cumulative strength of several characters

[BaophraT]

Hi !

My question may seem a bit silly, but I've been faced with this situation several times. Let's take the example of 3 characters joining forces to break down a door: how is the die roll affected ? Until now, I've added a +1 bonus for each additional character above one. On reflection, shouldn't I take into account each character's strength bonus more precisely ? I'm sure you've got your own house rules on this, and I'd love to hear what you think !

[GnomeBoy]

Most commonly I think, people add the bonuses, with a minimum of +1 for those without a bonus.

I prefer to judge it based on the situation. Maybe help means automatic success, maybe it means going up the Dice Chain, maybe it just means it's a faster process... I wouldn't say I have one solution for all cases, because not all doors are the same!

[BanjoJohn]

Application of strength, for me, should be cumulative, instead of supplemental.
If you have two people who can each lift 150 lbs, then they can lift about 300 lbs together, it wouldnt make sense to only let them lift 200 or 250.
So for example, if there's a heavy boulder that you would say only someone could push on a DC20 strength check, one person with 10 str would need to roll a 20 because of +0 bonus. Two people with 10 str would count as 20 str and you could decide that's a +4 bonus. Three people who are 10 str would count as 30 str and would get a +whatever bonus.

Now, you would have to determine the maximum number of characters can act on the object in order to do the task, but the previous old ways of doing it where you only get a +1 bonus or +2 bonus are outdated thinking on what makes good gameplay and cooperation.

Now, how you adjucate this bonus is up in the air, I think using a dice chain modifier is fair, I think using addative bonuses is fair as well, or some combination of both.

[BaophraT]

Thank you for your interesting comments. After reading your points of view I thought of something else : add a +1 bonus per character, but add +1d per Strength bonus point, which would balance everything out.

[BanjoJohn]

balance? in DCC? hehe. Just joking. That sounds like a nice compromise.