Pat, the blame you seem to be placing on unified system design appears to me to be more properly placed on bad cases where the designers of the system didn't do a good job with unified design and/or the implementation of the design was poor.  Granted, it's a narrow distinction in practice, but I think it one still worth making.

Not to mention, that considering D&D, especially the WotC versions, you have to consider their strange fidelity to surface traditions while monkeying with the guts.  That is, if one were to make a radically clean unified D&D, that would be one thing.   Or if one wanted to make a loving homage to the original, that would be another very different thing.  They seem to be schizophrenic on those two directions.

Quote from: nDervish;1129476As for what I actually like in dice mechanics, I seem to be a serious outlier - in most of these kinds of discussions, a lot of people will generally say "I like Dice Mechanic X because the exact probabilities are transparent", but I consider that a bug, not a feature.  Pre-4th edition Shadowrun is one of my favorite dice mechanics, mainly for the clear implicit model of complex situations (the number of dice rolled solely reflects your ability, the target number solely reflects the difficulty of the task, and the number of successes solely reflects the quality of the result), but also in part because very few people can look at "8 dice vs. target number 4" and immediately know the exact percentage chance of getting any specific number of successes - but anyone can easily see that, most of the time, you'll get roughly 4 of them.  This feels more true-to-life to me, given that, IRL, if I'm shooting at a target on the range, I don't know that I have a 37.48672% chance of a bullseye, but I do know that I'll usually hit within about 5 cm/2 inches of the center.  (Made-up numbers, not an actual statement of my personal ability with firearms.)

I really agree with this part.  I like slightly opaque mechanics in general.  Thinking about mechanics and and probabilities takes my head out of the story-space where I have the most fun.

Quote from: nDervish;1129542"how the hell can a STR 6 kobold out-arm-wrestle a STR 20 fighter?"

I don't see this as a different case to how would a kobold out-fight a fighter in a straight up fist fight. It might be technically possible with enough bad rolls from the fighter but extremely unlikely.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586Except that the criticism is that you're singling out one approach as the root of the problem when in reality both approaches fail. And if both approaches fail then the one you're singling out can't be the root of the problem--the issue must be something else. My position, beyond that base criticism is that if both approaches are doomed to fail regardless then the most simple, straightforward and/or effective (in terms of simulation) approach should be the one used (or at least the one preferable in most circumstances).

That's not my argument. I don't think handling all possible outliers or differences in how different tasks are resolved in real life is the purpose of a game system. That's why I just pointed out your criticism is invalid.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586That's exactly what I meant by inconsistent mechanics. Every single time you want to do something in the system you have to use a completely different set of mechanics that often doesn't account for character abilities (just rolls a 1 or 2 on a d6) or address any of the issues you were pointing out that unified mechanics fail to address. They're just different almost for the sake of being different, and still don't simulate reality close to 1/1. If anything they simulate it even less by often not accounting for character ability at all.

Again, I never argued that emulation of every aspect of reality was the goal, of anything.

And I think your statement that B/X is irrationally and poorly designed is nonsense. It's perhaps the slimmest and mostly tightly designed system of D&D ever developed, and the different resolution methods make the different parts of the game easy to mentally separate. And modifying everyone based on some random stat isn't a virtue, it's just another attempt to force symmetry on everything, even where it makes no sense. Whether a stat should modify something varies. Factors to consider are what exactly the stat represents (they tend to be relatively collections of broad affinities, which map poorly to real life), the degree a stat would matter, the level of abstraction/granularity of the mechanic, and assorted other factors. For the dungeon tasks in B/X, a standard ability score modifier would be far too large given the range of the d6, most of the tasks aren't clearly associated one or more ability scores, and is largely irrelevant anyway because the game assumes adventurers are competent and that should be more important than some minor natural aptitude.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586Rules that don't exist in systems with non-unified mechanics either, because they deal with specialized circumstances that are hard to incorporate into the game. Except that if I was going to make them up for a skill-based system using unified mechanics I could make them up on the fly by simply assigning a minimum skill/ability level as a requirement. With non-unified mechanics I would either need to fall back on a minor concession like "roll 2 or less on a d6 and forget about your character's abilities affecting the roll" or make the whole thing up from scratch.

Again, I never argued a system needs to mimic reality in every possible way.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586That's an extremely minor issue (what's the huge difference between a caster level and a combat modifier or a skill level?), and not not even an issue with unified mechanics, but an issue with D&D 3e+ mechanics not being unified enough. If spell casting (along with every other task in the game) was handled as a skill instead of relying on character classes or dragging around these carryover mechanics from older editions like caster levels, THAC0/Combat Modifiers and whatnot that wouldn't be an issue. A spell resistance roll would just be a magic skill roll using the opponent's magic resistance as difficulty. An attack would just be a skill roll against the opponent's defensive skill. A saving throw would just be a skill roll against the negative condition's difficulty, etc.

This is mostly how 5e does it, by the way, which is also the most successful edition in D&D history. I wonder if those two things are related (and I doubt throwing a bone to the OSR had much to do with it cuz most people who play 5e probably don't know WTF B/X D&D even is--they play it cuz it's finally easy enough for normies to grasp).

You're just pointing out minor inconsistencies that are an issue precisely because they're inconsistent rather than being truly unified mechanics.

It is not a minor issue, if it comes up frequently, and you have to look it up every time. The degree by which it breaks the flow of the game matters, and so does the frequency. Good design should be easily internalized, and become automatic, except when there's a good reason to force people to make a decision. Which number you add to a d20 roll isn't a good reason to continually break the flow of the game. If you think of the mechanics as the interface of a video game, then having two systems that look similar but aren't is equivalent to having the drop shields and attack buttons placed so it's easy to squash the wrong one, and you end up blowing up all the time because you dropped your defenses instead of shooting.

I'm unfamiliar with 5e, so I can't comment on it. But again, you're adding new rules to defend old rules. That just proves they don't work.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586A tradition that dealt with a different style of game that didn't involve in-depth incursions into a simulated world, where stuff like character skills and handling a broad range of tasks becomes relevant.

OD&D didn't have character skills, so that argument doesn't apply to the edition.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129586In my experience those are usually included for the sake of completeness, given that those difficulty modifiers may become relevant in situations where a skill roll might still be necessary, such as when trying otherwise trivial tasks in combat, or when complications that may penalize an otherwise extremely low difficulty roll are in effect. But those same systems usually include a note somewhere that you don't need to roll every single time a task that might be covered by a skill comes up. You only need to roll when dramatically appropriate. This is pretty much standard fare in RPGs.

But they are included.

To step back for a minute to a more interesting discussion, when a DM calls for a skill or other check is one of those things that matters a lot more than the probabilities or the specific mechanic. And like initiative order, it's one of those things that varies widely, from table to table. Even if the edition clearly specifies when checks should be made in every possible circumstance (which has probably never happened in the history of the hobby), everyone has their own idea of how they should work, and tends to carry those ideas from game to game, regardless of the official rules. There's a certain level of consensus involved here, because how these kind of things are handled tends to develop as a form of table convention, and becomes part of the social contract in a local group. But those conventions can also vary widely from group to group, and from DM to DM. We all know DMs who are sticklers for checks even for trivial things, and others who handwave most of it away if you have the appropriate skill on your character sheet.

What I'm trying to emphasize is this is something that largely happens outside the context of the rules, and happens more at the social level. And like most things of this sort, it can be very hard to describe and analyze, because it's something we were acculturated into, rather than something we formally learned. It's like trying to explain how we walk without mimicking the steps; it's just something we do, not something we think about.

Quote from: Jamfke;1129371Like D20 vs percentiles for combat resolution or skill usage. Which is your favorite and why? Does probability factor into your reasoning at all or is it more of a sentimental thing (cuz it is the way!)?

I guess it depends.

In general, when I'm considering the chance a certain PC should have to perform such-and-such action, I find it natural and fast to think in terms of percentages: "Hmm...this PC in these circumstances should have about a 75% chance of success." A system which lets me easily adapt that initial, rapid evaluation into a roll is a big benefit, IMO. This means that dice which divide evenly into 100 are all pretty easy to think about and use: d%, d20, d10, d4. This also assume a single die, not multiple dice together.

When thinking about probabilities where I'm rolling multiple dice and adding the results, or where I'm using dice that don't evenly divide into 100, I tend to think in terms of fractions. For example 1/6 or 3/6 or 1/12 or whatever. That's especially true for the "multiple dice" scenario, because if you're concerned about the probabilities you'd need to perform some calculation.

The game system and my overall familiarity with it also matters. For example, if you've run a "multiple d6" kind of system for a long time, you might gain an intuitive feel for the probabilities, even if you never bother to calculate them.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1129589Pat, the blame you seem to be placing on unified system design appears to me to be more properly placed on bad cases where the designers of the system didn't do a good job with unified design and/or the implementation of the design was poor.  Granted, it's a narrow distinction in practice, but I think it one still worth making.

Not to mention, that considering D&D, especially the WotC versions, you have to consider their strange fidelity to surface traditions while monkeying with the guts.  That is, if one were to make a radically clean unified D&D, that would be one thing.   Or if one wanted to make a loving homage to the original, that would be another very different thing.  They seem to be schizophrenic on those two directions.

Many gamers seem to like elegance and symmetry for the sake of elegance of symmetry, and this manifests in various ways, including arguing in favor of unified mechanics. I'm arguing this is an irrational preference. Design decisions should be made on whether the mechanic improves the game, not based on some vague aesthetic.

The argument for and against traditional standards is a different one. There is a certain utility in keeping things the same, because it leverages people's hard earned experience and knowledge. Forcing people to learn an entirely new system requires a lot more investment.

But that brings up a related point: Remember the switch from 3.0 to 3.5? The two editions are pretty close -- they didn't change the overall architecture in any major way. There weren't even that many medium-sized changes. But wow, they made a lot of tiny changes. I remember that years after 3.5 came out, we were still finding rules that we were using the old way, because we didn't know they changed the wording in the middle of a paragraph somewhere.

That made it a nightmare to learn the new edition. Between 2.0 and 3.0, there were some major changes and the rulebooks were entirely rewritten. So we had to learn the new edition from scratch, which was a lot of work. But for 3.5, we had to notice all the subtle changes in sections of the rulebook we thought we were quite familiar with. That was a lot harder, because to learn the new edition, we had to unlearn what we already knew.

That's a similar concept to mechanics that are fundamentally different, but look very similar. When two things are distinct, we can learn them separately and keep them compartmentalized. But when two things look similar but are fundamentally different, it can be a lot harder to keep them straight.

I realize that people will get defensive when talking about preferred system, so it might be better to talk about preferred systems. I do play and enjoy high-randomness systems, but all other things being equal, it is a aspect that bugs me. The system CORPS has more of a low-randomness result -- it was actually the system that made me realize about just how huge the variance of other systems is. I also often enjoy Amber Diceless, which is one of the few games to err on the side of less randomness.

Quote from: nDervish;1129542Another "system around the rolls" factor which can matter more than the dice probabilities is the range of dice results vs. the range of potential modifiers.  Which is kind of what the "fighter vs. kobold" discussion is getting at.  The reason the kobold has a significant chance of out-muscling the STR 20 fighter is because the die roll has a range of 20 points, but the difference in their STR modifiers is only 9 points.  If, instead, you added the actual STR scores, then the fighter is rolling d20+20 and the kobold is rolling d20+6, a 14-point difference in their modifiers, which makes the fighter far more likely to win.

And then you've got games like Ars Magica, which resolves everything on d10 rolls and it's not that uncommon to see characters with modifiers of +20 or +30 on some rolls, which completely outstrips the range of randomness and guarantees success at simpler tasks, or victory in opposed rolls against marginally-skilled (say, +10) opponents.  Some people dislike games which do this, usually out of ideas of "fairness" or "it should be possible for anything to happen", but it does neatly resolve things like "do you have to roll every time a skill comes up, or do you automatically succeed barring exceptional circumstances?" or "how the hell can a STR 6 kobold out-arm-wrestle a STR 20 fighter?" by allowing for situations where the modifiers are big enough to only allow one possible outcome.

Slight nitpick: difference between Strength 20 and 8 is (+5) vs (-1), so that's a 6 point difference or 30% on a d20.

Cinematic Unisystem uses 1d10 while a straight Strength tests use stat x 2 where normal human stats goes from 1 to 5. So in that system, a contest between Strength 1 and 5 would be +2 vs +10, or 80% on 1d10. It's a significantly lower-variance system.

So there are a number of systems that have lower variance. They're just slightly less well-known on the market.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129601I don't see this as a different case to how would a kobold out-fight a fighter in a straight up fist fight. It might be technically possible with enough bad rolls from the fighter but extremely unlikely.

Technically, in a fist-fight the kobold does zero damage so I think they have 0%. Even if they did 1 damage, though, they have to succeed at ten or more rolls with the fighter succeeding at none because of the difference in hit points and damage. The chance of that will be less than 0.0001%.

However, a test of strength like arm-wrestling is resolved as a single Strength contest, in which the kobold has a 9% of winning. Canonically, the Player's Handbook suggests that holding a door closed vs forcing it open is a Strength contest roll, which is quite close to arm wrestling.

Quote from: Pat;1129608Many gamers seem to like elegance and symmetry for the sake of elegance of symmetry, and this manifests in various ways, including arguing in favor of unified mechanics. I'm arguing this is an irrational preference. Design decisions should be made on whether the mechanic improves the game, not based on some vague aesthetic.

The argument for and against traditional standards is a different one. There is a certain utility in keeping things the same, because it leverages people's hard earned experience and knowledge. Forcing people to learn an entirely new system requires a lot more investment.

But that brings up a related point: Remember the switch from 3.0 to 3.5? The two editions are pretty close -- they didn't change the overall architecture in any major way. There weren't even that many medium-sized changes. But wow, they made a lot of tiny changes. I remember that years after 3.5 came out, we were still finding rules that we were using the old way, because we didn't know they changed the wording in the middle of a paragraph somewhere.

That made it a nightmare to learn the new edition. Between 2.0 and 3.0, there were some major changes and the rulebooks were entirely rewritten. So we had to learn the new edition from scratch, which was a lot of work. But for 3.5, we had to notice all the subtle changes in sections of the rulebook we thought we were quite familiar with. That was a lot harder, because to learn the new edition, we had to unlearn what we already knew.

That's a similar concept to mechanics that are fundamentally different, but look very similar. When two things are distinct, we can learn them separately and keep them compartmentalized. But when two things look similar but are fundamentally different, it can be a lot harder to keep them straight.

Elegance for the sake of elegance alone is bad design.  Elegance as a correlation with mechanics that are easy to use, easy to remember, etc. is to me just another perspective of the same thing.  That is, if a mechanic is pushed because of "elegance" and pushed hard because of symmetry, but then causes confusion and handling time problems in actual play, I don't consider that an "elegant" mechanic.  To me, this is like "coupling" in software design.  Things can be too tightly coupled (intermingled improperly) or too loosely coupled (generally, added complexity for no good reason), but that doesn't make the proper level of coupling a bad consideration in design.  It merely means that you can't apply a set of coupling rules without thought and get a good outcome.  Or in other words, "elegance" is a high-level goal that can't be met by pursuing "elegance" but only by pursuing a clean design and using lower-level principles to get it.  When it's done, I still want the holistic combination to manage to produce elegant mechanics in play.

On traditional standards, I've got nothing against them.  I'm rather more for than against, usually.  What I object to, especially with WotC D&D, is maintaining surface traditions only or tossing the tradition out wholesale, as if those where the only possibilities. Though admittedly, given the range of rabid fans and the lack of a coherent vision at WotC, they've done rather well over all.  It's one of the reasons that they can't do a good ranger class.  Tradition says there has to be a class called ranger, and it has to do the wilderness scout thing mixed with quasi druid abilities and get bonuses against certain creatures and probably pick a favored terrain and fight with certain weapons and so on.  Which is an absolute mess even if you build the foundation of the system to support such a thing.  They would do far better to make a system that supports a wilderness scout--and if that turns about to be a branch of the fighter or something else, just go with it.  Their focus on this is like the opposite of your first point--not favoring tradition, but using the stated reason of tradition as an excuse to be anti-symmetrical and anti-elegant for no appreciable benefit.  Or to use another slant, as if they had attempted to copy the style of High Gygaxian rules writing by being deliberately obscure and conversational with multiple writers and incoherent systems, instead of that style being an interesting byproduct of having a consistent vision from a single writer whose systems are more coherent than they might first appear.

You'll get no argument from me on D&D 3.5.  I think it's the worst version of D&D ever made, even if including some games that are only loosely D&D.  Not only did it do everything you said, despite those changes it failed to address underlying problems in the system.  We refused to use it.  WotC rules writing isn't quite the complete cargo cult that Pathfinder can fall into, but they've definitely got a bit of that, attempting to ape the style of games instead of breaking down the why and wherefore of what they intend to extend.

Quote from: Pat;1129605That's not my argument. I don't think handling all possible outliers or differences in how different tasks are resolved in real life is the purpose of a game system. That's why I just pointed out your criticism is invalid.

....
Again, I never argued that emulation of every aspect of reality was the goal, of anything.

I didn't say that was your argument. If anything I said it was mine cuz the first time I mentioned anything about simulating reality I prefaced it with "My position, beyond that base criticism is..." meaning I was talking about what I thought. And the reason mentioning that was relevant was 1) to cover my bases along different lines my argument could be attacked, plus also cuz 2) the context on which you originally mentioned disliking unified mechanics (along with other things) was during a discussion about Strength checks that in jhkim's words "stretches my suspension of disbelief", meaning that credible simulation was still part of the overarching discussion.

Quote from: Pat;1129605And I think your statement that B/X is irrationally and poorly designed is nonsense. It's perhaps the slimmest and mostly tightly designed system of D&D ever developed, and the different resolution methods make the different parts of the game easy to mentally separate.

B/X is the slimmest edition of D&D cuz later editions added a lot of bloat, including a continuous expansion of the combat rules, an ever increasing number classes with an ever increasing number of features, expanded lists of spells, etc. None of that is the product of unified mechanics. I'm also not sure how using different resolution methods to handle everything in the system makes them easier to remember or "mentally separate", as opposed to adding more bloat I have to look up to know how task Y is handled as opposed to task Z.

Quote from: Pat;1129605And modifying everyone based on some random stat isn't a virtue, it's just another attempt to force symmetry on everything, even where it makes no sense. Whether a stat should modify something varies. Factors to consider are what exactly the stat represents (they tend to be relatively collections of broad affinities, which map poorly to real life), the degree a stat would matter, the level of abstraction/granularity of the mechanic, and assorted other factors. For the dungeon tasks in B/X, a standard ability score modifier would be far too large given the range of the d6, most of the tasks aren't clearly associated one or more ability scores, and is largely irrelevant anyway because the game assumes adventurers are competent and that should be more important than some minor natural aptitude.

And yet I can't think of anything you could do in a dungeon that couldn't potentially be affected by a skill or at least a fallback stat. Want to check if you noticed something? That sounds like a perception check, with Wisdom as the fallback stat. Want to bash a door open? That's obviously Strength. Want to prod a trap with a 10' pole to set it off from a safe distance? That could be automatic, or it might be either a Dexterity (manual agility) or an Intelligence (assess the nature of the trap, calculate proper distance, etc.) check if there's a chance for screw up, etc.

If you wanted to stick to a d6, you could even make it a 1 +Stat modifier chance in 1d6, since B/X only goes up to +3 for a score of 18. So a character with a Strength of 18 would have a 4 or less in 1d6 chance to break a door, for example.

Score (# in 1d6 to Success)
12 or less (1 in 1d6)
13 - 15 (1-2 in 1d6)
16 - 17 (1-3 in 1d6)
18+ (1-4 in 1d6)

If the task should be easier or more difficult, you could adjust the number needed by 1 or 2 up or down, with 0 or less meaning the task is impossible, or might require multiple results of 1 in a d6.

Quote from: Pat;1129605It is not a minor issue, if it comes up frequently, and you have to look it up every time. The degree by which it breaks the flow of the game matters, and so does the frequency. Good design should be easily internalized, and become automatic, except when there's a good reason to force people to make a decision. Which number you add to a d20 roll isn't a good reason to continually break the flow of the game. If you think of the mechanics as the interface of a video game, then having two systems that look similar but aren't is equivalent to having the drop shields and attack buttons placed so it's easy to squash the wrong one, and you end up blowing up all the time because you dropped your defenses instead of shooting.

If you can't remember that what you add to your d20 roll when checking your ability to overcome Spell Resistance is your Caster Level I don't know what to tell you. But regardless this still misses the point that the "problem" in this situation is not unified mechanics, but poor implementation of them.

Quote from: Pat;1129605I'm unfamiliar with 5e, so I can't comment on it. But again, you're adding new rules to defend old rules. That just proves they don't work.

And again, you're ignoring that the alternative also doesn't work, so unified mechanics can't possibly be the problem. Yet I can still think of work arounds using unified mechanics that might overcome this issue without drastically restructuring the system or ditching it out entirely--just a tiny addition that could be modularly implemented in the system. What would be your non-unified solution?

Quote from: Pat;1129605OD&D didn't have character skills, so that argument doesn't apply to the edition.

But it applies to the overall discussion of RPGs, and the fact that D&D didn't used to have skills but does now kinda underlines my original point that the designer were making it up as they went along cuz the hobby was still new and they had not had the chance to realize the need for skills or how to implement them.

Quote from: Pat;1129605But they are included.

And?

Quote from: Pat;1129605To step back for a minute to a more interesting discussion, when a DM calls for a skill or other check is one of those things that matters a lot more than the probabilities or the specific mechanic. And like initiative order, it's one of those things that varies widely, from table to table. Even if the edition clearly specifies when checks should be made in every possible circumstance (which has probably never happened in the history of the hobby), everyone has their own idea of how they should work, and tends to carry those ideas from game to game, regardless of the official rules. There's a certain level of consensus involved here, because how these kind of things are handled tends to develop as a form of table convention, and becomes part of the social contract in a local group. But those conventions can also vary widely from group to group, and from DM to DM. We all know DMs who are sticklers for checks even for trivial things, and others who handwave most of it away if you have the appropriate skill on your character sheet.

What I'm trying to emphasize is this is something that largely happens outside the context of the rules, and happens more at the social level. And like most things of this sort, it can be very hard to describe and analyze, because it's something we were acculturated into, rather than something we formally learned. It's like trying to explain how we walk without mimicking the steps; it's just something we do, not something we think about.

To the degree that any of this might be an issue, that would be a problem with GMing, not with the systems merely including difficulty modifiers for super easy tasks that you're supposed to roll for only during combat or other dramatically appropriate situations.

Quote from: Pat;1129608Many gamers seem to like elegance and symmetry for the sake of elegance of symmetry, and this manifests in various ways, including arguing in favor of unified mechanics. I'm arguing this is an irrational preference. Design decisions should be made on whether the mechanic improves the game, not based on some vague aesthetic.

You have made this claim but you have yet to adequately make your case for it. I've made the case for unified mechanics and it goes well beyond aesthetics and includes a lot logical and practical reasons for it. But as far as I can tell the only reason to use disparate mechanics is aesthetic.

I think a good way to generate stats, would be to start with 10+1d8 in each stat.  A random stranger on the street is a 10.  Your character will be at least an 11 in every stat, and have a chance of getting some really good stats.  They won't suck in any category.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129601I don't see this as a different case to how would a kobold out-fight a fighter in a straight up fist fight. It might be technically possible with enough bad rolls from the fighter but extremely unlikely.

Agreed and after further testing, the results of the hit dice pool vs. hit dice pool mechanic I mentioned above are strikingly close to the results of a complete combat, at least using Basic D&D stats. I think I'll be using this for grappling in old school D&D from now on. But I'll add the STR mod to the HD roll to accentuate high STR at low levels.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129628Want to check if you noticed something? That sounds like a perception check, with Wisdom as the fallback stat.

The idea of wisdom influencing visual perception actually is a good example of absurdity caused by 3e/d20 systematization.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129648The idea of wisdom influencing visual perception actually is a good example of absurdity caused by 3e/d20 systematization.

Yep, also a good example of the broader problem of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, which is definitely a rabid systematization problem, but is also more. The D&D core chassis doesn't support perception checks very well.  Even the perception skill in 3E to 5E has problems.  The only way to really fix it in D&D is to change the six core abilities, which is striking at the heart of the traditions of the game.  The most reasonable paths from there are:

1. Make a radical departure from D&D from the ground up that supports perception (assuming that is a reasonable goal, of course)--though what you call and market it as is then a problem.  

2. Accept that perception in traditional D&D should mostly be people roleplaying what they look for, with perhaps a modest mechanic to handle sudden awareness (e.g. surprise, casual notice of hidden doors and traps, etc.)  It doesn't necessarily have to be the 1 or 2 or 3 on a d6, but whatever that system is, it isn't a "skill" in the WotC D&D sense of the term.

Aesthetics and sales and marketing and style aside (Ha!), those are both valid design approaches.  That is, with some thought and work, you can pursue either one of those and make a game that "works" well in play.  But whatever else they are, they are not the same game.

Quote from: jhkim;1129610Technically, in a fist-fight the kobold does zero damage so I think they have 0%.

Yeah, oddly, in a fist fight, a standard kobold can't even damage a lone rat. But the rat can kill the kobold 100% of the time. In fact, a single rat strength 2 (-4) can kill infinite unarmed PCs with a strength less than 10, 100% of the time! But I think that's more down to 5e's somewhat broken damage mechanics than the probabilities of its rolls. I'd allow house ruling 1 as minimum damage in such a situation.

Quote from: jhkim;1129610However, a test of strength like arm-wrestling is resolved as a single Strength contest, in which the kobold has a 9% of winning.

Yeah, so for an arm wrestling contest, first to three would seem fairer. A lot of real world arm wrestling matches end up as 3-2 victories. Which shows that these contests are not entirely pre-determined by the statistics, otherwise they'd always be 3-0 victories. Even so, the fighter would win 999 in 1,000 such games.

Quote from: jhkim;1129610Canonically, the Player's Handbook suggests that holding a door closed vs forcing it open is a Strength contest roll, which is quite close to arm wrestling.

Contesting a door I feel is fine as a single roll if it's part of a combat turn since you still have some chance to catch someone off balance in the chaos of the fight. I think that's the situation the Players' Handbook is describing; that is, it is an in the moment contest.

If it was outside of combat but time was a factor, or it went into multiple rounds, I'd probably allow the defender to set the DC. The result isn't really in question here, just the time. If it's a kobold defending against the fighter, it's not going to last long even if it rolled a natural 20. If its the fighter defending against the kobold, the kobold is probably going to give up unless it can bring its fellows to the task. But if it did somehow manage to get a lucky roll and the fighter got an unlucky roll it doesn't mean the kobold was suddenly stronger in that moment. It means that the kobold was able to use its strength effectively and the fighter wasn't: maybe he didn't have anything solid to push against?

If you're encountering kobolds, you're probably in their lair which means you're probably squeezed into a confined space, putting you at a disadvantage and giving them advantage. And then there's all the traps. The environment can play a big part in neutralising raw strength. Kobolds, being naturally weak, are going to use everything they can to make things difficult for you, including greasing the floor.

However, if it was a simple push vs push with nothing else going on, I'd just compare strength × 30 as the amount each can push. With the defender getting to add the weight of the door. No roll is needed here as it's not really something you can fail.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129648The idea of wisdom influencing visual perception actually is a good example of absurdity caused by 3e/d20 systematization.

The idea that "Wisdom" or equivalent attributes dealing with instincts, mental agility and alertness could affect perception predates 3e and already existed in skill-based systems other than D&D. It's not about your stats affecting your physical sensory receptors, but about your mind being able to process sensory data quickly and effectively to notice things and identify patterns, things that are "off", etc., which is a real thing that can be learned through practice in real life.

I studied art in college and one of the first things they do is make you study a bunch of different objects and draw them in excruciating detail so that you can train your eyes to pick up patterns and identify shapes and structures. One of the first exercises I had to do was draw a chair "sculpture" made up of three foldable chairs and stools mashed up and somehow held together in irregular patterns all tied up between their legs, which was a very tedious drawing exercise everyone hated. And every class they would add more chairs making the sculpture even more complex and difficult to draw.

The entire point of the exercise was not to draw a chair sculpture cuz it looked cool or was some sort of modern art statement, cuz it was not. It was to train our eyes (and minds) to pick up details so we'd become accustomed to analyzing shapes so we could draw them better. By the time I was done with those exercises it was like I was seeing things for the first time--I would notice patterns everywhere and pick up things I'd barely even glanced at before. My eyes didn't physically get better, I just learned how to use them.

I suspect that cops and security personnel have to undergo similar training, but focused on noticing misplaced objects and remembering everything they say in room at a quick glance, rather than drawing. But absent training, for purposes of "it's a game", if you don't have a "Perception" skill you would still be able to pick up things (which is something everyone can do at some basic level anyway), but would fallback on your core ability to process sensory information, which in most RPGs would be covered by your "Wisdom" or equivalent stat.

In the traditional D&D, though, "Wisdom" is not about instincts, mental agility, and alertness.  It's been gradually morphed into that by WotC, so that now for a lot of people the question is not, "Why are your connections with philosophic thoughts and insights into the gods making you a scout?" but rather, "Why are your instincts, mental agility, and alertness" making you a good clerical spell caster?"  You can Humpty/Dumpty the meaning of "Wisdom" in the game as one way of dealing with that, but it still isn't going to make it two things at once.  

Moreover, people have noticed with those shifts in value that Charisma makes an arguably better stat for clerics--not surprising given how it as also shifted meaning.  Once you start down that road, though, better off to just admit and rename the attributes to Perception and Insight or whatever centers on what you actually use it for.  Which brings us back to my previous point, that "tradition" on the cheap, with lip service to tradition but changing the meaning under the hood, doesn't really work.

As for art, I couldn't say.  I can say something about law enforcement perspective.  Yes, there are exercises you can go through to bring out whatever talent you have, but they typically do not work for everyone, or even most people.  Furthermore, people who are notably talented in such things don't usually need the exercises to stand out in that respect--though the exercises will maximize their already considerable talent. Which in game terms to me sounds like an attribute that people have, which gets modified only very slightly with work.  That is, perception is more like strength than like a typical "skill".