Then one of the group members decided to throw a rock through the stained glass window! So I had to improvise and have a horde of undead, and made up some custom/interesting abilities for the horde on the fly as well. It turned out to be quite fun and entertaining, and since then I’ve tried to be more in the “outline” mode you describe to allow more unpredictability and choice from the players.

Secondly, I run a Homebrew game and have not tested this with 4e.

To begin with, I removed the Atr bonus on all Skills. Thus the skill is only ever equal to the amount of Skill Points spent on it.

Each skill check relies on a d% roll and has 6 possible outcomes. A standard skill check has a Pass/Fail Mark of 50% and the possible outcomes would be as follows:

99 – 90, Critical Fail
89 – 70, Great Fail
69 – 50, Minor Fail
49 – 30, Minor Pass
29 – 10, Great Pass
09 – 00, Amazing pass

The starting Pass/Fail Mark depends on the PC’s Skill Level compared to the difficulty level of the challenge or obstacle. A Skill level of 2 against a difficulty of 1 would grant the PC with a +1 to their d% roll. This moves the Pass/Fail Mark to 60%, granting the PC a higher likely of passing. Whereas a Skill level of 1 against a difficulty of 2 would give the PC a -1 to their d% roll. With the Pass/Fail Mark at 40% they have less possibility of succeeding.

No matter the odds, a 99 is always a Critical Fail and a 00 is always an Amazing Pass.

Using this system a Rogue with an Acrobatics of 5 wants to scale the wall of the local Watch from the dark alley, The difficulty is 3 (1 for low visibility, 1 for lack of hand holds and 1 for the Moss covering the wall). His Acrobatics score grants him a +2 to the Skill Check and a Pass/Fail Mark of 70. The Rogue rolls an 82 which is a Minor Fail and slides back to the ground unsuccessful but unharmed and unseen. The lumbering Barbarian wants to try and jump the two stories onto the roof. His Athletics is 4 and with a difficulty of 7 he has a -3 on the Skill Check. Any roll over 20 and he fails to some extent. Rolling a 09 he has a Minor Pass and leaps amazingly into the managing to slam his axe head into the awning and pull himself up. Rolling a 64 with a -3 means a Critical Fail in which case the Barbarian leaps dramatically into the air only to fall short and land hard onto some crates with an almighty thud that alerts the nearby guards. The Barbarian takes some HP damage, a negative to his Fort save and the Entire party has to survive one round of CA against them as the Guards have them surrounded and try to arrest them.

I hope this something within this system works nearly as well as it has for me.

Finally, the ‘Yes and Roll’ was from ChattyDM a couple of days ago and I forgot to reference it, my bad.

Thanks, Scott