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A few friends and I are designing our own game system and would like some feedback.

The number of dice to roll is equal to your skill rating 1-5 (1-untrained, 2-basic knowledge, 3-experienced, 4-Elite, 5 Heroic)

There are three things to look for when rolling your dice:
Success (The face value)
The higher the better. Any +x/-x modifiers applies to the Success. Generally even an unskilled mook can potentially have the same amount of success as an expert, but it's unlikely
Quality (Matches to the face value)
As the name implies, this is how well you succeed. You a re said to have a quality equal to the number of dice showing the high value. If a success value is higher than yours it "cancels out" your success on a 1 for 1 basis. So a low success with a higher quality (multiple matches) can still win against a high success with low quality. Quality will generally be hard to increase but has a chance to increase with certain abilities and maybe equipment.
Advantage (any dice showing a 4+)
This provides an abstract way of accounting for random events. Advantage acts like a currency and is use it or lose it. Players can spend advantage to gain, well, and advantage over their opponent. In the basic rules this will be a simple extra point of damage (or armor for the defender) OR an extra point of success per advantage spent. However, a full list of things advantage can be spent on is being made. Advantage is generally gained through positioning on the table and other scenarios where it's clear a model could have a leg up on another, such as having the high ground or attacking from behind

This system is intended to be simple and fast but force players to make hard decisions in a risk reward type format. Players have to choose their own success and just how advantages play out but so can the opponent. Players will often decide if the should keep that one single 6 and hope the opponent doesn't roll more of a lower number? Or do they go a slightly safer route and take the three 4s? Quality beats quantity, but quantity is quality all on its own.

A note on critical hits:
The current plan s if the success is equal to or greater than a weapon's trauma rating it will score a critical hit per quality of the success. this would entice players to keep the fewer high roll versus the safer multiple low rolls. another option is for a crit to be success plus damage but i'm trying to avoid lots of math.

The How To:
Roll your dice pool.
Step 1: look for any sixes. For every six roll an additional d6 for the pool (Exploding sixes)
Step 2: look for the highest result with the most matches (Success and Quality)
Step 3: Look for all dice that show a four or higher (Advantage)
Now compare results.
A higher success beats a lower success on a 1 for 1 basis. If there are any success left unbeaten than that side wins

An Example of play:
Jon is firing at Tripp's model.
Jon's model has a Marksmanship of 2 and so rolls 2 dice. Results are a 6 and a 2. since there is a 6 he rolls an additional die and gets a 5. So Jon then chooses his highest Success with the most matches. Sadly, nothing has a match so he takes the 6. He does, however, now have two dice that are 4 or higher.
Jon States: I have one 6, advantage two.
Trip rolls his Defense of 3 and gets a 6 and two 3s. He rolls an additional die for another 3. Now Tripp has to make a choice, If he takes the 6, Jon could use his advantage to add two more points to his Success beating Tripp's roll. Tripp could Take the Six and add in his Advantage to make that 6 a 7 instead but Jon will still beat him. So Tripp decides to take the thee 3s instead. Jon will beat one 3 but Tripp will still win because he has two 3s left compared to Jon's zero 6s.
Tripp states: I have three 3s, advantage one.
Tripp Wins the roll and his model dives out of the way of the shot.

Tripp could have taken the hit and applied his advantage to boost his armor instead, but had Jon rolled high for damage that could have been just enough to beat his boosted armor and still wound Tripp's model. NOTE: With current critical rules this could have also meant that Tripp's model received a nasty critical hit IF Jon's 6 was equal to or greater than his weapon's trauma rating.

It seems complicated but it's easier than it looks. Obviously higher skilled models have a better chance of making matches and rolling sixes to add even more dice. I think in terms of the bell curve though it works out in the end. I'll have to actually crunch the numbers to see.

So what do ya'll think?

Sounds pretty interesting although I'd lose exploding 6s it becomes too easy to spam dice (however possible, tactics, list writing, table position) and the game devolves into chuck for 6s to win the game.
Might work better with exploding d12, that's how my group fixed Dystopian wars.
Just my 2 cents.

We are heavily considering d10s but were are little concerned that the spread of possible values would be too much to warrant the Quality aspect, especially with a limited 1-5 dice pool.

Exploding sixes did make it possible for a skill level 1 model to beat a skill level 5 model on a rare occasion. Though we could always make it a +1 to success or something.

It should also be noted that on average most models will have 2-4 skill level on most thngs with 1 and 5 being fairly uncommon

OK, so how would your rules handle the following situation:

A unit of four Space Marines and a Veteran Sergeant are shooting at a unit of five Orks and one Nob. Two Marines have Bolters, one has a flamer, one has a Missile Launcher, and the Sgt. has a Bolt Pistol. The Nob is in front and in the open and at 12 inch range. The Boys are strung-out behind him. One Boy is at 14 inch range and partially shielded by some foliage. Another Boy is at 16 inch range and he's partially behind a large rock. Another Boy is in the open at 18 inch range. Another Boy is in the open at 20 inch range. Another Boy is behind a fortified wall at 22 inch range.

Thirdeye wrote:
OK, so how would your rules handle the following situation:

A unit of four Space Marines and a Veteran Sergeant are shooting at a unit of five Orks and one Nob. Two Marines have Bolters, one has a flamer, one has a Missile Launcher, and the Sgt. has a Bolt Pistol. The Nob is in front and in the open and at 12 inch range. The Boys are strung-out behind him. One Boy is at 14 inch range and partially shielded by some foliage. Another Boy is at 16 inch range and he's partially behind a large rock. Another Boy is in the open at 18 inch range. Another Boy is in the open at 20 inch range. Another Boy is behind a fortified wall at 22 inch range.

In are particular game you activate on a unit by unit basis. In low point skirmish level games an individual model is a unit all on its own. Higher point games you have can have a unit of more than that. But this only really affects how activation works. low point games= a model activates then another, either marine or ork. in higher point games= every model in the marine squad would activate one at a time then the orks or vica versa.

In either rate each model would resolve actions INDIVIDUALLY. Bolter one activates, rolls Marksmanship vs Ork's defense (We will say maybe a 3 vs 1 roll). Let's say the one behind the wall. Since this ork is in cover and a good distance away the marine incurs a -1 penalty to his success for his target being obscured, and depending on his bolter's accuracy he could benefit from a bonus or penalty from there as well. THe ork behind the wall Could possibly receive an extra advantage to his roll being that he is behind solid cover.

Now let's say the Nob had next initiative (How units activate is still being discussed though we want a semi random system). The Nob rushes to the Sgt. for melee and rolls his CQB on the Sgt a (4 vs 3). The Sgt. succeeds his defense essentially diving out the way of the Nob's chain axe. Another option to the Sergeant is an opposed CQB roll. If the Sgt. felt he could do better with his CQB than his defense he could roll that instead and immediately score an attack back. There other things the Sgt could have done but that's beyond the scope of the original post, but its essentially a reactive fire type deal.

Cover matters, movement matters, and range matters. As well as your weapons having more to them then just the pain they can deliver.

In this particular case you are actually bringing up a rule we haven't fully fleshed out yet, called Combined Effort. This allows units who have poor skills to pool their abilities together. So if the orks together were making up a unit when that unit activates they could choose to make rolls separately OR act together. After all quantity is a quality all on its own. I think I said that already. This particular rule is still getting hammered out and balanced but wouldeessentially allow you to witch from a Warmahordes style model by model basis to a 40k style mob basis on the fly. again WIP

I like a system where you roll a number of dice equal to your skill level, selecting one result as your score.
Only really works in small games though, but it does allow low skill level models to beat high skill level models, albeit less likely.
Add in criticals (1 being critical miss, -1 to score, 6 being critical hit, +1 to score)

 marv335 wrote:
I like a system where you roll a number of dice equal to your skill level, selecting one result as your score.
Only really works in small games though, but it does allow low skill level models to beat high skill level models, albeit less likely.
Add in criticals (1 being critical miss, -1 to score, 6 being critical hit, +1 to score)

It's a skirmish level game akin to Heavy Gear and Warmachine. Aiming for a level where you can play with from around 5 models on upwards to maybe 50 for very large games.

Still tweaking criticals. the idea we are trying to go for is that each weapon has a Trauma Rating, which indicates what it takes to score a crit. If the mechanic we go with is equal to or exceeds the trauma then a crit is scored, similar to games like Edge of the Empire. The idea is the weapon has the POTENTIAL to do critical damage but is far more likely to live up to this potential in more skilled hands than thse of an untrained mook.

I am also against exploding dice. Exploding dice are a bad mechanic because you do not know how many dice you need to roll ahead of time, which means each round of exploding dice needs to be handled separately.

 Renegade09 wrote:
Step 1: look for any sixes. For every six roll an additional d6 for the pool (Exploding sixes)

This is not one step. You have to roll your dice, look for sixes, roll more dice, look for sixes, roll more dice, look for sixes... until you run out of sixes.

It doesn't even serve the normal role of exploding dice, which is to represent the one-in-a-million victory, because your dice poker system already does that.

An easy fix would be to just increase the stats by 1 - from 2 Marksmanship to 3, and 3 Defense to 4 - to make it more likely for your dice poker mechanic to play a role, without the tedium of rerolling rerolls of rerolls with exploding dice.

 AlexHolker wrote:
I am also against exploding dice. Exploding dice are a bad mechanic because you do not know how many dice you need to roll ahead of time, which means each round of exploding dice needs to be handled separately.

 Renegade09 wrote:
Step 1: look for any sixes. For every six roll an additional d6 for the pool (Exploding sixes)

This is not one step. You have to roll your dice, look for sixes, roll more dice, look for sixes, roll more dice, look for sixes... until you run out of sixes.

It doesn't even serve the normal role of exploding dice, which is to represent the one-in-a-million victory, because your dice poker system already does that.

I dont think i was clear here with what I meant. After you roll, look for sixes. for every six roll an additional die and apply its result the rest. I never reroll the entire pool. And I would say its more akin to One Roll Engine except matches aren't necessary they just boost the result in some way. though a simple +1 would probably be better.

trying to simplify things as much as possible while still having something more than just a roll for highest deal

 Renegade09 wrote:
I dont think i was clear here with what I meant. After you roll, look for sixes. for every six roll an additional die and apply its result the rest. I never reroll the entire pool.

No, I got that. But you still need to stop what you're doing to keep rolling dice until they stop exploding. You can't even stop exploding dice once you've beaten some target, because your opponent is also using exploding dice and might get lucky and get five 6s times to your four.

Basically, the less batches you need to roll, the better, and the sooner you know how many batches you need to roll, the better.

I see your point. The soul goal of the exploding d6 is so a Skill level 1 could stand up to a skill level 5 in rare instances.

If we drop exploding 6 it would have to be replaced with an equivalent.

Frankly the entire system may need to be scrapped...

 Renegade09 wrote:
I see your point. The soul goal of the exploding d6 is so a Skill level 1 could stand up to a skill level 5 in rare instances.

If we drop exploding 6 it would have to be replaced with an equivalent.

You already have one, since you're using opposed rolls - just add +1 to each stat like I suggested to make more use out of the dice poker thing, and the Skill level 2 guy might roll a a double six while the Skill level 6 guy might roll 1,2,3,4,5,6, or something like that.