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I'm not much of a probability genius. I understand a little bit about it, but nothing in depth. My question here is primarily one to determine which type of resolution methods are your favorite for certain activities performed in a game and why.

Like 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 had a friend in high school who wanted to write his own D&D variant, and one thing he used is 1d20 to roll character attributes. His reason was because he thought that a scale that went from 3 up was stupid, which in a way it is. Anyway, his problem was a total lack of understanding of probability. While 3d6 gives most scores in the middle and few on the extremes (the bell curve) a single d20 gives the exact same average but also an identical chance of getting an extreme number as an average number. Probably everyone reading this board understands this, but he didn't. From that standpoint, I feel like a basic understanding of probability is essential for anyone who wants to design a game.

I find it interesting when I see a percentile-based RPG where every single probability or bonus is divisible by five. Those folks are playing a d20 game but they don't seem to even realize it or for some reason think that rolling percentile dice instead of a d20 is more fun somehow. Again, a basic understanding of probability is valuable.

Just some observations. A lot of folks don't like math, I get that.

I'm not a fan of card draw resolutions, especially when the deck is not reshuffled between draws. This is because previous draws will influence the outcome of later draws--if I did great last turn with good draws, then this turn I'm not as likely to get draws as good since those cards are no longer in the deck. Likewise the reverse is getting the "you suck" hand and knowing that your chance of doing better next turn is higher. In both cases, I'd prefer that each outcome was independent of the last, so rolling dice has always been my preference.

I have tried and enjoyed (or hated) many types of task resolution mechanics, including d20 (roll under or over), d100 (roll under or over, or compare to table FASERIP-style), Dice Pools (add together or count successes), and more. But the one I find most effective and enjoy most is d20+Modifier (roll over).

d20+Mod IMO is the most simple and straightforward mechanic and the easiest to teach. Rolling "high" to succeed is intuitive and a d20 has a decent range of variables without needing to roll a bunch of dice or explaining to people how to count the "1s" and "10s". It has the issue of lacking a bellcurve, but makes up for it with speed of play. Almost every other task resolution mechanic (other than d10+Mod, which is identical, but with a d10) takes longer to resolve and more effort from the players, and attention away from the game.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129384I have tried and enjoyed (or hated) many types of task resolution mechanics, including d20 (roll under or over), d100 (roll under or over, or compare to table FASERIP-style), Dice Pools (add together or count successes), and more. But the one I find most effective and enjoy most is d20+Modifier (roll over).

d20+Mod IMO is the most simple and straightforward mechanic and the easiest to teach. Rolling "high" to succeed is intuitive and a d20 has a decent range of variables without needing to roll a bunch of dice or explaining to people how to count the "1s" and "10s". It has the issue of lacking a bellcurve, but makes up for it with speed of play. Almost every other task resolution mechanic (other than d10+Mod, which is identical, but with a d10) takes longer to resolve and more effort from the players, and attention away from the game.

Greetings!

Good points, VisionStorm! For a number of years, I played Rolemaster. Yes, sometimes called *Chartmaster*:D The game system provided probably unparalleled depth, and richness of detail. My players deeply enjoyed many aspects and features of the Rolemaster system, but ultimately grew weary from the charts, the math, the general complexity, and the bookkeeping involved.

So, yeah. Adult gamers for the most part--in my experience--hugely demand speed, simplicity/ease of use, and fun. That is the "holy trinity.":D

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Over on BGG we've had a few of these threads and/or threads where someone either steadfastly disbelieves the bell curve or fanatically keeps harping that "a d20 is not balanced because its average is 10.5" no. I kid you not. That ones been spouted a few times.

It's complicated.

The difference between different dice mechanics is largely about the kurtosis, although some such as D20 and percentile dice behave essentially the same in this regard.

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Fig 1. Random chart off the interwebs showing distributions with different kurtosis.

Figure 1 shows some probability density functions with differing kurtosis.  Kurtosis drives the likelihood that a roll will produce extreme results in the tails.  Dice with high kurtosis are more swingy.  The most swingy mechanics are D20 and percentile dice (which behave as if they were a single 100-sided die).  These have a flat distribution where every possible outcome has the same probability.  

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4453[/ATTACH]
Fig. 2. A flat distribution such as a D20 or D100.

Different dice mechanics have different probability distributions.  4DF, for example, has relatively low probability of rolling anything outside the range of +2 to -2.  There is about 6% chance of rolling higher than +2.  This makes the game dependent of the FATE point economy as the dice roll outcomes are largely clustered around the middle in the range +2 to -2.  D&D's D20 mechanic, however, is just as likely to roll a 1, 10 or 20, giving it a much higher probability of rolling in the extremes.  Traveller's 2D6 mechanic sits somewhere in the middle.  Exploding dice mechanics complicate the calculation - Savage Worlds is famous for being fiddly to calculate the odds for dice rolls.

Generally the more dice involved the lower your kurtosis.  One issue with buckets-of-dice systems is that the kurtosis changes with the number of dice being rolled.

Having said all that I have a soft spot for 2D6, as it lends itself to quick mental arithmetic and bonuses of (say) +1 to +3 have more-or-less sensible effects across a wide range of target rolls, which is a nice happenstance.  It's more swingy than 4DF and less swingy than D20.

I'll also add some observations about dice mechanics on systems for PbP use.

I'm running a Scum and Villainy campaign on a forum at the moment, and the dice mechanic is slightly clumsy as you have to have some back-and-forth between the DM and players to even determine how many dice to roll.  For a game to work nicely in PbP I would suggest a dice mechanic with the following attributes.

• Always rolling the same dice - the difference is the target.
• Bonuses can be added after the fact.  If you have metacurrency then it can just be added later.
• Avoid contested rolls.  Keep it to the player making one dice roll - through a roller app or otherwise.  The DM can subtract the opponent's bonus from the roll.

This approach means that the player can roll straightaway and the GM can frig the roll with whatever bonuses apply.  On a PbP game that can save a day or two of turnaround time for a single roll.

2D6 + bonuses would work fine for this, as would 4DF or a D&D style D20.  Dice pools where you might vary the number of dice being rolled add a round trip to the conversation.  This also includes D&D's advantage/disadvantage mechanics if it's not always obvious when it applies.

I love D6 system, where you roll your skill dice vs a target number and you get more dice the more skilled you are. It avoids all the problems the D20 system has, since 2d6+ is always a bell curve, which range grows slowly, but always a bell curve.

Although the d20 result probability itself is flat, it is modified and compared against targets that are bell curves so the final effect is the same.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1129383I'm not a fan of card draw resolutions, especially when the deck is not reshuffled between draws. This is because previous draws will influence the outcome of later draws--if I did great last turn with good draws, then this turn I'm not as likely to get draws as good since those cards are no longer in the deck. Likewise the reverse is getting the "you suck" hand and knowing that your chance of doing better next turn is higher. In both cases, I'd prefer that each outcome was independent of the last, so rolling dice has always been my preference.

What you're describing is a feature, not a flaw. It models the rise and fall of fortune in a way that's less prone to streaks than dice-based systems.

My friends and I used to figure out the probabilities of all sorts of systems :)
I DID have a few players who liked it simple though, and BRP (percentage system) was always popular.

Having said that, I'm not that picky, as long as I don't notice holes or inconsistencies in the logic and probabilities of the rules.

D100. Seems more "even" in a silly subjective way.

D20 aquired great Fame being as "swingy" as possible, but it can drive PC parties to TPKs like no other solid. It can "feel treacherous" at times.

My aesthetic preference for the math alone is a system that uses 2d10 + (small) mods versus target numbers.  It's a relatively flat curve, and the percentages are easily understood once you show someone a chart of the outcomes. It's a compromise between something like 3d6 and d20.  

For simple handling, I think a system using only a d12 would be rather nice, as you can do some fun things with 12 being evenly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.  

That's in theory.  In practice, I find that I don't want to play the kinds of games that would best fit such somewhat narrow ranges.  That is, I don't necessarily need "zero to hero", but I do want some substantial power level differences in the math itself, not just add-on abilities.  The same way that modifiers over -3 or +3 in 3d6 start to skew things (unless balanced by competing modifiers, which is its own issue), with 2d10, -4 to +4 is the reasonable limit, with maybe -5 and +5 for extreme edge cases.  I think, for example, that I'd like Hero System better if it were built from the ground up using 2d10, but I no longer have enough interest in the game to put in the work to test the theory.  Likewise, the proper sort of game that would use a d12 is either very light or the complexity is embedded in units--so far not my preference.

I'm happy enough with any moderately simple system in an existing game, d20 + mods, percentage rolls, etc. Some of the clever system have more appeal than others, but I seldom play with a group that would appreciate them.  For the dice roll itself to invoke decision points is more OOC game than I usually want with casual players, since they can't internalize the mechanics well enough for it stop interfering with their actions in character.

I like linear for binary pass/fail rolls. The effect of modifiers is more intuitive, and I don't understand what people mean when they say the d20 is "swingy", unless they're narrating attacks that miss by 8 as "worse" misses than attacks that miss by 1. Just stop doing that.

I like curves for rolls with more than two possible outcomes, because then you can have different probabilities for different outcomes, but still assign each outcome the same number of possible results, for easier memorization.

E.g. 2d6 --> 2: Hostile, 3-5: Unfriendly, 6-8: Uncertain, 9-11: Friendly, 12: Helpful

is easier to memorize (3, 6, 9, 12) than

1d20 --> 1: Hostile, 2-5: Unfriendly, 6-15: Uncertain, 16-19: Friendly, 20: Helpful

For dice choice, it's all about how much granularity is important.  (Of course) d100 gives 1% granularity, d20 5%, and d6 16%.  While I have some sentimentality for the d20, I've come to the conclusion that a d6 gives sufficient granularity for my purposes.  For a d20, I'm not much concerned about a mod smaller than +3, which is equivalent to a +1 on a d6, so why bother with all of those extra numbers?  d20 or d100 does better in systems where you add dozens of tiny mods to get a final result, but I don't care for those anyway.

For a simple system d6+skill+mods vs target, roll over, is great.  If simplicity is not my primary goal, I prefer d6-d6 with both dice exploding.  The latter has some nice properties, such as a fumble below a negative threshold always being possible but becoming very rare as one becomes skilled, a small chance to do almost anything, and added excitement when a die explodes.

I also really like systems where margin of success or failure matters.  Frex, on the system I'm working on now, margin of success on an attack is damage done, which speeds things up a bit by eliminating the damage die roll.

All game mechanics totally suck!! :)

Quote from: Theory of Games;1129442D20 aquired great Fame being as "swingy" as possible, but it can drive PC parties to TPKs like no other solid. It can "feel treacherous" at times.

THIS is exactly why I love using a D20 for RPGs. It's that absolute treachery of the damned die. Sometimes for the GM, sometimes for the players, sometimes for that one dude who can't roll over 10 all damn night! We've all been that dude.

I once ran a 4 hour dungeon with plenty of combat and I failed every attack roll. It was hysterical, but what made it even more fun is I ran that same event the next day and slaughtered the PCs. To me, that's a feature of the D20.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129457I like linear for binary pass/fail rolls. The effect of modifiers is more intuitive, and I don't understand what people mean when they say the d20 is "swingy", unless they're narrating attacks that miss by 8 as "worse" misses than attacks that miss by 1. Just stop doing that.

But this is often built into the d20 system, eg some iterations use "d20 + Athletics" as the number of feet your PC jumps, which can give ridiculous results. Or 5e opposed shove/grapple checks where the STR 20 Proficient guy rolls '1'+7 = 8 and the STR -2 kobold rolls 20-2 = 18. These kind of opposed checks and roll=result stuff would be far better done on multiple dice generating a plausible bell curve.

For old school D&D I went back to Tom Moldvay's suggestion of using multiple d6s roll-under for attribute checks, which generates a bell curve. For 3e-4e-5e the d20 is too hardwired in to the system, although I guess one could use 3d6 or 2d10 for Attribute checks (not attacks or saves).
BTW I find the BRP d% system's approach of treating success chances as Platonic ideals not floating DCs works ok with the flat 1-100 spread. The specific problem is with the 3e-5e d20 System's floating DCs & opposed checks. It takes OD&D's functional attack & save mechanic (both naturally highly variable) and uses it for skill/ability checks, where it's simply not appropriate. You can cludge it with generous use of "Take 10/Passive Score", but it's fundamentally not a good system IMO.

Quote from: S'mon;11294685e opposed shove/grapple checks where the STR 20 Proficient guy rolls '1'+7 = 8 and the STR -2 kobold rolls 20-2 = 18. These kind of opposed checks and roll=result stuff would be far better done on multiple dice generating a plausible bell curve.

In 5e a kobold would more likely oppose with DEX+2. But even so, it's still not flat because you are using multiple dice. The chance of this scenario playing out as you've described it is 1/4 of 1%. Or as my group would call it, a million to one.

Chance of success: 73.75%

https://anydice.com/program/1b849

What I'm using at the moment is ye olde percentile dice, mainly because I'm currently running Mythras, which is BRP family.  I'm not really a big fan of "flat" dice curves in general, but I do like the classic BRP skill improvement mechanics (which I'm using, rather than doing it "the Mythras way"), which are only really implemented for percentile.  (Although there is a modified d20-based version of the advancement mechanic used in Pendragon, but I particularly dislike d20-based resolution, probably because of its strong association with D&D and, thus, with class-and-level and zero-to-demigod systems.)

As 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 also like EABA's "roll some number of d6s, and keep the 3 highest" mechanic, which pushes average results higher with increased skill, but doesn't change the range of possible results as skill levels become arbitrarily high.

And I've lately been really liking what I've read of the dice mechanic in Early Dark, where you roll a handful of d10s (usually 6-8 for starting characters), group them into sets such that the sum of each set is no more than a limit based on your base attributes (usually a limit of 7-8 for starting characters), and then each set is one effect from your attempt with the power of that effect being based on the number of dice in the set.  Unfortunately, because there's significant strategy in how you want to group your sets (lots of small sets to create many minor effects vs. big sets for big effects), it's not suitable for solo play, and seems unlikely to work that well for online play either (because, in an opposed roll situation, the other person's dice rolls are hidden information until after you're done grouping them and simultaneously reveal your sets), so I doubt I'll be able to actually play it until the covidpocalypse has passed.  But, here again, good luck seeing the percentages in that mechanic without using a calculator.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129472In 5e a kobold would more likely oppose with DEX+2. But even so, it's still not flat because you are using multiple dice. The chance of this scenario playing out as you've described it is 1/4 of 1%. Or as my group would call it, a million to one.

Chance of success: 73.75%

https://anydice.com/program/1b849

I was assuming the kobold grappled the fighter!
Yes 1& 20 is 1 in 400, but it there's a much bigger chance the kobold grapples the fighter. I can fluff it so it makes sense but it's harder with some static skill checks, or roll= result like 3e & 4e jumping. There are a bunch of cludges to make it work, eg Rogue Reliable Talent, but a better designed system would not need them.

Probability matters, but the mechanics around the probabilities often matter more. For instance, do you have to roll every time a skill comes up, or do you automatically succeed barring exceptional circumstances? Is your chance based almost entirely on your raw aptitude and training matters very little (AD&D's method), or the other way around? When you roll, under what circumstances, what contributes to the roll, and what success and failure mean can matter a lot more than the odds.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1129438What you're describing is a feature, not a flaw. It models the rise and fall of fortune in a way that's less prone to streaks than dice-based systems.

I call it flaw because "modeling the rise and fall of fortune" isn't what I'm trying to do. There is nothing wrong with streaks. Sometimes they are positive, sometimes negative, but I prefer independent randomness over cards.

Actually more than that (I forgot the brackets): fighter grappling kobold probability of success: 86.25% (https://anydice.com/program/1b860)

Quote from: S'mon;1129483I was assuming the kobold grappled the fighter!
Yes 1& 20 is 1 in 400, but it there's a much bigger chance the kobold grapples the fighter.

Kobold grappling the fighter probability of success: 11.25% (https://anydice.com/program/1b861). That's about a 9 to 1 advantage to the fighter. Is that not enough?

If you do want more of an advantage, the easiest fix in 5e is to impose disadvantage on the kobold for trying to grapple a larger creature. Now its chance reduces to 3.56% (https://anydice.com/program/1b863).

Still not enough? Grant advantage as well to the fighter resisting a smaller creature. Now its chance is less than 1% (https://anydice.com/program/1b864).

Quote from: Pat;1129485Probability matters, but the mechanics around the probabilities often matter more. For instance, do you have to roll every time a skill comes up, or do you automatically succeed barring exceptional circumstances? Is your chance based almost entirely on your raw aptitude and training matters very little (AD&D's method), or the other way around? When you roll, under what circumstances, what contributes to the roll, and what success and failure mean can matter a lot more than the odds.

One of the things I used to hate about old D&D was how probably of success for skill-related tasks seemed to rely almost entirely on a set of widely variable abilities that was rolled during character creation then set on stone. And if you got lucky and scored an 18 you would have a default 90% chance of success on any action based on that stat--Forever!

Fuck training! You got lucky during character creation, congrats!

I prefer systems where training and conditioning are a bigger factor for success than "natural" abilities, and opportunities for improvement exist across the board (for a cost) for basically all abilities, rather than crucial abilities necessary to handle common tasks being set on stone.

I'm also not entirely a fan of binary success. I tend to think of successes in degrees, with merely partial success (or failure) being the default and truly succeeding (or messing up) requiring high rolls (maybe 5+ above or below target number on a d20+Mod mechanic). That way skill and high modifiers become more relevant, even given the swingyness of a d20 roll.

Success generation Dice Pool mechanics also handle this pretty well, since degrees of success are baked into the system by the very nature of having to count ascending "successes" (the more the better!). Though, I think single dice +Mod mechanics run faster, but I have a soft spot for success generation Dice Pools, and prefer them over counting pips if I have to roll multiple dice to handle task resolution.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129499One of the things I used to hate about old D&D was how probably of success for skill-related tasks seemed to rely almost entirely on a set of widely variable abilities that was rolled during character creation then set on stone. And if you got lucky and scored an 18 you would have a default 90% chance of success on any action based on that stat--Forever!

I guess that'd be 2e AD&D? Maybe RC D&D? No other version had roll-under d20 proficiency checks as standard.

Quote from: S'mon;1129502I guess that'd be 2e AD&D? Maybe RC D&D? No other version had roll-under d20 proficiency checks as standard.

Yeah, I mostly played 2e, and briefly Basic before I quickly moved on to 2e. But I always figured older editions still used roll-under stats, since they had no skills/proficiencies, so ability checks defaulted to closest score based on whatever characters wanted to try at DM's discretion. At least from what I gathered from the times I played Basic with other DMs while still new to the hobby (I played 2e by the time I got my own books and started DMing).

Quote from: S'mon;1129502I guess that'd be 2e AD&D? Maybe RC D&D? No other version had roll-under d20 proficiency checks as standard.

No, 1st edition. The original proficiency system in Oriental Adventures had fixed rolls (each peaceful proficiency had its own target number), but that was quickly dropped. The version that appeared in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, and was expanded in the Wilderness Survival Guide, and then became part of the core in 2e, rolled against ability scores when making non-weapon proficiency checks.

And even Moldvay has that note in the back about using ability checks to resolve random tasks, which has the same problem sans a skill system.

Quote from: S'mon;1129468But this is often built into the d20 system, eg some iterations use "d20 + Athletics" as the number of feet your PC jumps, which can give ridiculous results. Or 5e opposed shove/grapple checks where the STR 20 Proficient guy rolls '1'+7 = 8 and the STR -2 kobold rolls 20-2 = 18. These kind of opposed checks and roll=result stuff would be far better done on multiple dice generating a plausible bell curve.

For old school D&D I went back to Tom Moldvay's suggestion of using multiple d6s roll-under for attribute checks, which generates a bell curve. For 3e-4e-5e the d20 is too hardwired in to the system, although I guess one could use 3d6 or 2d10 for Attribute checks (not attacks or saves).
BTW I find the BRP d% system's approach of treating success chances as Platonic ideals not floating DCs works ok with the flat 1-100 spread. The specific problem is with the 3e-5e d20 System's floating DCs & opposed checks. It takes OD&D's functional attack & save mechanic (both naturally highly variable) and uses it for skill/ability checks, where it's simply not appropriate. You can cludge it with generous use of "Take 10/Passive Score", but it's fundamentally not a good system IMO.

Yes I agree, dice result = fictional result rolls should use a normal curve.

The D&D attack roll works because it's only one factor in a complex set of checks where the more skilled combatant not only is more likely to hit, but also has more hit points and probably does more damage. So they might only be 15% more likely to hit, but still have 10:1 odds to win the whole combat. To abstract a D&D combat into a single check, the appropriate mechanic would be hit dice vs. hit dice, a la Tunnels & Trolls. Something similar would probably give the results you're looking for in the kobold grappling a fighter example.

Quote from: Pat;1129521No, 1st edition. The original proficiency system in Oriental Adventures had fixed rolls (each peaceful proficiency had its own target number), but that was quickly dropped. The version that appeared in the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, and was expanded in the Wilderness Survival Guide, and then became part of the core in 2e, rolled against ability scores when making non-weapon proficiency checks.

And even Moldvay has that note in the back about using ability checks to resolve random tasks, which has the same problem sans a skill system.

True re 1e, so it's there if you count DSG and WSG as standard/core - I certainly don't.

Moldvay & Mentzer optionally suggest d20 checks, but they also suggest multiple-d6 checks, which I eventually realised works much better.

Regarding probabilities like a contest of Strength in 5E D&D...

Quote from: mightybrain;1129492Actually more than that (I forgot the brackets): fighter grappling kobold probability of success: 86.25% (https://anydice.com/program/1b860)

Kobold grappling the fighter probability of success: 11.25% (https://anydice.com/program/1b861). That's about a 9 to 1 advantage to the fighter. Is that not enough?

For me, it really isn't.

The strongest possible human loses a contest of strength to an average kobold 10% of the time? That really stretches my suspension of disbelief.

In a test of raw strength, the strongest possible human should just always win a contest of strength with an average kobold. There shouldn't be any dice-rolling tension - it should just happen. And if we did look up the rules, the rules should tell us the same thing - that the strongest man in the world wins with no doubt whatsoever.

In RPGs, this regularly comes up when the expert PC tries their skill and fails. Then all the other PCs without training try it, and because they have five chances to roll high, one of them succeeds. For example, if you were dying -- what would be the best choice to save your life? Having a brilliant doctor come see you, or five average people with no medical training? In D&D (in the case 5E), a cleric with Wisdom 18 has a +6 in Medicine. That's an 85% chance of success of a DC10 Medicine check. But five people with +0 have a 98% chance to get a success among them.


Personally, I find that the vast majority of RPG rule systems have far too much variance for my suspension of disbelief. In the real world, the champion Olympic weightlifter is never going to lose to a below-average guy off the street. Particularly with skills, the range of ability goes much larger than roll variance. That is, the top mathematician in the world will be able to solve math problems that an undergraduate student has no hope of solving. But conversely, an undergraduate math major can also solve problems that a high school dropout can't even understand.

So if the range of roll is 1 to 20, then skill should go from 1 to 40 or more -- and that's just with real-world skill, let alone legendary or fantastic ability.

People who are experts in their field should always and reliably be able to outperform those with no particular skill.

Quote from: Pat;1129485Probability matters, but the mechanics around the probabilities often matter more. For instance, do you have to roll every time a skill comes up, or do you automatically succeed barring exceptional circumstances? Is your chance based almost entirely on your raw aptitude and training matters very little (AD&D's method), or the other way around? When you roll, under what circumstances, what contributes to the roll, and what success and failure mean can matter a lot more than the odds.

Another "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.

Quote from: jhkim;1129539The strongest possible human loses a contest of strength to an average kobold 10% of the time? That really stretches my suspension of disbelief.

That's not the situation described. The kobold has about 10% chance of reducing the strong human's speed to 0 for about 6 seconds. And even then, the human still has about a 90% chance of escaping the grapple and moving anyway.

This is grappling, not a test of raw strength. If you get tipped off balance it's not your strength preventing you from moving.

For a test of raw strength (who can lift the biggest boulder) you could use the strength × 30 rule. (Or strength × 15 for a kobold.)

Quote from: nDervish;1129542"do you have to roll every time a skill comes up, or do you automatically succeed barring exceptional circumstances?"

The advice in the 5e Player's Handbook is:

QuoteThe DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.

Quote from: jhkim;1129539The strongest possible human loses a contest of strength to an average kobold 10% of the time? That really stretches my suspension of disbelief.

That's another important factor in ability and skill checks -- IRL, many traits or learned skills function in radically different ways, but most systems try to force them all into one or just a few mechanics. Strength checks are one of the classic examples -- there's a reason for weight categories in wrestling and power lifting, and why someone beating a guy who has 20 pounds on them in a bar room brawl is considered so impressive. A relatively small difference in size can can make the difference between an even match and winning all the times, and a tiny kobold should have zero chance against a large man in anything directly strength-related.

It's even hard to lump all skills into one category. Some skills are pretty deterministic -- in the physical sciences or engineering, where you can precisely measure, calculate, and calibrate forces, the odds of a buttress or a bridge collapsing are almost infinitesimally small. OTOH, improvising something in a jungle might be a risk, but an engineer would usually know whether it's a risk or whether the materials available are sufficient. And trying to create or discover something completely new might never succeed, no matter how many times you try, and you might not know that for sure until you've been butting your head against a potential new theory for 30 years. Those are all completely different, and that's just discussing one related set of skills. The breakdown, degree of confidence in the result, chances of success, and swinginess are going to be very different in the behaviorial sciences and the arts.

That's why I'm firmly convinced RPGs generally don't do skills well, and also why I dislike unified mechanics. They're an attempt to force symmetry on a very heterogeneous set of processes.

I think most games build their skill probabilities under one of two assumptions:

A. Skills are like combat, and represent things that need a roll under pressure.
B. Skills are a separate thing, and are meant to represent anything you do but the most trivial thing.  With possibly separating combat, magic, or other items out under a system more like A.

In the first, the GM is supposed to let people succeed on things they should be able to do when there is no pressure. In the latter, the skills often have wide ranges of both checks and modifiers, such that auto fail and auto succeed is built into the system.

I think either can work just fine, given the tastes of different players.  If what you want is the high excitement, then there really is no need for B.  It's just extra complication getting in the way of getting to the next roll that might fail.  Whereas if you want the game to be more  about the mundane successes building up to something more slowly but inexorably by using the abilities of your character, then A can start to seem a little lacking.  It's taste.

What I don't like is a system that tries to have it both ways, but then the writer of the system doesn't put the work in.  This is yet another time to point out why the 3.* craft system sucks, by the way.  You could sum up a chunk of the 4E and then 5E improvements to WotC D&D as "realized that they had a lot of things attempting style B game poorly and then made the design decision to rip them out root and branch."

A big part of my current home design is trying to bridge that gap intelligently, and give the GM and players tools to manage the distinction.  Part of the solution is that skills have a "tier" rating, such as "Novice" or "Expert", and also have mechanical underpinnings.  The distinction between 4 success layers (fumble, failure, success, and critical) works into it as well, but making "failure" mean something different in tension versus non-tension checks.  Basically, an "Expert" has to fumble (which is very unlikely) in a sustained piece of work requiring multiple checks to fail pulling off an expert-level task.  And even if he does fumble, he's well equipped to deal with it and succeed eventually (not being under pressure).  A group of lesser beings can attempt it, but the cumulative chance of one of them fumbling and blowing the whole thing is likely, making such attempts the domain of the desperate only. If no one gets seriously hurt, they can keep trying, but it is likely to be beating their heads against the wall.  It also helps mechanically that I've built in group dynamics from the ground up, instead of tacking them on after the fact.  Or the GM can rule on it, because the math of the system backs up the likely outcomes anyway, thus saving the hassle for those rare moments when desperate outcomes and no immediate tension actually matter.

Whereas for simpler checks under pressure, the Expert still has a notable edge, but the game assumes that the tension of the moment narrows the gap.  If you are bleeding out on the icy ledge while the yetis attack, you'd rather have the expert healer, but you'll settle for the two mountain climbers with first aid if that's all you can get right now.  Whether such a system would appeal to others, I don't know, but it at least is mechanically supporting the design goals.

Quote from: jhkim;1129539if you were dying -- what would be the best choice to save your life? Having a brilliant doctor come see you, or five average people with no medical training? In D&D (in the case 5E), a cleric with Wisdom 18 has a +6 in Medicine. That's an 85% chance of success of a DC10 Medicine check. But five people with +0 have a 98% chance to get a success among them.

I would consider that a case of Working Together from the Player's Handbook. That is, the one with the highest skill could roll with advantage if at least one other took the Help action. But it wouldn't increase the advantage with more than one helping. That would still tip the balance back to the solo trained healer in this example. (But it would be better, both for probability and thematically, to have a skilled healer and an assistant.) If the players insist they want to make a Group Check with all five, then there's a rule for that too, but the rule is that at least half the group have to succeed. It does slightly improve their chances over a single check but not as much as a roll with advantage from a helper. And I think any DM would be within their rights to impose disadvantage due to too many cooks.

In the context of combat, what we are talking about is roughly the amount of first response first aid you can give in about 6 seconds. What can you seriously expect to do in that time except roll someone on their side and check they haven't swallowed their own tongue? It's not surgery.

If it wasn't a combat situation (like a disease or similar) and there wasn't a specific rule for it, then I'd go with something like the festering wound rules - i.e. you can only receive 1 medicine check every 24 hours and you need some number of successes to recover. In that case, you are much better off going with a better doctor: both in overall recovery probability and recovery time.

Quote from: Pat;1129548That's why I'm firmly convinced RPGs generally don't do skills well, and also why I dislike unified mechanics. They're an attempt to force symmetry on a very heterogeneous set of processes.

I disagree about unified mechanics for several reasons:

1: I have yet to seen a single RPG with non-unified mechanics that not only also failed to adequately represent these sort of outliers in skill rolls, but that didn't additionally over complicate the entire system by providing widely disparate mechanics to handle everything.  All they accomplish is to make mechanics an inconsistent mess.

Old D&D had non-unified mechanics, not because they worked better to handle these details, but because RPGs were still new and IMO the designers where making things up as they went along, so they didn't think to handle them under a unified mechanic. Other systems did it first. Then when D&D finally did it by 3e it never went back or get revised in later editions because it simply worked better than old D&D ever did. Unified mechanics were the fix for the inconsistent mess that old D&D non-unified mechanics used to be.

2: Skill rolls in most games usually represent ability tests during risky situations of high uncertainty, like the middle of combat or working with inadequate time or materials. No system ever calls for you to make rolls to perform routine tasks. To handle more deterministic tasks, like physical sciences or engineering, you could just assign a minimum skill level to attempt certain actions and require a skill roll only during uncertain situations, or if the character is attempting to accomplish something special.

3: It's a game. That doesn't mean that therefore things don't have to make sense, ever. But it does mean that sometimes you're gonna have to make compromises to make things feasible within the context of the game rules. The reason why these points you mention seem to suck in terms of game mechanics is because, IMO, they're impossible to adequately represent in terms of game mechanics and every game is gonna suck at representing these things in a "realistic" matter. But at least with unified mechanics you don't have to over complicate the system just so that you can still utterly fail to realistically represent this wide range of variability in task resolution.

Quote from: Pat;1129548a tiny kobold should have zero chance against a large man

In 5e a tiny creature cannot grapple a large creature as it would be more than one size category larger. However, in their size categories, a kobold is small not tiny, and a man is medium not large.

In general I'm in favour of systems that connect size and strength or weight and strength in some way. However, that only really makes sense within a race. As a counter example consider the chimpanzee; about the same size as a kobold and yet typically stronger than a man.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129559I disagree about unified mechanics for several reasons:

1: I have yet to seen a single RPG with non-unified mechanics that not only also failed to adequately represent these sort of outliers in skill rolls, but that didn't additionally over complicate the entire system by providing widely disparate mechanics to handle everything.  All they accomplish is to make mechanics an inconsistent mess.

Skill systems with unified mechanics also fail to represent those outliers, so that's not a valid criticism. And your second critique that they necessarily make an inconsistent mess isn't true. To provide a positive example, consider B/X D&D: The d20 attack roll is different from the generic skill (or "do things in the dungeon") d6 roll, which is different from the % thief skills, and that's different from the 2d6 morale roll. Contrast that with the d20 system, where skills, saves, spell resistance, and knocking down doors, attacks, and saves all use the same basic d20 + mods vs. a target number mechanic.

Yet in D&D3, I always had a hard time remembering how spell resistance worked, because it looked superficially like the more common d20 rolls, but it had very different parameters (caster level instead of spell level like saves, etc.). It's apparent similarity to the other mechanics is exactly what made it hard to remember, because they made it look too much like other subsystems. Conversely, in B/X D&D, it was always easy to remember what I needed to roll for opening a door or attacking an orc, because the heterogeneous resolutions methods used distinct visual and tactile mnemonics. When you have mechanics that are substantially different, they should look and feel different; when mechanics with fundamental differences look the same, it makes them harder to keep straight.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129559Old D&D had non-unified mechanics, not because they worked better to handle these details, but because RPGs were still new and IMO the designers where making things up as they went along, so they didn't think to handle them under a unified mechanic.

Nonsense, OD&D drew from a wargaming tradition more than a century old. Gygax did have a preference for creating new systems for new situations, but the rest of that is just making up stuff to confirm your own bias.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129559No system ever calls for you to make rolls to perform routine tasks. To handle more deterministic tasks, like physical sciences or engineering, you could just assign a minimum skill level to attempt certain actions and require a skill roll only during uncertain situations, or if the character is attempting to accomplish something special.

Plenty of systems do have modifiers for trivial tasks, which result in a non-zero chance of failure. And the rest of that is you making up new rules. And if have to make up new rules to prove the existing rules work, that suggests they don't.

Quote3: It's a game. That doesn't mean that therefore things don't have to make sense, ever. But it does mean that sometimes you're gonna have to make compromises to make things feasible within the context of the game rules. The reason why these points you mention seem to suck in terms of game mechanics is because, IMO, they're impossible to adequately represent in terms of game mechanics and every game is gonna suck at representing these things in a "realistic" matter. But at least with unified mechanics you don't have to over complicate the system just so that you can still utterly fail to realistically represent this wide range of variability in task resolution.

I agree with your basic premise, though I slightly disagree with some of the conclusions. Games are imperfect abstractions, and have to focus on what's important or interesting. But there's quite a range between my "awareness of some of these flaws could make existing systems better" and your dismissing it entirely because it can't match some perfect representative ideal.

Unified systems are useful only so much as they are not pushed too far.  Exactly what is "too far" depends somewhat on design intent, and thus can't be entirely critiqued in a vacuum. There is nothing that says that a game system needs to have a single system throughout to use unified systems (note plural), however.  Rather, it just needs to settle on a few clear systems that are used appropriately.  

Which is to say that I agree somewhat with Pat and somewhat with Vision Storm on this question. There are multiple good and many more bad ways to model a particular thing.  There are things that probably should or should not be modeled.  There are games with different lists of what should or should not be modeled.  There are things that are theoretically or superficially useful to model, that upon testing or practical use turn out to not be worth the complexity costs in having them.  So I think the argument can only go so far in the abstract.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1129575Which is to say that I agree somewhat with Pat and somewhat with Vision Storm on this question.

Where do you disagree with me? Because in my original post, the only thing I said was that I disliked unified systems. Vision Storm posted a followup that assumed I said all kinds of things I never said, and created a lengthy rebuttal based on those imaginary fabrications. But to make it clear, I didn't say anything that Vision Storm implied, nor do I believe any of that crap. It's quite literally a strawman position, created solely to be knocked down, and in no way represents what I believe.

The reason I'm posting this is because, when someone makes up a lengthy rebuttal based on false premises like that, people casually reading a thread seem to frequently assume the original poster actually holds the strawman position. Even when the original poster makes a later post, as I did, disclaiming it.

I read your post, and don't see anything that disagrees with anything I said. Your position does not seem to be halfway between mine, and Vision Storm's. Which suggests you're ascribing to me the position Vision Storm created, rather than responding to what I actually said. And since I have zero interest in defending a strawman position I don't hold, I want to put a stop to that.

Quote from: Pat;1129580Where do you disagree with me? Because in my original post, the only thing I said was that I disliked unified systems. Vision Storm posted a followup that assumed I said all kinds of things I never said, and created a lengthy rebuttal based on those imaginary fabrications. But to make it clear, I didn't say anything that Vision Storm implied, nor do I believe any of that crap. It's quite literally a strawman position, created solely to be knocked down, and in no way represents what I believe.

Quote from: Pat;1129548...
It's even hard to lump all skills into one category. Some skills are pretty deterministic -- in the physical sciences or engineering, where you can precisely measure, calculate, and calibrate forces, the odds of a buttress or a bridge collapsing are almost infinitesimally small. OTOH, improvising something in a jungle might be a risk, but an engineer would usually know whether it's a risk or whether the materials available are sufficient. And trying to create or discover something completely new might never succeed, no matter how many times you try, and you might not know that for sure until you've been butting your head against a potential new theory for 30 years. Those are all completely different, and that's just discussing one related set of skills. The breakdown, degree of confidence in the result, chances of success, and swinginess are going to be very different in the behaviorial sciences and the arts.

That's why I'm firmly convinced RPGs generally don't do skills well, and also why I dislike unified mechanics. They're an attempt to force symmetry on a very heterogeneous set of processes.

You seem to be implying that unified mechanics implies a single, uniform mechanics for the entire system. My argument is that one doesn't need to go that far to get some of the benefits of unified mechanics. Regardless of how many different types of skill behaviors there are, there is still a finite limit when considering the reasonable range of modeling in games.  (That is, not perfect, but good enough to avoid some of the issues you are stressing in the paragraph above.)  Specifically, it is possible to do some form of unified mechanics without forcing symmetry on different things.  

Where I side with you on the remark above and disagree with Vision Storm is that I think the practical outcome of pushing that theory in most cases is very much likely to be exactly the problem of forcing symmetry where it should not be.  But my objection is more about lazy and thoughtless designers than an inherent problem with unified systems.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1129582You seem to be implying that unified mechanics implies a single, uniform mechanics for the entire system. My argument is that one doesn't need to go that far to get some of the benefits of unified mechanics. Regardless of how many different types of skill behaviors there are, there is still a finite limit when considering the reasonable range of modeling in games.  (That is, not perfect, but good enough to avoid some of the issues you are stressing in the paragraph above.)  Specifically, it is possible to do some form of unified mechanics without forcing symmetry on different things.  

Where I side with you on the remark above and disagree with Vision Storm is that I think the practical outcome of pushing that theory in most cases is very much likely to be exactly the problem of forcing symmetry where it should not be.  But my objection is more about lazy and thoughtless designers than an inherent problem with unified systems.

The d20 system is usually considered a unified system, yet things like the miss chance for concealment and the damage roll don't use the d20 + modifiers vs. a target number. Except for the simplest systems, like storygames with a very narrow focus, I can't think of a single game with a single system for everything. There are always exceptions, so it's not reasonable to assume I'm talking such a hypothetical extreme. It's like something saying they like rules light systems, and someone replying that you need more than one rule to make a game. That's not a good argument, because a game with a single rule isn't within the normal range of expectations. Same applies to unified systems vs. less unified systems.

But the d20 system is a unified system in that a lot of mechanics that work very differently are forced into a similar-seeming d20 roll. For instance, attack rolls operate differently than skills operate differently than saves operate differently than spell resistance, but they all use the same dice roll, add modifiers, and compare them to a target number. That's an example of the kind of unified system I have a problem with, because it's masking some very different things by making them look alike. It's just good user interface design to give reinforcement signals when you change modes, and having different dice or a distinct method of reading them is a good way to do it in RPG design. Conversely, unified mechanics have no real virtue in themselves. Yes, there are benefits to simplicity and grouping similar things, but that's not generally what anyone means when they say "unified mechanic".

Also, note that my mention of unified mechanics in the original post was a quick aside. The bulk of the text you quoted is talking about skills, not unified mechanics. I drew a general comparison to unified mechanics at the end, but that's it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129559I disagree about unified mechanics for several reasons:

1: I have yet to seen a single RPG with non-unified mechanics that not only also failed to adequately represent these sort of outliers in skill rolls, but that didn't additionally over complicate the entire system by providing widely disparate mechanics to handle everything.  All they accomplish is to make mechanics an inconsistent mess.

Old D&D had non-unified mechanics, not because they worked better to handle these details, but because RPGs were still new and IMO the designers where making things up as they went along, so they didn't think to handle them under a unified mechanic. Other systems did it first. Then when D&D finally did it by 3e it never went back or get revised in later editions because it simply worked better than old D&D ever did. Unified mechanics were the fix for the inconsistent mess that old D&D non-unified mechanics used to be.

2: Skill rolls in most games usually represent ability tests during risky situations of high uncertainty, like the middle of combat or working with inadequate time or materials. No system ever calls for you to make rolls to perform routine tasks. To handle more deterministic tasks, like physical sciences or engineering, you could just assign a minimum skill level to attempt certain actions and require a skill roll only during uncertain situations, or if the character is attempting to accomplish something special.

3: It's a game. That doesn't mean that therefore things don't have to make sense, ever. But it does mean that sometimes you're gonna have to make compromises to make things feasible within the context of the game rules. The reason why these points you mention seem to suck in terms of game mechanics is because, IMO, they're impossible to adequately represent in terms of game mechanics and every game is gonna suck at representing these things in a "realistic" matter. But at least with unified mechanics you don't have to over complicate the system just so that you can still utterly fail to realistically represent this wide range of variability in task resolution.

FWIW I agree with all of the above. I think the biggest mess was actually 1st ed AD&D, but that's just me. Runequest was much better at that time. None of these is perfect, but you'll never get that in a game anyway. But a unified system for skills and maybe stat rolls tend to smooth out a lot of things in RPGs IMO.

Quote from: Pat;1129570Skill systems with unified mechanics also fail to represent those outliers, so that's not a valid criticism.

Except 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).

Quote from: Pat;1129570To provide a positive example, consider B/X D&D: The d20 attack roll is different from the generic skill (or "do things in the dungeon") d6 roll, which is different from the % thief skills, and that's different from the 2d6 morale roll.

That'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.

Quote from: Pat;1129570Contrast that with the d20 system, where skills, saves, spell resistance, and knocking down doors, attacks, and saves all use the same basic d20 + mods vs. a target number mechanic.

Yet in D&D3, I always had a hard time remembering how spell resistance worked, because it looked superficially like the more common d20 rolls, but it had very different parameters (caster level instead of spell level like saves, etc.).

That'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.

Quote from: Pat;1129570Nonsense, OD&D drew from a wargaming tradition more than a century old. Gygax did have a preference for creating new systems for new situations, but the rest of that is just making up stuff to confirm your own bias.

A 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.

Quote from: Pat;1129570Plenty of systems do have modifiers for trivial tasks, which result in a non-zero chance of failure.

In 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.

Quote from: Pat;1129570And the rest of that is you making up new rules. And if have to make up new rules to prove the existing rules work, that suggests they don't.

Rules 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.

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".

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

Quote from: mightybrain;1129662Yeah, 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.

I would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair."  He then goes on to win.

That is a result utterly divorced from reality. If I saw it in a movie, I would think it was intentional parody or something. There is simply no way it would happen.

The reason why arm wrestling contests end up in 3-2 victories is because the contestants are very closely matched due to ranking. The same is true of most other tournaments -- whether physical or mental. The way to get tense games is by carefully ranking who is testing against who. The top champion will almost always beat someone in the middle of the rankings. But someone in the middle of the rankings is still really good, and will almost always beat a beginner. That's true in chess, arm-wrestling, and many other contests.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1129667In 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".

This is partly an issue of people getting hung up with words and ascribing specific meanings to them (to the exclusion of others) instead of accepting them as approximate game concepts with their own specialized meanings for "it's a game" purposes.

But Wisdom in particular was always an issue even back in the day, when the question would be "what is the real functional and fundamental difference between Intelligence and Wisdom?" People would jump through hoops trying justify the existence of both as separate stats by going into nuance and falling back on their "books smarts" vs "common sense" distinctions. But the reality is that based on real life definitions of these words Intelligence and Wisdom are just slightly different variations of essentially the same overall concept that can even be used as synonyms for each other. And the "you are wise beyond your years" definition of Wisdom is too specialized yet vague on its own to adequately encompass an entire stat in terms of functionality.

It's only once we get to the "instincts, mental agility, and alertness" definition of recent D&D editions plus the older "willpower" aspects of it that Wisdom even begins to make sense as its own stat. Even then I'm not sure it's enough or that you can draw a broad enough range of functionalities to treat it as an RPG stat, which is itself part of a separate question about "what functions/purposes should an RPG stat have?"

My position is that a 1/1 simulation is impossible so we should limit ourselves to "good enough" approximations for purposes of "it's a game", where attributes are treated as core abilities with a broad range of functionalities that can be broken down into more specific functions handled by other abilities (such as skills or powers). And if an "attribute" isn't broad enough to be broken down into more specific functions that are actually useful in the context of "it's a game", then that attribute shouldn't exist in the game--even if some analog arguably exists in real life (such as Intuition or Willpower)--unless it's handled as narrower type of ability, like a skill or trait.

In my own system I folded the entire range of "mental agility" functionalities into a single attribute called "Awareness", which encompasses everything that has to do with instincts, alertness, mental quickness, problem-solving, insight, etc. In D&D terms, Awareness is basically Intelligence plus the "alertness/insight" aspects of Wisdom. The "willpower" aspects of wisdom belongs to another attribute called "Presence" (also called Bearing at one time), which represents a character's "mental power", encompassing confidence, conviction, resolve, force of personality and personal charm--in D&D terms pretty much Charisma, plus willpower (which is what charisma has slowly warped into in D&D over the past two editions).

Physical attributes are generalized as well--Might ("physical power", or Strength + Constitution in D&D) and Reflexes ("physical agility", or Dexterity plus Athletics and melee accuracy in D&D). Then all the specific stuff is either a skill (which are themselves general skills) based on those attributes, a specialty based on their skills, or some type of power functionality, which are handled using universal game effects.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129628You 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.

You started this tangent by making up things I didn't say, and now you're claiming I never said what I actually said. If you're going to pretend I said thing I didn't, and pretend I didn't say what I did, then you're not even talking to me, so there's really no way to have a conversation. But for reference, I included at least 4 times where I laid out the argument you said I didn't, below (spoiler blocked to have mercy on the other people in the thread). You never really addressed any of the points, except to say you disagree. Similarly, you haven't really a made a case for your side, beyond expressing a preference for unified mechanics.

Spoiler

Quote from: Pat;1129570To provide a positive example, consider B/X D&D: The d20 attack roll is different from the generic skill (or "do things in the dungeon") d6 roll, which is different from the % thief skills, and that's different from the 2d6 morale roll. Contrast that with the d20 system, where skills, saves, spell resistance, and knocking down doors, attacks, and saves all use the same basic d20 + mods vs. a target number mechanic.

Yet in D&D3, I always had a hard time remembering how spell resistance worked, because it looked superficially like the more common d20 rolls, but it had very different parameters (caster level instead of spell level like saves, etc.). It's apparent similarity to the other mechanics is exactly what made it hard to remember, because they made it look too much like other subsystems. Conversely, in B/X D&D, it was always easy to remember what I needed to roll for opening a door or attacking an orc, because the heterogeneous resolutions methods used distinct visual and tactile mnemonics. When you have mechanics that are substantially different, they should look and feel different; when mechanics with fundamental differences look the same, it makes them harder to keep straight.

Quote from: Pat;1129584But the d20 system is a unified system in that a lot of mechanics that work very differently are forced into a similar-seeming d20 roll. For instance, attack rolls operate differently than skills operate differently than saves operate differently than spell resistance, but they all use the same dice roll, add modifiers, and compare them to a target number. That's an example of the kind of unified system I have a problem with, because it's masking some very different things by making them look alike. It's just good user interface design to give reinforcement signals when you change modes, and having different dice or a distinct method of reading them is a good way to do it in RPG design. Conversely, unified mechanics have no real virtue in themselves. Yes, there are benefits to simplicity and grouping similar things, but that's not generally what anyone means when they say "unified mechanic".

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.

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.

.... 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.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1129667In 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.  

I'd go a step further, and point out that abilities or attributes are one of the most artificial aspects of a game. Natural talents don't come in packages like that, and they're usually stretched to the point of absurdity in many games, because there's a compulsion to assign some attribute to everything. For instance, climbing. Yes, strength helps. But specifically, it's gripping strength, not overall strength. And strength is usually associated with size, which actually hinders climbing, for the same reason the best gymnasts are small. The best climbers are scrawny little guys with corded muscles in their wrists. And that's ignoring all the other factors, like balance, assessment, not having sweaty palms, and so on.

Quote from: jhkim;1129689I would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair."  He then goes on to win.

I was picturing: he loses 1 roll, his arm begins to tilt back, the crowd murmur, but then he wins the next 3 and slams the kobold's arm down. Sure, there might be a wobble here or there, but he will almost always win when the differences between the bonuses and penalties are that high. The likelihood is he will win 3 games to 0 in a best of five tournament.

Quote from: jhkim;1129689But someone in the middle of the rankings is still really good, and will almost always beat a beginner. That's true in chess, arm-wrestling, and many other contests.

Right. And that, in 5e D&D terms, would be expertise. In 5e this is worth between +4 at low levels, up to +12 at high levels. Arm wrestling is not only about how much you can lift. You could make a pretty good rogue hustler character that has a low strength but takes expertise in athletics. Who would imagine that such a weak looking figure could regularly beat the strong men in athletic feats. The fact that most would refuse to believe it is what would make it such an effective hustle.

Quote from: Pat;1129748You started this tangent by making up things I didn't say, and now you're claiming I never said what I actually said. If you're going to pretend I said thing I didn't, and pretend I didn't say what I did, then you're not even talking to me, so there's really no way to have a conversation. But for reference, I included at least 4 times where I laid out the argument you said I didn't, below (spoiler blocked to have mercy on the other people in the thread). You never really addressed any of the points, except to say you disagree. Similarly, you haven't really a made a case for your side, beyond expressing a preference for unified mechanics.

Whatever, dude. I'm not even sure what it is that I "made up" that you said. All I did was voice an opinion in regards to something you said as part of a broader discussion on action resolution. And I did refute those points with specific reasons beyond just "I disagree"--some of your criticisms were not even about unified mechanics, but D&D doing unified mechanics wrong (which is the fault unified mechanics somehow), and your assertion that using different mechanics for different tasks somehow helping mnemonic process simply begs the question. You've simply asserted that's the case but haven't backed it up with anything, like it's some self-evident truth that using ten different processes for ten different things is somehow easier to remember than using ONE process to do everything.

But I'm not gonna go back and rehash this whole thing because this is pointless.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129768You've simply asserted that's the case but haven't backed it up with anything, like it's some self-evident truth that using ten different processes for ten different things is somehow easier to remember than using ONE process to do everything.

Except that's not at all what I said, ever. Every single time, I specifically pointed out the problem is mechanics that are fundamentally different, but look similar.

If you have any serious interest in the topic, look into UX and usability theory.

Quote from: jhkim;1129689I would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair."  He then goes on to win.

That is a result utterly divorced from reality. If I saw it in a movie, I would think it was intentional parody or something. There is simply no way it would happen.

The reason why arm wrestling contests end up in 3-2 victories is because the contestants are very closely matched due to ranking. The same is true of most other tournaments -- whether physical or mental. The way to get tense games is by carefully ranking who is testing against who. The top champion will almost always beat someone in the middle of the rankings. But someone in the middle of the rankings is still really good, and will almost always beat a beginner. That's true in chess, arm-wrestling, and many other contests.

In your example it takes a very special kind of GM to call for a roll.

If the disparity is that high the winner is adjudicated without the need of a roll since it falls under the stuff so easy to do you don't ask for a roll, Like walking.

Quote from: Pat;1129770

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129768...your assertion that using different mechanics for different tasks somehow helping mnemonic process simply begs the question. You've simply asserted that's the case but haven't backed it up with anything, like it's some self-evident truth that using ten different processes for ten different things is somehow easier to remember than using ONE process to do everything.

But I'm not gonna go back and rehash this whole thing because this is pointless.

Except that's not at all what I said, ever. Every single time, I specifically pointed out the problem is mechanics that are fundamentally different, but look similar.

I'm sorry for not copy/pasting exactly what you said...

Quote from: Pat;1129570Conversely, in B/X D&D, it was always easy to remember what I needed to roll for opening a door or attacking an orc, because the heterogeneous resolutions methods used distinct visual and tactile mnemonics. When you have mechanics that are substantially different, they should look and feel different; when mechanics with fundamental differences look the same, it makes them harder to keep straight.

...this whole thing begs the question. Even in the part I didn't specifically address (last sentence in the quote, above) you're still making the claim that using essentially the same mechanic across the entire system is somehow "harder to keep straight" when dealing actions that are different (combat, spellcasting, skills, etc.), which is fundamentally absurd. How can using the same task resolution mechanic across the entire system--meaning that you only have to remember ONE thing--make it more difficult to remember how to resolve tasks?

Even taking into consideration the specific example that you provide--

Quote from: Pat;1129570Yet in D&D3, I always had a hard time remembering how spell resistance worked, because it looked superficially like the more common d20 rolls, but it had very different parameters (caster level instead of spell level like saves, etc.). It's apparent similarity to the other mechanics is exactly what made it hard to remember, because they made it look too much like other subsystems.

...which is an example that applies ONLY to D&D, and ONLY because it's badly implemented unified mechanics--we're still dealing with nearly identical mechanics. But because YOU personally can't remember what number to add in ONE circumstance in ONE specific game that uses a mishmash of subsystems rather than truly unify the whole thing that's somehow a testament against the entire enterprise of unified mechanics.

Quote from: Pat;1129770If you have any serious interest in the topic, look into UX and usability theory.

I'm not sure how pointing to a broad topic like user experience proves your point.

....
And to nip this in the bud while we're at it...

Quote from: Pat;1129580Where do you disagree with me? Because in my original post, the only thing I said was that I disliked unified systems. Vision Storm posted a followup that assumed I said all kinds of things I never said, and created a lengthy rebuttal based on those imaginary fabrications. But to make it clear, I didn't say anything that Vision Storm implied, nor do I believe any of that crap. It's quite literally a strawman position, created solely to be knocked down, and in no way represents what I believe.

The reason I'm posting this is because, when someone makes up a lengthy rebuttal based on false premises like that, people casually reading a thread seem to frequently assume the original poster actually holds the strawman position. Even when the original poster makes a later post, as I did, disclaiming it.

I read your post, and don't see anything that disagrees with anything I said. Your position does not seem to be halfway between mine, and Vision Storm's. Which suggests you're ascribing to me the position Vision Storm created, rather than responding to what I actually said. And since I have zero interest in defending a strawman position I don't hold, I want to put a stop to that.

I never "assumed" things that you never said. I merely voiced a opinion (or several) making the case for unified mechanics--quoting one of your posts, since you were the one who brought it up. I never claimed that you said anything (you may look at my original post below and tell me where I did) nor constructed a straw man. I merely spoke on generalities about the subject, in thread dealing with task resolution mechanics, which includes unified mechanics, making it a relevant topic. Then you decided to take it personal and started arguing me on the topic despite not believing "any of that crap".

Sorry that you lack reading comprehension.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129559I disagree about unified mechanics for several reasons:

1: I have yet to seen a single RPG with non-unified mechanics that not only also failed to adequately represent these sort of outliers in skill rolls, but that didn't additionally over complicate the entire system by providing widely disparate mechanics to handle everything.  All they accomplish is to make mechanics an inconsistent mess.

Old D&D had non-unified mechanics, not because they worked better to handle these details, but because RPGs were still new and IMO the designers where making things up as they went along, so they didn't think to handle them under a unified mechanic. Other systems did it first. Then when D&D finally did it by 3e it never went back or get revised in later editions because it simply worked better than old D&D ever did. Unified mechanics were the fix for the inconsistent mess that old D&D non-unified mechanics used to be.

2: Skill rolls in most games usually represent ability tests during risky situations of high uncertainty, like the middle of combat or working with inadequate time or materials. No system ever calls for you to make rolls to perform routine tasks. To handle more deterministic tasks, like physical sciences or engineering, you could just assign a minimum skill level to attempt certain actions and require a skill roll only during uncertain situations, or if the character is attempting to accomplish something special.

3: It's a game. That doesn't mean that therefore things don't have to make sense, ever. But it does mean that sometimes you're gonna have to make compromises to make things feasible within the context of the game rules. The reason why these points you mention seem to suck in terms of game mechanics is because, IMO, they're impossible to adequately represent in terms of game mechanics and every game is gonna suck at representing these things in a "realistic" matter. But at least with unified mechanics you don't have to over complicate the system just so that you can still utterly fail to realistically represent this wide range of variability in task resolution.

I think we might have unreasonable expectations in the differentiation of abilities as well as difficulty grasping the probabilities. For example, here is Devon Larratt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XTtLj0ZYA), a world champion arm wrestler, bench pressing about 255 lbs. That's a D&D equivalent of between 8 and 9 in raw strength terms (using the strength × 30 rule.) And here is Thor Björnsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH3A2kvZ-b8), one of the world's strongest men, bench pressing 540 lbs. Appropriately, this is the D&D equivalent of an 18 strength.

And here is Devon beating Thor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkkL-bAH8H4) in an arm wrestle; with ease.

Even a 7 strength isn't weak. It's just lower than average; in a world were the average man can bench press around 345 lbs.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129843I think we might have unreasonable expectations in the differentiation of abilities as well as difficulty grasping the probabilities. For example, here is Devon Larratt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XTtLj0ZYA), a world champion arm wrestler, bench pressing about 255 lbs. That's a D&D equivalent of between 8 and 9 in raw strength terms (using the strength × 30 rule.) And here is Thor Björnsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH3A2kvZ-b8), one of the world's strongest men, bench pressing 540 lbs. Appropriately, this is the D&D equivalent of an 18 strength.

And here is Devon beating Thor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkkL-bAH8H4) in an arm wrestle; with ease.

Even a 7 strength isn't weak. It's just lower than average; in a world were the average man can bench press around 345 lbs.

I'm not sure on what world the average man can bench press 345lb, but it's not Earth! A typical man can't bench press 185lb without strength training.

Larratt in that video mentions it's his first time bench pressing in many years. A 255lb bench with years of detraining is very impressive. He would have no trouble benching 315+ with focused training. He's an 18 Strength in D&D-land.

Bjornsson's enormous strength is well beyond an 18, but his size is only possible with huge dosages of anabolic steroids, and probably exogenous insulin as well. There no humans in D&D-land as big as him. He's a good model for a 19 Str Ogre, I guess.

Edit: I see where you made the mistake - the 30 x Strength rule applies to lifting things off the ground using your entire body, i.e. a deadlift, not a bench press. Men typically can deadlift twice as much as they bench press. Bjornsson recently deadlifted 1104lb.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129843I think we might have unreasonable expectations in the differentiation of abilities as well as difficulty grasping the probabilities. For example, here is Devon Larratt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XTtLj0ZYA), a world champion arm wrestler, bench pressing about 255 lbs. That's a D&D equivalent of between 8 and 9 in raw strength terms (using the strength × 30 rule.) And here is Thor Björnsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH3A2kvZ-b8), one of the world's strongest men, bench pressing 540 lbs. Appropriately, this is the D&D equivalent of an 18 strength.

And here is Devon beating Thor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkkL-bAH8H4) in an arm wrestle; with ease.

Even a 7 strength isn't weak. It's just lower than average; in a world were the average man can bench press around 345 lbs.

Next show the video where Thor gets his ass handed to him by Floyd Mayweather in a boxing match! Arm wrestling, like it or not, requires some skill. Reference: Over The Top.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129857I'm not sure on what world the average man can bench press 345lb, but it's not Earth! A typical man can't bench press 185lb without strength training.

Larratt in that video mentions it's his first time bench pressing in many years. A 255lb bench with years of detraining is very impressive. He would have no trouble benching 315+ with focused training. He's an 18 Strength in D&D-land.

Bjornsson's enormous strength is well beyond an 18, but his size is only possible with huge dosages of anabolic steroids, and probably exogenous insulin as well. There no humans in D&D-land as big as him. He's a good model for a 19 Str Ogre, I guess.

Edit: I see where you made the mistake - the 30 x Strength rule applies to lifting things off the ground using your entire body, i.e. a deadlift, not a bench press. Men typically can deadlift twice as much as they bench press. Bjornsson recently deadlifted 1104lb.

In AD&D the average character with a STR of 8-11 can carry unencumbered 35lb. Or 105 heavily encumbered.
A person with 18 STR can do that with 110lb
And a person with 18/00 STR could do 335lb. or heavily encumbered up to 405lb. Thats the upper limit without magic or tomes. (couldnt find anything at a glance on just lifting with no movement, or upper limit of lift/carry)

In BX strength has no bearing at all on carrying capacity.

In 5e the average person with a STR 11 carry 165lb and lift 330lb. At 18 STR thats a lift of 540lb. And at the max of 20 its 600lb lift.

Quote from: Pat;1129548...a tiny kobold should have zero chance against a large man in anything directly strength-related.

A woman should have zero chance  against a large man in anything directly strength-related.
But hell it's fantasy.  ;-)

Quote from: DocJones;1129874A woman should have zero chance  against a large man in anything directly strength-related.
But hell it's fantasy.  ;-)

EXACTLY!

RPG systems are horrible 'reality' emulators.

Trying to do make an RPG model "how x is done in real life" is the worst design paradigm you can have for making an RPG system.

RPG's are Genre Emulators.

How I want my RPG system to model the Genre of play I want to see at the table, is the better design paradigm.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129857Edit: I see where you made the mistake - the 30 x Strength rule applies to lifting things off the ground using your entire body, i.e. a deadlift, not a bench press. Men typically can deadlift twice as much as they bench press. Bjornsson recently deadlifted 1104lb.

If that were the metric, he would have a 37 strength in D&D terms.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129857I'm not sure on what world the average man can bench press 345lb, but it's not Earth! A typical man can't bench press 185lb without strength training.

D&D world is not like your local gym. For us, an average male weighs about 195 lbs and, untrained, lifts around 130 lbs according to this (https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/bench-press/lb). In 5e D&D world that would give them an equivalent strength between 4 and 5.

Conversely, the average 5e D&D human with no athletics training (not that 5e grants any strength bonus for that anyway) has a strength between 11 and 12 and can lift around 345 lbs.

5e does a good job matching strength to expectations at the top end, but not so much in the middle or bottom. Which is why, I suggest, we don't have a good intuition for matching strength statistics to the world. We need to re-calibrate our understanding of what below average strength means in D&D world. Usually it means a lot stronger than you're imagining.

I think the debate is getting caught up some in specifics of arm-wrestling and/or kobolds, when it's really a broad thing about what die rolls are like.

First of all, this isn't some airy theoretical issue. There exist systems other than D&D that people play which have different probability distributions. Low-variance systems aren't common, but they also aren't unknown. I'd rate Unisystem as medium-variance, for example, and CORPS and Amber Diceless as low-variance.

So if you haven't played those - what's a low-variance system like? It means that expert PCs can really shine in their fields - often with guaranteed success. Conversely, though, if a PC doesn't have appropriate ability, then they more often have a guaranteed failure. It's a matter of personal taste whether one likes this, but it's neither impossible nor bizarre how they work. Now, those systems have other foibles and issues, so I don't purely pick those. But if we're talking about coming up with a new mechanic for a new system, I think it's worth considering what degree of variance you want.

Quote from: jhkimI would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair." He then goes on to win.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129778In your example it takes a very special kind of GM to call for a roll.

If the disparity is that high the winner is adjudicated without the need of a roll since it falls under the stuff so easy to do you don't ask for a roll, Like walking.

The variance in the mechanics used affects *all* rolls. I'm picking an extreme example for illustration, but the mechanics just as strongly affect how a skill 4 vs skill 5 contest works.

Higher variance in the die roll leads to more upsets with the lower-stat figure outperforming the higher-stat figure. Lower variance in the die roll means that there's less variation relative to skill.

Quote from: Jaeger;1129879RPG systems are horrible 'reality' emulators.

Trying to do make an RPG model "how x is done in real life" is the worst design paradigm you can have for making an RPG system.

RPG's are Genre Emulators.

How I want my RPG system to model the Genre of play I want to see at the table, is the better design paradigm.

Different people want different things out of their RPG system. But even for genre emulation, it's not always clear what the best variance is.

For heroic genres, I feel that high variance often fits even worse than reality. Say we're trying for a heroic genre like Conan. In swords and sorcery, does it make more sense for a kobold to defeat Conan in a contest of Strength? For me, the answer is generally no. It doesn't fit the genre for a kobold to beat him in a contest of strength.

Quote from: jhkim;1129902I think the debate is getting caught up some in specifics of arm-wrestling and/or kobolds, when it's really a broad thing about what die rolls are like.

First of all, this isn't some airy theoretical issue. There exist systems other than D&D that people play which have different probability distributions. Low-variance systems aren't common, but they also aren't unknown. I'd rate Unisystem as medium-variance, for example, and CORPS and Amber Diceless as low-variance.

So if you haven't played those - what's a low-variance system like? It means that expert PCs can really shine in their fields - often with guaranteed success. Conversely, though, if a PC doesn't have appropriate ability, then they more often have a guaranteed failure. It's a matter of personal taste whether one likes this, but it's neither impossible nor bizarre how they work. Now, those systems have other foibles and issues, so I don't purely pick those. But if we're talking about coming up with a new mechanic for a new system, I think it's worth considering what degree of variance you want.



The variance in the mechanics used affects *all* rolls. I'm picking an extreme example for illustration, but the mechanics just as strongly affect how a skill 4 vs skill 5 contest works.

Higher variance in the die roll leads to more upsets with the lower-stat figure outperforming the higher-stat figure. Lower variance in the die roll means that there's less variation relative to skill.



snip

So don't use a single die, use 2d6, 3d6 systems, the bell curve means that in a well built system the looser will be the lower stat most of the time.

The 3d6 bell curve is better for this since it groups most around 9-12 which you give 0 +/-, making the stat the relevant factor, if the difference is greater than that one will get either 0 or +1, +2 and the other 0 or -1. -2. Making the stat more relevant than in d20 systems.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129843I think we might have unreasonable expectations in the differentiation of abilities as well as difficulty grasping the probabilities. For example, here is Devon Larratt (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_XTtLj0ZYA), a world champion arm wrestler, bench pressing about 255 lbs. That's a D&D equivalent of between 8 and 9 in raw strength terms (using the strength × 30 rule.) And here is Thor Björnsson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH3A2kvZ-b8), one of the world's strongest men, bench pressing 540 lbs. Appropriately, this is the D&D equivalent of an 18 strength.

And here is Devon beating Thor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkkL-bAH8H4) in an arm wrestle; with ease.

Even a 7 strength isn't weak. It's just lower than average; in a world were the average man can bench press around 345 lbs.

In fairness a lot of that has to do with D&D 5e simplifying things to make it simple to calculate carry weight capacity for "it's a game" purposes rather than attempting to model reality 1/1. It's not that the average D&D human is intended to be literally that strong as a reflection of reality, even within the context of D&D world(s), but that the designers opted to keep the mechanics used to calculate carry capacity simple for playability purposes. I even heard someone once mention that the designers expressly said this was so, but I didn't read the source, so I don't remember where it was from.

That being said I agree with the starting sentence of your post and I believe that it's impossible to perfectly model reality 1/1. The best that we can hope for are "good enough" approximations for game rules purposes, focused on playability, with simulation as a secondary focus, to the degree that it can realistically be achieved.

However, I also believe that jhkin brings a valid point and interesting type of scenario where established task resolution mechanics (at least in D&D) seem to fail, or at least come up short. I'm not sure what the most elegant or adequate solution is, other than maybe doubling the Strength modifier in that specific type of STR vs STR tests. But that seems like kind of an ad hoc solution, if it doesn't really apply to other types of tests outside of STR vs STR. I think that most general skill related tasks still function without problems outside of this specific instance or maybe a few other outliers.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129904So don't use a single die, use 2d6, 3d6 systems, the bell curve means that in a well built system the looser will be the lower stat most of the time.

The 3d6 bell curve is better for this since it groups most around 9-12 which you give 0 +/-, making the stat the relevant factor, if the difference is greater than that one will get either 0 or +1, +2 and the other 0 or -1. -2. Making the stat more relevant than in d20 systems.

I've considered trying this as well, though, I'm stuck with my preference for fast single-die task resolutions. But 2d6 or 3d6 sound really tempting, since d6 is my favorite die type for rolling multiple dice, and 2 or 3 dice are relatively quick to add up (beyond 3 dice, I would rather go with Shadowrun style dice pools and count successes). I would probably go with 3d6 if I try this, since it's close enough to a d20 variable range that I could use modifiers intended for a system using a d20 (maybe reducing them by 1 or 2) and it could still work.

If you use 3d6 + 2 against random opponents rolling 3d6 with modifiers from -2 to +2 you'll win about 65% of contests
If you use d20 + 4 against random opponents rolling d20 with modifiers from -4 to +4 you'll win about 65% of contests

The only real difference is that you'll get more draws with 3d6. But neither begins to approach the 99% you'd get without randomness.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1129904So don't use a single die, use 2d6, 3d6 systems, the bell curve means that in a well built system the looser will be the lower stat most of the time.

The 3d6 bell curve is better for this since it groups most around 9-12 which you give 0 +/-, making the stat the relevant factor, if the difference is greater than that one will get either 0 or +1, +2 and the other 0 or -1. -2. Making the stat more relevant than in d20 systems.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129910I've considered trying this as well, though, I'm stuck with my preference for fast single-die task resolutions. But 2d6 or 3d6 sound really tempting, since d6 is my favorite die type for rolling multiple dice, and 2 or 3 dice are relatively quick to add up (beyond 3 dice, I would rather go with Shadowrun style dice pools and count successes). I would probably go with 3d6 if I try this, since it's close enough to a d20 variable range that I could use modifiers intended for a system using a d20 (maybe reducing them by 1 or 2) and it could still work.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129953If you use 3d6 + 2 against random opponents rolling 3d6 with modifiers from -2 to +2 you'll win about 65% of contests
If you use d20 + 4 against random opponents rolling d20 with modifiers from -4 to +4 you'll win about 65% of contests

The only real difference is that you'll get more draws with 3d6. But neither begins to approach the 99% you'd get without randomness.

mightybrain is correct that linear vs bell-curve doesn't directly address this. The issue is *die roll variance* vs *stat range*. 3d6 has less variance than 1d20, but so does 1d10.

1d20 has standard deviation of 5.77
3d6 has standard deviation of 2.96
1d10 has standard deviation of 2.87
1d6 has standard deviation of 1.71

It's a question of the standard deviation of the roll versus the stat difference between master and weakling (i.e. Strength mod between Conan and a kobold, for example).

In terms of system design, you can get a less swingy system by any of (1) reducing the size of the die like using 1d10 instead of 1d20, (2) replacing the die with more smaller dice for a tighter bell curve, like 3d6 instead of 1d20; or (3) increasing the range of the stats. It's not like the only choices are 65% or 99%.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129782...this whole thing begs the question. Even in the part I didn't specifically address (last sentence in the quote, above) you're still making the claim that using essentially the same mechanic across the entire system is somehow "harder to keep straight" when dealing actions that are different (combat, spellcasting, skills, etc.), which is fundamentally absurd. How can using the same task resolution mechanic across the entire system--meaning that you only have to remember ONE thing--make it more difficult to remember how to resolve tasks?

No, I'm not making that claim. It's not about arbitrary categorization of mechanics based on chapters in the book or some other arbitrary scheme. It's about mechanics that look and feel alike, but are fundamentally different. Mechanics are the user interface of the game. They're the buttons we press, and the knobs we turn. When you have two knobs right next to each other, and both are labeled "d20", it creates a point of uncertainty. Sure, people will eventually memorize the positions, but that doesn't mean it's a good interface. It creates confusion when it's being learned, and makes it easier for even the skilled to make mistakes. That dissonance also slows things down, requiring users to devote a few extra slivers of time on an arbitrary mechanic every time it comes up, instead of responding automatically. While that can sometimes be deliberate -- cf. civil engineers and deliberately confusing intersections that force people to pay attention, and thus theoretically reduce accidents -- that's not good for a smooth flow of intuitive responses, it's frustrating or annoying, and in RPGs can do things like break immersion.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129782...which is an example that applies ONLY to D&D, and ONLY because it's badly implemented unified mechanics--we're still dealing with nearly identical mechanics. But because YOU personally can't remember what number to add in ONE circumstance in ONE specific game that uses a mishmash of subsystems rather than truly unify the whole thing that's somehow a testament against the entire enterprise of unified mechanics.

I've already addressed this. No, it's not about badly implemented unified mechanics. It's a flaw in the concept of unified mechanics. Because unless you have a very simplistic system that only needs one resolution method, like some single-focused storygames with a dramatic resolution technique that applies to everything, you'll end up using mechanics to model disparate things that function in different ways. We discussed some of these, for instance how different types of skill work, and how that compares to arm wrestling, and so on. So any reasonably complex RPG will, necessarily, end up with a heterogeneous mix of resolution methods. If you disguise those differences and make them all look alike because you're using the same dice and applying modifiers in superficially similar ways, that's equivalent to having two buttons labeled "d20" sitting next to each other.

This is all pretty basic stuff, which is why I recommended looking into usability theory.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1129782...
And to nip this in the bud while we're at it...


I never "assumed" things that you never said.

Look at your own words, in the post you quoted. You quote me, and then use the second person "you". In that context, that's a direct reference to me, and thus you're making statements about me. You also ascribe motivations to other people in the paragraph about the originals designers, which reinforces the idea.

I can accept you didn't intend it that way, but that's how it came across.

Quote from: jhkim;1129902For heroic genres, I feel that high variance often fits even worse than reality. Say we're trying for a heroic genre like Conan. In swords and sorcery, does it make more sense for a kobold to defeat Conan in a contest of Strength? For me, the answer is generally no. It doesn't fit the genre for a kobold to beat him in a contest of strength.

That's a very complex question, because RPGs are a very different genre from books and film. In narrative media, there are plot structures and patterns, that are lacking in RPGs. Which is why RPGs sometimes default more back toward realism, or more properly verisimilitude; or conversely, go full storygame and structure resolution based on dramatic structures and plot flow rather than on some kind of static assessment of capability in a specific area. That's why referencing characters like Conan is so fraught.

Quote from: mightybrain;1129953If you use 3d6 + 2 against random opponents rolling 3d6 with modifiers from -2 to +2 you'll win about 65% of contests
If you use d20 + 4 against random opponents rolling d20 with modifiers from -4 to +4 you'll win about 65% of contests

The only real difference is that you'll get more draws with 3d6. But neither begins to approach the 99% you'd get without randomness.

As jhkim pointed out, the modifier ranges you used are about a third less than the standard deviations of each roll (+/-2 vs. SD 2.96 for 3d6, +/-4 vs. SD 5.77 for 1d20), so it's no surprise that the results would be tilted in your favor, but still pretty random.  If you want the results to go 99% "the right way", then you need to use larger modifiers, so that the results will be shaped primarily by the modifiers, rather than by the randomness of the roll.

If you use 3d6 + 20 against random opponents rolling 3d6 with modifiers from -2 to +2 you'll win about 100% of contests
If you use d20 + 20 against random opponents rolling d20 with modifiers from -4 to +4 you'll win about 100% of contests

Ah, the old 50 strength ploy. Even the mighty Tarrasque only has a +10!

With 3d6 that's 100% with no chance of failure. With d20 there's still a slim chance (https://media.giphy.com/media/KfZhJtyDhKlyMMIoIT/giphy.mp4) that a character with +2 or more can win such a contest.

Quote from: VisionStorm....But Wisdom in particular was always an issue even back in the day, when the question would be "what is the real functional and fundamental difference between Intelligence and Wisdom?"....

The distinction between intelligence and wisdom is very real and appropriately represented in AD&D.

Religion is the means by which a culture stores its accumulated wisdom, not empirically, but through mythical story-telling.

When people practice the religion of their culture, they are embodying their ancestors' ancient knowledge without necessarily understanding it empirically. This is represented in AD&D by the fact that magic-users must learn their spells, whereas clerics are simply given their spells.

High wisdom provides some resistance to mental attack forms involving will force. This makes sense because people who practice religion are more resistant to despair, anxiety, and other attacks against the mind. That is because our ancestors learned long ago how to withstand these mental assaults, otherwise we would not be here.

Naturally, people who are irreligious do not understand wisdom, and the more empirically minded they are, the more this is true.

Our culture has had what is in essence a spiritual stroke because it has become too empirical. The problem is that the world is too complex for the human brain to understand in strictly empirical terms. Holistic apprehension is more complete but less specific -- a picture is worth a 1,000 words.

People have latched onto the corona virus hysteria largely because it's something that they can understand in empirical terms; everyone knows what a virus is and how it works. The corona virus is a stand-in for aspects of reality that trouble our culture, but which most can no longer understand, in the same way that demons were once stand-ins for diseases which people did not understand.

The two hemispheres of the brain are hard-wired differently:

Left hemisphere: Operation in Explored Territory
positive affect
activation of behavior
word processing
linear thinking
detail recognition
detail generation
fine motor action

Right hemisphere: Operation in Unexplored Territory
negative affect
inhibition of behavior
image processing
holistic thinking
pattern recognition
pattern generation
gross motor action

There is an obvious correlation between the hemispheres and intelligence/wisdom.

Quote from: jhkim;1129985mightybrain is correct that linear vs bell-curve doesn't directly address this. The issue is *die roll variance* vs *stat range*. 3d6 has less variance than 1d20, but so does 1d10.

1d20 has standard deviation of 5.77
3d6 has standard deviation of 2.96
1d10 has standard deviation of 2.87
1d6 has standard deviation of 1.71

It's a question of the standard deviation of the roll versus the stat difference between master and weakling (i.e. Strength mod between Conan and a kobold, for example).

In terms of system design, you can get a less swingy system by any of (1) reducing the size of the die like using 1d10 instead of 1d20, (2) replacing the die with more smaller dice for a tighter bell curve, like 3d6 instead of 1d20; or (3) increasing the range of the stats. It's not like the only choices are 65% or 99%.

I think that this is an outlier situation, though. I don't think that it necessarily applies to all types of actions that characters will perform. And this is also a D&D-specific issue dealing with Strength contests that might not apply to other systems.

Part of the issue is that Strength is essentially being used as a "Skill", but without having a skill (or Proficiency, whatever). So you don't get a Proficiency modifier for the roll, which is normally the only way to reach the upper limit in terms of ability roll modifiers in D&D 5e.

The issue is that this particular Strength function is essentially its own skill, but the game isn't accounting for that because there is no "Strength" proficiency (other than Strength saves). So you end up rolling low modifiers against each other, since it's just a plain ability check with no Proficiency. And since the system uses a die type with high variability that low modifier doesn't mean much. That's the reason why a kobold has such a high chance to beat Conan on a Strength check.

IMO, the best way to handle this in D&D is to double Strength modifiers for this type of check, specifically. That will give characters with higher scores the a significant edged without changing or complicating the game too much.

Another alternative could be to include a Strength proficiency, but then anyone could get it, which defeats its purpose. So the best alternative to truly give the contestant with the highest Strength a consistent edge is to double their Str modifiers for this type of rolls.

But this type of issue only happens when making plain ability score contests without Proficiencies. There's no need to adjust the entire task resolution mechanic to account just for this type of specialized scenario. I'm also not sure that Conan needs a 99% success rate in a Strength contest in the middle of combat, where lots of variables are in play. Specially when we consider that chimps are technically stronger than humans in real life, which means that just because a creature is small that doesn't mean that they're automatically weak.

Quote from: Pat;1130006No, I'm not making that claim. It's not about arbitrary categorization of mechanics based on chapters in the book or some other arbitrary scheme. It's about mechanics that look and feel alike, but are fundamentally different. Mechanics are the user interface of the game. They're the buttons we press, and the knobs we turn. When you have two knobs right next to each other, and both are labeled "d20", it creates a point of uncertainty. Sure, people will eventually memorize the positions, but that doesn't mean it's a good interface. It creates confusion when it's being learned, and makes it easier for even the skilled to make mistakes. That dissonance also slows things down, requiring users to devote a few extra slivers of time on an arbitrary mechanic every time it comes up, instead of responding automatically. While that can sometimes be deliberate -- cf. civil engineers and deliberately confusing intersections that force people to pay attention, and thus theoretically reduce accidents -- that's not good for a smooth flow of intuitive responses, it's frustrating or annoying, and in RPGs can do things like break immersion.


I've already addressed this. No, it's not about badly implemented unified mechanics. It's a flaw in the concept of unified mechanics. Because unless you have a very simplistic system that only needs one resolution method, like some single-focused storygames with a dramatic resolution technique that applies to everything, you'll end up using mechanics to model disparate things that function in different ways. We discussed some of these, for instance how different types of skill work, and how that compares to arm wrestling, and so on. So any reasonably complex RPG will, necessarily, end up with a heterogeneous mix of resolution methods. If you disguise those differences and make them all look alike because you're using the same dice and applying modifiers in superficially similar ways, that's equivalent to having two buttons labeled "d20" sitting next to each other.

This is all pretty basic stuff, which is why I recommended looking into usability theory.


Look at your own words, in the post you quoted. You quote me, and then use the second person "you". In that context, that's a direct reference to me, and thus you're making statements about me. You also ascribe motivations to other people in the paragraph about the originals designers, which reinforces the idea.

I can accept you didn't intend it that way, but that's how it came across.

We're fundamentally misunderstanding each other so this discussion is useless.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1130040The distinction between intelligence and wisdom is very real and appropriately represented in AD&D.

You basically snipped my actual points to address the opening statement you took issue with without refuting a single actual argument. Then you made a bunch of unsupported claims about religion making us wise and worked backwards from a set of pseudo-religions D&D assumptions to basically "jump through hoops trying justify the existence of both as separate stats by going into nuance and falling back on their "books smarts" vs "common sense" distinctions". Just like I mentioned in my post that people normally did during this type of discussion.

Vision Storm, you seem to be confusing "Doesn't do what I think it should do" with "Doesn't do what the designers intended or said they would do".  It makes your arguments difficult to follow.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1130055Vision Storm, you seem to be confusing "Doesn't do what I think it should do" with "Doesn't do what the designers intended or said they would do".  It makes your arguments difficult to follow.

I would need specific examples to understand exactly what you mean. Though I do tend to speculate on the designers intent in some instances, or to look at or judge rules beyond just a specific system's implementation, but more in term of possibilities or whether or not a rule actually serves a practical purpose in practice (beyond theory or the designers stated intent).

Though, I am aware that what I consider ideal or optimal and what the designers might have wanted might be different. But there are cases where what the designers might intend for a rule or ability doesn't really pan out in actual play or most situations, which is part of some of the criticisms I sometimes have.

Quote from: jhkimIn terms of system design, you can get a less swingy system by any of (1) reducing the size of the die like using 1d10 instead of 1d20, (2) replacing the die with more smaller dice for a tighter bell curve, like 3d6 instead of 1d20; or (3) increasing the range of the stats. It's not like the only choices are 65% or 99%.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1130049But this type of issue only happens when making plain ability score contests without Proficiencies. There's no need to adjust the entire task resolution mechanic to account just for this type of specialized scenario. I'm also not sure that Conan needs a 99% success rate in a Strength contest in the middle of combat, where lots of variables are in play. Specially when we consider that chimps are technically stronger than humans in real life, which means that just because a creature is small that doesn't mean that they're automatically weak.

It's a matter of taste whether one likes a more swingy system or not, but for me, it's vastly *more* of an issue with skills than it is with raw attributes.

To my intuition, skill should make a huge difference in terms of chance of success. I mentioned earlier that there should be a huge difference between a high school dropout, an undergraduate math major, and a top PhD mathematician in terms of solving a math problem. An undergrad can solve math problems where the dropout can't even understand the question. For another angle, consider driving -- what are the chances for someone new to driving, an average licensed person, and a racecar driver? Someone with a license should have a 99.99% chance to drive on the highway to work in the morning without incident, but that should be quite difficult for someone new to driving (under 50%, say).

To take a D&D5 example, consider a desert nomad (barbarian with outlander background) and a pirate (rogue with sailor background). They are each trying to sail a ship to the island as quickly as possible. The rogue has proficiency bonus with vehicles (water) - but that only makes a difference of +10%. Their chances aren't very different.

Quote from: jhkim;1130088To my intuition, skill should make a huge difference in terms of chance of success. I mentioned earlier that there should be a huge difference between a high school dropout, an undergraduate math major, and a top PhD mathematician in terms of solving a math problem. An undergrad can solve math problems where the dropout can't even understand the question. For another angle, consider driving -- what are the chances for someone new to driving, an average licensed person, and a racecar driver? Someone with a license should have a 99.99% chance to drive on the highway to work in the morning without incident, but that should be quite difficult for someone new to driving (under 50%, say).

I don't agree. PhD mathematicians aren't always the best at basic math, whereas an undergrad math major is probably someone who both has recently used those skills, and has a knack for it. Also, academic disciplines are highly specialized, and people are only truly experts in a narrow area. The PhD might be great at things in their specialty, mediocre at some of the basics, and left floundering when it comes to something outside their expertise. Conversely, the math major might be better at routine math, but have no relevant background when it comes to more advanced topics.

In a lot of ways, skill is more about what you can do, than increasing your odds. Similarly, driving to work everyday is less about technical skill than it is about safe habits. Experience helps, because it increases situational awareness. But being exceptionally skilled at high speed chases might actually increase your chance of accident, because someone with that training is attuned to taking risks. True, that skill might help with diagnosing and compensating for problems with the vehicle, or assessing dangers like the potential for black ice, or just not panicking. But it's primarily about being exceptionally capable in extreme circumstances, not being better at routine things.

Quote from: jhkim;1130088To take a D&D5 example, consider a desert nomad (barbarian with outlander background) and a pirate (rogue with sailor background). They are each trying to sail a ship to the island as quickly as possible. The rogue has proficiency bonus with vehicles (water) - but that only makes a difference of +10%. Their chances aren't very different.

As far as I can tell, a ship can't move at all in 5e unless you have the minimum number of skilled crew. The fact that skilled crew are specified separately to unskilled crew implies that anyone without water vehicle proficiency can't act as crew. And without enough crew the ship can't move at all.

A better example might be driving a wagon or chariot.

Note, when they published Xanathar's guide they addressed a problem with tool proficiencies in general. For example, if you were driving a chariot and the DM called for a check, it would almost certainly be an animal handling roll, and if you already had proficiency with that, your vehicle proficiency would effectively add nothing. To patch this up they suggest that if a skill and tool proficiency both apply then you can roll with advantage.

Quote from: jhkim;1130088To my intuition, skill should make a huge difference in terms of chance of success. I mentioned earlier that there should be a huge difference between a high school dropout, an undergraduate math major, and a top PhD mathematician in terms of solving a math problem. An undergrad can solve math problems where the dropout can't even understand the question.

This could well be the case if the problem had a DC so high that the unskilled player could not reach it even with a 20, but the high level character with expertise could (expertise can go up to +12 at high level).

Quote from: jhkim;1130088It's a matter of taste whether one likes a more swingy system or not, but for me, it's vastly *more* of an issue with skills than it is with raw attributes.

To my intuition, skill should make a huge difference in terms of chance of success. I mentioned earlier that there should be a huge difference between a high school dropout, an undergraduate math major, and a top PhD mathematician in terms of solving a math problem. An undergrad can solve math problems where the dropout can't even understand the question. For another angle, consider driving -- what are the chances for someone new to driving, an average licensed person, and a racecar driver? Someone with a license should have a 99.99% chance to drive on the highway to work in the morning without incident, but that should be quite difficult for someone new to driving (under 50%, say).

To take a D&D5 example, consider a desert nomad (barbarian with outlander background) and a pirate (rogue with sailor background). They are each trying to sail a ship to the island as quickly as possible. The rogue has proficiency bonus with vehicles (water) - but that only makes a difference of +10%. Their chances aren't very different.

Personally, I'm willing to accept a certain degree of swinginess because it's a game and that allows more room to maneuver without characters with high ability completely overwhelming lower ability characters, particularly in combat, which I believe was the thinking behind the range of modifiers allowed in 5e. Though, I suppose maybe 5e takes it a little too far, so I may have to end up reassessing my own system's ability range at some point, since it uses a similar range to 5e.

But some of these are outlier scenarios. The academic stuff in particular is hard to appropriately handle in terms of the game rules, since a lot of times it deals with expert knowledge (sometimes layers of it) that you either have or you don't. Or it may deal with research that could take years to complete, on top of requiring very specific expert knowledge, which might entail a lot of very low probability ability checks leading up to the big discoveries in terms of the game rules, depending on how you handle them mechanically. I would handle specific knowledge as a separate requirement you would need to purchase as a separate ability (similar to a Feat) in addition to using a more general skill level for rolls. If you don't have the specific knowledge for a task (such as speaking a specific language) you may simply be unable to attempt it, or may suffer extreme penalties if allowed.

I'm also not sure about the driving stuff because driving is a very low failure rate type of task, unless you're performing stunts or driving at excessively high speeds. I never even crashed till like a month after getting my license, when my car slipped making a turn at an intersection and did a 180 on me, and I didn't know you were supposed to (cautiously) accelerate when a car starts to spin to attempt to regain traction on the tires to stop it from spinning (which is counterintuitive). If driving untrained had a 50% or less success rate I should've crashed a lot more.

Quote from: jhkim;1129985mightybrain is correct that linear vs bell-curve doesn't directly address this. The issue is *die roll variance* vs *stat range*. 3d6 has less variance than 1d20, but so does 1d10.

1d20 has standard deviation of 5.77
3d6 has standard deviation of 2.96
1d10 has standard deviation of 2.87
1d6 has standard deviation of 1.71

It's a question of the standard deviation of the roll versus the stat difference between master and weakling (i.e. Strength mod between Conan and a kobold, for example).

In terms of system design, you can get a less swingy system by any of (1) reducing the size of the die like using 1d10 instead of 1d20, (2) replacing the die with more smaller dice for a tighter bell curve, like 3d6 instead of 1d20; or (3) increasing the range of the stats. It's not like the only choices are 65% or 99%.

1 Die doesn't have a bell curve, each time you roll you have equal chance to get any number on the die.

With 3d6 most of the rolls will end in the middle, the more to the extremes you go the less probable the result is.

It's a matter of how many ways you have to get number X

In 1d20 you have 1/20 always.

In 3d6 it depends on the number 3 & 18 you have 1 way to get so 1/18

4 & 17 you have 2 different ways so 2/18 for any of those two numbers.

And so on.

Until you reach the middle which has the most combinations possible, meaning it will get rolled more often than any other number.

This means the system has less swing and is more stable.

A difference of +-1 in modifiers has a huge weight in comparing 1d20 to 3d6.

And I will not continue arguing about rolls because I have read all of you do it before and you just don't get it, some of you even argue that a single die has a bell curve.

Quote from: nDervish;1130037As jhkim pointed out, the modifier ranges you used are about a third less than the standard deviations of each roll (+/-2 vs. SD 2.96 for 3d6, +/-4 vs. SD 5.77 for 1d20), so it's no surprise that the results would be tilted in your favor, but still pretty random.  If you want the results to go 99% "the right way", then you need to use larger modifiers, so that the results will be shaped primarily by the modifiers, rather than by the randomness of the roll.

If you use 3d6 + 20 against random opponents rolling 3d6 with modifiers from -2 to +2 you'll win about 100% of contests
If you use d20 + 20 against random opponents rolling d20 with modifiers from -4 to +4 you'll win about 100% of contests

Quote from: mightybrain;1130038Ah, the old 50 strength ploy. Even the mighty Tarrasque only has a +10!

Ehm, no, I'm not talking about "50 strength".  I'm not talking about D&D (or any particular system) at all.  I'm talking about the raw numbers and how they compare:  If you want to ensure that a more-capable opponent is (nearly-)guaranteed to defeat a less-capable opponent, then you use modifiers on the roll which are large enough that the modifier will be more significant than the likely variance in the raw dice results.  How you get the modifiers which are large enough to overcome the variance in the raw die result is a question of how the dice mechanic is designed, which was supposed to be the original point of this thread, before it got bogged down in D&D Strength modifiers.

But, as I mentioned in my first reply in this thread, there are other (not-D&D) systems out there which do use modifiers large enough to make the raw die result all but irrelevant.  For example, there's Ars Magica, which can see you rolling 1d10+20 against someone rolling 1d10+5 - unless you're in a "stress" situation (in which case those are exploding 1d10 rolls), there's no need to even roll at all because it's not possible for the lower-skilled person to roll high enough to beat the higher-skilled.  Whether you consider that a bug or a feature is a matter of personal taste (I've gone back and forth on it myself), but it is an option for how to design your dice mechanic, even if it's not the option that D&D5e chose to take.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1130139In 3d6 it depends on the number 3 & 18 you have 1 way to get so [strike]1/18[/strike] 1/216

4 & 17 you have [strike]2[/strike] 3 different ways so [strike]2/18[/strike] 3/216 for any of those two numbers.

And so on.

Fixed that for you.

Quote from: mightybrain;1130175Fixed that for you.

https://anydice.com/program/e6 (https://anydice.com/program/e6)

https://anydice.com/program/116 (https://anydice.com/program/116)

https://anydice.com/program/393 (https://anydice.com/program/393)

https://anydice.com/program/fb4 (https://anydice.com/program/fb4)

Here's a chart of a simulation of contests between characters with different modifiers:

[table=class: grid]
  [tr]
    [td]mod[/td]
    [td]-4(-2)[/td]
    [td]-2(-1)[/td]
    [td]0(0)[/td]
    [td]+2(+1)[/td]
    [td]+4(+2)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]-4(-2)[/td]
    [td]47.5% (45.5%)[/td]
    [td]57.0% (54.7%)[/td]
    [td]65.9% (63.6%)[/td]
    [td]73.8% (72.3%)[/td]
    [td]80.5% (79.1%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]-2(-1)[/td]
    [td]38.4% (36.5%)[/td]
    [td]47.5% (45.6%)[/td]
    [td]57.0% (54.9%)[/td]
    [td]65.9% (63.9%)[/td]
    [td]73.8% (72.0%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]0(0)[/td]
    [td]29.9% (27.9%)[/td]
    [td]38.2% (36.3%)[/td]
    [td]47.3% (45.2%)[/td]
    [td]57.3% (54.5%)[/td]
    [td]66.0% (63.8%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]+2(+1)[/td]
    [td]22.6% (20.6%)[/td]
    [td]29.7% (27.6%)[/td]
    [td]38.2% (36.1%)[/td]
    [td]47.6% (45.1%)[/td]
    [td]57.6% (54.3%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]+4(+2)[/td]
    [td]16.5% (14.4%)[/td]
    [td]22.8% (20.5%)[/td]
    [td]29.9% (27.9%)[/td]
    [td]38.2% (36.4%)[/td]
    [td]47.5% (45.1%)[/td]
  [/tr]
[/table]

The value in each cell is the percentage of times that the character with the modifier in the column beat the character with the modifier in the row using the d20 + modifier method. The values in brackets represent the same contest using 3d6 + (modifier). Each test was run 100,000 times.

You can see that the figures are fairly close but with +2% to +3% for the d20 method. This is explained by the fact that the 3d6 method results in more draws. Here is the chart for the percentage of draws.

[table=class: grid]
  [tr]
    [td]mod[/td]
    [td]-4(-2)[/td]
    [td]-2(-1)[/td]
    [td]0(0)[/td]
    [td]+2(+1)[/td]
    [td]+4(+2)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]-4(-2)[/td]
    [td]5.0% (9.2%)[/td]
    [td]4.5% (9.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.0% (8.3%)[/td]
    [td]3.5% (7.3%)[/td]
    [td]3.1% (6.1%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]-2(-1)[/td]
    [td]4.4% (9.0%)[/td]
    [td]5.0% (9.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.5% (9.1%)[/td]
    [td]4.0% (8.3%)[/td]
    [td]3.6% (7.4%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]0(0)[/td]
    [td]4.1% (8.4%)[/td]
    [td]4.5% (9.1%)[/td]
    [td]5.0% (9.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.6% (8.9%)[/td]
    [td]4.0% (8.4%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]+2(+1)[/td]
    [td]3.6% (7.4%)[/td]
    [td]4.0% (8.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.6% (9.1%)[/td]
    [td]5.1% (9.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.5% (8.9%)[/td]
  [/tr]
  [tr]
    [td]+4(+2)[/td]
    [td]3.0% (6.3%)[/td]
    [td]3.4% (7.4%)[/td]
    [td]4.0% (8.3%)[/td]
    [td]4.5% (9.1%)[/td]
    [td]5.0% (9.3%)[/td]
  [/tr]
[/table]

If you adjust for the draws, the probabilities for d20+mod and 3d6+1/2mod are pretty much the same. (At least within the range of values we're interested in.)

Quote from: jhkimThe issue is *die roll variance* vs *stat range*. 3d6 has less variance than 1d20, but so does 1d10.

1d20 has standard deviation of 5.77
3d6 has standard deviation of 2.96
1d10 has standard deviation of 2.87
1d6 has standard deviation of 1.71

It's a question of the standard deviation of the roll versus the stat difference between master and weakling (i.e. Strength mod between Conan and a kobold, for example).

In terms of system design, you can get a less swingy system by any of (1) reducing the size of the die like using 1d10 instead of 1d20, (2) replacing the die with more smaller dice for a tighter bell curve, like 3d6 instead of 1d20; or (3) increasing the range of the stats. It's not like the only choices are 65% or 99%.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1130139This means the system has less swing and is more stable.

A difference of +-1 in modifiers has a huge weight in comparing 1d20 to 3d6.

And I will not continue arguing about rolls because I have read all of you do it before and you just don't get it, some of you even argue that a single die has a bell curve.

I agree with you that 3d6 has a bell curve while 1d20 has a flat distribution. But the point is that 1d20 and 3d6 aren't the only choices. 1d10 also has less variance than 1d20. So let's look at real systems.

In D&D5, let's consider a Contest of Strength between a kobold (Strength mod -1) and Conan (Strength mod +5). So the kobold rolls 1d20 and subtracts 1, compared to Conan's 1d20 plus 5. There is a 73.75% chance that Conan will win, a 3.5% chance of a tie, and a 22.75% chance that the kobold will win. (Note that there was a previous claim that the kobold only had a 9% chance of winning, but I don't think that's right.)

Let's look at Interlock instead, which is the system for the Cyberpunk RPG (from R Talsorian). Here Strength goes from 2 to 10, with average 5. In a contest, each character rolls their stat plus 1d10. So the equivalent to a kobold would be Strength 4, while Conan is Strength 10. So here, there is a 90% chance that Conan will win, a 4% chance of a tie, and a 6% chance that the kobold will win.

That's a system with much less swing in it, despite not having a bell curve.

A bell curve 3d6 also has less swing than 1d20. Let's take GURPS. It's a little unclear what Conan's strength would be in GURPS -- there isn't a strict maximum and disagreement about what is a standard human max, and I don't have the GURPS Conan books. This thread (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=11324) rated him as ST 17, though. If we take GURPS as Conan with 17 ST compared to ST 9, then a quick contest of Strength will result that Conan has an 94.6% chance to win, a 1.56% chance of tie, and the kobold has an 3.8% chance to win.

Quote from: mightybrain;1130202If you adjust for the draws, the probabilities for d20+mod and 3d6+1/2mod are pretty much the same. (At least within the range of values we're interested in.)

I haven't checked all of them, but those numbers seem reasonable. I mentioned that the standard deviation of 3d6 is about half that of 1d20. I don't know where you're getting those mods from, though. I think it's more concrete to use real RPG systems.

Quote from: jhkim;1130241I agree with you that 3d6 has a bell curve while 1d20 has a flat distribution. But the point is that 1d20 and 3d6 aren't the only choices. 1d10 also has less variance than 1d20. So let's look at real systems.

In D&D5, let's consider a Contest of Strength between a kobold (Strength mod -1) and Conan (Strength mod +5). So the kobold rolls 1d20 and subtracts 1, compared to Conan's 1d20 plus 5. There is a 73.75% chance that Conan will win, a 3.5% chance of a tie, and a 22.75% chance that the kobold will win. (Note that there was a previous claim that the kobold only had a 9% chance of winning, but I don't think that's right.)

Let's look at Interlock instead, which is the system for the Cyberpunk RPG (from R Talsorian). Here Strength goes from 2 to 10, with average 5. In a contest, each character rolls their stat plus 1d10. So the equivalent to a kobold would be Strength 4, while Conan is Strength 10. So here, there is a 90% chance that Conan will win, a 4% chance of a tie, and a 6% chance that the kobold will win.

That's a system with much less swing in it, despite not having a bell curve.

A bell curve 3d6 also has less swing than 1d20. Let's take GURPS. It's a little unclear what Conan's strength would be in GURPS -- there isn't a strict maximum and disagreement about what is a standard human max, and I don't have the GURPS Conan books. This thread (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=11324) rated him as ST 17, though. If we take GURPS as Conan with 17 ST compared to ST 9, then a quick contest of Strength will result that Conan has an 94.6% chance to win, a 1.56% chance of tie, and the kobold has an 3.8% chance to win.


I haven't checked all of them, but those numbers seem reasonable. I mentioned that the standard deviation of 3d6 is about half that of 1d20. I don't know where you're getting those mods from, though. I think it's more concrete to use real RPG systems.

Now, take Interlock and switch 1d10 for 2d6.

And in a contest between Conan and a Kobold (how did the both of them end in the same world?) the result is automatic, Conan wins.

Quote from: jhkim;1130241I agree with you that 3d6 has a bell curve while 1d20 has a flat distribution. But the point is that 1d20 and 3d6 aren't the only choices. 1d10 also has less variance than 1d20. So let's look at real systems.

In D&D5, let's consider a Contest of Strength between a kobold (Strength mod -1) and Conan (Strength mod +5). So the kobold rolls 1d20 and subtracts 1, compared to Conan's 1d20 plus 5. There is a 73.75% chance that Conan will win, a 3.5% chance of a tie, and a 22.75% chance that the kobold will win. (Note that there was a previous claim that the kobold only had a 9% chance of winning, but I don't think that's right.)

Let's look at Interlock instead, which is the system for the Cyberpunk RPG (from R Talsorian). Here Strength goes from 2 to 10, with average 5. In a contest, each character rolls their stat plus 1d10. So the equivalent to a kobold would be Strength 4, while Conan is Strength 10. So here, there is a 90% chance that Conan will win, a 4% chance of a tie, and a 6% chance that the kobold will win.

That's a system with much less swing in it, despite not having a bell curve.

A bell curve 3d6 also has less swing than 1d20. Let's take GURPS. It's a little unclear what Conan's strength would be in GURPS -- there isn't a strict maximum and disagreement about what is a standard human max, and I don't have the GURPS Conan books. This thread (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=11324) rated him as ST 17, though. If we take GURPS as Conan with 17 ST compared to ST 9, then a quick contest of Strength will result that Conan has an 94.6% chance to win, a 1.56% chance of tie, and the kobold has an 3.8% chance to win.


I haven't checked all of them, but those numbers seem reasonable. I mentioned that the standard deviation of 3d6 is about half that of 1d20. I don't know where you're getting those mods from, though. I think it's more concrete to use real RPG systems.

I never used any of these systems, BUT shouldn't systems with bigger range (and variance) have bigger modifiers?  If I convert from 1-10 to 1-100, then a +1 is converted to +10. I think it should be 5-0.5=4.5 or roughly 5 for the cobalt, and 5+2.5 or roughly 8 for Conan if you want to approximately convert 1-20 to the 1-10 . At least that's how I would convert it; I would cut the modifiers in half and round the values.

Standard deviation is probably the best way to convert mods.

1d100: 28.87
1d20: 5.766
3d6: 2.958
1d10: 2.872
2d6: 2.415

Yes, a +1 in 3d6 means almost twice as much as a +1 in 1d20.

Quote from: Pat;1130263Standard deviation is probably the best way to convert mods.

1d100: 28.87
1d20: 5.766
3d6: 2.958
1d10: 2.872
2d6: 2.415

Yes, a +1 in 3d6 means almost twice as much as a +1 in 1d20.

It's a good place to start.  However, I think you then also have to examine how the range and mods are used in the system (some of which will be GM-driven, naturally).  For example, in D&D 5E, it's rare for the extreme bottom of the d20 range to ever be relevant in play.  Whereas some uses of Hero System are going to work hard to keep the effective range of results in the 7 to 14 range (by sitting on the modifiers).  The latter doesn't have much additional effect on the analysis, since we are dropping the same amount from the lower and the upper ends.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1130272It's a good place to start.  However, I think you then also have to examine how the range and mods are used in the system (some of which will be GM-driven, naturally).  For example, in D&D 5E, it's rare for the extreme bottom of the d20 range to ever be relevant in play.  Whereas some uses of Hero System are going to work hard to keep the effective range of results in the 7 to 14 range (by sitting on the modifiers).  The latter doesn't have much additional effect on the analysis, since we are dropping the same amount from the lower and the upper ends.

I think it's safe to say that most systems tend to use the upper half of the range more than the bottom half.

Quote from: Trond;1130260I never used any of these systems, BUT shouldn't systems with bigger range (and variance) have bigger modifiers?  If I convert from 1-10 to 1-100, then a +1 is converted to +10. I think it should be 5-0.5=4.5 or roughly 5 for the cobalt, and 5+2.5 or roughly 8 for Conan if you want to approximately convert 1-20 to the 1-10 . At least that's how I would convert it; I would cut the modifiers in half and round the values.

They're completely different systems, though. Each system uses different parameters to handle the range of ability modifiers. Interlock's range of modifiers are comparatively higher than D&D 5e's, despite using a lower die type at half the variable range. D&D 5e is also an odd case, since the system uses low modifiers, even compared to earlier editions of D&D, presumably to allow interaction between characters or enemies with disparate levels and allow low level/HD enemies, like goblins and orcs, to still pose some sort of a challenge to higher level PCs. Meanwhile Interlock's attributes and skills go up to 10 each, where an attribute of 10 (maximum unmodified human potential) is the equivalent of a D&D score of 20 (+5 modifier), and D&D 5e's proficiency modifier only goes up to +6 (which might be doubled with certain feats or class features, or modified by other factors).

However, older editions of D&D had skill or combat modifiers (or equivalent, like THAC0) as high as +20 or higher. The 5e modifier range is a recent trend based around a different set of assumptions on how to handle character abilities, where ability ranges are toned down for the sake of balance.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1130253Now, take Interlock and switch 1d10 for 2d6.

And in a contest between Conan and a Kobold (how did the both of them end in the same world?) the result is automatic, Conan wins.

There's a reduced chance, but it is not automatic. The kobold has 4 Strength and Conan has 10, so (for example) if Conan rolls a 2 and the kobold rolls a 12, the kobold would win by 4 points.

With 1d10, the kobold has a 6% chance of winning.

With 2d6, the kobold has a 2.7% chance of winning.

Quote from: jhkim;1130305There's a reduced chance, but it is not automatic. The kobold has 4 Strength and Conan has 10, so (for example) if Conan rolls a 2 and the kobold rolls a 12, the kobold would win by 4 points.

With 1d10, the kobold has a 6% chance of winning.

With 2d6, the kobold has a 2.7% chance of winning.

It is automatic, unless there's a chance of Conan slipping on a banana peel and thus loosing. It's the prerogative of the GM (and a long held tradition) to not ask for rolls on stuff he considers doesn't need it. So in arm-wrestling between Conan and a Kobold (Unless especial conditions are mentioned), Conan wins 100% of the time.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1130326It is automatic, unless there's a chance of Conan slipping on a banana peel and thus loosing. It's the prerogative of the GM (and a long held tradition) to not ask for rolls on stuff he considers doesn't need it. So in arm-wrestling between Conan and a Kobold (Unless especial conditions are mentioned), Conan wins 100% of the time.

But die roll variance isn't just something that comes up solely in the case of Conan and a kobold. It's something that influences how the whole game plays out, for all attributes and skills and tasks.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles an 8 Str kobold. The mechanics say Conan wins 74% of the time, but the GM overrules and says it's 100%.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 10 Str average peasant. The mechanics say Conan wins 70% of the time, and maybe the GM overrules and says it's 100%.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 12 Str typical soldier. The mechanics say Conan wins 66% of the time. Does the GM overrule?

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 14 Str opponent. The mechanics say Conan wins 62% of the time. Again, does the GM overrule?


The GM can overrule and impose a 100% sometimes, but presumably at some point they use the mechanics as written, and then we jump back into the same high variance probabilities. So faced with increasing strength opponents, Conan might jump from 100% to just 62% chance of winning.

It is an intentional feature of high-variance systems that it's easier for low-skill characters to contribute, and there's still tension over the die roll even if a character is high stat/skill.

Quote from: Trond;1130260I never used any of these systems, BUT shouldn't systems with bigger range (and variance) have bigger modifiers?  If I convert from 1-10 to 1-100, then a +1 is converted to +10. I think it should be 5-0.5=4.5 or roughly 5 for the cobalt, and 5+2.5 or roughly 8 for Conan if you want to approximately convert 1-20 to the 1-10 . At least that's how I would convert it; I would cut the modifiers in half and round the values.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1130287They're completely different systems, though. Each system uses different parameters to handle the range of ability modifiers. Interlock's range of modifiers are comparatively higher than D&D 5e's, despite using a lower die type at half the variable range. D&D 5e is also an odd case, since the system uses low modifiers, even compared to earlier editions of D&D, presumably to allow interaction between characters or enemies with disparate levels and allow low level/HD enemies, like goblins and orcs, to still pose some sort of a challenge to higher level PCs. Meanwhile Interlock's attributes and skills go up to 10 each, where an attribute of 10 (maximum unmodified human potential) is the equivalent of a D&D score of 20 (+5 modifier), and D&D 5e's proficiency modifier only goes up to +6 (which might be doubled with certain feats or class features, or modified by other factors).

However, older editions of D&D had skill or combat modifiers (or equivalent, like THAC0) as high as +20 or higher. The 5e modifier range is a recent trend based around a different set of assumptions on how to handle character abilities, where ability ranges are toned down for the sake of balance.

As VisionStorm says, the point is that different systems play out differently. If you want to play D&D, then play D&D. When you use a different system, then the mechanics will produce different results. In Interlock, there is less comparative variance. This means that if I'm playing Cyberpunk, then my superstrong solo will more reliably succeed compared to the weak netrunner. This can mean less tension over the die roll, and more situations where you need a particular character to succeed.

Quote from: jhkim;1130381But die roll variance isn't just something that comes up solely in the case of Conan and a kobold. It's something that influences how the whole game plays out, for all attributes and skills and tasks.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles an 8 Str kobold. The mechanics say Conan wins 74% of the time, but the GM overrules and says it's 100%.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 10 Str average peasant. The mechanics say Conan wins 70% of the time, and maybe the GM overrules and says it's 100%.

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 12 Str typical soldier. The mechanics say Conan wins 66% of the time. Does the GM overrule?

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles a 14 Str opponent. The mechanics say Conan wins 62% of the time. Again, does the GM overrule?


The GM can overrule and impose a 100% sometimes, but presumably at some point they use the mechanics as written, and then we jump back into the same high variance probabilities. So faced with increasing strength opponents, Conan might jump from 100% to just 62% chance of winning.

It is an intentional feature of high-variance systems that it's easier for low-skill characters to contribute, and there's still tension over the die roll even if a character is high stat/skill.

Lets talk arm-wrestling for a bit. It involves more than raw strength, it involves skill (technique) and determination and pain tolerance.

Now lets examine your examples:

Conan (20 Str) arm-wrestles an 8 Str kobold. The mechanics say Conan wins 74% of the time other times it's a draw and the Kobold wins how often?, but the GM overrules and says it's 100%. The GM overrules the mechanics because he takes into consideration those other factors, and now lets look at your numbers in D&D you said the Kobold is STR-1 while Conan is STR+5 that's already 6 points difference just by the mechanics. So Conan is already at a 6 points advantage, now lets talk technique, me thinks Conan would have more experience in a human sport plus Kobolds are known for their "physical ineptitude", now lets talk determination, from the SRD : "Kobolds are craven reptilian humanoids that commonly infest dungeons. They make up for their physical ineptitude with a cleverness for trap making." Craven = Cowardly and you're telling me it has the same determination than Conan?

As a GM I take all that into consideration and say the result is automatic, Conan Wins and gets to roll to see if he broke the Kobold's arm.

Only way I could call for a roll is if there's other so far unmentioned circumstances.

The other cases I would need to know more about the situation, I might call for a roll or not, I might even give an automatic win to Conan's opponent. But just by what I know so far Conan beats the peasant. I call for a roll on the other 2.

Because this is an RPG not roulette.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1130040High wisdom provides some resistance to mental attack forms involving will force. This makes sense because people who practice religion are more resistant to despair, anxiety, and other attacks against the mind.

Not sure about that at all. It almost seems more the opposite. Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals are notoriously prone to 'deaths of despair'. In Africa it's widely said that white Europeans are immune to black (in both senses) magic - neither vulnerable to it, nor able to employ it.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1130049Specially when we consider that chimps are technically stronger than humans in real life, which means that just because a creature is small that doesn't mean that they're automatically weak.

I remember looking at the bull chimps in London Zoo and realising that their torsos were basically human sized (perhaps not surprising - we only diverged 4-6 mya) and not that much smaller than the gorillas! The idea that chimps are small is a bit of a myth; they're more like D&D Dwarves - short but not 'small'.

Quote from: S'mon;1130428I remember looking at the bull chimps in London Zoo and realising that their torsos were basically human sized (perhaps not surprising - we only diverged 4-6 mya) and not that much smaller than the gorillas! The idea that chimps are small is a bit of a myth; they're more like D&D Dwarves - short but not 'small'.

The reason it's a myth is because all the chimps we see on TV and in movies are immature. And the reason for that is because chimps lose their playfulness when they mature, and become aggressive, and insanely strong. Young chimps are easier to work with, and you're less likely to lose an arm.

Quote from: Pat;1130450The reason it's a myth is because all the chimps we see on TV and in movies are immature.

Ah, right! Thanks!

Yeah, you don't want to mess with chimps.

Quote from: S'mon;1130427Not sure about that at all. It almost seems more the opposite. Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals are notoriously prone to 'deaths of despair'. In Africa it's widely said that white Europeans are immune to black (in both senses) magic - neither vulnerable to it, nor able to employ it.

Human intelligence comes at a severe cost: the existential crisis. Animals know nothing of the future, they know nothing of themselves, therefore they are inured to the evils of the world. But humans can be crippled by despair and self-doubt. If a people are afflicted by widespread despair, then they are subject to extinction. Religion seems to counteract this fundamental failure of the human mind. ALL human cultures have religion, therefore it seems that religion must perform a critical function.

Empiricism is a purely objective analysis of reality. However, it has a basic flaw: we are subjects, not objects; we live in the bivalent world of experience. Empirical thought can tell us the physical composition of a chair, such as its density and molecular composition, but it cannot tell us whether that chair is comfortable or uncomfortable. The mythological stories of religion tell us about the world we live in and they tell us how to navigate that world without our minds coming apart. They are first and foremost stories about us and our experiences with other humans. The Sky and Earth of Sumerian mythology are not the sky and Earth of science, rather they are archetypal personalities, categories of apprehension that we use to understand the world that we must navigate in order to survive.

Irreligious people are thus more vulnerable to crippling depression and anxiety. Intelligence in itself is not a shield, and in fact renders one more vulnerable. In our modern society, people rely more heavily on psychiatric medication to remain relatively functional sans the practices of magic and religion, but even so, depression and anxiety have continued to increase. The current mass hysteria, a stress test for our civilization and triggered so easily, shows how close we are to the total mental breakdown of our entire society.

One must remember however that superstition, a core element of pagan religion, is a double edged sword (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqc8b9nKgoo). On the one hand it provides resistance to anxiety, but on the other hand failure to perform the required rituals increases anxiety. Monotheism is an advancement, as it uses the conscious will, not superstition, as a shield (as in "the power of positive thinking") -- pay attention to the litanies and chants used in Catholicism, and sit in on a conservative Catholic service. Using the Rosary is just as effective at combating anxiety as any modern medication, if not more so.

Here is an example of how it works: When Trobriand islanders fish in a lagoon, they rely only on their science and technology to perform their task. But when they go out into the open ocean, a potentially chaotic environment which they cannot control and which provokes anxiety, they use magic and religion. This calms their anxieties and allows them to effect their science and technology without the diminishment of its efficacy. Thus, in this context, one can see that the use of magic is actually logical because it shows an understanding of how the human brain functions, not empirical understanding (i.e. not by using intelligence -- none of them have PhD's in psychology), but nevertheless that knowledge is embodied through the practice of their ancient religion (i.e. by using wisdom).

Belief is purely an act of will. Belief can be invoked by the rote practice of ritual, as in paganism, or it can be invoked by a conscious act of will, as in monotheism. Either way, it is a vital tool in the abnegation of the demons that haunt us.

Matthew Conroy has an interesting document (perhaps fun for the maturing math mind) over on his page that he has updated over the years, which has a number of dice questions and such.  Pretty good for your Summer math.

https://www.madandmoonly.com/doctormatt/mathematics/dice1.pdf (https://www.madandmoonly.com/doctormatt/mathematics/dice1.pdf)

Quote from: Jamfke;1129371I'm not much of a probability genius. I understand a little bit about it, but nothing in depth. My question here is primarily one to determine which type of resolution methods are your favorite for certain activities performed in a game and why.

Like 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!)?

Personally, I don't find the belaboring of differences in dicing mechanisms in RPGs to be all that fruitful. Virtually all analysis suffers from a fatal flaw. Confusing x for f(x). What that means is, yeah, I could use 3d6 rather than d20 and claim it's because of the bell curve. But the fact is, when I'm just trying to figure out if someone hits or not, I really don't care what the chances of rolling exactly a 6, or exactly a 7, or exactly an 8. What matters is the probability that it's a hit. And that's going to end up being a percentage, regardless of whether I'm using d100, d20, 3d6, 9d12 keep the best 3, drawing cards, or playing rock paper scissors.

And so I prefer to just use a percentile system. Skip the pretense and keep it simple.

d20 is a close second and more appropriate in cases where doing math on the dice is common, kind of like D&D's to hit roll. It's not just a question of how good the attacker is and their associated probability of success. That probability varies on a sliding scale according to the opponent's defensive capabilities. It's just easier to add a +5 adjustment than a +25% adjustment.

And then my third choice is anything that just follows directly from what it is that's happening. If something seems 1 in 3 likely, I'm probably just going to roll a d6 and see if it comes up 1 or 2. I'm not going to try to shoehorn it into a core mechanic involving a target number. Nor am I going to round it to 33% just so I can use percentile.

One thing I have heard a player express was, "I want to use all the damn dice I paid for." So I do prefer to mix it up.

Quote from: Lunamancer;1134036One thing I have heard a player express was, "I want to use all the damn dice I paid for."

Yeah, some of my players are iffy on playing D6 System for just this reason!! :-O

Yeah, I don't mind D6 systems, but if you have all the crazy dice, you want to use them. I was originally totally wrong on the subject of DCC, when they announced you'd need non-standard dice to play, thinking that this would kill the popularity of the game. I was an idiot about it; of course the weirdo dice being part of DCC just became an excuse for players to buy them!

Classic Traveller is just such a game, translating d6 only rolls into percentage probabilities is a pain in the you know what. Also if I have all the polyhedral dice, I tend to want to use them in building encounters tables, I don't like to figure out how to make those tables using only d6s. When I use 1 d6, it is a short encounter table with only 6 encounters, if I use 2d6s, then the probability of an encounter is higher towards the middle of the list and lower towards the ends, then there is d66, which is a square table with 2 resultant d6 rolls, one along the X axis the other along the y axis, which is the equivalent of rolling a 36 sided die or a d36. Having all the polyhedral dice means I can use any number on my encounter tables with variable probabilities so long as the total of probabilities don't exceed 100%, typically I use either percentile Dice of d20s.

Quote from: Lunamancer;1134036And so I prefer to just use a percentile system. Skip the pretense and keep it simple.

d20 is a close second and more appropriate in cases where doing math on the dice is common, kind of like D&D's to hit roll. It's not just a question of how good the attacker is and their associated probability of success. That probability varies on a sliding scale according to the opponent's defensive capabilities. It's just easier to add a +5 adjustment than a +25% adjustment.

If players want to use all the dice, I just run D&D.

Percentile system is of course Basic Roleplaying / Runequest. The purpose of other dice is to skew the probability curve slightly.  d20 for example, is much more action oriented using a critical hit or critical fail mechanic, Literally a 1 in 20 chance of having a dramatic success or failure (Will usually happen about once a four hour session. D100 not so much crits and critical failures 01 and 100 respectively, happen about once a month if a group is playing weekly sessions. Using dice pools (like 3d6 for example) introduces bell curves, meaning that most things will be median, and the probability critical hits and failures drops dramatically to where you may only see one every six months or so, or even longer with more than three dice in the pool (1 in 216 chance of rolling three 6's for example... 1 in 1296 chance of rolling four sixes).

Anyone ever use an Excel Spreadsheet for dice?
I have, and when I do, I have no reason to stick with d6s.
For example here is what I write for the various die rolls:
1d4 =RANDBETWEEN(1,4)
1d6 =RANDBETWEEN(1,6)
2d6 =RANDBETWEEN(1,6)+RANDBETWEEN(1,6)
1d8 =RANDBETWEEN(1,8)
1d10 =RANDBETWEEN(1,10)
1d12 =RANDBETWEEN(1,12)
1d20 =RANDBETWEEN(1,20)
d100 =RANDBETWEEN(0,99)

Quote from: GameDaddy;1135576If players want to use all the dice, I just run D&D.

Percentile system is of course Basic Roleplaying / Runequest. The purpose of other dice is to skew the probability curve slightly.  d20 for example, is much more action oriented using a critical hit or critical fail mechanic, Literally a 1 in 20 chance of having a dramatic success or failure (Will usually happen about once a four hour session. D100 not so much crits and critical failures 01 and 100 respectively, happen about once a month if a group is playing weekly sessions. Using dice pools (like 3d6 for example) introduces bell curves, meaning that most things will be median, and the probability critical hits and failures drops dramatically to where you may only see one every six months or so, or even longer with more than three dice in the pool (1 in 216 chance of rolling three 6's for example... 1 in 1296 chance of rolling four sixes).

This is what I was getting at when I said people who analyze probabilities in RPG mechanics often confuse x for f(x). What you say is true for x.  It's usually not true for f(x). In the examples you name, f(x) is always one of four possible outcomes--hit, miss, crit, and fumble. In each example, the crits and fumbles are the extremes and rarer. The hit/miss results are more moderate and far more likely. So the probability distribution for f(x) is as good a bell curve as one can hope for with only 4 data points. Notice even the mechanics that have linear distributions for x produce bell curve distributions for f(x).

I would also point out that it is not necessarily the case that multiple dice even make for rarer extremes in f(x)--there's no reason to assume, for instance, that only 1 and 100 are the crits and fumbles on the d100. Two of the percentile RPGs I play use one-tenth the base probability for success as the probability for critical (e.g. if your percentile rating is 60,  you crit on 1-6, succeed on 7-60). The other percentile RPG I play generally has it at one-fifth. The 3E/d20 system had kind of a neat way of doing crits. It varied by weapon, but I think most often, if you rolled a 19-20, it was a potential crit, calling for a second successful hit roll to confirm the crit. This essentially made the odds of crit equal to 1/10 the odds of hitting at all. Same as the first two d100 systems I play.

So my position is that it's f(x) that really matters while x is largely irrelevant. And since the probability distribution of x does not necessarily correlate to the probability distribution of f(x) (and in fact does not in the vast majority of RPG mechanics I've seen), I consider probability analysis of game mechanics which invariably focus on x to be distractions and not very insightful.

Also, because I focus on f(x) rather than x, I have increased appreciation for the most standard plain Jane mechanics. Like D&D's roll d20 to hit, then roll funny shaped die for damage. Say a fighter needs a 13 to hit and does a d8 damage. When I look at the distribution of f(x,y) (x being the hit roll variable, y being the damage roll variable), I see there's a 60% chance of doing no damage, 5% chance of doing 1 damage, 5% chance of doing 2 damage, and so on. Much like the 4-data point "bell curve", this also creates a crude curve if you can forgive the limitations of the low resolution data set we're using. And that curve is more like a Pareto distribution--in this example, 83% of all damage the fighter deals will come from the best 25% of the fighter's attacks. Pretty close to 80/20. This satisfies my sense of naturalism far better than chasing bell curves, and strikes me as far more sophisticated as it keeps the game deceptively simple.

Quote from: jhkim;1129689I would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair."  He then goes on to win.

That is a result utterly divorced from reality. If I saw it in a movie, I would think it was intentional parody or something. There is simply no way it would happen.

The reason why arm wrestling contests end up in 3-2 victories is because the contestants are very closely matched due to ranking. The same is true of most other tournaments -- whether physical or mental. The way to get tense games is by carefully ranking who is testing against who. The top champion will almost always beat someone in the middle of the rankings. But someone in the middle of the rankings is still really good, and will almost always beat a beginner. That's true in chess, arm-wrestling, and many other contests.

In designing my logarithmic superhero game Ascendant, I looked really closely at real-world variance in outcomes - for instance, one of the things I simulated in the game was bowling by professional bowlers, and another was random chess matches of people with different chess scores. The research for Ascendant says "jhkim is 100% right". The difference between peak performance and sub-par performance is far more profound than a typical D20 game would have us believe.

Quote from: Cloyer Bulse;1131642Human intelligence comes at a severe cost: the existential crisis. Animals know nothing of the future, they know nothing of themselves, therefore they are inured to the evils of the world. But humans can be crippled by despair and self-doubt. If a people are afflicted by widespread despair, then they are subject to extinction. Religion seems to counteract this fundamental failure of the human mind. ALL human cultures have religion, therefore it seems that religion must perform a critical function.

Empiricism is a purely objective analysis of reality. However, it has a basic flaw: we are subjects, not objects; we live in the bivalent world of experience. Empirical thought can tell us the physical composition of a chair, such as its density and molecular composition, but it cannot tell us whether that chair is comfortable or uncomfortable. The mythological stories of religion tell us about the world we live in and they tell us how to navigate that world without our minds coming apart. They are first and foremost stories about us and our experiences with other humans. The Sky and Earth of Sumerian mythology are not the sky and Earth of science, rather they are archetypal personalities, categories of apprehension that we use to understand the world that we must navigate in order to survive.

Irreligious people are thus more vulnerable to crippling depression and anxiety. Intelligence in itself is not a shield, and in fact renders one more vulnerable. In our modern society, people rely more heavily on psychiatric medication to remain relatively functional sans the practices of magic and religion, but even so, depression and anxiety have continued to increase. The current mass hysteria, a stress test for our civilization and triggered so easily, shows how close we are to the total mental breakdown of our entire society.

One must remember however that superstition, a core element of pagan religion, is a double edged sword (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqc8b9nKgoo). On the one hand it provides resistance to anxiety, but on the other hand failure to perform the required rituals increases anxiety. Monotheism is an advancement, as it uses the conscious will, not superstition, as a shield (as in "the power of positive thinking") -- pay attention to the litanies and chants used in Catholicism, and sit in on a conservative Catholic service. Using the Rosary is just as effective at combating anxiety as any modern medication, if not more so.

Here is an example of how it works: When Trobriand islanders fish in a lagoon, they rely only on their science and technology to perform their task. But when they go out into the open ocean, a potentially chaotic environment which they cannot control and which provokes anxiety, they use magic and religion. This calms their anxieties and allows them to effect their science and technology without the diminishment of its efficacy. Thus, in this context, one can see that the use of magic is actually logical because it shows an understanding of how the human brain functions, not empirical understanding (i.e. not by using intelligence -- none of them have PhD's in psychology), but nevertheless that knowledge is embodied through the practice of their ancient religion (i.e. by using wisdom).

Belief is purely an act of will. Belief can be invoked by the rote practice of ritual, as in paganism, or it can be invoked by a conscious act of will, as in monotheism. Either way, it is a vital tool in the abnegation of the demons that haunt us.

Dude. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously. This is good, deep stuff!

Quote from: Libramarian;1129857I'm not sure on what world the average man can bench press 345lb, but it's not Earth! A typical man can't bench press 185lb without strength training.

Larratt in that video mentions it's his first time bench pressing in many years. A 255lb bench with years of detraining is very impressive. He would have no trouble benching 315+ with focused training. He's an 18 Strength in D&D-land.

Bjornsson's enormous strength is well beyond an 18, but his size is only possible with huge dosages of anabolic steroids, and probably exogenous insulin as well. There no humans in D&D-land as big as him. He's a good model for a 19 Str Ogre, I guess.

Edit: I see where you made the mistake - the 30 x Strength rule applies to lifting things off the ground using your entire body, i.e. a deadlift, not a bench press. Men typically can deadlift twice as much as they bench press. Bjornsson recently deadlifted 1104lb.

Since D&D stats are rolled on a bell curve, I have always interpreted an 18 to represent someone who is in the top 1 out of 216 people. That's about three standard deviations above the mean.
18 Strength is the strongest kid in your high school class.
18 Dexterity is the best soccer player in your high school class.
18 Intelligence is the valedictorian of your high school class.
18 Charisma is the most popular girl in your high school.
18 Wisdom is ... I'm not gonna touch that one

For this reason I tend to think that gamers underestimate how many 18s a heroic character could have. There are plenty of people we all are familiar with who have multiple 18s, and it's not unrealistic at all, especially because in real life high stats tend to correlate with each other.

In any case, people like Bjornsson (STR) or Albert Einstein (INT) or Kim Kardashian (CHA) are more like five standard deviations beyond the mean and can't really be represented with 3-18. AD&D got closer for Strength when it added 18(00) strength. 18(00) strength would be in 21,600, or about IQ 180.

Quote from: Libramarian;1129857Bjornsson's ... There no humans in D&D-land as big as him.

There aren't really any other humans in Real Life Land as big as him either. :D

Quote from: jhkimI would ask you to think for a bit and picture this in your head. One of the strongest men in the world - an Olympic weight-lifter or the equivalent - has to arm-wrestle a little runt with below-average strength. He loses the first match, and he says "Can we do 2 out of 3? That would be more fair." He then goes on to win.

That is a result utterly divorced from reality. If I saw it in a movie, I would think it was intentional parody or something. There is simply no way it would happen.

The reason why arm wrestling contests end up in 3-2 victories is because the contestants are very closely matched due to ranking. The same is true of most other tournaments -- whether physical or mental. The way to get tense games is by carefully ranking who is testing against who. The top champion will almost always beat someone in the middle of the rankings. But someone in the middle of the rankings is still really good, and will almost always beat a beginner. That's true in chess, arm-wrestling, and many other contests.

Quote from: amacris;1135770In designing my logarithmic superhero game Ascendant, I looked really closely at real-world variance in outcomes - for instance, one of the things I simulated in the game was bowling by professional bowlers, and another was random chess matches of people with different chess scores. The research for Ascendant says "jhkim is 100% right". The difference between peak performance and sub-par performance is far more profound than a typical D20 game would have us believe.

Thanks amacris. That's what just Kickstartered in March, right?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/ascendant/description

From a glance at the resolution chart, it looks like the probabilities shift a lot -- so +7 vs +0 is an automatic win. But on the other hand, it's a very compressed scale where each step is x2. Any comments on how that revelation affected how you designed your chart?