Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

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Kawazu_Delta
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Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

Post by Kawazu_Delta »

Long-time lurker, first-time poster here.

So, I'm working on some homebrew material, and right now I'm grappling with mechanics. Mostly, I'm considering whether I can bend an existing system to suit my needs, or if I want to hack something together from scratch just for the mathematical rush. I'm looking for something rules-lite, consistent and simple, and I'm okay with some degree of magical tea party. I'm also looking for something near the middle of the PC-capability spectrum, halfway between CoC and Nobilis. So I have a few questions, and I was hoping for some feedback.

Question 1:
What's your preferred system for conflict resolution/core dice mechanics in an RPG? Dice pools, d20s, whatever. What works best?

Question 2:
What percentage of the time should a character succeed at the thing they're designed to do? For example, all else being equal, how often should a fighter succeed at stabbing a goblin? How often should a rogue succeed at picking the lock on someone's house? Something challenging enough that you have to roll to do it, but something at which you expect to be pretty good or even specialized.

Question 3:
What percentage of the time should a character succeed at something they have no business doing, but won't auto-fail? The fighter has to pick a lock, for instance, or the wizard has to kick somebody. Again, all else being equal, and assuming we're not looking at some kind of kick-boxing wizard.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

1.) I myself don't have a preferred conflict resolution system. I do have resolution mechanics I don't like, though. I don't like roll-under and I don't like RNGs that combine different PMF matrices such as rolling a d8 and a d12. I saw that Earthbound uses that and I was all nope. I'm not a fan of dicepools for systems with large and variable amounts of dice accumulation. Not even (especially not even) if they have a way for you to 'buy' hits, because it ends up making the probability curves resemble bell curves instead of dicepools.

2.) That's way too broad of a question. However, practical experience has shown me that you don't want to go below around 60% for specializations that aren't supposed to be low comedy, grimdark, or emphasize human weakness because it frustrates people. I remember a session in early-era 4E D&D (before the errata onslaught) where a D&D newbie with a 50% chance to hit with their powers whiffed both of their dailies and encounter powers and got so frustrated that they never played again.

3.) Again, way too broad of a question. Hell, it's flat-out unanswerable. People can suck at a task for a ton of reasons and it's impossible to give odds on those situations.
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Re: Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

Post by Josh_Kablack »

Kawazu_Delta wrote: Question 1:
What's your preferred system for conflict resolution/core dice mechanics in an RPG? Dice pools, d20s, whatever. What works best?
Any of Flat RNG, Bell Curve RNG or Dice Pool work well enough, provided you understand their limitations.

Flat RNG (ie d20 System's roll 1d20 vs DC) is simple to explain and odds are generally predictable. However if bonuses or target numbers diverge too much, some things become auto-success for one character and impossible success for another character, which kinda obviates the whole need for a random success determination to begin with. In this setup each +1 is always very valuable, and optimizers will collect as many as they can.

Curved RNG (ie HERO's roll 3d6 under Skill number/CV calculation or any Flat RNG that adds open-ended rolls) uses the bell curve of multiple dice to set things up so that results at the extreme ends are far less likely than they are in a flat RNG. This means that there is a point of diminishing returns on collecting further bonuses and optimizers will want to diversify after getting numbers that are "good enough". On the downside, this has the same issues where different characters with highly divergent bonuses obviate the need for a randomizer. Heck, a less-than-absolute version usually happens in a much tighter bonus range than in most flat randomizer systems. A +6 bonus in a 3d6 system jumps 2 standard deviations, in a d20 system that's only one standard deviation -- even though in both cases you still have two thirds of the RNG to go before someone is all the way off of it, in the curved one the character without that +6 needs to get a lot luckier to stay relevant.

A dice pool lets you have a setup where a character can accumulate bonuses approaching infinity and yet never have a completely guaranteed chance of success. The problem inherent to dice pools that they require more dice and more player time to resolve. Other frequent problems is that many designers try to get innovative with dice pools and accidentally design systems where the odds are not merely opaque, but actually unknowable by anyone in advance -- which makes it impossible for module authors, MCs or players to know whether a task is supposed to be hard.

Question 2:
What percentage of the time should a character succeed at the thing they're designed to do? For example, all else being equal, how often should a fighter succeed at stabbing a goblin? How often should a rogue succeed at picking the lock on someone's house? Something challenging enough that you have to roll to do it, but something at which you expect to be pretty good or even specialized.
I think the single biggest determining factor should be the length of real time the action takes to resolve at the game table. If it's a single die roll action, then higher failure rates are acceptable, as the players will get plenty more chances in the session.

Conversely If it's the sort of action that requires rolling multiple dice in succession and consulting chart lookups, then it needs to have a pretty high success rate for properly-specced characters.
Question 3:
What percentage of the time should a character succeed at something they have no business doing, but won't auto-fail? The fighter has to pick a lock, for instance, or the wizard has to kick somebody. Again, all else being equal, and assuming we're not looking at some kind of kick-boxing wizard.
This sort of thing benefits massively from something like 3e D&D's "Take 20" roll. If there is no in-game time pressure, it's best to handle it using the smallest amount of out-of-game time possible.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Required success rate depends on:
  • the cost of getting that roll (e.g. your only use of Fireball today)
  • The consequences of failure (e.g., falling off a cliff to your death)
  • How annoyed players are going to get at having to keep rolling.
The iterative probability math for 3e D&D is that you must survive 95% of level-appropriate encounters. (More if you don't get XP for some of the ones you win)
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Post by Seerow »

I like different resolution mechanics for different things. Specifically for combat I actually like the swinginess and speed of resolution of the d20. For most other things (specifically anything done that isn't stabbing people) I tend to prefer more consistent results with more granularity, and generally prefer dice pool systems.


As far as success rates, again varies based on situation. Combat somewhere in the 50-75% success rate for a normal opponent is my preferred. But I don't mind if some things are much lower or fall off entirely (ie if the Wizard can't hit with a stick, I don't care), and targets specialized in a certain defense pushing that 50-75% success rates down to 30-55% is okay.

Out of combat I prefer there to be a broad range of what is possible and thus huge range of success. While a lot of people talk about how bad it is if one character falls off the RNG and that causes the whole stealth minigame to fall apart or whatever, I am just not bothered by it. Characters who are good at something should be significantly good at it to the point where they can 90%+ succeed on something that a character who does not invest at all is sub 5% on, or even has no chance on.

If you want your game to have a stealth system or social minigame or whatever where everyone is capable of contributing then you need to design those systems with more depth to them than a single skill that is a binary choice between investing or not.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Something to consider:

If: this task is one that fails if any player fails his or her roll (e.g., stealth)
Then: your "true" success rate is the product of all players' personal chances of not failing.

e.g., if you have a five-character party where the characters have the following stealth success rates:
  • 95%
  • 90%
  • 75%
  • 60%
  • 50%
The party's chance of success is about 19% -- less than 1 in 5, and completely unmanageable.

If something is going to take a significant amount of table-time to do, it should generally be a reasonable choice for all the PCs to participate in it together.
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Re: Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

Post by OgreBattle »

Question 2:
What percentage of the time should a character succeed at the thing they're designed to do? For example, all else being equal, how often should a fighter succeed at stabbing a goblin? How often should a rogue succeed at picking the lock on someone's house? Something challenging enough that you have to roll to do it, but something at which you expect to be pretty good or even specialized.


In D&D the core of the game is stabbing monsters. This means that a part of around 4 to 6 people are expected to beat a level appropriate challenge in 1 to 6 turns. So your odds of success should be calibrated to getting the output you desire.

Talking strict % without context leads to situations where magic missile is 100% accurate but you'll need 10 of them to drop a level appropriate challenge.
---

Here's an old discussion on modifiers and the RNG that you may find helpful:

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=190056
FrankTrollman wrote:
...The average human simply stalls out when asked to do repeated math functions - even if they are simple addition. And players will be straight up confused when their character doesn't live through something that they had a 90% chance of living through... even after attempting it ten times in a row. So with that in mind, here are some math don'ts:
  • Don't use fractions. I once had this alternate save system where people added 2/5 or 3/5 to their saves each level so that good and bad save progressions would add up - it was mathematically kind of pretty but it was a complete cluster fuck. As Mister Cavern I had to redo everyone's save bonuses every level. People just couldn't wrap their heads around adding .4s to things at all. So I don't give a fuck how nice the math comes out adding some kind of fraction to things, just don't do it. Whole numbers only unless you want players to look at you like lost lambs every time they have to interact with the numbers.
  • Always use linear addition. For various reasons it is sometimes necessary to have a big bonus at the beginning of a progression and then a more measured bonus after that. It may be tempting to add these bonuses in some kind of logarithmic fashion or to have bonuses add up to arbitrary values that are then cross referenced to a table or to add half of subsequent bonuses or whatever. Do not succumb to this temptation, because that kind of shit paralyzes people. Players have enough problems adding 4 and 3, the moment you ask them to add 5 and half of 4 they are drooling vegetables.
  • Don't let numbers get too large. It is a fact of mathematics that numbers raised to an exponent have the same relation as numbers that are lowered by the same exponent. That you could have perfectly identical mathematical relationships between levels by constantly raising things to the same exponent. And that shit works just fine in a computer game. But humans lose track of numbers when they get big. Dong repeated subtraction from a 3 digit number is hard for people, and doing repeated subtraction from a 4 digit number might as well be pushing Sisyphus's rock. Sometime try watching a Mister Cavern deal with an epic level Solo against a group of PCs, it's hilarious, yet also faintly sad.
But while that is fascinating in its way, it merely shaves an infinite number of possible numeric progressions off of an even larger infinite number of possible numeric progressions. To get farther, one has to make positive assertions as well as negative one. Here are some:
  • The numbers have to start large enough that they can get smaller. Player characters can't really start in the AD&D "single hit die" crowd, because it is sometimes game mechanically relevant for there to be children or cats. Basically this means that a first level character who begins life with less than 10 hit points or so feels ridiculous in the face of potential hazards that are supposed to be substantially weaker than they are (like familiars or poisonous snakes).
  • Numbers actually shouldn't diverge very much as levels continue to rise. This is not to say that an 8th level character has to take shit from a 4th level character, but that two 8th level rogues need to have fairly similar abilities with lock opening for an "8th level lock" to have much meaning.
  • Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.
  • Any ability gained at any level needs to be competitive at the level they have it. Which in turn means that abilities need to either go obsolete or stay numerically competitive in a predictable fashion.
  • And finally, characters need to be different one from another. Despite the fact that them diverging much is what makes the game fall apart and the math stop "just working" - it is precisely the existence of the difference at all that makes one character feel different from another. Players seriously do want their characters to have a different Sneaking bonus than another character.
That's something of a tall order actually, although there are still infinite numbers of potential things that could fit that.

But there's another thing about level appropriate challenges that is only tangentially about the math. People fucking hate it when you tell them that a Level 8 character should be climbing a DC 23 wall. They have no problem at all being told that an Ice Wall is DC 23 Wall and is appropriate for an 8th level character. The 4e difficulty system would have offended people even if it had provided usable DCs, simply because the presentation of those DCs was offensive. Difficulties need to be task oriented rather than level oriented or no tasks you compete will ever feel at all meaningful.

-Username17
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Post by Blade »

1. What's important is to get something that is adapted to the mood you want. Using playing card or mahjong tiles instead of dices can interesting for the atmosphere.
If you want a realistic system, you might prefer a system where a pro can't be beaten by an amateur in his field, no matter how lucky/motivated the amateur is. If you want a more heroic setting, you've got to offer the amateur a way to win against a better opponent in a fair fight.

2. Once again, it's something that depends on the setting you want, but it also depends on the way actions are handled. If you want a fast system, you might prefer a system where the question isn't "does the fighter hit the goblin this time" but "does the fighter wins the fight against the goblin"?

Also, if both the fighter and the goblin miss 80% of the time but their only option is "strike again or run away", then you're in for slow and boring combat.

3. Once again, this depends on your setting. Some settings might benefit from having nobodies be able to kill dragons, while in others a beginner shouldn't be able to match a pro.
Though generally speaking I'd say that you can have systems where auto-fails exist, but provide some "luck/fate/willpower/etc." points that can let a character break this limit from time to time.
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Post by ishy »

What success chance you need for certain actions depends on a lot of variables.

Say I'm a brain surgeon. Either I'm the only chance at getting a success or I need a virtually 100% success chance for me to make an attempt. ((or say sneaking in the middle of a lich army to steal some notes, where I'm certainly dead if discovered))

While if I want to pick a lock, I can just keep trying 'till I succeed (just take 20).

If I kill a goblin in a single hit, I'm also willing to have a lower hit chance than if I need to land 10 blows.

If I have many options for increasing my hit chance (say higher ground, tripping, flanking etc.), I'm willing to have a lower base %.
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Re: Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

Post by nikita »

Kawazu_Delta wrote:Long-time lurker, first-time poster here.

So, I'm working on some homebrew material, and right now I'm grappling with mechanics. Mostly, I'm considering whether I can bend an existing system to suit my needs, or if I want to hack something together from scratch just for the mathematical rush. I'm looking for something rules-lite, consistent and simple, and I'm okay with some degree of magical tea party. I'm also looking for something near the middle of the PC-capability spectrum, halfway between CoC and Nobilis. So I have a few questions, and I was hoping for some feedback.
First and foremost question you need to tackle is question whether the chance for succeeding in something is tied to the consequences of that success.
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Post by schpeelah »

Blade wrote:1. What's important is to get something that is adapted to the mood you want. Using playing card or mahjong tiles instead of dices can interesting for the atmosphere.
If you want a realistic system, you might prefer a system where a pro can't be beaten by an amateur in his field, no matter how lucky/motivated the amateur is. If you want a more heroic setting, you've got to offer the amateur a way to win against a better opponent in a fair fight.
You have that backwards, at least as fighting is concerned. Realistically, any fighting master can lose to 2-3 amateurs, or even a single one that does something totally unpredictable. Badasses untouchable to normals are a heroic trope.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Now, I'm not ever going to say dice pools are an option, because I think they are are terrible accross the board.

But if you are asking the public at large whether you should use a dice pool or a flat RNG (or some other mess), then you most certainly are not ready for anything other than a flat RNG and anything else isn't what you are looking for anyway.

If you were ready for some bullshit complex resolution mechanic you would already know the weird ways it generates the results, and if those were the results you were looking for, you would know that and wouldn't need to ask random strangers.

Still. Linear single dice flat RNGs "work best", well, period, but ESPECIALLY for the purposes of posts like "I don't even know where to start designing my RPG".

Success rates I feel should be really high, there are some studies suggesting 50% success rates are the most addictive, but that doesn't really make them automatically good for an RPG as a base starting or finishing point to aim for with your resolution mechanic and bonuses.

Characters should succeed at difficult tasks that you deem barely doable... sometimes. If that seems like a silly answer, well, consider the nature of your questions. After all you flat out defined the question as "how often should people succeed at non-quite impossible things" and the answer, defined by the question is clearly "often enough that it is not-quite impossible".

The longer answer to your last question is, or what you probably really mean, is, I think, don't bother generating results with an under 5% chance of occurring.
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Post by Kawazu_Delta »

Alright. I've spent more time than I care to admit on anydice, trying to observe the spread of dice pools of various size/TN/dice-sides, and come to the conclusion that d20 is really the devil I know after all. It'll be easier to get my usual crowd to try something that looks familiar, anyway.

So I have a less broad, still probably overly-broad, follow-up.

How limited to bonuses on a d20 roll need to be to keep the results from becoming deterministic? Is there a good rule of thumb? A formula? Is is as simple as subtracting 1 from the highest conceivable DC?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Kawazu_Delta wrote:How limited to bonuses on a d20 roll need to be to keep the results from becoming deterministic? Is there a good rule of thumb? A formula? Is is as simple as subtracting 1 from the highest conceivable DC?
You need to define what you mean by deterministic.

The decision as to whether or not relative bonuses SHOULD ever go off the RNG compared to each other, and when and how they should do so, is a major basic design decision to make.

And while it isn't necessarily wrong to decide it either way...

Personally observing the various implications of systems that attempt to adhere to a "never ever off the RNG, always SOME chance off success/failure no matter what" plan it seems pretty obvious that the majority of systems actually SHOULD allow relative bonuses to go off the RNG in at least some contexts and not doing that leads to all sorts of stupid stupid problems.

In the end "This guy is so bad at dodging and I'm so good at hitting that I cannot actually miss at all" is a better "problem" than "no matter how good I am at killing dragons there is a very modest finite number of peasants with sticks as good or better than me".

And until you answer the question of how much hopefully greater than zero "determinism" you want in your game giving you a guideline beyond the very most basic information on what numbers exceed your RNG isn't really possible. And once you DO decide how much determinism you want... that decision basically IS the information you are after.
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Post by tussock »

RadiantPhoenix wrote:The iterative probability math for 3e D&D is that you must survive 95% of level-appropriate encounters. (More if you don't get XP for some of the ones you win)
To have a 50% chance of making level 19 without dying, you'd face ~240 standard encounters, so an e^(ln(0.5)/240) = 99.7% survival rate is required. At 95% survival rate, there's only a 1/221991 chance of seeing 19th level before dying, and the average character will die 12 times (which costs so much XP and gp they'll be a lot of levels and gear short).

That thing where you fail your save vs area-affect death magic half the time is obviously not compatible with that, which is why 1st edition had saves you made on a 2+ and also things which made you immune to death effects. /grognard.


Anyhoo.

Q1: d20 because it's just easier and takes big (but not too big) numbers to break it.
Q2: 100% success rate for things you should succeed at. 95% success rates, as noted, fail all the fucking time, especially if you're rolling a few each battle.
Q3: it depends on the consequences for failure, but roughly 1/3 success for idiots if failure doesn't kill them and 5/6 if it does. Though if they're, like, just non-specialists, 2nd stringers, you can't kill them for trying, and 2/3 success rate is a lot of failures if it hurts at all (if it doesn't hurt, don't roll).

Now, if you get into rerolls and needing 3 hits from 6 tries, and having assists build up after success or something, it's much easier to get up to 95%+ success rates. With enough rolls thrown in you eventually always have very near 100% success rates, or very near 0% with just a couple points less on the bonuses.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Kawazu_Delta wrote: So I have a less broad, still probably overly-broad, follow-up.

How limited to bonuses on a d20 roll need to be to keep the results from becoming deterministic? Is there a good rule of thumb? A formula? Is is as simple as subtracting 1 from the highest conceivable DC?
Scroll up a bit to the link I posted to the really long discussion on TGD that goes over how many bonuses/penalties a d20 system like D&D should be able to handle, it answers your questions there. Has things like:
RobbyPants wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.
How tight are you talking? +/- 5 on the d20? Something like that could be workable if you assume anyone has a mod of +0 to +5 (for same-level threats here) for both their offensive and defensive stat. Then, if you assume a base line of success of 50%, you end up with things like:

Good attack (+5) vs good defense (+5) = 50%
Good attack (+5) vs bad defense (+0) = 75%
Bad attack (+0) vs bad defense (+0) = 50%
Bad attack (+0) vs good defense (+5) = 25%

And you could have "intermediate" values of +1 to +4, so you get stuff like:

Attack +2 vs defense +2 = 50%
Attack +5 vs defense +2 = 65%
Attack +0 vs defense +2 = 40%

This model works either by adding the defense to a d20 (for opposed rolls) or to 11 (for static tests). If you want a greater degree of success, you could add 10 - 20% to the base 50% of success, which could be workable too. For instance, if you want your base success to be 65% (roughly 2/3), you end up with:

Good vs good = 65%
Good vs bad = 90%
Bad vs bad = 65%
Bad vs good = 40%


So, do you think something like this is workable? It means that all of your modifiers (not including level based modifiers) must be within five points, which is really tight. That's like saying your armor bonus plus your shield bonus plus your Dex bonus can never add up to more than +5. Is that too tight to work?
You take those odds and make sure your characters have enough penalties/bonuses per level to match those odds in easy/medium/hard challenges for their level.
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Re: Need opinions on ideal rates of success and failure

Post by MfA »

Kawazu_Delta wrote:How often should a rogue succeed at picking the lock on someone's house?
Pretty much all the time with repeated tries, unless they fumble.
Josh_Kablack wrote:This sort of thing benefits massively from something like 3e D&D's "Take 20" roll. If there is no in-game time pressure, it's best to handle it using the smallest amount of out-of-game time possible.
The rogue should be able to succeed on a normal lock with take 10, I don't see a problem with having a fumble rule for something like this (and thus no take 20). Sure if the fighter does it (or the rogue is up against an extra-ordinary lock) it means he has to continue rolling till he flukes, fumbles or gives up ... but he's doing something extra-ordinary, why should it be resolved quickly? It taking a little more game time seems appropriate to me.
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Post by souran »

So, this is a little bit of a tangent, but would d20 be better without skill ranks and instead use a descriptive system for relative skill?

So instead of having ranks going from 0-infinite have levels of untrained/Novice (+1)/Journeyman(+2)/Expert(+4)/Master(+6)?

Would this better serve the above suggestions because the difference between characters would be smaller and all levels while still having variance between characters?
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Post by Grek »

tussock wrote:
RadiantPhoenix wrote:The iterative probability math for 3e D&D is that you must survive 95% of level-appropriate encounters. (More if you don't get XP for some of the ones you win)
To have a 50% chance of making level 19 without dying, you'd face ~240 standard encounters, so an e^(ln(0.5)/240) = 99.7% survival rate is required. At 95% survival rate, there's only a 1/221991 chance of seeing 19th level before dying, and the average character will die 12 times (which costs so much XP and gp they'll be a lot of levels and gear short).
You don't have to survive to level 19, you have to survive till the level where you can get ressed.
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Post by MfA »

souran wrote:So instead of having ranks going from 0-infinite have levels of untrained/Novice (+1)/Journeyman(+2)/Expert(+4)/Master(+6)?
Why does any one ever thinks this a good idea? You can't have competence without incompetence ... and you fucking well need areas of both to make characters distinct.

A fighter's lockpick should be an adamantine pickaxe and a magic item of silence.
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Post by souran »

MfA wrote:
Why does any one ever thinks this a good idea? You can't have competence without incompetence ... and you fucking well need areas of both to make characters distinct.

A fighter's lockpick should be an adamantine pickaxe and a magic item of silence.
The game already includes a way of tracking areas of competence and incompetence. They are in the ability scores.

Further, in a typical game players simply keep adding points to the skills they selected at level 1. The end result is that in most games characters always are off the RNG for tasks in their field and have a near 0 chance of success for anything else.

There really isn't enough room on the RNG for there to be 24 skill ranks. If the difference in skill is going to diverge to where nobody else can even bother attempting why not just have skills function like FATE tags or whatever and the rogue can open all level appropriate locks and the fighter can break down all level appropriate doors and they auto-fail if they try and do the opposite. Thats the defacto situation the existing skill system creates anyway.
MfA
Knight-Baron
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Post by MfA »

souran wrote: The game already includes a way of tracking areas of competence and incompetence. They are in the ability scores.
Can be ... not in most D20 games though obviously, can't escape the math that a +1 is only an (absolute) 5% change in the odds.
Further, in a typical game players simply keep adding points to the skills they selected at level 1.
So? I was talking about the size of the bonuses. That said, providing some low fixed DCs with good pay offs to shoot for for most skills helps make the decision space a little more interesting.
The end result is that in most games characters always are off the RNG for tasks in their field and have a near 0 chance of success for anything else.
Nah, that's because of having too many sources of bonuses ... with a bit of discipline on the parts of the developers you can keep people on the RNG for level appropriate stuff. Chances going to 0 for the non specialists at mid to high level I have no problem with, find a different way to solve things (magic being the obvious one, but often simply applying more violence can solve a lot of problems as well).
There really isn't enough room on the RNG for there to be 24 skill ranks. If the difference in skill is going to diverge to where nobody else can even bother attempting why not just have skills function like FATE tags or whatever and the rogue can open all level appropriate locks and the fighter can break down all level appropriate doors and they auto-fail if they try and do the opposite. Thats the defacto situation the existing skill system creates anyway.
Sure, why not ... I can live with that. I think you're underselling the importance of the illusion of choice, the appearance of realism and the attraction more finer grained math has for some people ... but I can live with it.

What I can't stand is turning everything in a samey mess where everyone is within a couple of 10s of percent of odds of success of each other.
Last edited by MfA on Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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