Calculating The Ladder

See this page for what ladders are and how to use them. This page is about generating them.

Parameters

Ladders are generated from the following parameters, so these need to be decided before you can calculate your game's ladder.

  1. Main Die
  2. Starting Bracket
  3. Game Scope (this can be adjusted while calculating your ladder)

Calculation

Next, let's look at how to calculate your ladder.

  1. S Step Size = divide the Main Die by 4, and round.
  2. B Bottom Offset = Take the average stat value and average skill value of your starting bracket and add them together.

Template

DN Difficulty Margin Quality Time
0 Trivial -3S Terrible 10x
B Easy -2S Awful 4x
B+S Moderate -S Bad 2x
B+(2S) Tough 0 Tie 1x
B+(3S) Challenging +S Good 1/2
B+(4S) Extreme +2S Great 1/4
B+(5S) Impossible +3S Amazing 1/10
Just because your ladder has a top end, doesn't mean skill rolls can't surpass that value, so don't worry too much about capturing the entire parameter space.

Examples

Here are a couple of examples to help illustrate the process.

D&D-like

  • Main Die: 1d20
  • Sample Bracket
    • Average Stat: 2
    • Average Skill: 3
  • S = 5
  • B = 5
DN Difficulty Margin Quality Time
0 Trivial -15 Terrible 10x
5 Easy -10 Awful 4x
10 Moderate -5 Bad 2x
15 Tough 0 Tie 1x
20 Challenging +5 Good 1/2
25 Extreme +10 Great 1/4
30 Impossible +15 Amazing 1/10

D6 system

  • Main Die: 1d6
  • Sample Bracket
    • Average Stat: 1
    • Average Skill: 2
  • S = 2
  • B = 3
DN Difficulty Margin Quality Time
0 Trivial -6 Terrible 10x
3 Easy -4 Awful 4x
5 Moderate -2 Bad 2x
7 Tough 0 Tie 1x
9 Challenging +2 Good 1/2
11 Extreme +4 Great 1/4
13 Impossible +6 Amazing 1/10