Compound

James J Skach · January 15, 2007, 10:12:14 PM

So, one of the things I've been kicking around is to have a mechanic that quantifies combining tasks. So, for instance, if you were sneaking into a camp, and you had to get by four guards, you would combine the task difficulties for all of the sneaking past the guards.

Problem is when you multiply the probabilities out, you start to get numbers bunched around difficult.

Now I did this all assuming d20, and when you get up to like 3 combined tasks, you start getting consist task ratings of 19.

So has anyone done this - either home brewed or published? How?

James J Skach · January 15, 2007, 10:20:01 PM

Perhaps a bit more...

In d20, an average task is a difficulty rating of 10. If you combine three average tasks, you get a difficulty rating of 17 - more than tough. If you combine 5, it's up to 19.

So that means if you tried to do 5 average tasks combined under one roll, from a strict probability standpoint, it would be a 95% chance of failure.

That just doesn't seem right to me, though the math works that way. I'm just wondering if anyone else has faced this and what solution they came up with - whether it was strictly by-the-book math or some different approach to the numbers.

lordhellion · January 15, 2007, 10:28:33 PM

D20 doesn't leave a lot of room to breathe. As long as the tasks are all fairly similar, I might just run with the highest difficulty number--if they can juke that one they can juke them all.

Or, prehaps a scaled increase: +1 for one additional task, another +1 for two more tasks, another +1 for three more, and so forth. You'd want to use heavy discretion, though, as always.

Of course, combining tests always makes me nervous. If they fail, which part did they fail?

Franklin · January 16, 2007, 05:32:21 AM

One way that we did it in our (old) group was to say "What bit of this thing is most dangerous for your characters?" The GM (normally me) would say what this was and make that the main part of the roll, making it more difficult by a few points here or there. If they passed that, then they passed the entire thing, if not, then that was the bit where it all went wrong and bad stuff started to happen to them. Not sur eif that is any help at all.

Thanks
Frank

James J Skach · January 16, 2007, 11:26:43 AM

Quote from: lordhellionD20 doesn't leave a lot of room to breathe. As long as the tasks are all fairly similar, I might just run with the highest difficulty number--if they can juke that one they can juke them all.

I apologize if I came off as thinking of this in terms of the D20 rules. I only meant that I was basing my calculation on the d20 as the randomizer. The same thing happens with d100, just a bit more granularity before things bunch up again.

Quote from: lordhellionOr, prehaps a scaled increase: +1 for one additional task, another +1 for two more tasks, another +1 for three more, and so forth. You'd want to use heavy discretion, though, as always.

This is what I was thinking about - and trying to see if anyone had actually done this and used it. It breaks the math/probability aspect of the resolution, but how does it play?

Quote from: lordhellionOf course, combining tests always makes me nervous. If they fail, which part did they fail?

And this, I have to say, I hadn't considered. Something to ponder...it actually makes me rethink this quite a bit.

Thanks!

Compound

James J Skach

James J Skach

lordhellion

Franklin

James J Skach