Reynard said: I have never understood the assertion that Alternity was the bones on which the d20 system was built. There really isn't a lot of evidence for that. For more influence came from various Skills and Options 2E stuff, I think. Click to expand...

You're right in that I've never actually read a designer say they took inspiration from the Alternity mechanic, but it's obvious that it's one of if not THE first to take into account the difficulty of the task, and adjust the "target" accordingly. Accept, it adjusts the target through the dice steps instead of adjusting the "AC" (DC) of the task. You can see the 2E holdover in the "roll low," but the mechanic that introduces the idea of difficulty seems definitely a basis for the idea of Difficulty Class, only cleaned up.After we finally saw the 3E mechanic, about a year later I happened across Alternity, and smacked my head at both how obvious the connection, how simple the next step was, but also seeing the genius in the D20 simplicity--something that the arguably clunky Step Dice System didn't include. Although, like I said, that was pretty genius at the time, too.