Looks like I came up with a name for my little project. I’m borrowing such huge concepts from Edge of the Empire and smashing them into D&D – I figured “Edge of the Dungeon” seemed appropriate. Kinda like how Apocalypse World variations always have “World” in the title, or Dragon Age variations include “Age” somewhere, etc.

I’ve started an article on my Wiki for this game. So many fiddly bits! I’ve done a little design before, with Arcana Evolved Saga Edition, but never finished it. I outlined how this system should work from start to finish, but I think I’m going to boil this down to the base, and rebuild off of that. Find the mechanical hooks to hang things on one by one.

The Core Mechanic
This sets the game apart from D&D, and brings in EotE sensibilities, while being simple enough to roleplay without any other elements. Whenever your character takes an action that has a chance of failure, you as a player roll two (or more) dice: the Skill Check, which is a d20 and must meet or beat a target difficulty; and the Advantage Dice, which is at least a d4 and gains dice and steps based on circumstances. The Advantage Dice are compared against the Threat Dice of the opposing character or the static situation, and the positive total determines the result.

This immediately gives us several different hooks for rule expansion! We have the binary Skill Check, which we can throw arithmetic at (like attribute mods, skill mods, bonuses, penalties, etc), or even probability adjustments (rerolls, minimums, etc). And we have the scalar Advantage/Threat result, which can also have all the same modifications as the Skill Check (as it’s a regular number), but it’s useful as more than just binary success/failure. It can be spent on varying effects. Maybe your opponent loses an action, perhaps the mayor owes you a favor, that kind of thing. I know I’m repeating myself a bit here, but I’m solidifying the mechanic in my head.

Defend Yourself!
So how closely do we cleave to D&D, and how much do we want to move towards Edge? In D&D, attacks and skills are so divorced that they follow almost completely different rules and advancement. In Edge, they are identical, such that making a Brawl roll is no different mechanically than rolling Negotiate against a target’s Cool. Do we maintain the Armor Class/Fortitude/Reflex/Will defenses from D&D, or bring over Edge’s methods? At the moment, I want to find a way for the classic defenses to fit. On the other hand, I want attack rolls and skills to scale at a similar rate, probably by rolling attacks into the skill system.

Star Wars Saga Edition did try a little of this, and for all its awesomeness, kinda failed at it. There were multiple skill uses which would use the defenses as target numbers. However, the defenses started low and rose quickly, while skills started high and rose slowly, making skill “attacks” extremely effective at low levels and practically useless at high levels. Unifying the advancement should help, but ultimately might create other issues in the system.

Skilled in Advance
So… D&D skills (at least in 4e) range pretty dramatically. Not nearly as dramatically as in 3.5e and variants, but that’s another discussion for another time. So, at first level, the range is between a -1 penalty all the way to a +17 bonus. If the skill is expected to be in your wheelhouse, it should be at least +8. By tenth level, skill bonuses range from +4 to +26 or so, with +15 being “good”. Conversely, a character’s best attack should be no less than +6 (assuming a weapon) at first level, up to +12. Interestingly enough, the difference between worst and best at tenth is only one point more. This is already a very different picture than with skills. Here’s the big difference: everybody in D&D is expected to attack at some point. Not everyone is expected to use Diplomacy, or Athletics.

This is probably completely alleviated by simple economy of advancement. Every player’s gonna continue to put points into their signature attacks, as well as the skills in their wheelhouse. Someone who focuses 100% on Support might fall behind on attacks… but is that a bad thing? The 3.5e Mystic Theurge with a crappy BAB is not at all a useless character. I’m not even gonna get into skill math in Edge. Sure, it ranges from 1/0 to 4/2 (for a beginner) to 5/5, but… what does that mean? Is it a difference of… nine? No. The statistics involved make this ridiculously difficult to quantify.

So it’s settled. Advance attacks as skills. And how is that done?

Greyhawk’s Got Talent!
What do I say on my Wiki? Talents give you new abilities, and Feats advance the ones you have. Ok then. Let’s have the Talents be gatekeepers to skills (something like: Skill Training: +3 to a skill; step up your Advantage Die) and advance that with Feats (so: Skill Focus: +2 to a trained skill – cannot have more ranks than [X] – where [X] is an arbitrary cap, like levels).

Stuck A Feather in a Cap and Called It Arbitrary
What is this arbitrary cap? Not sure yet. I’m ditching levels and classes (oh shit, what have I done?), so that won’t be it. Number of Feats? Number of Talents? Total points spent divided by something? Something different for each trait? This is going to be a bit of a sticky wicket until I’ve converted a few characters at different advancement levels.

I think I’m at a stopping point here. Next installment will be other basic systems like Hit Points and a deeper look at defenses.