Brain chemicals + math = d20 is ideal. D&D has blown away every competitor because it has a resolution system that is both simple and satisfying. While you personally might love the "roll 5d6, take out the highest and lowest, then add 1d4 for each advantage and subtract 1d4 for each disadvantage and then add the square root of the angle of the sun in your eyes" system for it's edgy realism, it's not better. Not in the sense of mass appeal and general utility.
I agree. I mean, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the ideal. There may be better, but it's got a good enough balance. A 5% chance of critting is rare enough that it's notable, but common enough that it happens every couple of combats for a player - a nice hit of dopamine. 1% means per several sessions or so, which makes it too rare to be a factor in play and to feel excitement at the thought that you might crit. You could counterbalance that by increasing the effect, say making it instakill instead of double damage dice, but then it becomes a problem when it happens because you can't account for it while making encounters. That happens to your BBEG? Oops.
There might be better than 1d20, but I'm really not convinced that 2d10 does it better.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
roll 5d6, take out the highest and lowest, then add 1d4 for each advantage and subtract 1d4 for each disadvantage and then add the square root of the angle of the sun in your eyes" system for it's edgy realism
Is that angle 📐calculated against the plane of the ground or the plane of the forehead? (I’m taking notes.)
As I do so often, I have run the numbers on this proposal. I must first say that it requires recalibration.
On the surface it has a problem because it doesn't go down to a 1. But the "bell curve", which is actually just a spiked distribution and not a curve at all, reduces the chances of getting any successful result over 11. The net result will be fewer hits per roll and longer combats. I analyzed a system that "corrects" the bottom not being a 1 by testing d10+2d6-2, which produces results from 1-20. But with three dice it is more curved but still causes the problem of fewer hits.
However, I suspect this would also cause spell saves to be less frequent. Casters often use their best attribute to set their spell save DC while the target is often using one of their worst. So spell saves typically require higher rolls than melee "blocks". Implementing something that changes the shape of the curve will impact melee focused characters in a different way than spell focused characters.
I like the concept, and the proposed modification for advantage & disadvantage, but it is clear you would probably have issues if you wanted to drop it into your game. Maybe your table is filled with STEM majors that love poking the probability model used in D&D. But as-is it will cause longer combats due to more misses.
I don't know what the word is to describe the "distribution" of 2d6 (or 2dN) dice. I call it a spiked distribution. The single die distribution is called a flat distribution. When you use 3 or more dice, you begin to see bell shaped curve distribution. However, that is still not a "Standard" distribution.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
The game feel is bullshit if it isn't supported by, you know, facts.
Again, binary outcomes. Success or failure, that's all that matters. As long as more results being near the average doesn't translate into more results being successes (or failures) there is no more nor less chaos with a 1d20 roll vs a 2d10 roll. And that translation shouldn't happen as long as the game aims to have bounded accuracy.
As for your barbarian vs wizard comparison, a difference of 5 points in modifier (basically the difference between being proficient and having a decent relevant attribute vs not being proficient and being perfectly average in the relevant attribute) results in the character with the relative +5 winning 73.75% of contests. Sure, that could be higher (I think 80-85% would be better), but it's a far cry from your assertion nonetheless (if the difference is 2+5+6 (Barb's Int penalty, Wiz' Int bonus, Wiz proficiency with Expertise benefit or vice versa for Athletics) the wizard wins 94.75% of the time).
And once more for God and country: there's no such thing as critical failures or critical successes in skill checks in the rules. DM doesn't play by the rules and things don't turn out well? That's on the DM, not the rules.
Math doesn't lie. Intuitive and subjective impressions may not line up with the math, but that doesn't mean the math is wrong. It means the impressions are mistaken.
A deeply flawed understanding, sadly.
The intuitive and subjective impressions are the only thing that matters. D&D is not played by calculators, it's played by people, and those people play the game they play because they enjoy the experience of playing it.
The game is about nothing other than its feel. The play experience, the feel of the game, its tone and timbre. All those Sacred Cows everyone hates the thought of doing without? They hate it because the game doesn't feel right to them without those things. Certain ideas can be objectively better game design - stronger, more elegant, less complex, more flexible, all the Good Stuff buzzwords - and if it doesn't feel right in play? People will reject it. The Six Sacred Scores are provably bad game design - Wisdom doesn't map to anything useful and has an ever-changing nebulous description nobody can agree on and Constitution has no business being its own separate score from Strength, among many other problems...but the Six Sacred Scores are so intrinsic to the play experience and feel of classic D&D that nobody will let Wizards shift away from them.
Yes, the d20 is much the same way. D&D will never not use a d20 as its Decider die, because it's intrinsic to the experience a majority of players have with D&D. That argument is valid, if deeply annoying - the game just doesn't feel right if it's not decided by d20 rolls." Throwing math in people's faces shows an understanding of math, not game development. D&D is the only major game system I know of that still uses the d20 as its resolution mechanic - and yes, shit like Dungeon World and Pathfinder count as D&D for this purpose because they're the same bloody system from the same bloody source and everybody knows it. No other system I'm aware of uses the d20, because d20 resolution produces a specific play experience that nobody except D&D players tends to find desirable or fulfilling.
You keep hanging up on the "Success/Failure" binary percent chance thing and claim every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them. if that's truly the case, then why do so many other games go so far out of their way to avoid d20 resolution? They could get in on D&D's market share, get the automatic third-party support market of all D&D's assorted paraphernalia, dip into people's existing collections of shiny math rocks. Why cut themselves out of all that, if every single resolution mechanic is always completely and utterly identical forever so long as it has the same percentages of success?
Simple. Different resolution mechanics feel different, and a lot of people like those play experiences better. Some people love the fistful-of-d6s system Shadowrun uses. Some people really vibe on Genesys' over-complex 'Story Dice' system. Some people really appreciate the clean resolution and fine gradiation of GURPS' 3d6 dice pool. And hell - some people really vibe on Savage Worlds' dice ladder or Cyberpunk's d10 resolution. Each game presents very different feels, very different subjective play experiences, and the resolution mechanic is a big part of that.
D&D leans into the anything-goes wild lolrandom hyper chaos of the d20, where anybody can roll for anything and stand a chance of success even when all logic, reason, rational thought and game-'verse reality says they have no god damned business touching that godforsaken math rock. Other systems do it differently. Some folks like what those other systems accomplish. Some folks like skill, talent, and training having a degree of meaning. Some folks find it absolutely beyond ridiculous that the Int 6 barbarian without a lick of education in his entire life is even allowed to roll Arcana, but D&D says he's perfectly entitled to whatever roll he wants, and he's got a five percent chance of being the smartest wizard in the room whenever he does.
So sometimes people are gonna complain about the lolrandom nonsense that sort of action resolution produces. Which is why we're all here, ne?
You can also have different planes use different dice systems based on their alignment. Material plane is 1d20 because it is mildly chaotic aligned, but if you adventure to The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, the system changes to 2d10 as the plane is lawfully aligned; perhaps even more of a change as it is heavily aligned towards Law.
That's a really cool idea actually, and one I may loot for future use!
what would you go to for additional chaos?
Replace anything that still grants a static modifier with a dice roll where the static modifier is the average. i.e. your ability modifier of +3 is now an ability modifier of +1d6. It also may shift dice that already are multiple smaller dice such as 2d6 back into 1d12.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
The intuitive and subjective impressions are the only thing that matters. D&D is not played by calculators, it's played by people, and those people play the game they play because they enjoy the experience of playing it.
Worth noting, the "game feel" is because of the math, not in spite of it. D20 produces a demonstrably different curve than 3d6 or 2d10 or what have you. Basic statistics.
And FWIW, WotC clearly understands that. "Bounded accuracy" and the advantage/disadvantage system both, together and individually, emulate some of the statistical advantages of a bell curve. It's almost like they bent over backwards to change the feel of the game without ditching the brand of "D20." This is probably why the 5e SRD doesn't include a "bell curve rules" section but the d20 SRD did.
As I do so often, I have run the numbers on this proposal. I must first say that it requires recalibration.
On the surface it has a problem because it doesn't go down to a 1. But the "bell curve", which is actually just a spiked distribution and not a curve at all, reduces the chances of getting any successful result over 11. The net result will be fewer hits per roll and longer combats. I analyzed a system that "corrects" the bottom not being a 1 by testing d10+2d6-2, which produces results from 1-20. But with three dice it is more curved but still causes the problem of fewer hits.
However, I suspect this would also cause spell saves to be less frequent. Casters often use their best attribute to set their spell save DC while the target is often using one of their worst. So spell saves typically require higher rolls than melee "blocks". Implementing something that changes the shape of the curve will impact melee focused characters in a different way than spell focused characters.
I like the concept, and the proposed modification for advantage & disadvantage, but it is clear you would probably have issues if you wanted to drop it into your game. Maybe your table is filled with STEM majors that love poking the probability model used in D&D. But as-is it will cause longer combats due to more misses.
I don't know what the word is to describe the "distribution" of 2d6 (or 2dN) dice. I call it a spiked distribution. The single die distribution is called a flat distribution. When you use 3 or more dice, you begin to see bell shaped curve distribution. However, that is still not a "Standard" distribution.
Not going down to "1" is the point. You eliminate the possibility of critical failure/fumble; yet still retain, albeit much less probably, the potential for a nat 20.
It doesn't reduce the chances of getting successful results over 11generating fewer hits per roll. It reduces the chances of getting roles over 11. As someone mentioned above, part of the point of this too is that you are confident in your bonus's being able to turn a roll of 11 into a sucess meaning you get more hits per turn as you are reducing the chances of of your bonus's failing to overcome a low roll.
(d10+2d6-2) You are overthinking it. Even 3.5 UA had a variant suggestion of 2d10 as simple reduction in chaos, though it wasn't as much of a sacrifice at the higher end because in 3e crits were not specific to nat 20's (automatic confirmation) - weapons had threat ranges and feats for extending them so that you could theoretically crit on rolls of like 16-20 or even 14-20; though it required a confirmation roll. Again the issue they were recognizing -like apparently so very many other 'issues'- is that most players enjoy critical success while far fewer enjoy critical failure, and apparently "DM's can houserule out critical failure" wasn't entirely good enough on it's own; so someone tossed out this means among others of just ditching the possibility of rolling a "1"; and generating a more stable means of generating above average final results.
1) The intuitive and subjective impressions are the only thing that matters. D&D is not played by calculators, it's played by people, and those people play the game they play because they enjoy the experience of playing it.
The game is about nothing other than its feel. The play experience, the feel of the game, its tone and timbre. All those Sacred Cows everyone hates the thought of doing without? They hate it because the game doesn't feel right to them without those things. Certain ideas can be objectively better game design - stronger, more elegant, less complex, more flexible, all the Good Stuff buzzwords - and if it doesn't feel right in play? People will reject it. The Six Sacred Scores are provably bad game design - Wisdom doesn't map to anything useful and has an ever-changing nebulous description nobody can agree on and Constitution has no business being its own separate score from Strength, among many other problems...but the Six Sacred Scores are so intrinsic to the play experience and feel of classic D&D that nobody will let Wizards shift away from them.
Yes, the d20 is much the same way. D&D will never not use a d20 as its Decider die, because it's intrinsic to the experience a majority of players have with D&D. That argument is valid, if deeply annoying - the game just doesn't feel right if it's not decided by d20 rolls." Throwing math in people's faces shows an understanding of math, not game development. D&D is the only major game system I know of that still uses the d20 as its resolution mechanic - and yes, shit like Dungeon World and Pathfinder count as D&D for this purpose because they're the same bloody system from the same bloody source and everybody knows it. No other system I'm aware of uses the d20, because d20 resolution produces a specific play experience that nobody except D&D players tends to find desirable or fulfilling.
2) You keep hanging up on the "Success/Failure" binary percent chance thing and claim every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them. if that's truly the case, then why do so many other games go so far out of their way to avoid d20 resolution? They could get in on D&D's market share, get the automatic third-party support market of all D&D's assorted paraphernalia, dip into people's existing collections of shiny math rocks. Why cut themselves out of all that, if every single resolution mechanic is always completely and utterly identical forever so long as it has the same percentages of success?
Simple. Different resolution mechanics feel different, and a lot of people like those play experiences better. Some people love the fistful-of-d6s system Shadowrun uses. Some people really vibe on Genesys' over-complex 'Story Dice' system. Some people really appreciate the clean resolution and fine gradiation of GURPS' 3d6 dice pool. And hell - some people really vibe on Savage Worlds' dice ladder or Cyberpunk's d10 resolution. Each game presents very different feels, very different subjective play experiences, and the resolution mechanic is a big part of that.
3) D&D leans into the anything-goes wild lolrandom hyper chaos of the d20, where anybody can roll for anything and stand a chance of success even when all logic, reason, rational thought and game-'verse reality says they have no god damned business touching that godforsaken math rock. Other systems do it differently. Some folks like what those other systems accomplish. Some folks like skill, talent, and training having a degree of meaning. Some folks find it absolutely beyond ridiculous that the Int 6 barbarian without a lick of education in his entire life is even allowed to roll Arcana, but D&D says he's perfectly entitled to whatever roll he wants, and he's got a five percent chance of being the smartest wizard in the room whenever he does.
4) So sometimes people are gonna complain about the lolrandom nonsense that sort of action resolution produces. Which is why we're all here, ne?
Oh geez. This is going to take some doing, I can just tell. Right then.
1) I'm going to get back to this, but I think it'll go better addressing the other stuff specifically first. So:
2) No, I do not claim that "every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them". I claim that 1d20 rolls are not more chaotic than 2d10 or 3d6 rolls within the context of D&D. Resolutions of checks in D&D are really, really simple: there's a percentage chance of success, and an inverse percentage chance of failure - the binary thing. That's true for all three options mentioned. You hit or exceed the DC or you don't, whether you do that with 1d20, 2d10 or 3d6. You have a bunch of rolls that give you a success, and a bunch of others that give you a failure. Whether within that bunch of successes or that bunch of failures some are more common than others is completely immaterial. The only thing that matters is how many there are in total in each bunch, because that ratio equals the odds and anything else is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how likely you are to roll exactly 11, or any other specific number. You're not trying to roll exactly 11. You're trying to roll as high as the DC or higher. Graphically, the shape of the curve doesn't matter; the areas below the curve left and right of the DC (if plotted on the horizontal axis) represent the odds of succes, not the curve itself.
I'll say again: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER YOU'RE MORE LIKELY TO ROLL AN 11 THAN A 20 FOR A SKILL CHECK OR NOT. Rolling 11 doesn't mean anything. It's an average result, but "average" doesn't tell us whether it succeeds. We shouldn't care about average, because the system doesn't give us anything for being average. All we should care about is rolling high enough, and sometimes high enough means rolling at least a 16 while other times high enough just means rolling at least a 3. Sometimes rolling high enough even means rolling at least -3, in which case we can't fail and there shouldn't have been a roll called for in the first place. Maybe people do care about rolling average more often and extremes being more rare; that's fine, I'm not judging them for it, but mechanically that's meaningless.
(as for why other systems don't get in on the d20 system: I assume it's because you put yourself in competition with D&D when you do, and why'd you want to do that? If I want to play something like D&D, chances are I'm just going to play D&D)
3) Will you kindly lay off the critical success/failure thing? There's no such thing in 5E for skill checks. There isn't. You know it, I know it, you know that I know that you know it. It's been repeated several times in this thread, even if it shouldn't have needed to be said once. It's the rules. You're complaining about something that doesn't happen and can't happen if you play by the rules, so just play by the rules already. If you're not, stop playing and find a better game where you will. And again, having had training and having talent and skill and being prepared and whatever else do matter: having a +5 relative advantage in modifier makes you three times as likely to beat someone in a skill check. That's what training and skill and talent and preparation do, they give you a better modifier, and it pays off. You can keep telling me they don't, but they evidently, demonstrably, factually do.
4) Clearly I'm here to complain about that complaining, because (and that should really be equally clear by now) it's pure silliness. There is no more nor less lolrandom nonsense using 1d20 than there is 2d10. There isn't. Math says so. You can take Math's word for it. Math's word is good.
And finally getting back to 1) the intuitive and subjective feelings that flat-out contradict design can't be held sacrosanct. That's like telling me some people would like Pac-Man better if it didn't have a maze, because Snake doesn't have a maze and they like Snake. If people can't intuit the value of the maze in Pac-Man, sure, that's for them to decide, but it doesn't invalidate Pac-Man's design.
The system works. The system works as designed. If you think it doesn't because you feel that it doesn't, well, you're wrong. No offense, but you're wrong. Which isn't even not ok, it's whatever, but it'd be inane to change the design, which works, because there are people mistakenly saying it doesn't work. If you don't want crits in skill checks, great, then don't houserule them in. If you do want crits in skill checks, but they should be more rare than 1 in 20 on either side, hey, go for it - maybe require a second confirmation roll to reduce the percentage. If you want something else, do that, whatever it is. I'm not your supervisor, I can't stop you. Just don't try to tell me the system as designed does something other than what it actually does so you can complain about it. We have plenty of real things to talk about here, we don't have to fabricate anything.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
whilst a system with d6's was in the original D&D, that isn't how the rest of DnD went along. The swingy-ness is the point.
I shall recant.
The swingy-ness is the point.
This is at the core of the fudging & closed rolling V.S. no fudging & open rolling debacle. The dice are the unbiased arbiters of resolution. They have just the same chance to give you any number as any other number. You saying that a 2d10 system making an average result more likely is directly opposed to this ethos and way of thinking. Biasing towards a certain curve rather than have all results be equal is the direct opposite of that which is wanted.
Swinginess says my eleventh-level artificer with tool Expertise rolling at +10 to Thieves' Tools checks, with a 1d4 from Guidance and the ability to +5 any roll she makes with Flash of Genius at need, still has a 5% chance to be completely and utterly baffled by a five-copper DC 5 baby's-first-lock from the local fishmonger's bazaar.
No. **** that. **** that literally forever. And don't give me that moose garbage about "critical success/fumbles only happen during combat"; point me at one single GM ever who adheres to that instead of doing "hilarious" garbage like "Oh no, your master locksmith with really high quality artisan-grade thieves' tools rolled a 1 on your check? Guess you broke your picks! You're gonna have to buy some new ones, and I bet the guards at the next town will be really interested in why you're trying to buy thieves' tools! wink wink!"
I play by the rules. As do most of the DM's I play with and know. The DM for my campaign on sunday mornings said at the beginning of the campaign that he would run 1's on skills the way you claim everyone does. Guess what happened. ~20 sessions in and he forgets about it and I have to remind him of his own house rule and he decides to just drop it. The only other times I've seen people funk with nat 1's is that they made me hit an ally with my attack or made me auto-fail a saving throw.
out of the 8 active DM's on the server that I play/run on (that I have played in their games before), he has been the only one to my memory that has ever done nat 1's on skill checks. And he gave up on it.
Your artificer would, imo in most games, still open the lock. Also why is a DM asking for checks on DC 5 things? DC 5 is literally trivial difficulty. But I take it that was just your hyperbole.
I disagree with this notion that everyone just does nat 1's on ability checks. It's a perceived notion from folks that only play with people who do or only play with the same group and same DM. I've racked up like ~1.5k hours on r20 (not that impressive for most, ik) and most of that has been with a variety of DM's and players every day of the week. I haven't played for 20+ years, but I think I've gotten enough experience to know that nat 1's on ability checks isn't this ubiquitous house rule that everyone just hivemind-accepted at one point.
2) No, I do not claim that "every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them". I claim that 1d20 rolls are not more chaotic than 2d10 or 3d6 rolls within the context of D&D. Resolutions of checks in D&D are really, really simple: there's a percentage chance of success, and an inverse percentage chance of failure - the binary thing. That's true for all three options mentioned. You hit or exceed the DC or you don't, whether you do that with 1d20, 2d10 or 3d6. You have a bunch of rolls that give you a success, and a bunch of others that give you a failure. Whether within that bunch of successes or that bunch of failures some are more common than others is completely immaterial. The only thing that matters is how many there are in total in each bunch, because that ratio equals the odds and anything else is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how likely you are to roll exactly 11, or any other specific number. You're not trying to roll exactly 11. You're trying to roll as high as the DC or higher. Graphically, the shape of the curve doesn't matter; the areas below the curve left and right of the DC (if plotted on the horizontal axis) represent the odds of succes, not the curve itself.
I'll say again: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER YOU'RE MORE LIKELY TO ROLL AN 11 THAN A 20 FOR A SKILL CHECK OR NOT. Rolling 11 doesn't mean anything. It's an average result, but "average" doesn't tell us whether it succeeds. We shouldn't care about average, because the system doesn't give us anything for being average. All we should care about is rolling high enough, and sometimes high enough means rolling at least a 16 while other times high enough just means rolling at least a 3. Sometimes rolling high enough even means rolling at least -3, in which case we can't fail and there shouldn't have been a roll called for in the first place. Maybe people do care about rolling average more often and extremes being more rare; that's fine, I'm not judging them for it, but mechanically that's meaningless.
(as for why other systems don't get in on the d20 system: I assume it's because you put yourself in competition with D&D when you do, and why'd you want to do that? If I want to play something like D&D, chances are I'm just going to play D&D)
So, all of this is simply not true. Different probability distributions achieve objectively different game design goals. The benefit of a normal distribution is that static bonuses have a greater impact on your % chance to succeed (with some diminishing returns; the difference between a novice and a journeyman is greater than the difference between a journeyman and a master, even if the absolute numerical difference is the same). That usually creates more naturalistic results. That said, it's absolutely true that the "chaos" of D&D doesn't really come from the flat distribution. The chaos of D&D comes from the relative contribution of the random die versus the static bonuses. Reducing the chaos would involve reducing the range of numbers on the die, for example to one d10, and adjusting target numbers accordingly.
4) Clearly I'm here to complain about that complaining, because (and that should really be equally clear by now) it's pure silliness. There is no more nor less lolrandom nonsense using 1d20 than there is 2d10. There isn't. Math says so. You can take Math's word for it. Math's word is good.
This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
And finally getting back to 1) the intuitive and subjective feelings that flat-out contradict design can't be held sacrosanct. That's like telling me some people would like Pac-Man better if it didn't have a maze, because Snake doesn't have a maze and they like Snake. If people can't intuit the value of the maze in Pac-Man, sure, that's for them to decide, but it doesn't invalidate Pac-Man's design.
That's not a good analogy. A much better analogy is the evergreen XCOM analogy where the game displays a 90% hit chance but the actual chance ends up being about 99%, because players are dumb and don't intuitively understand that 90% hit chance means 10% miss chance. Do you know why XCOM does that? Because game designers have done a lot of research, and telling these lies improves the play experience. Player psychology doesn't really have a place in discussion of statistics, but D&D is a game, and making a good game is very different from making a "correct" one, to the point that discounting it honestly is wrong, in context.
The system works. The system works as designed. If you think it doesn't because you feel that it doesn't, well, you're wrong. No offense, but you're wrong. Which isn't even not ok, it's whatever, but it'd be inane to change the design, which works, because there are people mistakenly saying it doesn't work. If you don't want crits in skill checks, great, then don't houserule them in. If you do want crits in skill checks, but they should be more rare than 1 in 20 on either side, hey, go for it - maybe require a second confirmation roll to reduce the percentage. If you want something else, do that, whatever it is. I'm not your supervisor, I can't stop you. Just don't try to tell me the system as designed does something other than what it actually does so you can complain about it. We have plenty of real things to talk about here, we don't have to fabricate anything.
Sure, the system works as designed, but that doesn't shield it from design criticism, which is what the entire point of all of this is. No one is saying "D&D isn't achieving its goals." They're saying "D&D's goals don't make a fun game."
You can also have different planes use different dice systems based on their alignment. Material plane is 1d20 because it is mildly chaotic aligned, but if you adventure to The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, the system changes to 2d10 as the plane is lawfully aligned; perhaps even more of a change as it is heavily aligned towards Law.
Great idea and I will steal that, thank you very much yoink
I feel morally certain I've had this conversation with you before, Pang. I can distinctly recall going over the game feel behind the math and why the more stable, less aberrant and swingy results behind a dice pool system feels drastically different than the lolrandom hyper chaos of the d20, no matter what someone says about "a 65% chance to succeed is a 65% chance to succeed regardless of how many dice are involved with the roll." I know I've laid that out before, but apparently it was in a thread other than this one.
Nevertheless. A refresher.
"65% chance of success is 65% chance of success no matter how many dice are involved" applies only to a single roll. Over the course of a campaign and all its many thousands of die rolls, a dice pool system produces drastically more stable results. The deviation on rolls is much tighter, aberrant results are much rarer. The result is that in a 3d6 dice pool game, i.e. the standardized system I'm using as a basis for comparison here, your skills, abilities, and training feels reliable. You can count on your skills in a crisis, and training your skills feels meaningful and rewarding. When you flub something badly, it's either a case of genuine, legitimate bad luck or a case of the extreme difficulty of a given, specific task managing to defeat your best effort. It produces a game feel where being really good at something ensures that only cosmic happenstance or truly exceptionally adverse conditions can defeat that trained skill.
A d20 system, on the other hand, fostors a game feel of "literally anything can happen at any time." The Intelligence 6 barbarian with not a single knowledge proficiency to his name can regularly outperform the Intelligence 20 wizard with Expertise in Arcana in matters of arcane lore and knowledge - and conversely, the Strength 6 wizard who's never lifted anything heavier than his spellbook in his life can regularly defeat physical challenges that stymie the Strengrh 20 barbarian with Expertise in athletics. Things that simply should not be possible happen all the damned time with the d20, because ten percent of all rolls are either Glorious Success or Humiliating Failure, no matter what skill values are involved. The d20's lolrandom hyper chaos is a primary contributor to the fact that nobody cares about proficiency or training in D&D 5e and why people scorn anyone who seeks to try and do the "skillmonkey" thing and be prepared for a diversity of challenges. The common refrain is "why bother? Just roll high and you win anyways, there's no point in spending resources on that stuff when you could spend resources on doing more damage instead!"
Even in this thread, people have defended the "Anything Can Happen!" gamefeel of the d20 system as a high point of D&D, with the specific and explicit goal of ensuring that skill, training, talent, and all the rest has as little impact on rate of success as possible. Is it any wonder that some people may chafe at the idea that no amount of honed skill should matter in a game about skilled, competent heroes seeking to protect their worlds from dire fates?
IMO the reason I've felt skill profs don't matter too much is because they're so damn easy to acquire and getting a stupid high bonus is so easy, that it just defeats the purpose of rolling at all. It just makes it feel like "why do skills even exist in the game if the players are always going to succeed at their rolls because of their stupid high bonuses and easy access to advantage?"
This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
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This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
I also don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation (though I have tomorrow off, so we'll see how this goes), but you are continuing to examine only a single die roll in isolation, which simply doesn't reflect the reality of the game. The variance of the dice is definitely material, because players are making a shit-ton of rolls.
This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
I'm still not entirely sure what you are trying to say, but I looked this up:
and it has a graph comparing the probabilities of d20v2d10 and apparently concludes that vs an opponent whom you outclass, 2d10>d20, but vs an opponent who outclasses you, 2d10<d20. So, I suppose if you could choose between the two instance by instance, it would help to know how often you are going to be facing superior foes vs inferior ones.
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In an attempt tp make it quicker, simpler, and easier to understand, a comparison.
In a tabletop RPG, your bonuses, abilities, equipment, and the like - all the ways you can modify a roll - represent your training, practice, talents, and edges. The die represents the perversity of the universe and its desire to make you dead.
In d20 resolution, the perversity of the universe is at an absolute maximum. Everything is chaos, and one cannot have any certainty that their skills or abilities will work. An easy, simple challenge can be short-circuited by the perversity of the universe, while the most difficult challenges the game has available - both in and out of combat - can be casually attempted with a perfectly serviceable margin of success.
In dice pool resolution, the perversity of the universe is kept to a reasonable minimum. The universe can still throw you the occasional curveball, often enough to keep you on your toes, but you can look at a given task and know, with a reasonable degree of firmness, whether you're up to that challenge or whether it's beyond you. An easy, simple challenge will not stymie you more than once in a great while, and conversely the game's most difficult challenges - both in and out of combat - require extensive preparation simply to avoid disaster.
Some people prefer the idea that anything can happen, that a simple challenge can easily defeat their heroes, and that even the most difficult challenge requires nothing more than a pinch of shortstack luck and a dose of advantage. Others are enamored with the idea that skill, training, and talent should be able to overcome the perversity of the universe as often as not, and that someone who invests time, effort, and energy in becoming exceptional at a thing should actually have better results when using that skill than someone who has never trained a day in their life, picked up a single book, waved a single wand, or what-have-you.
This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
I also don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation (though I have tomorrow off, so we'll see how this goes), but you are continuing to examine only a single die roll in isolation, which simply doesn't reflect the reality of the game. The variance of the dice is definitely material, because players are making a shit-ton of rolls.
Got called up. :/ Opted for tea over booze in a supreme effort of will.
The number of rolls is immaterial. Each roll can still only result in one of two outcomes, success or failure. For a check, it doesn't matter whether you rolled a 12, a 16, a 20 or anything in between - all that matters is that you succeeded. Likewise it doesn't matter whether you rolled an 8, a 3 or a 1 - all that matters is that you failed. In other words, the odds of rolling a high number, a low number or an average number are irrelevant. The only relevant odds are those of success or failure. And because of that the standard deviation on the rolls isn't pertinent to being lolrandom. It's pertinent when you we look at what odds we want a check to have because then we have to set our DC (2d10 makes it easier to hit low to mid DCs, 1d20 makes it easier to hit high ones), but that isn't lolrandom. A DC is set deliberately and translates right back to a success and failure chance and not caring about what you rolled exactly, only whether it was high enough, because regardless of what you roll you can only succeed or fail - you can't get extra rewards, you can't get a consolation prize, you can't get punished beyond straightforward failure, there are no grades, you just pass or fail.
In d20 resolution, the perversity of the universe is at an absolute maximum. Everything is chaos, and one cannot have any certainty that their skills or abilities will work. An easy, simple challenge can be short-circuited by the perversity of the universe, while the most difficult challenges the game has available - both in and out of combat - can be casually attempted with a perfectly serviceable margin of success.
In dice pool resolution, the perversity of the universe is kept to a reasonable minimum. The universe can still throw you the occasional curveball, often enough to keep you on your toes, but you can look at a given task and know, with a reasonable degree of firmness, whether you're up to that challenge or whether it's beyond you. An easy, simple challenge will not stymie you more than once in a great while, and conversely the game's most difficult challenges - both in and out of combat - require extensive preparation simply to avoid disaster.
Yurei, all of that is as much as or more a function of DCs rather than dice. A simple challenge with a DC 5 will never fail if you're proficient and have a +2 attribute modifier. Never. Never mind that such a check shouldn't be rolled in the first place, mechanically you can't fail it anyway. Likewise, if you have a DC 25 to contend with and your total modifier is only +4, your margin of success is nonexistent (and the check should equally not be rolled in the first place, unless your DM is messing with you and just doesn't want you to know something is impossible - not a sign of a good DM). The "degree of firmness" you mention is simply the odds you face, and those odds, again, are just the chance of rolling high enough to hit the DC. 1d20 or 2d10 doesn't matter, assuming the DC is set to reflect the intended odds corresponding to whatever di(c)e will be used.
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This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
I also don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation (though I have tomorrow off, so we'll see how this goes), but you are continuing to examine only a single die roll in isolation, which simply doesn't reflect the reality of the game. The variance of the dice is definitely material, because players are making a shit-ton of rolls.
That variance is a product of the probabilities, though, not the die rolls
Let's say you have a rogue with a +9 on some skill. You have a 50/50 chance of making a DC 20 skill check -- which, according to the DMG, is "hard"
Since it's a pure coin flip, if you make a proverbial shit-ton of checks against that skill, you will absolutely experience "variance", in that you'll have runs of successes and failures rather than simply alternating them. Because that's how randomness works
Are you suggesting that's a bad thing, that should be changed somehow?
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What Saga and I are suggesting is that examining single rolls, in isolation, is disingenuous because the game experience isn't about one single roll made in isolation, it's about the cumulative experience of thousands of rolls across an entire campaign. When those rolls are considered as an aggregate whole, d20 resolution is swingy and obnoxious and results far too often in aberrant events that defy reason. The rogue breaking her thieves' tools on a DC5 lock, the wizard failing an Arcana check only for the barbarian to pass the same check and look at the wizard all "are you stupid or something?", the plate-armored fighter not managing to avoid a single enemy blow...there's lots of ways d20 resolution produces aberrant results. It's so common it stops being fun.
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I agree. I mean, I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the ideal. There may be better, but it's got a good enough balance. A 5% chance of critting is rare enough that it's notable, but common enough that it happens every couple of combats for a player - a nice hit of dopamine. 1% means per several sessions or so, which makes it too rare to be a factor in play and to feel excitement at the thought that you might crit. You could counterbalance that by increasing the effect, say making it instakill instead of double damage dice, but then it becomes a problem when it happens because you can't account for it while making encounters. That happens to your BBEG? Oops.
There might be better than 1d20, but I'm really not convinced that 2d10 does it better.
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As I do so often, I have run the numbers on this proposal. I must first say that it requires recalibration.
On the surface it has a problem because it doesn't go down to a 1. But the "bell curve", which is actually just a spiked distribution and not a curve at all, reduces the chances of getting any successful result over 11. The net result will be fewer hits per roll and longer combats. I analyzed a system that "corrects" the bottom not being a 1 by testing d10+2d6-2, which produces results from 1-20. But with three dice it is more curved but still causes the problem of fewer hits.
However, I suspect this would also cause spell saves to be less frequent. Casters often use their best attribute to set their spell save DC while the target is often using one of their worst. So spell saves typically require higher rolls than melee "blocks". Implementing something that changes the shape of the curve will impact melee focused characters in a different way than spell focused characters.
I like the concept, and the proposed modification for advantage & disadvantage, but it is clear you would probably have issues if you wanted to drop it into your game. Maybe your table is filled with STEM majors that love poking the probability model used in D&D. But as-is it will cause longer combats due to more misses.
I don't know what the word is to describe the "distribution" of 2d6 (or 2dN) dice. I call it a spiked distribution. The single die distribution is called a flat distribution. When you use 3 or more dice, you begin to see bell shaped curve distribution. However, that is still not a "Standard" distribution.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
A deeply flawed understanding, sadly.
The intuitive and subjective impressions are the only thing that matters. D&D is not played by calculators, it's played by people, and those people play the game they play because they enjoy the experience of playing it.
The game is about nothing other than its feel. The play experience, the feel of the game, its tone and timbre. All those Sacred Cows everyone hates the thought of doing without? They hate it because the game doesn't feel right to them without those things. Certain ideas can be objectively better game design - stronger, more elegant, less complex, more flexible, all the Good Stuff buzzwords - and if it doesn't feel right in play? People will reject it. The Six Sacred Scores are provably bad game design - Wisdom doesn't map to anything useful and has an ever-changing nebulous description nobody can agree on and Constitution has no business being its own separate score from Strength, among many other problems...but the Six Sacred Scores are so intrinsic to the play experience and feel of classic D&D that nobody will let Wizards shift away from them.
Yes, the d20 is much the same way. D&D will never not use a d20 as its Decider die, because it's intrinsic to the experience a majority of players have with D&D. That argument is valid, if deeply annoying - the game just doesn't feel right if it's not decided by d20 rolls." Throwing math in people's faces shows an understanding of math, not game development. D&D is the only major game system I know of that still uses the d20 as its resolution mechanic - and yes, shit like Dungeon World and Pathfinder count as D&D for this purpose because they're the same bloody system from the same bloody source and everybody knows it. No other system I'm aware of uses the d20, because d20 resolution produces a specific play experience that nobody except D&D players tends to find desirable or fulfilling.
You keep hanging up on the "Success/Failure" binary percent chance thing and claim every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them. if that's truly the case, then why do so many other games go so far out of their way to avoid d20 resolution? They could get in on D&D's market share, get the automatic third-party support market of all D&D's assorted paraphernalia, dip into people's existing collections of shiny math rocks. Why cut themselves out of all that, if every single resolution mechanic is always completely and utterly identical forever so long as it has the same percentages of success?
Simple. Different resolution mechanics feel different, and a lot of people like those play experiences better. Some people love the fistful-of-d6s system Shadowrun uses. Some people really vibe on Genesys' over-complex 'Story Dice' system. Some people really appreciate the clean resolution and fine gradiation of GURPS' 3d6 dice pool. And hell - some people really vibe on Savage Worlds' dice ladder or Cyberpunk's d10 resolution. Each game presents very different feels, very different subjective play experiences, and the resolution mechanic is a big part of that.
D&D leans into the anything-goes wild lolrandom hyper chaos of the d20, where anybody can roll for anything and stand a chance of success even when all logic, reason, rational thought and game-'verse reality says they have no god damned business touching that godforsaken math rock. Other systems do it differently. Some folks like what those other systems accomplish. Some folks like skill, talent, and training having a degree of meaning. Some folks find it absolutely beyond ridiculous that the Int 6 barbarian without a lick of education in his entire life is even allowed to roll Arcana, but D&D says he's perfectly entitled to whatever roll he wants, and he's got a five percent chance of being the smartest wizard in the room whenever he does.
So sometimes people are gonna complain about the lolrandom nonsense that sort of action resolution produces. Which is why we're all here, ne?
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Replace anything that still grants a static modifier with a dice roll where the static modifier is the average. i.e. your ability modifier of +3 is now an ability modifier of +1d6. It also may shift dice that already are multiple smaller dice such as 2d6 back into 1d12.
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Worth noting, the "game feel" is because of the math, not in spite of it. D20 produces a demonstrably different curve than 3d6 or 2d10 or what have you. Basic statistics.
And FWIW, WotC clearly understands that. "Bounded accuracy" and the advantage/disadvantage system both, together and individually, emulate some of the statistical advantages of a bell curve. It's almost like they bent over backwards to change the feel of the game without ditching the brand of "D20." This is probably why the 5e SRD doesn't include a "bell curve rules" section but the d20 SRD did.
Not going down to "1" is the point. You eliminate the possibility of critical failure/fumble; yet still retain, albeit much less probably, the potential for a nat 20.
It doesn't reduce the chances of getting successful results over 11generating fewer hits per roll. It reduces the chances of getting roles over 11. As someone mentioned above, part of the point of this too is that you are confident in your bonus's being able to turn a roll of 11 into a sucess meaning you get more hits per turn as you are reducing the chances of of your bonus's failing to overcome a low roll.
(d10+2d6-2) You are overthinking it. Even 3.5 UA had a variant suggestion of 2d10 as simple reduction in chaos, though it wasn't as much of a sacrifice at the higher end because in 3e crits were not specific to nat 20's (automatic confirmation) - weapons had threat ranges and feats for extending them so that you could theoretically crit on rolls of like 16-20 or even 14-20; though it required a confirmation roll. Again the issue they were recognizing -like apparently so very many other 'issues'- is that most players enjoy critical success while far fewer enjoy critical failure, and apparently "DM's can houserule out critical failure" wasn't entirely good enough on it's own; so someone tossed out this means among others of just ditching the possibility of rolling a "1"; and generating a more stable means of generating above average final results.
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Oh geez. This is going to take some doing, I can just tell. Right then.
1) I'm going to get back to this, but I think it'll go better addressing the other stuff specifically first. So:
2) No, I do not claim that "every single action resolution system produces the exact same result the exact same way the exact same number of times and therefore there's no practical difference between any of them". I claim that 1d20 rolls are not more chaotic than 2d10 or 3d6 rolls within the context of D&D. Resolutions of checks in D&D are really, really simple: there's a percentage chance of success, and an inverse percentage chance of failure - the binary thing. That's true for all three options mentioned. You hit or exceed the DC or you don't, whether you do that with 1d20, 2d10 or 3d6. You have a bunch of rolls that give you a success, and a bunch of others that give you a failure. Whether within that bunch of successes or that bunch of failures some are more common than others is completely immaterial. The only thing that matters is how many there are in total in each bunch, because that ratio equals the odds and anything else is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how likely you are to roll exactly 11, or any other specific number. You're not trying to roll exactly 11. You're trying to roll as high as the DC or higher. Graphically, the shape of the curve doesn't matter; the areas below the curve left and right of the DC (if plotted on the horizontal axis) represent the odds of succes, not the curve itself.
I'll say again: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER YOU'RE MORE LIKELY TO ROLL AN 11 THAN A 20 FOR A SKILL CHECK OR NOT. Rolling 11 doesn't mean anything. It's an average result, but "average" doesn't tell us whether it succeeds. We shouldn't care about average, because the system doesn't give us anything for being average. All we should care about is rolling high enough, and sometimes high enough means rolling at least a 16 while other times high enough just means rolling at least a 3. Sometimes rolling high enough even means rolling at least -3, in which case we can't fail and there shouldn't have been a roll called for in the first place. Maybe people do care about rolling average more often and extremes being more rare; that's fine, I'm not judging them for it, but mechanically that's meaningless.
(as for why other systems don't get in on the d20 system: I assume it's because you put yourself in competition with D&D when you do, and why'd you want to do that? If I want to play something like D&D, chances are I'm just going to play D&D)
3) Will you kindly lay off the critical success/failure thing? There's no such thing in 5E for skill checks. There isn't. You know it, I know it, you know that I know that you know it. It's been repeated several times in this thread, even if it shouldn't have needed to be said once. It's the rules. You're complaining about something that doesn't happen and can't happen if you play by the rules, so just play by the rules already. If you're not, stop playing and find a better game where you will. And again, having had training and having talent and skill and being prepared and whatever else do matter: having a +5 relative advantage in modifier makes you three times as likely to beat someone in a skill check. That's what training and skill and talent and preparation do, they give you a better modifier, and it pays off. You can keep telling me they don't, but they evidently, demonstrably, factually do.
4) Clearly I'm here to complain about that complaining, because (and that should really be equally clear by now) it's pure silliness. There is no more nor less lolrandom nonsense using 1d20 than there is 2d10. There isn't. Math says so. You can take Math's word for it. Math's word is good.
And finally getting back to 1) the intuitive and subjective feelings that flat-out contradict design can't be held sacrosanct. That's like telling me some people would like Pac-Man better if it didn't have a maze, because Snake doesn't have a maze and they like Snake. If people can't intuit the value of the maze in Pac-Man, sure, that's for them to decide, but it doesn't invalidate Pac-Man's design.
The system works. The system works as designed. If you think it doesn't because you feel that it doesn't, well, you're wrong. No offense, but you're wrong. Which isn't even not ok, it's whatever, but it'd be inane to change the design, which works, because there are people mistakenly saying it doesn't work. If you don't want crits in skill checks, great, then don't houserule them in. If you do want crits in skill checks, but they should be more rare than 1 in 20 on either side, hey, go for it - maybe require a second confirmation roll to reduce the percentage. If you want something else, do that, whatever it is. I'm not your supervisor, I can't stop you. Just don't try to tell me the system as designed does something other than what it actually does so you can complain about it. We have plenty of real things to talk about here, we don't have to fabricate anything.
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I play by the rules. As do most of the DM's I play with and know. The DM for my campaign on sunday mornings said at the beginning of the campaign that he would run 1's on skills the way you claim everyone does. Guess what happened. ~20 sessions in and he forgets about it and I have to remind him of his own house rule and he decides to just drop it. The only other times I've seen people funk with nat 1's is that they made me hit an ally with my attack or made me auto-fail a saving throw.
out of the 8 active DM's on the server that I play/run on (that I have played in their games before), he has been the only one to my memory that has ever done nat 1's on skill checks. And he gave up on it.
Your artificer would, imo in most games, still open the lock. Also why is a DM asking for checks on DC 5 things? DC 5 is literally trivial difficulty. But I take it that was just your hyperbole.
I disagree with this notion that everyone just does nat 1's on ability checks. It's a perceived notion from folks that only play with people who do or only play with the same group and same DM. I've racked up like ~1.5k hours on r20 (not that impressive for most, ik) and most of that has been with a variety of DM's and players every day of the week. I haven't played for 20+ years, but I think I've gotten enough experience to know that nat 1's on ability checks isn't this ubiquitous house rule that everyone just hivemind-accepted at one point.
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So, all of this is simply not true. Different probability distributions achieve objectively different game design goals. The benefit of a normal distribution is that static bonuses have a greater impact on your % chance to succeed (with some diminishing returns; the difference between a novice and a journeyman is greater than the difference between a journeyman and a master, even if the absolute numerical difference is the same). That usually creates more naturalistic results. That said, it's absolutely true that the "chaos" of D&D doesn't really come from the flat distribution. The chaos of D&D comes from the relative contribution of the random die versus the static bonuses. Reducing the chaos would involve reducing the range of numbers on the die, for example to one d10, and adjusting target numbers accordingly.
This is either also not true, or you're not conveying your point very clearly. 1d20 has a greater standard deviation than 2d10. That's pretty definitionally "more lolrandom."
That's not a good analogy. A much better analogy is the evergreen XCOM analogy where the game displays a 90% hit chance but the actual chance ends up being about 99%, because players are dumb and don't intuitively understand that 90% hit chance means 10% miss chance. Do you know why XCOM does that? Because game designers have done a lot of research, and telling these lies improves the play experience. Player psychology doesn't really have a place in discussion of statistics, but D&D is a game, and making a good game is very different from making a "correct" one, to the point that discounting it honestly is wrong, in context.
Sure, the system works as designed, but that doesn't shield it from design criticism, which is what the entire point of all of this is. No one is saying "D&D isn't achieving its goals." They're saying "D&D's goals don't make a fun game."
Great idea and I will steal that, thank you very much yoink
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IMO the reason I've felt skill profs don't matter too much is because they're so damn easy to acquire and getting a stupid high bonus is so easy, that it just defeats the purpose of rolling at all. It just makes it feel like "why do skills even exist in the game if the players are always going to succeed at their rolls because of their stupid high bonuses and easy access to advantage?"
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It's late Sunday night here and I don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation, so I'll very briefly address this and then shut down the forum: the resolution system (for skill checks, which don't have crits) doesn't care about standard deviations. It just checks whether you rolled high enough or not. The variance of the di(c)e rolls is immaterial, since for the purpose of a given DC all rolls that result in a success are equal and all rolls that result in a failure are equal. There is neither reward nor punishment for rolling average or extreme, and within the population of successes all are the same just like within the population of failures all are the same. 2d10, as such, is neither more nor less reliable (or conversely, "lolrandom") than 1d20. The same DC will result in different chances of success between the two options, but that's something else entirely.
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I also don't want to start hitting the booze in desperation (though I have tomorrow off, so we'll see how this goes), but you are continuing to examine only a single die roll in isolation, which simply doesn't reflect the reality of the game. The variance of the dice is definitely material, because players are making a shit-ton of rolls.
I'm still not entirely sure what you are trying to say, but I looked this up:
Core Mechanics: Randomization – Scott's Game Room (scottsgameroom.com)
and it has a graph comparing the probabilities of d20v2d10 and apparently concludes that vs an opponent whom you outclass, 2d10>d20, but vs an opponent who outclasses you, 2d10<d20. So, I suppose if you could choose between the two instance by instance, it would help to know how often you are going to be facing superior foes vs inferior ones.
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In an attempt tp make it quicker, simpler, and easier to understand, a comparison.
In a tabletop RPG, your bonuses, abilities, equipment, and the like - all the ways you can modify a roll - represent your training, practice, talents, and edges.
The die represents the perversity of the universe and its desire to make you dead.
In d20 resolution, the perversity of the universe is at an absolute maximum. Everything is chaos, and one cannot have any certainty that their skills or abilities will work. An easy, simple challenge can be short-circuited by the perversity of the universe, while the most difficult challenges the game has available - both in and out of combat - can be casually attempted with a perfectly serviceable margin of success.
In dice pool resolution, the perversity of the universe is kept to a reasonable minimum. The universe can still throw you the occasional curveball, often enough to keep you on your toes, but you can look at a given task and know, with a reasonable degree of firmness, whether you're up to that challenge or whether it's beyond you. An easy, simple challenge will not stymie you more than once in a great while, and conversely the game's most difficult challenges - both in and out of combat - require extensive preparation simply to avoid disaster.
Some people prefer the idea that anything can happen, that a simple challenge can easily defeat their heroes, and that even the most difficult challenge requires nothing more than a pinch of shortstack luck and a dose of advantage. Others are enamored with the idea that skill, training, and talent should be able to overcome the perversity of the universe as often as not, and that someone who invests time, effort, and energy in becoming exceptional at a thing should actually have better results when using that skill than someone who has never trained a day in their life, picked up a single book, waved a single wand, or what-have-you.
That's all.
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You mean to tell me that in all of your collective experience, none of you have played Champions/Fantasy HERO?
A 3d6 based game that works perfectly well.
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Got called up. :/ Opted for tea over booze in a supreme effort of will.
The number of rolls is immaterial. Each roll can still only result in one of two outcomes, success or failure. For a check, it doesn't matter whether you rolled a 12, a 16, a 20 or anything in between - all that matters is that you succeeded. Likewise it doesn't matter whether you rolled an 8, a 3 or a 1 - all that matters is that you failed. In other words, the odds of rolling a high number, a low number or an average number are irrelevant. The only relevant odds are those of success or failure. And because of that the standard deviation on the rolls isn't pertinent to being lolrandom. It's pertinent when you we look at what odds we want a check to have because then we have to set our DC (2d10 makes it easier to hit low to mid DCs, 1d20 makes it easier to hit high ones), but that isn't lolrandom. A DC is set deliberately and translates right back to a success and failure chance and not caring about what you rolled exactly, only whether it was high enough, because regardless of what you roll you can only succeed or fail - you can't get extra rewards, you can't get a consolation prize, you can't get punished beyond straightforward failure, there are no grades, you just pass or fail.
Yurei, all of that is as much as or more a function of DCs rather than dice. A simple challenge with a DC 5 will never fail if you're proficient and have a +2 attribute modifier. Never. Never mind that such a check shouldn't be rolled in the first place, mechanically you can't fail it anyway. Likewise, if you have a DC 25 to contend with and your total modifier is only +4, your margin of success is nonexistent (and the check should equally not be rolled in the first place, unless your DM is messing with you and just doesn't want you to know something is impossible - not a sign of a good DM). The "degree of firmness" you mention is simply the odds you face, and those odds, again, are just the chance of rolling high enough to hit the DC. 1d20 or 2d10 doesn't matter, assuming the DC is set to reflect the intended odds corresponding to whatever di(c)e will be used.
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That variance is a product of the probabilities, though, not the die rolls
Let's say you have a rogue with a +9 on some skill. You have a 50/50 chance of making a DC 20 skill check -- which, according to the DMG, is "hard"
Since it's a pure coin flip, if you make a proverbial shit-ton of checks against that skill, you will absolutely experience "variance", in that you'll have runs of successes and failures rather than simply alternating them. Because that's how randomness works
Are you suggesting that's a bad thing, that should be changed somehow?
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
What Saga and I are suggesting is that examining single rolls, in isolation, is disingenuous because the game experience isn't about one single roll made in isolation, it's about the cumulative experience of thousands of rolls across an entire campaign. When those rolls are considered as an aggregate whole, d20 resolution is swingy and obnoxious and results far too often in aberrant events that defy reason. The rogue breaking her thieves' tools on a DC5 lock, the wizard failing an Arcana check only for the barbarian to pass the same check and look at the wizard all "are you stupid or something?", the plate-armored fighter not managing to avoid a single enemy blow...there's lots of ways d20 resolution produces aberrant results. It's so common it stops being fun.
Please do not contact or message me.