Degrees of Success

Other (objects, etc.) concept

Rolls to succeed, challenge vs skill comparisons, etc. don't have a hard threshold of success and failure but have multiple grades ranging from failure to partial success to full success, possibly padded with catastrophic failure and exceptional success.

3
games
3
platforms

Alternate name: DoS

Requirement: Partial success must be possible. If there's only extreme points of success and failure (e.g. critical success/failure), then it is not good enough for this tag.

For example, rolling to hit someone in combat could work as follows, assuming 20-sided die (d20):
* 1 – critical failure, character drops their weapon, stumbles, or hurts themselves (spraining a muscle or literally stabs themselves)
* 2 to 10 – miss, nothing notable happens
* 11 to 14 – graze, the strike hits but does minimal damage
* 15 to 19 – hit, the attack does normal damage, cutting deep as it should.
* 20 – critical hit, the attack does improved damage or grievously injures the target

That's as opposed to simply rolling d20 with threshold of 15 where below 15 is miss, and 15 and above is a hit.

To make this tag more useful in its meaning, critical hit being part of that roll should be ignored if it's the only other degree of successs as it's fairly common feature of D&D and systems inspired by it.

This can also function where no random chance is not involved, for example lockpicking would be the difference of player's skill rating against lock's challenge rating.
* -5 or less skill – lockpick stuck in lock preventing lock from being opened without repairing or breaking the lock
* -3 or less skill – no effect, the lock is beyond your skill
* -1 or less skill – lock opens but it required you to sacrifice your lockpick to keep it open.
* 0 or more skill – lock opens without issues
* +2 or more skill – lock opens in significantly shorter time

Popular tags

circadiancycle estate gog steampowered

Games by year

The first Degrees of Success video game was released on March 26, 2015.

Paradox Interactive published all these games.

Platforms

Linux 1
Windows 1
Mac OS X 1