A game of 9s

[Yakk]

In the game of 9s, your abilities and skills are measured by how many "9s" you are good at it.

0 means you are between 10% and 90% in the skill or ability.
1 means you are above 90% of the population.
2 means you are above 99% of the population.
3 means you are above 99.9% of the population.
4 means you are above 99.99% of the population.

-1 means you are below 90% of the population.
-2 means you are below 99% of the population.
-3 means you are below 99.9% of the population.

etc.

To determine the victor in a contest (be it against another being or the environment) you roll 1d6 plus your modifier, against 1d6 plus their modifier or the modifier of the problem. A tie means a stalemate; often this means an immediate reroll, but if one party or the other has time on their side or another advantage, they win the tie.

If your difference is 5, you automatically win.
If your difference is 4, your win rate is 32:1. Every 32 times the +4 wins the +0 wins once, on average.
If your difference is 3, your win rate is 10:1.
If your difference is 2, your win rate is 4:1.
If your difference is 1, your win rate is 2:1.
If your difference is 0, your win rate is 1:1.

Now, not all problems are dominated by skill this much. For situations where chance matters less, you can use a smaller die; for example, a formal competition of Strength, you might use 1d4. For situations where chance matters more, you can use a larger die.

The goal is to minimize the amount of chaff on a character sheet. Every +1 is large and impactful.

[JNAProductions]

So, let's take something like chess. Someone who is -1 is worse than 90% of the population-this means they probably don't even know how to play chess. Someone who is +2 is better than 99% of the population.

This gives us the following distribution for the +2 player:

5 (Auto Win)
27.78% of the time.

4
13.89%

3
16.67%

2
13.89%

1
11.11%

0
8.33%

-1
5.56%

-2
2.78%

This means that, in a game of chess, someone who doesn't know the rules will beat a top 1% player just over 9% of the time.

I get that perfect realism is probably not the goal of this system... But that feels egregiously bad.

[Yakk]

Roll 1d4 for a "lower impact of chance", and +2 cannot lose to -1.

[JNAProductions]

Roll 1d4 for a "lower impact of chance", and +2 cannot lose to -1.

But +1 (top 10%) can.

I guess, let me put it this way. Try to sell me on this system-because right now, it doesn’t look worth using.