Degrees instead of multiple attempts

SYSTEM: ICONS, M&M

It just occurred to me degrees of success are easier than multiple attempts to achieve something using a skill.

Now, that might seem evident, but let me blather on for a bit more. Let's assume a situation I'm stealing from the Angry DM (whose work I sort of agree with but not necessarily and I'm not crazy about the angry schtick):

A player is evading someone. They run across a door that's locked. They can double back, they can pick the lock and go in, they can keep moving. They decide to pick the lock and go in. In the Angry DM's example, it takes three successes to pick the lock. I have to wonder why. (Really it's because he has a different axe to grind, involving the superiority of binary systems but I'm going a different way.)

• By requiring three attempts you're doing two things: First, you're increasing the chance of failure. (If it's a 50% chance of success, then three successes are .5*.5*.5, or one eighth instead of one half, which means that suddenly the character is going to fail seven out of eight times instead of one out of two times.) You're vastly increasing the chance of failure.
• You're expending the player's resources, because each attempt takes time. So at best, the character takes whatever time it takes for three lockpicking attempts.

Let's say it's conscious that you know you want to do these two things. Why not set it up so that you're doing them with one roll?

Result	Effects
3+ success	You're in, having picked the lock, but it cost you (time)!
2 success	You're in, having picked the lock, but it cost you 2x(time)!
1 success	You're in, having finally picked the lock, but it cost you 3x(time) and the pursuer knows you're in there
1 failure	Can't quite get the lock, so you take off
2 failure	Can't get it, and the pursuer is so close when you take off
3+ failure	We're fightin' here, because PC is caught.

As I type this, I'm realizing that many of the qualifications that I have put on things as a player ("I'm going to try to pick the lock but if I'm not getting it, I'm taking off!") are attempts to do exactly this, or forestall the really bad dice roll.

But why not think about it? Why not decide if a situation is binary or not? Sometimes something works or it doesn't. "I attempt to persuade her that these are not swords, I am a traveling Ginzu knife salesman." (One of the joys of actual TTRPG is that the GM might decide at that point that she laughs and decides that she's not going to call the cops because I have amused her instead of trying to kill her. That's not binary, but it counts as a success in my book.)

If multiple skills are involved, do you want a success pyramid instead? As GM you happen to know that the door is to Crisolanthe's bedchambers, and Crisolanthe is kept isolated because she is a conduit to strange energies. (The bad guy was going to drain them from her when she was of age, which will be soon.) So maybe to evade the pursuers you need the player to roll lockpicking (to get in) and persuasion (to keep Crisolanthe from calling for the guard or from zapping you, whichever fits Crisolanthe's personality.)

I probably wouldn't in this particular case because I'm suddenly interested in the Crisolanthe story, but you aren't, so you deliberately set it up as a success pyramid, but there are only six attempts possible: The player has to get three cumulative degrees of success on lockpicking before a deadline, and then at least one success on persuasion.

This approach also depends on choosing possible actions that have degrees, and sometimes it's difficult to do that in the heat of play.

Let's say they've come up with a plan to substitute one doodad for their forged doodad that will do something different, so when the bad guy thinks he's triggering the bomb that will destroy Venice, he's actually opening the doors to the secret base.

The obvious to me thing is that you have a simple roll of sleight of hand to substitute the remote, and then maybe a notice check so the bad guy has a chance to discover the flaw.

You've just reduced the heroes' chance of success by requiring two checks for the bad guy to notice the switch (once for the substitution, once when bad guy looks at remote). I'm pretty sure you already made one of those tougher than normal because it seemed like it should be, so why have to make both of them? (To increase the suspense, I hear you say....but really? You can't do that with roleplaying?) (Worse, you probably made them make a forgery roll at some point, and they passed it. If they didn't pass it, I might give them the notice check, but really? They passed it, dude.)

Because there are two different things involved—the forgery check andthe sleight of hand check—I might think about doing it as a success pyramid...but I might do it in a different order:

• We don't roll for the forgery first. We assume they constructed the doodad to have it available. Not gonna roll at this point.
• We roll sleight of hand when the time comes. Take note of the degrees of success or failure, but the thing is it always gets placed. (This is similar to my earlier idea that attacks by named villains always hit or are narrow misses, but sometimes they don't matter.)
• Then, when Bad Guy picks up the remote, we check to see if he/she/it notices. This is really the crucial roll, so we make it a contested roll, good guy forgery versus bad guy notice...and every degree of success or failure on the sleight of hand roll counts as a bonus to the forgery roll. In the wrong place? The bad guy looks at it more closely. In the right place and looks great? Bad guy doesn't notice at all.

Forgery + degrees of sleight vs Notice	Effect
3+ success	The good guys are racing to get in
2	The good guys are in
1	The good guys are in but noticed
1 Failure	He notices and does not use the remote
2+	He has feinted and fooled you in some way.

In both cases degrees of success or failure involve some kind of retcon or behind-the-scenes planning: The forces of the good guys are in and have overwhelmed the guards vs the bad guy has secret signaled some kind of alternate punishment for the players. If you don't like that kind of thing, then you don't like this idea much.

But the idea is to minimize the number of dice rolls and have them happen when the effect is known, rather than as they happen in the course of events.