Community

What if the number of d20s rolled increased to show higher levels of skill?

For example the level 1 fighter may start with a +1 to hit with weapon attacks from his class while the cleric, rogue, and wizard start with a +0 class bonus.  This represents some of the fighter's additional training with weapons.

As the fighter levels, instead of increasing this bonus to +2 or +3 he would instead gain additional d20s to roll (choosing the highest result of either roll).  By level 10, such a fighter might be rolling 3d20 for his attacks.  By level 10 the cleric might have just gained his second d20 to attacks while the wizard is still using but a single d20.

Possible Option: These extra rolls could be used to represent "multiple attacks".  For each d20 that successfully hits the target you get +1[W] additional damage.  This has the added benefit of smoothing out the damage progression and not double dipping into static modifiers. 

Advantage could act similarly by simply providing an additional d20.  So our level 10 fighter who rolls 3d20 gets advantage and now he rolls 4d20. This has the added benefit of reducing the power of advantage.  Going from 2d20 to 3d20 is worth only ~+2 on average as compared to the ~+5 bonus from going 1d20 to 2d20.  This means advantage could become more common and many small conditional modifiers could be removed.  Both prone and flanking for example could simply provide advantage for the attacker.  

A similar method could be applied to skills. Journeyman skill training might grant a +3 bonus, but expert skill training allows you to roll 2d20 and master skill training might provide 3d20.  Multiple successes might indicate exceptional levels of success.  For example, a "godlike" task may have only a 25 DC but require 2 successe with a single roll.

Using multiple d20s helps to make level of skill more important than random chance while keeping numbers bounded. It can give the player a sense of progression without requiring a "treadmill" like we saw in 4e.  

Could get messy with Advantage.

I like the idea. I'm not  sure they're even going to consider it in D&D Next but I like it.

I'm not sure how it would work with AOE attacks. If you only have one attack roll per round, rolling 3d20 is not big deal; but if you have 5 attack rolls each with 3d20, it could get kind of long.

That's not easing another foot into dice pools, that's diving in head first.  Not that I have a problem with dice pools, but you're never going to get it passed the "it's not D&D" crowd.  

Then there are the mechanical problems
1) you're not even getting the "easy math" bonus of dice pools because you're still calculating your success threshold in terms of the number on the die.  In fact you're adding an additional layer of complexity and thus time to the mechanic.
2) rolling multiple d20s concentrates your results in the upper range of the d20, but doesn't increase your maximum potential.  Thus it becomes even easier for a wizard with a lucky roll to out-strength a fighter, and increasing skill is shifted even more to the "more commonly succeed at the same old stuff" that I find rather boring relative to the "get to do new stuff" that is cooler.

Ironically, I was just considering something very much like this for my homebrew system, but ultimately decided it wasn't getting me anything useful.  What do you think it's getting you?