Quote from: gleichman;645311I don't see a excluded middle here. A creature with low skill can be said to be large, but few would call a giant slug powerful. Just big, and something you step out of the way of.

The "...and powerful" implies the skilled needed to back up large.

The middle is in the "the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill".

However, when The Traveller and CRKrueger made their reply exchanges, any "may" and "possibly" was overlooked, and it seemed like The Traveller said "all large and powerful creature have low skill" and as if CRKrueger said "all large and powerful creature have high skill".

That was where the middle was excluded.

Quote from: Catelf;645314The middle is in the "the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill".

Sigh, once again- a large low skill creature is not something I'd call powerful. People use things like the word 'and' to avoid excluded middles you know, not to string identical words together.

Now if  Traveller had wanted to make a better example, he would have used the giant slug. A giant acid spitting slug, one that couldn't hit the side of a barn but still covered an area maybe a dozen meters in diameter or so. That would be something large and dangerous. It would also require area of effect rules- and those rules by nature overcome low skill. But at least it would fit his requirements of low skill and dangerous.

Quote from: gleichman;645318Sigh, once again- a large low skill creature is not something I'd call powerful. People use things like the word 'and' to avoid excluded middles you know, not to string identical words together.

Now if  Traveller had wanted to make a better example, he would have used the giant slug. A giant acid spitting slug, one that couldn't hit the side of a barn but still covered an area maybe a dozen meters in diameter or so. That would be something large and dangerous. It would also require area of effect rules- and those rules by nature overcome low skill. But at least it would fit his requirements of low skill and dangerous.

When people use large and powerful, they mean big and strong. Fighting skill is a separate axis. The question becomes who do you bet on when you have "big, strong, inexperienced/low skill" vs. "small, weak, experienced/high skill". A Navy Seal may have a lot of skill, but I'll bet on the hippo/cape buffalo/grizzly bear (in hand to hand obviously, no guns) every time.

On a somewhat separate note when it comes to human vs. troll, both are low skill in the encounter. Because unless the human has spent time training to fight humanoids that are much bigger and stronger, his/her ability against other human fighters isn't going to translate. The principles of attack and defense are similar in soccer and basketball, but the techniques (especially of attack) are so different that knowing what to do doesn't mean you can pull it off.

The Traveller, re. the Tennis example: over the course of a match, you may be right. But the odds change a lot if you are talking about a single point. Combat is going to be more like a point, since the fact you could easily beat someone over 3 or 5 sets is irrelevant if you die when you lose a single point. So the 50 year old ex-pro who has been playing for 45 years will beat the really quick, hard-hitting 20 year old who has been playing for a month in a match, but the newbie will still win a bunch of points because of superior athleticism.

I'd call an elephant powerful, but I think he'd lose in any fight with a ninja.

Quote from: apparition13;645355When people use large and powerful, they mean big and strong.

As one of the people saying 'large and powerful' and one of the people accused of ignoring the middle, I assure you that was not what I meant.

Quote from: apparition13;645355On a somewhat separate note when it comes to human vs. troll, both are low skill in the encounter. Because unless the human has spent time training to fight humanoids that are much bigger and stronger, his/her ability against other human fighters isn't going to translate. The principles of attack and defense are similar in soccer and basketball, but the techniques (especially of attack) are so different that knowing what to do doesn't mean you can pull it off.

That's an interesting point, but I don't think it's enough of an issue to warrant adjusting rules in terms of playability versus finely grained realism. The troll versus warrior situation could perhaps be represented in the imagination by that scene from 300, where the Spartans are fighting that godawful eight foot tall mutant; they rapidly adjusted their tactics to use the skills they had in order to bring him/it down.

In other words high skill is already offset against giant size if the stats are appropriately weighted.

Quote from: apparition13;645355The Traveller, re. the Tennis example: over the course of a match, you may be right. But the odds change a lot if you are talking about a single point. Combat is going to be more like a point, since the fact you could easily beat someone over 3 or 5 sets is irrelevant if you die when you lose a single point. So the 50 year old ex-pro who has been playing for 45 years will beat the really quick, hard-hitting 20 year old who has been playing for a month in a match, but the newbie will still win a bunch of points because of superior athleticism.

I'm not sure I follow you here.

Quote from: gleichman;645364As one of the people saying 'large and powerful' and one of the people accused of ignoring the middle, I assure you that was not what I meant.

You're one person, not most. The fact that you mean "big and skilled" when everyone else means "big and strong" only makes your personal usage "incoherent"*.

*By which I mean other people won't understand it, not the advertised experience does not match the actual experience, which is a pretty incoherent definition of "incoherent". I hope everyone cohered that.

Quote from: apparition13;645376You're one person, not most.

I think that fact that the whole disscusion (which include a number of people other than myself) basically centered on saying large and powerful meant that it couldn't be low skilled puts the lie to that statement.

Really you should have said nothing about excluded middles- that phrase is overused (and wrongly used) here a great deal.

What you should have asked was "Let's say there is a creature that is large, strong, and low skill? How would you handle it?". Much more friendly and direct to the point. Try it next time, the answers may have interesting.

Quote from: gleichman;645378What you should have asked was "Let's say there is a creature that is large, strong, and low skill? How would you handle it?". Much more friendly and direct to the point. Try it next time, the answers may have interesting.

"...but to punish you this time, I won't actually engage you at your obvious intentions and answer it".

lulz.

Quote from: The Traveller;645375That's an interesting point, but I don't think it's enough of an issue to warrant adjusting rules in terms of playability versus finely grained realism. The troll versus warrior situation could perhaps be represented in the imagination by that scene from 300, where the Spartans are fighting that godawful eight foot tall mutant; they rapidly adjusted their tactics to use the skills they had in order to bring him/it down.

In other words high skill is already offset against giant size if the stats are appropriately weighted.


I'm not sure I follow you here.

Tennis players get judged by how often they win matches, not points. If your skill system is set up to reflect winning matches, which are the result of many, many, points, then all you need is a small advantage in the odds to be virtually unbeatable over the aggregate of many points. A combat encounter, by contrast, is a contest of much fewer "points", maybe even only one, and in those circumstances skill that may win out over the long term can lose in a one off. Since there is no long term when it comes to combat (you lose, you are defeated, rather than you lose the point, whose serve is it?), it makes every point a potentially sudden-death match-point. In a one off, single point/combat circumstance, even though the advantage probably lies with the grizzled vet rather than the quick and strong kid, the advantage isn't nearly as great as it would be in a match made up of a hundred points.

If you're gambling and have a 51% chance of winning any hand, you'll clean up over the long run. If you have everything, including your life, at stake on one hand, 51% is not comforting odds*.

So my conclusion is that while your skill to athleticism ratio might be appropriate to represent the results of a match, it may be under-weighting the effect of athleticism (stats, attributes, etc.) on a single point.

*I beat the casual players I play, but I lose points to them. I lose to my cousin the college scholarship player, but I take points off him. I'm a lot more confident saying I will beat the casual player, or lose to my cousin, than I am saying I will win or lose this point.**

**My game is actually soccer, and there you have the additional complication that novices can fool experienced players because they don't know how things are done, resulting in their doing things by accident that "beat" the experienced player. Their results will actually show more variance than that of experienced, but poorly skilled, players. Their inexperience can help them because they are unpredictably in ways that don't fit the normal game experience. They are still a liability, but invariably someone will do *something* that will leave them with a silly grin, the experienced player with a wry grin, and onlookers pointing and laughing.

Quote from: apparition13;645387Tennis players get judged by how often they win matches, not points. If your skill system is set up to reflect winning matches, which are the result of many, many, points, then all you need is a small advantage in the odds to be virtually unbeatable over the aggregate of many points. A combat encounter, by contrast, is a contest of much fewer "points", maybe even only one, and in those circumstances skill that may win out over the long term can lose in a one off. Since there is no long term when it comes to combat (you lose, you are defeated, rather than you lose the point, whose serve is it?), it makes every point a potentially sudden-death match-point. In a one off, single point/combat circumstance, even though the advantage probably lies with the grizzled vet rather than the quick and strong kid, the advantage isn't nearly as great as it would be in a match made up of a hundred points.

I agree with you here, my preference is for a 1:1:1 ratio between stats:skills:randomness, so a highly skilled but physically less capable player will have barely better odds than a more fit but less skilled player. Over the longer term the odds favour the older player but any given exchange is just north of a toss up.

This extends nicely when dealing with very large and powerful monsters versus humans with high skill, successfully representing as I mentioned earlier a troll shouldering through a half dozen men at arms but being stopped dead by a very highly skilled PC with high quality equipment. In the former case, size>skill, in the latter, skill>size.

An inordinate concentration on skill works reasonably well if all you're dealing with is humans, but once you go beyond that limited range it falls apart quickly. If skill is always > everything, a lot of factors go begging.

While we're on the subject, I recall jibbajabba had mentioned previously as part of the reasoning for his skill-heavy preference, in the case of people like Usain Bolt versus other athletes, randomness is reduced considerably. Usain might only lose one out of every five races, but from a quick back of the envelope calculation (feel free to correct this) if in a skill 1-10 plus stat 1-10 plus d10 system one person has 5 more than everyone else (total 10+1d10 versus 15+1d10), the more skilled has a 20-30% chance of losing out on average. So a 1:1:1 ratio stacks up fairly well even in extreme situations.

Obviously when it comes to the Olympics we're talking about 25+1d10 versus 30+1d10 but same idea.

When I draw the distinction, I am generally inclined to give learned skill more weight.

It's not a cut and dried thing, though. I would need more experience with the GDW house system (as found for instance in Traveller: the New Era) to come to a strong opinion about that particular implementation. Other examples would likewise depend upon the particulars.

As no doubt has been pointed out already, verisimilitude might suggest that innate potential sets bounds on what training or self-development can accomplish (which in turn decides how much potential is realized).

Quote from: gleichman;644961Indeed. I think there are two reasons why Traveller is so tunnel visioned on this.

The first is the very human failing of looking at everything like they're people in furry costumes. Because it takes us years of training to master our skills, he assumes that must apply to all creatures- and he doesn't see elephants training for battle. Thus he assumes they are bad at it, and depend completely upon their Stats.

The second is the grand child of D&D where Hit Points represented both skill and toughness. That there is no difference between a troll and a high level fighter (who may in fact have more HP, do more damage and have an higher AC). Gamers are in practical terms trained to consider all inputs of equal weight by the games they play, and they confuse that with reality.

Quote from: flyingmice;644963Once again we agree completely.

It takes only two years to make a Navy SEAL, an extraordinarily competent warrior, using compressed training, ruthless selection, and constant repetition. There is nothing in that regimen which cannot be done in the wild - in fact the selection is even more ruthless.  

-clash

I agree with the above posts, and that is why RQ 3 better represents a verosimilie simulation, IMO. There your abilities will increase your basic %, so if you have equal training, a guy with better abilities will have better chances, but most of it is still training and skill.