I just had an idea a few secs ago. It's probably not new, but I would like to know if you think it would be balanced.

Basically, I was thinking about making someone able to get lots of successes even if they don't have a high skill. My idea was (haven't thought about balance yet, so it probably needs a bit of tweaking) that if you roll a 6, and that 6 is a success (with a TN of 7-12 you would have to roll a 6 on that roll, not the first roll, and so on) you roll another die, and if that die is a 6, you get to roll another die, just as if you had a higher skill.

Looking back, this is not very balanced as-is, but I think this game needs a way for someone to simply become lucky and kill someone with a light pistol while defaulting to a low attribute. it would make the game a bit more "scary" as you would never be completely sure that someone is harmless.

There have been numerous other discussions like this, although they were explained differently.

What you are describing is equivalent to saying that if you beat the TN by 6 or more (using the rule of the 6 as normal) then you get an additional success. Personally I think a higher TN modifier than 6 for the 2nd success would be best (somewhere between 8 and 12) but otherwise the idea isn't bad.

I think L5R did something along these lines. Yes it did make things scarier, damn peasents able to put a whopping on the samurai. The only thing I'd need to think about is that in SR your odds of rolling a 6 are approx. 16% where as in L5R using d10's your odds were only 10% for getting another die to roll.

If you want something scary in L5R then take caltrops. When you stand on caltrops, you step on 1d10 of them (average 5.5), each caltrop doing 1k1 damage (and the damage dice reroll and add on 10s). We worked the average damage out to be something like 34 damage. that's more than the average damage done by a katana wielded by a strong character, and can easily be enough to kill!

We've been running "Each 6 by which original TN is beat with one die is an extra success" as long as I can remember. It does cause more successes than average -- I can't remember how many, maybe up to 25% more. It makes the game slightly more lethal, and does make tests such as Drain Resistance slightly easier. Other than that, I can't think of any real difference.

Like Lilt said, there are loads of variations on the theme. Using higher #s for how much TN has to be beat is one. Once is to simply count the number of 6's you get on a single die, and determine extra successes from that (TN 2-6 and 12 is one extra, 18 2 extras, 24 3 extras -- TN 7-12 and 18 is one extra, etc).

There are lots of things that you can do to tweak the system for more lethality.
(This is without dropping the level of your game to a Ganger campaign or something.)

IN Shadowrun 2nd Ed, there was mention of increasing the Power of weapons by half. So your Ares Pred doesn't do 9M, now it does 13M.

I found another nice trick for seriously advanced characters is to change the damage meters.
They now only have 7 blocks, and not 10.
Block 1, Light Wound.
Block 2 & 3, Moderate Wound.
Block 4,5,6 Serious Wound.
Block 7 - Deadly.

Hell, the most effeective means I have of scaring players is still by making all my dice rolls in front of them....no fudging. I have a lot of luck with dice, and they know that.

I'd toyed with the idea of adding two dice on either side of every roll to keep things statistically balanced while still allowing for enough variance to kill someone on sheer chance, but I think I like the idea of allowing more than one success off a single die quite a bit more. Is a shame there's no simpler way to get around that, though.