Re: [Forge-main] Re: Mechanics

[Jerry Stratton]

At 6:06 PM +0000 on 11/9/02, Ricardo Gladwell wrote: 
>Finally, on the issue on bonuses: should we add bonuses to rolls
>(open-ended) of simply have bonuses that modify the difficulty (closed).
>In some ways it makes sense to modify the difficulty (factors reduce how
>hard the task is), although adding bonuses and subtracting penalties to
>the roll is more intuitive, as opposed to subtracting bonuses and adding
>penalties to the difficulty.

By applying all modifiers to difficulty levels instead of to rolls, it makes it 
easy for game masters to pre-calculate difficulty levels. I.e., "with all 
modifiers added in, the difficulty level for resurrecting Jim Morrison is 13".

It also makes it easier for the player to see that this is an "easy" or "hard" 
thing for their character to do. I.e., difficulty level 3 is obviously somewhat 
easy, whereas difficulty 7, roll d10 with a bonus of 4 is not so obviously 
somewhat easy.

Jerry
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