Working on a sort of skill challenge type system: The Progress pool

Index Card RPG
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Working on this new system as my players have really been enjoying when I do madd combats as skill challenge adjacent encounters. Looking for input thanks yall Players work together to fill a Progress Pool through successful actions. Meanwhile, failures and enemy actions fill a Failure Pool. The encounter ends when one pool fills—success or failure with consequences.

  1. Player describes action

  2. GM sets DC (10-18) and Effort Type (Basic, Weapon, Gun, Magic)

  3. Player rolls d20 + ability modifier vs DC

  4. Success: Roll Effort die + Effort bonus → add to Progress Pool

  5. Failure: Roll Effort die + Effort bonus → add to Failure Pool

  6. GM Turn: Resolve enemy actions, check milestones

  7. Repeat until a pool fills, if the success pool fills up first, the encounter is finished with the players as victors. With failure, the players must face the music

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I don’t see why this wouldn’t work. After all, monster HP are pretty much the “progress pool” and player HP are the “failure pool”. As I understand it, your system effectively amalgamates all player HP into one pool, which would help to allow everybody to stay included in combat instead of getting picked off one by one. And of course, using this for non-combat challenges would be a no-brainer; systems like Draw Steel and Blades in the Dark do something very similar. The only real downside here would be a reduction in “granularity”: Either everyone succeeds at the same time, or they all fail. That’s not necessarily a drawback, of course — I expect many groups would enjoy such streamlining of gameplay.

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