MGuy wrote:I don't get what you're saying here. When opposing someone else players don't necessarily need to know what their chance of success really is. You don't 'need' to know when casting spells vs a target's save, you don't need to know it when making an attack, and you shouldn't know it when a surprise encounter happens.
Okay then let me rephrase it in a hopefully more comprehensible way:
You will not be "more likely" or "less likely" to do anything in a game where you alwas take 10 as the only option. It is a wholly binary system. You either always succeed at a given challenge or you always fail at it. No chance to recover, no alternative.
So, to use the senaking example, if I have to decide whether to sneak past those goblins, I need to have a realistic expectation of the outcome, to form my decision or it's just entirely random. I don't need to know exactly the perception modifier of said goblins but I need to know the probable range their modifier can be in, to decide whether I should try it or not. The GM can tell me that, but he shouldn't. It should be a consistent facet of the game universe. We all expect dogs to have a keen sense of smell, so I can realibly expect that an invisibility spell alone won't help me to get past one. We all expect a guy with arms as wide as tree trunks to do well in an arm wrestling contest, so I can reliably expect to lose if I am the skinny guy with twigs for arms. Those are the easy extreme cases but it gets more complicated once we get into the middle range of expected results. That's where K is right when he says it adds tension to not exactly know the outcome and that's also where the player needs a somewhat relibaly basis for his decision making. He need realistic expecations and they need to be represented by according numbers.
And it gets worse if you the opposed challenges involve actual harm to your character:
MGuy wrote:If you miss an attack you missed 'that' attack. As long as your game allows combat to continue beyond that single miss then it's not a big deal. What you 'can' do is make it so that your attacks are 'more' likely to hit so that you can know that you are better at swinging your sword than say throwing it. You don't know what the enemy's combat numbers are but you can bet that by investing in dodge/AC/etc that you are less likely to be hit when they swing their swords at you.
If you always take 10 as your resolution mechanic, then there is no such thing as "more likely to hit". You either hit, always, or you don't, ever. The combat is decided from the moment it began. You initial decision whether to attack or not decided the fate of your character with no further delineations. So, if the ambush check would have given you the chance to avoid enemies you can't defeat, then the success or failure becomes the de facto combat outcome. It is an absolutely deterministic system, where a single decision snowballs into a then ineviteable outcome. The moment your character set foot in the scene, the outcome was more or less set in stone.
And if you leave the area of opposed rolls and look at single checks (where you would expect far less problems) you are still facing a grave enemy: dullness.
Your character's abilities are frozen in their respective numbers. No spur of the momen, no unexpected dramatic actions, no sudden twists of fate, good or bad. Gone are the times where skinny wizard lifts the rock under which the warrior lies to free him, despite his frail stature. That wizard will no longer roll a 16+. Gone are the times of challenging fate with your action. No more "can I make that jump?". You either can or you cannot and you know right from the start.
So, your problem is twofold:
1. To allow players to make informed decisons for their characters (an ability utterly nescessary for a deterministic system to even remotely work), you need numbers that are able to realistically protray their chances. Simply taking 10 on a 3.x skill check won't do that in most circumstances as the underlying math is tilted slightly against the players to create more tension and reward high rolls.
2. Not allowing for varying results sets your character in stone. He becomes a dull and binary thing that either always succeeds at a given task or always fails, leaving no room for actual "challenges". What would you challenge such a character with? It is either no challenge or insurmountable with no third option.
PhoneLobster wrote:If you want to quibble about "reliable chance of winning" lets be fucking clear. "No reliable chance of winning" means a reliable defeat.
No it does not. It means an unreliably chance of winning. That's not even remotely the same as a reliably chance of defeat. It's not simply binary. Take a Thuata De for excemple, clad in sidhe armor. You will have a very hard time to pierce said armor unless you use cold worked iron against it. That doesn't mean you can't attack parts of the Thuata De that are not armored and bypass his protection that way, but you will be at a significant disadvantage in such a fight. You can still win. You can lose as well. Having cold worked iron would give you a tremendous advantage in that situation and increase your odds significantly.
You're trying to turn this into a binary scenario. You also ignore the little word "based" in "based on eurpean mythology" when you conclude that thus monsters are invulnerable outside their weaknesses.
PhoneLobster wrote:This means that you very much have stakes that matter[...]
Exactly. They don't need to be erased by simply giving everything to the players, though.
PhoneLobster wrote:[...], and there is no "false dichotomy" you are flat out admitting that your trivia checks are meaningless the game WILL deliver the information regardless of their outcome. OR if the outcome of those checks actually matters... then when they fail them they fucking reliably lose.
And this is your very false dichotomy. You only see two options because you onyl want to see two options. You claim to base your dichotomy on "my source material" when you simply non-sequitured entire different meanings out of what I said.
I am not here to piss in your cereal. I ask you to read what I actually wrote, however, before you attempt to rip my head off. I already said that I agree that nescessary information should not be withheld from the players. That doesn't mean they need to have access to all information, however. And information is not only binary in that it is either nescessary or useless. Some information can provide advantages or negate disadvantages. Then it is usefull, but not nescessary. It's not just two options.