Fractional bonuses?

[Neon Sequitur]

When I was a high school senior, a scheduling conflict resulted in me taking Home Economics. Whatever; we got to cook stuff and I was a ravenous teenager so I didn't mind. One dinky assignment we were given was a print-out of a measuring cup with the quarters labeled (e.g. 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1 cup) and we were supposed to fill in all the blank eighths and sixteenth measurements. 90 seconds later, done, turn that shit in.

However, so many students failed that assignment that we had to retake it the following day. And the day after that... and the day after that. All told, we did that assignment a full six times until my high school peers got this elementary-level math figured out, or the teacher just gave up on it.

I was staggered. I couldn't believe it. Admittedly, this was Home Ec. and so a selection bias towards the dregs of my school were enrolled, but still, fractions kick peoples' ass surprisingly hard for a surprisingly long time. For many people it's Integers or GTFO.

I seem to recall a similar experience when I got stuck taking shop class, and we were tested on using a standard ruler marked in 16ths of an inch. Somehow nobody in the entire class, aside from myself, knew how to do this. (And once again, I singled myself out for the wrong kind of attention. Nobody likes a smart-ass in high school.)

[Hadanelith]

I had the same experience in my welding class. At a community college. I was stunned that anyone had difficulty with this.

[ACOS]

One of these days I'll get around to writing mechanics that require differential calculus.

About 10 years ago, I decided to try using some multi-variable power functions for my shiny new "death from massive damage" rule. I was told in no uncertain terms that I can have either my gaming group or my TI-86 at the table, but not both.

Lesson learned.

[hyzmarca]

One of these days I'll get around to writing mechanics that require differential calculus.

About 10 years ago, I decided to try using some multi-variable power functions for my shiny new "death from massive damage" rule. I was told in no uncertain terms that I can have either my gaming group or my TI-86 at the table, but not both.

Lesson learned.

I never use a calculator. I find doing the work by hand to be most enjoyable.

[Aryxbez]

If Julianos be willing, for me to jack the subject of this thread around to an idea I'd want to see talked about.

Koumei once jokingly mentioned the idea of 4d6 (4d12??), with +/- fractional modifiers of sorts, though I can't find the post for the life of me. I've wondered this type of RNG would indicate for results, and what types of games it would likely make itself suited for more or less.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well a 4d6 RNG goes from 4 to 24, so it has 20 discrete steps. You could subtract 4 from your result and plug it in to d20 and the outputs would be in the same ranges

However the bell curve is a big deal:

However the extreme ends (24,4) each only come up an average of once every 1296 rolls. 23 and 5) each show up an average of 4/1296, while (22 and 6) each are rolled an average of 10/1296.

I'm to tired to work through exhaustive listing or recall inclusion/exclusion for probabilities beyond that, but you can see that 97.6% of your rolls with such an RNG would be within the middle 14 numbers. This contrasts pretty sharply to a flat d20 roll, where only 70 of rolls are in the middle 14 numbers.

[TarkisFlux]

Well a 4d6 RNG goes from 4 to 24, so it has 20 discrete steps. You could subtract 4 from your result and plug it in to d20 and the outputs would be in the same ranges

4d6-4 will output numbers from 0 to 20. There's 21 discrete steps. Not that this really changes the rest of your post.