UA "Players Roll All the Dice" variant?

[Extra Anchovies]

Does anyone have any play experience with any/all of the variant rules in the Unearthed Arcana section "Players Roll All the Dice" (at the end of Chapter 4)? What did you think of them?

They all seem like a really good way to keep players engaged in combat, since they have more things to do when it's not their turn. Also, I think it might be interesting to apply the variant only to PCs (e.g. the PCs make attack rolls and defense checks while monsters have set attack and defense scores; PCs roll magic checks and saving throws while enemies have set save modifiers and spell DCs; PCs roll to overcome SR and make SR checks when they gain items/abilities that grant SR). It would take a bit of a load off the DM, and it might make combat gameplay more fun (random chance is usually more exciting, after all). What do you all think?

[georgie_leech]

I enjoy how it changes some of the default impressions on the martial melee scale (attack rolls must be successful for an attack to land, while spells and the like are just there unless they are successfully resisted), but I'm not a huge fan of it in its 3.5 form; when I DM, I like to roll dice too. :smallfrown:

[Troacctid]

I played in a 4th edition game that worked like this. I liked it. I think all the players felt like they had a little more agency in their defenses, even though, mathematically speaking, the odds of success or failure are identical.

The biggest hurdle was that the character sheets had the "wrong" numbers on them--so we had to subtract 10 from the AC value on the sheet before we got the "real" value to add to our rolls. It tripped a couple people up a little bit. But it's easily fixed, of course.

[Chronos]

Mechanically, it doesn't make any difference. Dice don't care who's rolling them, and the variant is set up to leave the probabilities the same.

Narratively or simulationistly, however, I find it takes me out of the game if what my character is doing is fundamentally different from what the monsters are doing. Plus, not all competitions are between PCs on one side and NPCs on the other. What if there's a spat between two party members, or what if a clever bluff check got two of the monsters to fight each other? Who rolls the dice then, and how are the numbers compared?

[Dalebert]

This is also available in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm) and I imagine it's the same thing.

I was planning to try this in my game last night but the game was delayed quite a bit already by a couple of things so it was a bad time to experiment with something with a bit of a learning curve. I think I will try it next game though.

[dascarletm]

I've played with it before and I like it. I noticed players who would normally ask, "okay what's going on?" whenever their turn came up wouldn't do that anymore, because their attention is needed off their turn. Spellcasters also said it was more fun to roll a "spell power" check.