stop me if you've heard this before

Sometimes, the Ref may ask for a roll of the dice. The most common type of roll is a d20 roll.
The \gm sets a difficulty class (DC) and whoever is making the choice rolls the die and adds a modifier. If the total is at least equal to the DC, the actor gets what they want. Otherwise, they may fail or need to pay some price to succeed.

If a roll is a contest between two characters, the DC is equal 9+ the total modifier of the target. Otherwise, see below for guidelines on setting DCs.

What is this?

Basically I'm pretty set on a lot of the specific mechanics for my 3e-derived game. Here I'm trying to stretch myself and present only the stuff that's not about character creation, on account of that being the section of the ruleset I have a tendency to work too hard on without drawing the rest of the owl.

The form of what follows, presenting DCs by task rather than by skill (haven't included a skill list in here, but it will be much less granular than these categories) follows the first D&D Next playtest packet. The actual numbers are largely based on a d20ification of this analysis of the hidden d6 skill system of OSE/BX.

3eish: bones

Alright, without further ado here is the mechanical skeleton of my 3eish rules. This does not include any character options or combat-specific rules, other than a brief description of how attacks work. It also doesn't include rules for equipment, adventuring hazards or any kind of magic or special abilities. It is literally just the resolution and injury/endurance parts of the system.

a statline

rule

There are four stats. Condition is to Training what Presence is to Learning. You can have:

• no more things than your Condition
• no more bodily skills than your Training.
• no more bonds than your Presence 
• no more verbal skills than your Learning.

Skills have a ceiling of 1, 2, or 3, which is the maximum number of that skill one may have. All throws are d20 + Condition/Presence + Skills. A 20 or better passes, but if d20 + Skills is 15 or less there may be some complication.

When you run out of Nerve (Not-Getting-Hit-Points), physical damage reduces your Condition and forces a saving throw to keep going. Emotional damage past your Nerve reduces your Presence forces a throw not to break down.

why?

The Fantasy Trip is my favorite game I've never played. Maybe I still will someday. But it emerged from Melee and Wizard, two tactical skirmish games. Melee introduced the Strength/Dexterity split, which is handled quite differently than in the grand Arneson-Gygax tradition. Strength is how tough a character is (how many hits they can take and, in Wizard, how many spells they can cast), while Dexterity governs how likely they are to hit in combat or pull off other maneuvers. The Fantasy Trip used Intelligence (introduced in Wizard) to govern how many skills a character could have, Dexterity to govern how good they were at pulling them off, and Strength how long they can last.

Perhaps I'm a fool for monkeying with such a delicate balance, though Steve Jackson did in GURPS. He split the endurance element out of Strength to make it Health and making Strength responsible for the outcomes (damage, jumping distance, lifting amount) of physical feats. It strikes me to monkey with it in the opposite direction: keep the endurance element of Strength but throw the chance-of-success element of Dexterity in with it and separate physical success and skill (Condition and Training) from psychosocial success and skill (Presence and Learning).

Additionally, this has the feature where every stat corresponds directly to a limit on your character record sheet, which I think is delightfully straightforward.

The damage and saving throw mechanic is straight out of Into the Odd, you can substitute that out with little difficulty and keep the statline mostly the same. I also like the trauma depriving you of the benefits of your relationships angle, but that's going to need to be meshed into a game where those relationships are significant.