One of the rules that my players like in particular from Hollow Earth Expedition is “taking the average” — where the character can take the average expected success of their die automatically.

Example: Jack is an athletics guy who needs to do some fast footwork across a crumbling stone wall to get to the heroine and rescue her.  Jack’s Athletics is a 6…and average expected success of 3.  The wall is wide but in sketchy condition — loose mortar, etc. — He need 3 successes to make it across.  Taking the average, he’s done it but without aplomb.

Now for the average every day stuff — driving a car down a road at normal speeds in normal traffic — you shouldn’t need to roll a test.  In some more important tests, taking the average allow you to succeed at more difficult tasks without risking a crappy die roll.  But that, in itself, can be a problem for players…when you have a high average (remember, HEX difficulties generally range from 1-5), you don’t really fail at anything.  That removes a certain sense of danger and chance from the equation.

So to address this, I propose a few tweaks to make taking the average not so pat.  On tests where there is danger, or something at stake, the character taking the average still get their average benefit, but they roll their dice anyway.  If they roll all failures they botch, even if they succeed.

Example:  Jack takes the average and goes over the wall fast and without risk of falling to his death, but when he rolls his six dice and gets all failures.  The GM decides that at the last moment, the wall collapses and he throws himself to safety on the altar platform that the damsel in distress is on.  Now they are on the 18′ rickety platform, their initial means of escape gone, and the natives below have them surrounded.

Or the GM could have gone with the wall crumbles, even though Jack didn’t fall through any fault of his own.