Taking the Average… to Other Systems

August 12, 2008 No comments

One of the ideas I like most from the Ubiquity System used in Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) is that of Taking the Average. The concept works like this: instead of rolling dice, you can choose take half of your maximum roll and just use that. Ubiquity is a die-pool system, so if you’d normally roll 8 dice then Taking the Average gives you 4 successes. Ubiquity has a fixed target number (it’s binary; you only count evens and odds on whatever type of dice you roll, and evens are successes) that makes this work cleanly. It really speeds things along when you know you know the average is going to be good enough to accomplish the task at hand. You don’t risk screwing up something easy. It allows you to feel as if your character is competent and you can focus on roleplaying, and let that assured level of success guide you in making roleplaying as well as tactical choices.

Porting the idea to other systems isn’t that hard, but it does have slightly different effects. In a game like Savage Worlds, which has a fixed target number of 4 and required rolling different-sized polyhedral dice depending upon how good the character is, it would only work for more highly skilled characters. If you would roll a d4, the average is 2; you’d always fail, so you’re forced to roll dice. If you’re rolling a d8 or higher, though, it works, and it helps reinforce that the character is in fact that darn good at that particular thing. it’s one more reward for being a higher-ranked character. Of course, you’d never roll a Wild Die when Taking the Average, and your dice would never explode, and you’d never Ace, but you’ll also never really fail at simple stuff by rolling badly, either.

For a D20-based system Taking the Average would be 10, plus modifiers. If you’ve got a +7, the Average would be 17. This isn’t that different from Taking 10 or Taking 20 in 3rd edition (I haven’t read far enough into 4e to know if that concept was retained), where you take 10 rounds/minutes to work on something and get +10 to your roll. The trick with a d20-based system is that the target numbers move, so the player would have to have a feel for what he was doing to take the average. The caveat I’d also impose would be that if you’re going to Take the Average for an attack roll, you have to Take the Average on damage as well. If you’re hacking your way through cannonfodder mooks, this isn’t a big deal; when you reach a Big Bad encounter, you’ll probably need/want to roll.

It’s definitely an idea I’m going to play around with in the future. Has anyone else ever done anything similar? Do you see any huge pitfalls or concerns? Let me know what you think!