I am working on a game; help with the dice mechanics, please?

[Amechra]

Alright, I've got some simple dice mechanics all set up for my game. In it, these are the different levels of success:

Trivial: You do this without rolling. Only accessed if you use a Raise.
AUTOFAIL: Roll a (modified) 1 or 2 is an automatic failure; this is going to be a game light on rolling, so while this comes up, it's not as often. And it ain't crit fail.
Easy: Roll a (modified) 3 or higher
Medium: Roll a (modified) 5 or higher
Hard: Roll a (modified) 7 or higher
Impossible: Super ultra difficult; you can't hit this shit normally, bucko.

Now, each character will roll dice depending on their proficiency in that thing:
Schmucks roll 1d10-2
Average Joes roll 1d8
Experienced Dudes roll 1d6+2


Yes, this does mean that Experienced Dudes cannot fail an Easy challenge unless opposed.

Alright, so this means that Schmucks will always lose against Experienced Dudes, right? Wrong.

Each character can wager Raises; each Raise ups what you have to be rolling (so you can use it to shift from a task being Easy to it being Medium, thus making it harder for you to succeed), but also gives you some sort of benefit. You can "buy" free raises in certain things, and every so often, so rare they are practically mythic, you get things that Drop the difficulty a step, thus letting you do stuff like run on air and other neat-o crap.

So, yeah, an Experienced Dude at running with a Free Raise and a Drop(on walls) would be able to run on walls without much of a problem, while a Schmuck would fall on his ass if he tried.

Now, all that's well and good, but I'm kinda at a loss for how I'm going to do opposed rolls; I've been thinking that the best route might be not having them, and pulling some tricks to make them look like they are there.

Does any of this sound like an utterly stupid idea?

[veekie]

I've seen a somewhat similar roll system in Heroquest(their's is d20, roll under your stat, whenever your modifer hits 20 you get a free Raise and the stat resets to 1. Rolling a 1 or 20 gets you a Raise or costs you one respectively, resulting in a fumble if you run into negatives).

What they do with opposed rolls is simple, each side's Raises cancel out(in that their costs are still paid, but their benefits are countered unless you have more than the other party), and then roll independently. So you can have a success-failure matrix:
Success-Success: Minimal effect, if it's attack vs parry, the attacker only scores a glancing blow, if it's grapple vs grapple, it's a deadlock and neither party gets anywhere, if it's Stealth vs Perception, the spotter will sense a disturbance, but with no idea of the direction or distance. Leftover Raises might change this though.
Attacker Success-Defender Fails: Full effect, self explanatory. Attacker may get a critical if they have Raises.
Attacker Fails-Defender Success: No effect, self explanatory. Defender may get a counter effect if they have Raises.
Double Fail: No effect from either side. They just suck.

[Khorus]

Hello,

I like this approach, keeps you from making lucky rolls to do something normally out of grasp of the average Joe. While at the same time giving your PC's the ability to shine at higher ability levels.