This is why I dumped percentage skills and went with stat rolls in H&H and Drums of War both.  

Let people try anything, then give bonuses to the classes who're supposed to be good at specific things.

Depends on how much you like role protection.  Personally, I like the idea that the thief gets special abilities that only he can use.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;561484Lets say an AD&D fighter wants to try and sneak past some guards quietly.
Approaching this from the common sense perspective, it is certainly possible. Anyone can try and move quietly. It will be a matter of how noisy is the fighter (armor worn, etc.) and the level of attentiveness of the guard (is he dozing off, hard of hearing, etc.) The DM weighs the factors and determines probability of success.

Thirty-three percent (1-2 on 1d6), which is the basic number to surprise in 1e AD&D.

That's your attempt to sneak roll if I'm behind the screen.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;562162Thirty-three percent (1-2 on 1d6), which is the basic number to surprise in 1e AD&D.

That's your attempt to sneak roll if I'm behind the screen.

That's how I generally roll.

If you push up your sleeves there's a nice robust resolution system in OD&D's mechanics.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;561685Not specifically addressed at you Estar but your post does lead me to thinking about this. More recent games do seem to be attempting to use rules to cover every imaginable situation; rules are designed to "stretch" to any imaginable situation, not always successfully.

In particular, there seems to be a trend toward handling everything with skill checks and making sure each Skill covers a huge amount of ground that irks me. For the GM, most situations then become just a matter of assigning a DC, but it returns odd results. 3.5 had this to an extent - it had weird results occasionally generated by  the universal system like elderly characters having the best hearing  because Listen is Wisdom-based,

Anybody who thinks elderly people gain more Wisdom or better hearing with age hasn't taken customer service calls for DirecTV.

Quoteor ogres getting a bonus to Pick Pockets  [sleight of hand] because of their racial bonus to Dexterity, problems  that didn't appear when these were covered by highly specialized thief skills.

Well, I see the problem right there.  WHY would Ogres get a bonus to Dex?

QuotePathfinder and 4E both continued in this direction with more skill consolidation, covering even more design space (i.e. Perception now covers smell, instead of just Listen/Spot, so the oldies are better at that too).
In a recent Pathfinder game, I had a barbarian PC who (due to low Intelligence) had to buy a Linguistics rank to speak the language of the local area (there were regional languages, not just Common), and later on, because Pathfinder rolled 'Decipher Script' into Linguistics, he was also the only party member who had a chance to attempt to decode some ancient inscriptions we found. Looking over their skill list, they did they same with Gather Information/Diplomacy, so the paladin can get gossip at the local taverns better than other PCs.

Anyway, my complaint is not that a 'universal rules system' can't handle every eventuality, but that most of those I've seen generate weird results in doing so - potentially worse than not having the rule and just using common sense.

That is, a "universal" system is not necessarily a good one.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;562170Well, I see the problem right there.  WHY would Ogres get a bonus to Dex?

Yarr, I don't know what I'm doing.

I have no idea why I thought they got a bonus to Dex (might've been an incident when the GM sprang an unusually dextrous ogre on us); I checked the SRD and they have Dex 8, so a -1 on picking your pocket.

They were like, Ninja Ogres.

Japanese ogres...

I've been known to us an Orgre Magi Samurai on players before

Quote from: Panzerkraken;562202I've been known to us an Orgre Magi Samurai on players before

How do they handle as weapons? What's their speed factor?

Quote from: Exploderwizard;562203How do they handle as weapons? What's their speed factor?

I have them haste themselves beforehand, so it's 0.  The spikey bits are nice, and they can usually add a couple 'on hit' spell effects before they come crashing down.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;562162Thirty-three percent (1-2 on 1d6), which is the basic number to surprise in 1e AD&D.

That's your attempt to sneak roll if I'm behind the screen.

I've seen that solution before, but my problem with it is that it doesn't seem to reflect the conscous effort factor.

Say, if you have a party of 6 exploring the dungeon with a reasonable amount of carefulness - not specifically trying to sneak, but still being careful not to make too much noise -, they get a 1 in 3 chance of surprising the enemy. With your solution, if a single non-thief is trying to creep up on a guard doing his best to be even more quiet than during exploration, he gets the same 1 in 3 chance. Therefore, his specific, conscious and deliberate attempt to make even less noise and his leaving behind his noisy teammates did not provide him with any actual advantage.

At which point, why bother? If you're not the Thief, why ever bother trying to sneak up one someone alone - and thus put yourself at a greater risk of counterattack - when you could just move in in force and have the same chance of surprise?

I know in 2e it was meant as an insurance roll, where if you failed you had that extra % to cover your ass. But I never really liked that personally.

I used % on top of the normal d20 roll-under attribute roll. I just convert the % to d20, so Climb 70% becomes a 14, and then tack that onto a free 20 base. So where as others roll-under their DEX to free climb (no gear or anything), a thief starts his roll-under at 34. That way I could just add crazy modifiers (I cut off at -20 difficulty) and not have to worry about things much.

I guess I could've added the converted % directly onto their attributed stat, but that required more math than I was interested in. Basically it was hand-waveium tech because I couldn't be bothered.

Quote from: Premier;562213I've seen that solution before, but my problem with it is that it doesn't seem to reflect the conscous effort factor.

The assumption is that characters of any sort moving through the dungeon are attempting to maximize their quiet in order to have any chance of surprise at all. This is why moving silently is at the same rate as normal dungeon movement.

It's also why rangers surprise on a 1-3 and are only surprised on a 1 - for years I've heard gamers bemoan that 'rangers can't sneak' while ignoring that rather important class ability.

Everyone forgets the little details, especially myself.  But you guys would hate me IRL.  I can't really be bothered about details.  I just want to "fireball" stuff when I get to play.