[Divinity] making the conversion from dice to diceless. ( baby rant)

[sean2099]

Hi all,

I have promised some people here that I would keep them abreast of this process for Divinity.  Here is one of threads I would like to reference because this thread is a split from it.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19899.0

I apologize but I read an article here that stated, more or less, 'You are either playing diceless or a combination of dice/diceless.'   That prompted me because I had two different systems for skills without an external opponent and for opposed rolls.

To make a long story short, I removed the dice mechanic.  I replaced with a attribute called Will.  Will is simply the attribute that measures how many points you the Divinity (god or goddess) has at any given time.  I set it with a default score of 10.  I have used the number ten in other parts of the game so why not now.

I decided that they would recover one point per scene but that their score could not go over ten.  I did so, assuming that once they spend one point...they will spend more than that during each scene.  I could be wrong but I figure getting the spend/save hurtle changed to how much to spend was a worthy addition.

Amazingly, getting rid of the dice gave me other ideas.  As of right now, I just came up with a "new" mechanic.  I call it "clamoring."  Every use of power can be heard by other non-mortal beings.  I like because each usage of power creates more noise, which is detectable by non-mortals within a certain radius and can give away information about the power user.  I had been looking for a mechanic to help "limit" power usage without forcing them via additional resources (the subject of a thread all by itself.)

Changing to diceless has not been completely painless.  I have to go back through the power lists and tweak them.  I laugh about it now but I had dice-based initative for divine creatures.  The Temporal list needs an edit, that's for sure.  For most of it, I see that clarity is the main issue.  Even as I type, I could start other threads or digress in this one but I'll try not to do that too much.  For me, diceless has made and is making some things clearer.  I not advocating that diceless is better in all cases but in this case, I think it fits better.

I don't know about informative this was to everybody but it has helped me at least.

Sean