Decimal Modifiers

[JMAP94]

So I'm new at DMing, but I have played dungeons and dragons and some pathfinder. One thing that always bothered me was odd numbered attributes. That there is very little difference between having a 12 and a 13 score, because both have a modifier of +1, and how you would have to wait until a level where you would get an attribute point to see the difference. As a player, in point buy systems, I was always incentivized to have all "even numbers" in my skills because that is the best way I could get the most bang for my modifiers .

So, for the campaign I am going to run this summer, i came up with an idea called "decimal modifiers." That is to say 13 would have a modifier of +1.5 in a sense that half of the time, it is treated as a +1, and the other half of the time it is treated as +2 (however, this is only for active checks and not for things effected by ability scores like AC and Carry Weight). There were two ways I was thinking going about this:

1- As the GM, I will hold a sheet with randomly generated "heads" and "tails" (using an online generator). I would ask players to take into account any decimal modifiers they have when reporting a result and to write it in on their character sheet. So let's say they have 13 Dex, and they roll a 10, I would ask players to report their total as "11.5." Once I hear that decimal, I move to my "Heads and Tails sheet" look up the next result, and cross it out. If it's heads, I treat that 11.5 as a 12. If tails, I treat that 11.5 as an 11. The only downside I see with this is that subconsciously, I could be making decisions for NPC's who have these decimal modifiers based on the next coin flip result. The easy fix to that is to print out a separate sheet for NPCs and give it to a trustworthy player, and not look at it, and ask that player for the result when a decimal modifier comes up for an NPC.


2- the second thing I thought of was At the beginning of each encounter, a coin is flipped for each character. If heads, that character gets plus 1 to all attributes that are odd. If tails, they don't. I have a little bit of concern about this because it puts too much weight on one coin flip, that three skills could get +1 for an encounter. which is why I'm probably going with option 1. The upside is, though, less work on my part and the flow of combat isn't disrupted as much.

[JBPuffin]

So I'm new at DMing, but I have played dungeons and dragons and some pathfinder. One thing that always bothered me was odd numbered attributes. That there is very little difference between having a 12 and a 13 score, because both have a modifier of +1, and how you would have to wait until a level where you would get an attribute point to see the difference. As a player, in point buy systems, I was always incentivized to have all "even numbers" in my skills because that is the best way I could get the most bang for my modifiers .

So, for the campaign I am going to run this summer, i came up with an idea called "decimal modifiers." That is to say 13 would have a modifier of +1.5 in a sense that half of the time, it is treated as a +1, and the other half of the time it is treated as +2 (however, this is only for active checks and not for things effected by ability scores like AC and Carry Weight). There were two ways I was thinking going about this:

1- As the GM, I will hold a sheet with randomly generated "heads" and "tails" (using an online generator). I would ask players to take into account any decimal modifiers they have when reporting a result and to write it in on their character sheet. So let's say they have 13 Dex, and they roll a 10, I would ask players to report their total as "11.5." Once I hear that decimal, I move to my "Heads and Tails sheet" look up the next result, and cross it out. If it's heads, I treat that 11.5 as a 12. If tails, I treat that 11.5 as an 11. The only downside I see with this is that subconsciously, I could be making decisions for NPC's who have these decimal modifiers based on the next coin flip result. The easy fix to that is to print out a separate sheet for NPCs and give it to a trustworthy player, and not look at it, and ask that player for the result when a decimal modifier comes up for an NPC.


2- the second thing I thought of was At the beginning of each encounter, a coin is flipped for each character. If heads, that character gets plus 1 to all attributes that are odd. If tails, they don't. I have a little bit of concern about this because it puts too much weight on one coin flip, that three skills could get +1 for an encounter. which is why I'm probably going with option 1. The upside is, though, less work on my part and the flow of combat isn't disrupted as much.

For the second option, have the coin flip apply to ALL characters and do it yourself. You tell them which way it is, and the math is even for everyone.

[Knaight]

I'd recommend avoiding this - the ability score to ability modifier thing is questionable design in a lot of ways, which made sense back in early D&D when mechanics like rolling under the score itself were still in play. With that said, if you have to do it the easiest way to do it is to have the bonus only apply on odd rolls. You roll a 13, your 15 counts as a +3 instead of +2. There's some weird quirks to the probability distribution, in that it suddenly grows a bunch of holes, but in a pass fail boolean system to begin with that doesn't really matter.