Thread by @delaneykingrox

Today on #homebrewrpg I will be poking my game mechanic wand at the second ever RPG after Dungeons & Dragons- the delightfully old school Tunnels & Trolls.

Now this game is very dear to me, and taught me that I could hack DnD to be whatever I wanted...

So what I will be doing is making the system more maths lite.

At its heart, T&T is about addition. You roll two D6 and add your entire attribute, and have to beat a target number.
Statistics are classic "roll 3d6", so you have 3-18 to begin.

I came into T&T at third edition, and later editions added skills and other features. For this I will focus on the core mechanics alone.

So the thing that turned out group off T&T was that essentially combat works by everyone rolling their weapon's dice, adding the weapons adds and then... and this is where it gets weird... everyone adds their total together for team damage.

The enemies do the same.

I think we were fighting something like twenty goblins in a published dungeon and after about thirty minutes of us rolling and adding up, it was...

...a draw.

The simplest way to make T&T maths lite is to take the basic concepts of weapon dice, monster ratings and difficulty levels and remove the granularity.

So a monster rating is how badass a monster is, and is it's hitpoint. You divide the monster rating by 10 and add 1 for dice

So a MR 40 monster has 3 dice and 40 hitpoints. It then gets half its MR to add to the roll (+20 adds)

Difficulty levels are how high you need to roll to beat a test or make a saving throw. Level x5 is the amount.

A level one roll needs 20+
Level two needs 25+
Etc

Okay, let's start by making the level of the roll the target to beat on a d6 and see what happens.

Using the range target chart to guess difficulty levels you can set it thus.

Level 1: 2+
Level 2: 3+
Level 3: 4+
Level 4: 5+
Level 5: 6

Level 6+7: 6 then 2+
Level 8: 6 then 3+

Reroll 6 and always fail on 1.

Nice, so you then just need to set the number of dice a player rolls based on their stat. Let's do every 5 points you get an extra.

1+ 1
5+ 2
10+ 3
15+ 4
20+ 5
25+ 6

So now the maths is basically...

"Okay gimme a level 3 dex check"

"I have 4 dexterity dice".

I get 2,5,6

That's two successes!

The same goes for combat. You take the dice listed for the weapon, and if the adds are higher than 3, you get an extra die.

You need to roll higher than their armour rating to hit- which is MR divided by 10.

So MR 35 monster is hit on a 4+.

We are essentially dividing the hitpoints done each turn by six. However you can do this...

The MR divided by ten, rounded up is the hit points to "seriously injure" the monster. It checks to see if it flees at this stage.
It can then take the same amount again before defeat.

So now we have a system that allows us to solve rolls quickly without translation or addition.

If you have speed 3D (a stat of 15-19), you roll 3 dice. Any that get over the success rating is a success.

For combat, you roll your weapon dice. Any that get over the armour hit.

Moving Tunnels and Trolls to a dice pool system instead of pure addition makes the game much more accessible and friendly to new and young players.

Also since it keeps the success rating levels and monster ratings, it is completely back compatible with all adventures.

All they would need to do is publish a new weapons list and a simple conversion rule of...

Weapon dice = weapon dice + (1 dice for adds higher than 3)

And there you go. Same old school goodness, but the only crunch if your weapons against monster's heads.

Alternatively you can make the combat a DEX dice check and you get 1 or 2 dice replacing the adds.

If you beat your enemy, you make a strength check plus weapon dice.

This lets those delicious weapon lists have dice for speed/accuracy/ease of use and dice for HURTYNESS

Movind to dice pool would be quite a change for #tunnelsandtrolls, but the back compatibility is handy.

Maybe an offshoot edition called Tunnels & Trolls: Trollpool or something?

Anyway, as usual, I hope you like my game mechanic prodding.

Have fun trolling.

Oh, I forgot the one other mechanic I would put in play... damage can chew CON dice, but it also can chew LUCK dice. Basically you can risk eroding your luck to act as extra hit points.