Skill and Task Resolution... A Cool Chart.

First, I am sure that this post is in compliance with all requirements of Joesky's Tithe.

Like many of the members of the DIY D&D (OSR) scene out there I have been playing games for years... decades in fact. I have seen games come and go and have given many of them a try at one point or another. One of the games I bought and tried to play, but could never really get my group into when I was a kid was MERP (Middle-Earth Role Playing) by ICE. The games mechanics were grounded in ICE's pretty popular, at the time, Rolemaster game system. As a Tolkien lover I just had to pick up the game. Though we never really played I ended up using a lot of the material as a spring board into developing some of my own hacks for D&D.

One of the tables which I worked into my own game was the table on page 77, "MT-2-STATIC MANEUVER TABLE".

Wedging this table into our house ruled/2e proficiency (skill) system was always a bit of a crunch. It never quite fit into D&D but I still made it work. I have used the table as a starting point and created the following table which seems to have encompassed grades of success presented in the original MERP table. The extremes of success and failure also translate, in D&D terms, to critical successes and failures.

A couple quick notes regarding the table: When I mention time segments, I mean measures of time (e.g. rounds, turns, hours, etc.). Also, to find out more about the (dis)advantage system, hit up the following links: roles, rules and rolls or the D&D Next Playtest.