for new quests you make i would reccomend you to use sum dice systems (players have X amount of dices per type of action,they can asign then you roll and sum the results)
the reason for this is that,you have a curve (average values)
lets take 2d3 for example ,lets call the first dice A,and the second dice B,then lets make a table adding their possible results ( for example if A=1 and B=1,A+B=2)
so here is the table of possible sums when you roll 2d3
| dice results | A=1 | A=2 | A=3 |
| B=1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| B=2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| B=3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
as you see the possible total sum combinations are 9,beint the combination per row (2,3,4/3,4,5/4,5,6)
so what are the chance of getting a value equal or higher than 4 ?,well lets count how many combinations are equal or bigger than 4 and then divided them by 9 (total possible combinations)
3 possible dice combinations have a sum=4 (A1+B3,A2+B2,A3+B1) ,and there are 3 possible combinations bigger than 4,so 3 combinations=4 plus 3 combinations higher than 4,equal 6 combinations equal or higher than 4
so in total,the chances of rolling 4 or gigher are 6/9=2/3=66.66...%
why is a sum dice system good?
in flat dices (1d100,1d1000) all values have the exact chance (the chance of rolling a 1 is one in a hundred,the chance of rolling a 2 is one in hundred and so on),so sometimes you get the awful bad rolls in row or bonuses doesnt really are that impactfull when the dice is too high
in sum dice because of their ''table of combinations'' certain combinations repeat more than others,as showed by the fact that 4 appears 3 times,where 5 and 3 appear 2 times,and 2 and 6 appear only a single time
so you can manipulate distributions to make certain results more or less likely
and more important,you can make sure bonuses actually increases chances really big for really unlikely rolls,but not add to much to normal or already easy rolls
lets see a +1 in a 2d3 for example, give that our total combinations where 9,1/9=0.1111....=11% roughly bonus
chances of rolling 6 in 2d3 is only 11 percent,so adding a +1 increases the chance of rolling a 6 to roughly 22%,a double in chance of rolling wich is massive
where rolling 4 goes from 66% to 77% chance of being rolles, an increase of 16% wich while big is really tame to the increase that the chances of rolling 6 had
so bonuses really help to surpass unlikely values (increase chance of critics really big,and reduce chances of critical failures a lot),WITHOUT CHANGING THE ''AVERAGE'' ROLL CHANCE THAT MUCH
meaning you can get a smooth progression without ''we failed the same fucking action in a row 7 times'' or ''we rolled critical success 7 times in a row and defeated the quest before time'',because ''normal'' values are actually a lot more likely to roll than criticals ,and what increases and decreases criticals (postive and negative) chances is instead the bonuses and debuffs
so lets say you want your players to progress an at somewhat steady rythm,you use a sum dice system and a ''failing forward'' (as long they dont critic fail,they get a small bonus for the next time they do the action)
the result is that every time they fail,they stack bonuses wich as explained before,makes their success chance grow exponentially with every stack
so what begins as 1% chances succes,after adding a few +5 bonuses because of normal failures,can go to 5%>10%>30%>70% ,esentially making less to succedwith every new attempt
and what if you want to go ''tropico dice'' and go crazy?
well,then you add dices,3d3 have 81 possible combinations compared to the 9 of 2d3,and the most common sum value of 3d3 is between 5-7 with a 70 percent chance of rolling between said values (a really massive increase compared to 2d3 whose higher value was 6 with only 16% chance)
so int a nutshell
>for steady progression give small bonuses per failed action that stack,therefore increasing chances of success as well character bonuses
>for crazy progression allow players to stack several dices on a single action,but make sure there is enough scarcity of dice to ensure they dont neglect anything,like having 7 actions per category and 4 dices,they could stack all in single actions,but they would neglect others,or they could spread to thin if they dont stack dices
>you can scale up easily,as you can add bonuses or debuffs,add or take dices,increase DC or reduce them,making for an easy way to slide difficulty
want to make an enemy order of magnitude stronger?
give him 2 extra dices to his attack rolls
then make the MC go harsh training with high DC to gain extra dices to his own attacks while keeping the ''slowly increasing bonuses with each failure'' to have steady progress
and you can still have the ocassional high or low roll
