to other tests. For example, in climbing a wall, you climb, each round, a number of meters equal to the number rolled on the d20. However, if the d20 roll indicates a failure, lose an amount of "endurance" (set, initially, at one's strength score, for example) equal to the difference between the result of the d20 and the character's Reflexes.
Example: Lyona, with a Reflexes of 11 and Strength of 8 is climbing a 20m wall. The GM decrees the wall has a difficulty higher than Lyona's Reflexes, so she has to roll d20. In the first round, she rolls 7, indicating that she climbed 7m. The following round, she rolls 16, 5 more than her Reflexes. Not only does Lyona make no progress, but she's beginning to tire, now with only 3 endurance. In the next round, she rolls 11. She's now climbed 18m - nearly at the top! However, in the next round, she rolls 14, 3 more than her Reflexes score, reducing her endurance to zero. Nearly grabbing the lip of the wall, her hand slips and she falls 18m.
In your example of an opposed test (such as arm-wrestling). The current rules allow for a strength 3 character to beat a strength 18 character 1.5% of the time, which doesn't seem right somehow. However, if a character's "endurance" is based on strength, even if the strength-18 character failed one test and the strength-3 character succeeded, the strength-18 character will still have plenty of endurance left to trounce the strength-3 character in the following round.
And endurance does not have to be based on strength. Consider a contest of intellect, such as gambling. In this instance, the "endurance" for the task might be based on the participants' Intelligence scores.
Just a thought for how to do this within the DW core rules. I tend to use
d6+ability score vs. task difficulty to get around this. So, for example, the strength-3 character only has any chance to defeat a strength-7 character - a character with a strength of 8 or more could never be defeated by such a puny individual. Of course, technique could play a part, so this is where a decent skills system would also help...
I hope this helps. If you do play-test this approach, I'd be interested to see how you get on.