So far in this discussion, I've been dealing with the 'testing' aspect of RPGs as "Character A attempts Action X and with varying degrees of chance either succeeds or fails. While not entirely wrong and certainly representative of any number of RPGs, it doesn't take into account all of the grey areas of success and failure.

The most seen example of such a "grey area" is illustrated in the idea of the "critial hit". If the player rolls really well (say 5% chance) then the character has made a critical hit, doing extra damage for the well aimed (or lucky) strike. The evil twin of the critical hit is the critical fumble where the player rolls so badly that the character drops his weapon or hits an ally.

The Darksword Adventures rpg had a system by which the result of any roll was expressed as a fraction of the total possible result. In other words, if your character's strength was such that you could lift 200 pounds when you're completely on your game then if you made a roll that had a 1/4 result then on that particular day you could only work up the energy to lift about 50 lbs. This tended to make outright failure less common but you better stick to lifting those fifty pound rocks as getting the full 200 was much more difficult. Good design would dictact that the 100% success values would tend to be slightly higher than in other systems as well.

Another option is that of the 'add on' effect where the basic result is either a success or fail result but then there are variations in the ultimate result. As an example, a wight with paralyzing touch (such as the one that has killed me repeatedly in Grendel's Cave only needs to touch you in order to inflict paralysis on you. That is the true/false level. Does it touch you? Yes or No? As an add on to that, you are paralyzed. Lets say that at the most the wight can paralyze you for 6 units of time (random 1d6 or straight max of 6). In the game however, you have the ability "Resist Paralysis" at a level rated one through 10. A character with a really high resistance can outright ignore the paralysis where as someone without it is going to be stuck for the full time. This creates a continuum of possible results.

A point based system works best when the character has a pool of resources that can be attacked and/or depleted... which of course is the subject of my next post on this subject.