TheRPGSite

Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

That depends on how detailed you want to be.
Remember that Skills in the SG systems and similar may be cheaper, but they are also more narrow in where they can be used.

I don't think so, no. If you wanted to give one or the other a preponderance of importance it would be easy, for example to make attributes more important:

attribute*2+skill
(attribute+5)+skill
etc.

but I don't see any reason for it really, and you'd have to rejig your dice rolls to compensate for it in terms of randomness. Maybe in the case of extremely large and powerful monsters with low skill you might want to give them an edge to keep them dangerous, but that depends on lots of factors. Example of a skill + stat + d10 situation:

normal human: combat 5 + use sword 5, base 10 (average)
troll: combat 10 + use club 3, base 13

That doesn't seem to give the troll much of an edge in a battle, but external factors can modify actual combat outcomes significantly, like the way the troll does base 10 damage and the normal human only does base 4, the troll is both more heavily armoured and can absorb a lot more damage implying the troll can do wild attacks for even more damage with much less risk than a human, the log a troll is swinging can't be deflected with a sword, only dodged, and so on.

Or you could just bump up the troll's skill a bit, as with wild animals (teeth and claws are their only weapons so they are naturally going to be pretty good at using them).

In general I think it works. 1:1 is the simplest way to do it, and maybe if you want to adjust the importance of skill/attribute it'd be easiest to do it by changing the range of the attributes, instead of the weighting formula - you could have stat going 1-5 (4 point range) and skill 0-8 (8 point range) for example.


Also though:

*if someone has no skill at all, I think a task should be a lot harder, even if someone has a high attribute as well. So, some sort of extra penalty at Skill 0 may be called for.

*I do like in some respects the idea that you don't have to spec out attributes perfectly in order to max out a skill. Its probably realistic (i.e. most olympians or sports champions seem to have specific builds and such) but I do enjoy the idea of concepts like the old martial arts dude whose martial arts is really really badass in spite of his general Dex maybe not being as high as it used to be. So I like the idea of perhaps jacking up an attribute for specific checks, though not past the usual maximum.

I think one of the big advantages, is that most people can quickly grasp a 1-5 stat and skill distribution. It feels familiar, because a lot of ratings (hotels, videos, et al) use a 5 star system.

I always think it was a large component to the success of the WoD games.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

That method was always a massive simplification, one that never made sense to me. It's arrival basically marked the beginning of the end of simulation in game design.

Might be why I never used it, and why I wouldn't play a game that did.

Quote from: gleichman;644908That method was always a massive simplification, one that never made sense to me. It's arrival basicall marked the beginning of the end of simulation in game design.

I fail to follow your logic on this one.

Care to explain in more detail why you feel this way?

Quote from: gleichman;644908That method was always a massive simplification, one that never made sense to me. It's arrival basicall marked the beginning of the end of simulation in game design.

Might be why I never used it, and why I would play a game that did.

Could you expand on that a bit? I.e. what is lost in the [stat+skill] method?

(edit: scooped! dammit)

Quote from: GnomeWorks;644910I fail to follow your logic on this one.

Care to explain in more detail why you feel this way?

I'm strongly of the opinion that training and experience are more important than traditional attributes, especially for the source material for the genres I play. No untrained man who has never done any math is going to be the equal of someone holding a PHD in the subject.

They certainly help, they may even put a cap on many skills, but the degree shown in attribute + skill system? Nonsense.

The arrival of this method was a signpost for the start of non-simulation gaming IMO, when simple mechanics and quick methods became more important than representing game world reality.

Quote from: gleichman;644915I'm strongly of the opinion that training and experience are more important than traditional attributes, especially for the source material for the genres I play. No untrained man who has never done any math is going to be the equal of someone holding a PHD in the subject.

For some skills (math, nuclear physics, etc.) this is certainly true. However, for other skills (fist-fighting, etc.) people with high (relevant) attributes and little training can do as well as someone with low (relevant) attributes and a lot of training.  These two types of skills can easily be handled the simple attribute + skill system. Those skills that require training to use as all require at least a "1" in the skill to even roll (regardless of how high or low your attribute is). Those that do not require training to use can be rolled even with no rank in skill.  This may still be abstracted more than you would like, but it does answer your objection.

Quote from: RandallS;644916For some skills (math, nuclear physics, etc.) this is certainly true. However, for other skills (fist-fighting, etc.) people with high (relevant) attributes and little training can do as well as someone with low (relevant) attributes and a lot of training.

I disagree. And in the case of the genre sources I like, disagree so strongly that we're not even talking the same language.

Quote from: gleichman;644915I'm strongly of the opinion that training and experience are more important than traditional attributes, especially for the source material for the genres I play. No untrained man who has never done any math is going to be the equal of someone holding a PHD in the subject.

They certainly help, they may even put a cap on many skills, but the degree shown in attribute + skill system? Nonsense.

The arrival of this method was a signpost for the start of non-simulation gaming IMO, when simple mechanics and quick methods became more important than representing game world reality.

I tend to agree and weight skill above stats.

How much weight, is not so clear.

I think that in a game system, there should be some difference between stats and skills. For example, being naturally graceful and coordinated certainly helps on fight with a rapier. But Skill with a rapier shold offer some perk that natural talent does not.

Its quite a new idea

If you look back at older systems such as BRP or FGU you tend to get

Start score in a skill = (formula involving Attributes)
As you gain experience or build on a skill you add to this value often significantly as both these systems are % for the final skill (although FGU /20 to get a d20 TN)

So typically starting score = Dex + 5%
Final score = 65% (13 Dex + 5 base + 47 experience)

This was a fairly typical model until WoD came in with stat = 1-5 Skill = 1-5
Now stat and skill are seen as equal in importance.
We can explude D&Ds stat as skill NWP as they were non sensical compared to its much closer to BRP theives skills where Dex gives a bonus to a base which improves with XP.

In reality skill weighs much more that stat. So I think I have used tennis as a good example. The weight should be skill 1-80 Stat 1-10 + 1d6.

Quote from: gleichman;644908That method was always a massive simplification, one that never made sense to me. It's arrival basicall marked the beginning of the end of simulation in game design.

Might be why I never used it, and why I would play a game that did.

indeed.

and a better way would be...?

Quote from: RandallS;644916Those skills that require training to use as all require at least a "1" in the skill to even roll (regardless of how high or low your attribute is). Those that do not require training to use can be rolled even with no rank in skill.

Yes, this is the approach I use. Other than for very basic actions there's usually a skill which covers moves, if you don't have it you can't do it. Also attributes are very static, so even if skills start out lower they inevitably tend to outweigh the base stat.

I don't really see a problem with starting the game out on an even scale, 1-10 stat, 1-10 skill. It produces results I'm happy with.

Quote from: jibbajibbaIn reality skill weighs much more that stat. So I think I have used tennis as a good example. The weight should be skill 1-80 Stat 1-10 + 1d6.

That works alright until you try to apply it to non human monsters. What about the abovementioned troll, very high strength, average reflexes, low skill - should he get his ass kicked as a rule by an above average skill man at arms?

Using stat (1-10) + skill (1-10) for humans, the troll should be able to shoulder through a half dozen soldiers creating carnage as he goes by my calculations; if skill were as heavily weighted as you outline, one soldier could probably do him in. Alternately with the even stat and skill system, a very highly skilled PC could probably cut the troll down with a couple of blows, all of which seems realistic to me.

Not so easy to make a system that works for non humans as well as it does for humans!

Quote from: jibbajibba;644920Its quite a new idea

If you look back at older systems such as BRP or FGU you tend to get

Start score in a skill = (formula involving Attributes)
As you gain experience or build on a skill you add to this value often significantly as both these systems are % for the final skill (although FGU /20 to get a d20 TN)

So typically starting score = Dex + 5%
Final score = 65% (13 Dex + 5 base + 47 experience)

This was a fairly typical model until WoD came in with stat = 1-5 Skill = 1-5
Now stat and skill are seen as equal in importance.
We can explude D&Ds stat as skill NWP as they were non sensical compared to its much closer to BRP theives skills where Dex gives a bonus to a base which improves with XP.

In reality skill weighs much more that stat. So I think I have used tennis as a good example. The weight should be skill 1-80 Stat 1-10 + 1d6.

It always seemed to me that BRP and similar systems left the attributes completely redundant except in a few weird instances (like making an idea roll to see if you suddenly 'get it').

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644922indeed.

and a better way would be...?

Just about anything that doesn't weight stats so heavily, season to taste. My homegrown rules for example are idea :)

In published games... jibbajibba's examples look like a decent answer to the question in general although I think those games suffer from other problems. But the concept he lays out is acceptable.

Oddly enough HERO System puts too much weight on Stats for my taste, but it doesn't break it so badly that I can't put up with it.

Quote from: gleichman;644915I'm strongly of the opinion that training and experience are more important than traditional attributes, especially for the source material for the genres I play. No untrained man who has never done any math is going to be the equal of someone holding a PHD in the subject.

They certainly help, they may even put a cap on many skills, but the degree shown in attribute + skill system? Nonsense.

The arrival of this method was a signpost for the start of non-simulation gaming IMO, when simple mechanics and quick methods became more important than representing game world reality.

My Lord! We actually completely and utterly agree on something! :D

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;644937My Lord! We actually completely and utterly agree on something! :D

-clash

We may need to check for other "End of Days" signs, it may be time to max the credit cards...

Quote from: The Traveller;644927Yes, this is the approach I use. Other than for very basic actions there's usually a skill which covers moves, if you don't have it you can't do it. Also attributes are very static, so even if skills start out lower they inevitably tend to outweigh the base stat.

I don't really see a problem with starting the game out on an even scale, 1-10 stat, 1-10 skill. It produces results I'm happy with.


That works alright until you try to apply it to non human monsters. What about the abovementioned troll, very high strength, average reflexes, low skill - should he get his ass kicked as a rule by an above average skill man at arms?

Using stat (1-10) + skill (1-10) for humans, the troll should be able to shoulder through a half dozen soldiers creating carnage as he goes by my calculations; if skill were as heavily weighted as you outline, one soldier could probably do him in. Alternately with the even stat and skill system, a very highly skilled PC could probably cut the troll down with a couple of blows, all of which seems realistic to me.

Not so easy to make a system that works for non humans as well as it does for humans!

at tennis, yup even Tiger Tim could beat a troll at tennis.

In combat. A low dex clumsy troll should hit infrequently but basically kill on impact. But there is no reason why a low dex troll needs to be unskilled at combat. One supposes that troll world is pretty tough and trolls that were crap at fighting would probably end up as dinner or clothes for other trolls before they made it to troll adult hood.
To think low dex = low skill is to equate skill and stat again.

Quote from: gleichman;644939We may need to check for other "End of Days" signs, it may be time to max the credit cards...

If the moon turns blood red tonight, I will be drowning in expensive toys... :D

-clash

Have skills give other things, whether you want to call them powers, tricks, feats, stunts, etc. doesn't matter.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644942In combat. A low dex clumsy troll should hit infrequently but basically kill on impact. But there is no reason why a low dex troll needs to be unskilled at combat. One supposes that troll world is pretty tough and trolls that were crap at fighting would probably end up as dinner or clothes for other trolls before they made it to troll adult hood.

You're just ducking the question here - the case can of course exist where you have large non human attributes and low skill, let's say an elephant, basically no skill but enormous strength and some reflexes. Should a man at arms be able to beat an enraged elephant easily?

The answer of course is no, so you're down to segregating rolls by species and a wide variety of other factors which leaves you ultimately with Phoenix Command levels of playability.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644942To think low dex = low skill is to equate skill and stat again.

I'm not thinking that, or saying that. Just low skill, full stop.

Another option if designers don't want to weight skills heavily are hierarchical skills, as follows:
Someone with INT 3 and Physics 9 (basically a moron with a professorship) has the same chance of success in a physics roll as someone with INT 9 and Physics 3 (a genius who didn't graduate in physics from college).

Technically the professor should have access to knowledge the dropout doesn't have and so should be able to do things the dropout couldn't.

This can be simulated by having hierarchical skills, in order to get Physics you need a minimum skill in maths and science or something. So the genius can't do what the professor can, because he can't get that skill full stop, without the supporting skills. Waaaay easier than fiddling with the basic structure of your system.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

GURPS 4E has provisions for this. In skill contests actual experience counts for more than just raw talent.

A guy with a 12 IQ and 16 points in a skill will fare a bit better than another with a 15 IQ and 2 points in the skill.

Quote from: The Traveller;644945You're just ducking the question here - the case can of course exist where you have large non human attributes and low skill, let's say an elephant, basically no skill but enormous strength and some reflexes. Should a man at arms be able to beat an enraged elephant easily?

The answer of course is no, so you're down to segregating rolls by species and a wide variety of other factors which leaves you ultimately with Phoenix Command levels of playability.

You are seizing on the one mistake he made - for some reason he replied to you that "To think low dex = low skill is to equate skill and stat again." as if to contradict something you said, but you had not stated that - to invalidate the rest of his argument, which does not depend on it. Essentially, animals have skills. Animals are way smarter than you give them credit for. Jibba-jabba is correct in his reasoning.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;644948You are seizing on the one mistake he made - for some reason he replied to you that "To think low dex = low skill is to equate skill and stat again." as if to contradict something you said, but you had not stated that - to invalidate the rest of his argument, which does not depend on it.

Whatever about that, this is fairly clear:

Jibbajabba: In reality skill weighs much more that stat. So I think I have used tennis as a good example. The weight should be skill 1-80 Stat 1-10 + 1d6.

Me: That works alright until you try to apply it to non human monsters. What about the abovementioned troll, very high strength, average reflexes, low skill - should he get his ass kicked as a rule by an above average skill man at arms?

When you weight skills or stats too highly you start running into serious problems. Or is each skill individually weighted?

Quote from: flyingmice;644948Essentially, animals have skills. Animals are way smarter than you give them credit for. Jibba-jabba is correct in his reasoning.

Well we could Dr Dolittle back and forth all day but it still ignores that mighty creatures with low skill exist and should be able to mill through decent numbers of quite skilled warriors. This system does not account for anything except humans, and even then raw stats can be a deciding factor in certain areas.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;644947GURPS 4E has provisions for this. In skill contests actual experience counts for more than just raw talent.

A guy with a 12 IQ and 16 points in a skill will fare a bit better than another with a 15 IQ and 2 points in the skill.

True, but that's not really what I'm referencing.

I'm talking about a guy with 16 IQ and 12 Skill.

Thinking about this a bit, if I were to use a skill + stat style die pool it woud look like this:

Stats would have three ranks:
      Below Average -1 dice
      Average +0 dice
      Above Average +1 dice

Skills would be ranked on at least a 1-5 scale, +1 dice per rank.

Yes this means that a Below Average Beginner is basically the same as unskilled, and I feel that's about right in reality. What they have managed to learn is mostly impractical fluff at best.

I *might* have a fourth rating for Stats representing a prodigy level talent that would apply only to a single specified skill...

Quote from: The Traveller;644951Well we could Dr Dolittle back and forth all day but it still ignores that mighty creatures with low skill exist and should be able to mill through decent numbers of quite skilled warriors. This system does not account for anything except humans, and even then raw stats can be a deciding factor in certain areas.

No, it *denies* "that mighty creatures with low skill exist". Any dangerous critter is skilled in combat. Your assuming something which is not there. Any troll who makes it to adulthood is a master at troll warfare. Elephants are very skilled at defending themselves. Leopards are extremely skilled at killing things. Why do you assume low or no-skill? These are things they do all the time. Why wouldn't they be skilled?

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;644959No, it *denies* "that mighty creatures with low skill exist".

Indeed. 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: 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 thy'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. There 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.

Once 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

Quote from: gleichman;644956Thinking about this a bit, if I were to use a skill + stat style die pool it woud look like this:

Stats would have three ranks:
      Below Average -1 dice
      Average +0 dice
      Above Average +1 dice

Skills would be ranked on at least a 1-5 scale, +1 dice per rank.

Yes this means that a Below Average Beginner is basically the same as unskilled, and I feel that's about right in reality. What they have managed to learn is mostly impractical fluff at best.

I *might* have a fourth rating for Stats representing a prodigy level talent that would apply only to a single specified skill...

I think that's counter productive. Players won't pick skills for a stat they start off 1 point down in.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644966I think that's counter productive. Players won't pick skills for a stat they start off 1 point down in.

They might if starting skills are determined randomly and you progress in the skills you use through play

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644966I think that's counter productive. Players won't pick skills for a stat they start off 1 point down in.

The idea that someone really bad in math ends up studying things other than math is not something I'd lose any sleep on. I'd consider it rather normal.

And of course if for some reason a character wants to run against the grain, he has that option. It will take him longer and require more effort to do less than other people- and again, that's the whole idea. No sleep lost here.


BTW: the example was given for the normal human range, and IMO the whole concept of dice pools systems like this falls apart outside that range.

Quote from: flyingmice;644959No, it *denies* "that mighty creatures with low skill exist". Any dangerous critter is skilled in combat. Your assuming something which is not there. Any troll who makes it to adulthood is a master at troll warfare. Elephants are very skilled at defending themselves. Leopards are extremely skilled at killing things. Why do you assume low or no-skill? These are things they do all the time. Why wouldn't they be skilled?

Sure, okay, ninja elephants. I'll remind you that I made this very same point early on in the discussion (my first post in the thread in fact, #3), but what you're saying here is that every large or powerful creature is of a high level of skill in combat, which just sidesteps the gaping hole in jibbajabba's system as well as being nonsense.

But since we're doing hypotheticals, let me posit that a troll might only be of the same skill level as a street tough or bully boy since trolls aren't noted for setting up fighting academies and so forth. When you're big and strong, you don't need to be skilled. Take the log and hit something until it stops moving. This isn't skill, but it is still formidable.

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.  

You should be aware that gleichman has taken to sniping from the sidelines since I put him on ignore for saying that all gamers who didn't follow his true path were limp wristed homosexuals unworthy of life or words to that effect, so whatever vitriol overflows his keyboard probably shouldn't be imbibed.

Quote from: The Traveller;644971You should be aware that gleichman has taken to sniping from the sidelines since I put him on ignore for saying that all gamers who didn't follow his true path were limp wristed homosexuals unworthy of life or words to that effect, so whatever vitriol overflows his keyboard probably shouldn't be imbibed.

"or words to that effect"... what an interesting method of lying that is.

There have been many heated moments on this board for me, but I can't recall any time where I claimed anything about anyone being homsexual, nor have I even claimed that anyone was 'unworthy of life' except perhaps as a joke or maybe hyperbole.

Given that you have me on ignore, I can't ask you for a link to prove your point (which if true would need an apology by myself). Given that this is the second time you've posted this libel, I'm afraid I'm going to have to (for the first time in my life?) report a post to the moderators. Perhaps they can find the reference for me, or deal with you if none exists.

Quote from: flyingmice;644948You are seizing on the one mistake he made - for some reason he replied to you that "To think low dex = low skill is to equate skill and stat again." as if to contradict something you said, but you had not stated that - to invalidate the rest of his argument, which does not depend on it. Essentially, animals have skills. Animals are way smarter than you give them credit for. Jibba-jabba is correct in his reasoning.

-clash

Me bad I was skim reading just before dinner he didn't say that.

I would say a couple of things. Your comments round animals having combat skills are entirely correct.
There might be a few large baby animals, walrus cubs, baby elephants that have high stats and low skill and yes i would expect a skilled warrior to be able to dispatch them.


Somewhat controversially I don't necessarily think that a game has to take the most realistic position. Realism isn;t always the most playable choice.

Whilst WoD'd stat/skill split is illogical it generally works well enough in play.

My current system has a lot of 'luck' So its 2d10 + stat (-3 to +5) + Skill (+0 to +10). Now I have been toying to reduce to d10 but I want a uniformed approach across skill and combat and I wanted more chance in combat. I used 2d10 to reduce luck over 1d20 or at least to pull in the top and bottoms ends to give a more predictable standard result.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644979There might be a few large baby animals, walrus cubs, baby elephants that have high stats and low skill and yes i would expect a skilled warrior to be able to dispatch them.

I would expect a highly skilled warrior (well enough armed) to dispatch even the mightest adults. Being an apex predator has its advantages.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644979Somewhat controversially I don't necessarily think that a game has to take the most realistic position. Realism isn;t always the most playable choice.

I don't think it's as hard as people make it out to be. Too often they just claim it's difficult and give up without trying.

Simple adjustments can correct rather serious failings, and people are capable of more than they think. The trick is getting them to try.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644979I would say a couple of things. Your comments round animals having combat skills are entirely correct.

I actually made that point in the first place, but how and ever...

Quote from: jibbajibba;644979There might be a few large baby animals, walrus cubs, baby elephants that have high stats and low skill and yes i would expect a skilled warrior to be able to dispatch them.

Okay let's take a highly skilled elephant and reduce it so it's five feet tall at the shoulder. How much of its danger was due to sheer muscle mass and how much due to skill now? Is it considerably more or less dangerous after bathing in the shrink ray?

Quote from: jibbajibba;644979Somewhat controversially I don't necessarily think that a game has to take the most realistic position. Realism isn;t always the most playable choice.

Agreed.

Quote from: The Traveller;644981I actually made that point in the first place, but how and ever...


Okay let's take a highly skilled elephant and reduce it so it's five feet tall at the shoulder. How much of its danger was due to sheer muscle mass and how much due to skill now? Is it considerably more or less dangerous after bathing in the shrink ray?


Agreed.

Okay vis a vis your elephant.
Strength is important because of the damage dealt.
Strong doesn't let you hit more often strong means your hits are deadly and you are hard to hurt because all of your muscles protect your vital organs.
A 5' tall elephant still have 4 times the mass of a 6 foot tall man.
Now I would expect a skilled warrior to hit the elephant more often but the elephants hits to do more damage.
Vis a vis skill the elephant's skill and combat technique depends on its size. It has evolved/been made by Jesus to be big and bulky and it uses that in combat against faster foes with more powerful weapons. So if you reduce its size its combat techniques won't work.

Quote from: flyingmice;644963It 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

"Selection" is the problem in this discussion.  It doesn't take only two years to make a Navy SEAL for some people.  It will just never happen because they've been selected out.  You can't say it's the training unless they are training everyone up to the same standard, but they aren't.  They aren't accepting most, and they are bouncing most of the ones they do accept.  There is no amount of pre-training that is going to result in them taking on a blind retarded midget.

You are just blurring the line of what "skill" represents here by including selection (even Natural Selection) as a factor.  If on your first day at the shooting range the instructor takes your rifle and sends you to file papers, in RPG terminology it's not because Natural Selection hasn't furbished you with the "skills", it's because you rolled a 3 Dex Ranger and need to go do something where your clumsiness is potentially less fatal.

Quote from: The Traveller;644971Sure, okay, ninja elephants. I'll remind you that I made this very same point early on in the discussion (my first post in the thread in fact, #3), but what you're saying here is that every large or powerful creature is of a high level of skill in combat, which just sidesteps the gaping hole in jibbajabba's system as well as being nonsense.

But since we're doing hypotheticals, let me posit that a troll might only be of the same skill level as a street tough or bully boy since trolls aren't noted for setting up fighting academies and so forth. When you're big and strong, you don't need to be skilled. Take the log and hit something until it stops moving. This isn't skill, but it is still formidable.

Shrug. This has turned into an argument. As arguments are not discussions, and thus are wastes of time and effort, I will bow out. You have your position, it works for you, and I leave you to it.

QuoteYou should be aware that gleichman has taken to sniping from the sidelines since I put him on ignore for saying that all gamers who didn't follow his true path were limp wristed homosexuals unworthy of life or words to that effect, so whatever vitriol overflows his keyboard probably shouldn't be imbibed.

I almost always disagree with gleichman, but I feel no need to insult or belittle him. His ideas are always thought out, and make sense if you accept his basic world view, which I don't. He's perfectly liable to call someone an idiot, but I've never heard him use being gay as an insult. On the other hand, I don't put people on ignore for disagreeing with me, either. I can always learn something. More data is always a good thing. :D

-clash

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;644991There is no amount of pre-training that is going to result in them taking on a blind retarded midget.

While it's easy to exclude the extremes, what's interesting about the SEAL training is that they still can't predict who will or will not make the cut by looking at what RPGs would call stats. Many a strong, fast, powerful and smart guy has failed while many you might think would never make the cut did.

The reason for this is that they aren't looking for simply strong, fast, powerful or smart. They help, but what matters most is another factor- one that could be called 'Skill at become a SEAL' :)

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;644991"Selection" is the problem in this discussion.  It doesn't take only two years to make a Navy SEAL for some people.  It will just never happen because they've been selected out.  You can't say it's the training unless they are training everyone up to the same standard, but they aren't.  They aren't accepting most, and they are bouncing most of the ones they do accept.  There is no amount of pre-training that is going to result in them taking on a blind retarded midget.

You are just blurring the line of what "skill" represents here by including selection (even Natural Selection) as a factor.  If on your first day at the shooting range the instructor takes your rifle and sends you to file papers, in RPG terminology it's not because Natural Selection hasn't furbished you with the "skills", it's because you rolled a 3 Dex Ranger and need to go do something where your clumsiness is potentially less fatal.

Selection isn't a problem, it's a feature. Selection is what makes competent and lucky leopards well fed, and what makes incompetent or unlucky leopards the gunk between the elephant's toenails. Selection weeds out the unfit and those who can't learn. In nature, the unfit die. In SEAL training, they become perfectly successful electricians mates or helicopter pilots or helmsmen or gunners. It's still selection.

-clash

Quote from: gleichman;644993While it's easy to exclude the extremes, what's interesting about the SEAL training is that they still can't predict who will or will not make the cut by looking at what RPGs would call stats. Many a strong, fast, powerful and smart guy has failed while many you might think would never make the cut did.

The reason for this is that they aren't looking for simply strong, fast, powerful or smart. They help, but what matters most is another factor- one that could be called 'Skill at become a SEAL' :)

This is absolutely true. I've researched the hell out of this for various games, and author after author, many of them SEALs, say the same thing - that it's impossible to predict who will become a SEAL and who won't. :D

-clash

It is also tricky because things like strength can be improved by training and hard work. How much of that is skill and how much is raw ability can be difficult to decipher. Not saying every body type can get 18/00 strength but it is true that skill factors in there to a degree.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;644998It is also tricky because things like strength can be improved by training and hard work. How much of that is skill and how much is raw ability can be difficult to decipher. Not saying every body type can get 18/00 strength but it is true that skill factors in there to a degree.

True.

Rolemaster played with that idea and I considered it myself. However in the end I just decided that a character's Strength score represented his potential and (baring the effect of his age group) he gets to start the game with it.

Even I pass on complexity and go with the simple solution now and then.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644988Okay vis a vis your elephant.
Strength is important because of the damage dealt.
Strong doesn't let you hit more often strong means your hits are deadly and you are hard to hurt because all of your muscles protect your vital organs.

Sure it does. Watch a lightly built petite woman try to swing a two handed sword and count how many swings she manages in a minute versus Arnie in his prime.
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;644988A 5' tall elephant still have 4 times the mass of a 6 foot tall man.
Now I would expect a skilled warrior to hit the elephant more often but the elephants hits to do more damage.
Vis a vis skill the elephant's skill and combat technique depends on its size. It has evolved/been made by Jesus to be big and bulky and it uses that in combat against faster foes with more powerful weapons. So if you reduce its size its combat techniques won't work.

The emperor's got no clothes here. If there's a problem with a system it's usually better to fix the problem than wander down the garden path of ninja elephants who lose their ninja skills when they get hit with a shrink ray, I'm genuinely trying to help in that regard.

Quote from: flyingmice;644992Shrug. This has turned into an argument. As arguments are not discussions, and thus are wastes of time and effort, I will bow out. You have your position, it works for you, and I leave you to it.

Do all the discussions you lose turn into arguments? :p

Quote from: flyingmice;644992I almost always disagree with gleichman, but I feel no need to insult or belittle him. His ideas are always thought out, and make sense if you accept his basic world view, which I don't. He's perfectly liable to call someone an idiot, but I've never heard him use being gay as an insult. On the other hand, I don't put people on ignore for disagreeing with me, either. I can always learn something. More data is always a good thing. :D

Who was insulting him? That's more or less literally what he said, check it out, he was in full flow in that "the role of the GM " thread linked in my sig. I politely asked him for his ideas after he'd spent several pages shitting on everyone and he came out with the homosexual thing. Really, don't take my word for it. I place little value on his ideas at this point mind you, he knows how to stir trouble but when pinned down on any facts he's invariably caught short.

Oh and gleichman if I catch you stalking me any more through quotes you'll join the two idiots I've already reported for the same thing, you unbalanced maladjust.

There, that was insulting him.

Quote from: The Traveller;645000Who was insulting him? That's more or less literally what he said, check it out, he was in full flow in that "the role of the GM " thread linked in my sig. I politely asked him for his ideas after he'd spent several pages shitting on everyone and he came out with the homosexual thing. Really, don't take my word for it.

The link in your sig just shows the OP.

Quote from: One Horse Town;645002The link in your sig just shows the OP.

No, that's post number 330 in the thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25606). The thread is linked above that if you click on it.

Quote from: The Traveller;645000Do all the discussions you lose turn into arguments? :p

How does one lose a discussion? One loses arguments or debates. They are not the same thing.

-clash

Quote from: The Traveller;645004No, that's post number 330 in the thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25606). The thread is linked above that if you click on it.

I'm not trawling through that lot. Either link to the post where Gleichman said what you think or belt up about it.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

I don't know about "should," but I tend to prefer games where skill is more of a determinant of success than ability; I like ability to mark the difference between equally skilled. For me, this means the input from ability should be somewhat muted relative to skill; to use your construction, perhaps something along the lines of Skill x + Ability y/2. For me, this captures the difference between, say, practicing diligently and having innate ability.

Something else to consider is that skills can also function as gatekeepers: 'you must be this tall to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl.' No matter what your ability, frex, you cannot pilot a starship without the Starship Pilot skill.

Quote from: One Horse Town;645009I'm not trawling through that lot. Either link to the post where Gleichman said what you think or belt up about it.

I had to temporarily take him off ignore to wade through pages of his vitriol, and no indeed he didn't say what I thought he had. He came close on a few occasions, but apologies to gleichman for not committing the tirades of abuse to memory. By way of compensation, here's a selection of his greatest hits from that thread:

QuoteLittle child, you have no idea what you're talking about. If I had any respect or even a faint hope you were capable of learning something- I'd explain your error.

But I don't waste my time on fools.

That is the nature of this hobby, fragmented and generally speaking made up of underwhelming players, designers and GMs. It's only due to the incompetence being so widely spread that the hobby survives, for fools will still play with fools.

This is such a silly comment. And so typical of therpgsite.

And you wonder why I can't take you seriously...

I'd have to care about the opinions and ideas of such as yourself to have grief, and I'd have to submit to your views to be a victim.

You think too highly of yourself, as usual.

Strawmen and Knee-Jerks are the only significant reaction by many here.

One of the reasons I think so little of you is your inability to grasp the concept that most things are a mix of conflicting concerns that must be dealt with in order to achieve a goal.

His is pipe dreams and rose color glasses, a place to hide from reality.

You're such a child.

One that lives the past, yet unable to apply it to the present because you've spent so much effort distorting it to meet your personal needs.

Be a man and owe up to what you've said and accept, the fault of your words are not mine.

And that is why I've got him on ignore. You're welcome.

Quote from: The Traveller;645015I had to temporarily take him off ignore to wade through pages of his vitriol, and no indeed he didn't say what I thought he had. He came close on a few occasions, but apologies to gleichman for not committing the tirades of abuse to memory. By way of compensation, here's a selection of his greatest hits from that thread:

And that is why I've got him on ignore. You're welcome.

As I said, "He's perfectly liable to call someone an idiot, but I've never heard him use being gay as an insult." These are all variations on "You're an idiot."

-clash

Case closed.

Dealing with animals and monsters in a skill system isn't that difficult.  For a predator, it only lives if it kills, so skill level should be at least the equivalent of a Professional level human, if not Expert.

A prey animal that defends by running probably isn't going to have much skill, but one that does fight, probably also fights to mate so is probably going to be just lower then the predator.

So a lot of animals are going to be at least as skilled as a character, but are going to also be stronger, faster, and maybe have armor.  You don't use a sword to kill a big animal, you use a spear or bow and kill it before it kills you.

As far as a Troll goes, if it is still alive, then it's good at killing.  It might be slow, but if it hits you, look out.  Also good luck killing it without a critical hit system.

You could go through and give each monster and animal a completely different skill profile, but that's not really necessary.

Quote from: CRKrueger;645020As far as a Troll goes, if it is still alive, then it's good at killing.  It might be slow, but if it hits you, look out.  Also good luck killing it without a critical hit system.

Yes but shrink a troll down to human size and you're left with a basic street ruffian. Systems that disproportionately focus on skill aren't much use when it comes to non human monsters since they don't represent the other natural advantages these things have, unless you wanted to dispense with basic attributes entirely.

Quote from: The Traveller;645023Yes but shrink a troll down to human size and you're left with a basic street ruffian. Systems that disproportionately focus on skill aren't much use when it comes to non human monsters since they don't represent the other natural advantages these things have, unless you wanted to dispense with basic attributes entirely.

Well, I'd argue a skilled street ruffian, life for a monster depends on killing every day or so for survival, life for a street ruffian does not unless he's in a crazy-bad section of town.

Your point is taken though in that what really makes a Troll dangerous is his strength, claws, regeneration, tough hide, etc...  however, that doesn't mean that it has low or average skill when compared to a person.  Yeah it doesn't know 35 different claw moves but it knows a couple and uses them every day - or it dies.

No human goes through the life and death struggle that a predator or monster does, it's like being a Spartan or something really, only with self-learned combat experience.

Quote from: CRKrueger;645020You could go through and give each monster and animal a completely different skill profile, but that's not really necessary.

I would think this depends to at least some degree upon your system, how much room it allows and how you view your more fantastic creatures (and even the more common ones). I take the genre based viewpoint that each creature is on the same human-to-heroic rank system as players. Some are likely to exceed the skill level of even the most impressive heroes. Some of these may be rather large. Bring friends or other advantage(s).

Of course how well the system being used shows the impact of different advantages has an important impact on what we're talking about. For example, if you're playing something that doesn't provide significant damage and toughness bonuses to large creatures, then large creatures will be more difficult to represent in the system.

The more abstract one is, and the fewer factors you have to take advantage of- the more trouble you run into, and the less special battles with large creatures become. At the worst case, they have no significant differences and require no change at all in engagment tactics.

Quote from: CRKrueger;645020Dealing with animals and monsters in a skill system isn't that difficult.  For a predator, it only lives if it kills, so skill level should be at least the equivalent of a Professional level human, if not Expert.

A prey animal that defends by running probably isn't going to have much skill, but one that does fight, probably also fights to mate so is probably going to be just lower then the predator.

So a lot of animals are going to be at least as skilled as a character, but are going to also be stronger, faster, and maybe have armor.  You don't use a sword to kill a big animal, you use a spear or bow and kill it before it kills you.

As far as a Troll goes, if it is still alive, then it's good at killing.  It might be slow, but if it hits you, look out.  Also good luck killing it without a critical hit system.

You could go through and give each monster and animal a completely different skill profile, but that's not really necessary.

I use a catch all skill for this called Natural Weapon, which is informally defined by the animal. So a troll might be Natural Weapon+3 (Expert Level), with a Quality (damage in this case) Mod of +50.

Quote from: CRKrueger;645024Your point is taken though in that what really makes a Troll dangerous is his strength, claws, regeneration, tough hide, etc...  however, that doesn't mean that it has low or average skill when compared to a person.  Yeah it doesn't know 35 different claw moves but it knows a couple and uses them every day - or it dies.

What percentage of the danger in facing a troll is in its skill alone would you say? For my money, maybe 10% to 20%. An arnisador, a batadóir, these are people who know what to do with a knobbly cudgel. A troll would rarely have any need for anything more than a quick bash to get what it wants, without getting into the tos and fros of troll society (although the trolls in the Hobbit seemed to be on fairly amicable terms).

Take away the giant strength, the speed even, and you haven't much left. Some seem to feel that a troll's strength is barely relevant to its combat abilities, this to my mind is self apparently wrong.

20-30 maybe from skill.  Depends on how trolls are described in the setting.  I don't think monsters should have Master level training, but at least a level that corresponds to Professional, in other words, the equivalent of a soldier, not necessarily a Seal.  Now an obviously successful monster or Apex predator might very well have an Expert level skill, but still not Bruce Lee level.

Since science hasnt figured it out yet, I dont expect an rpg to do so. Certain types of games/genres support skill over aptitude, others make them equal, and others favour attributes over skill or treat attributes as a character's base ability in any related skill and only specialities of the character grant a bonus beyond this. None of which really effects game play.

For everyone who says "in reality, its all about skill", try looking up the word savant soemtimes. Human beings are curious creatures.

Quote from: Wolf, Richard;644991"Selection" is the problem in this discussion.  It doesn't take only two years to make a Navy SEAL for some people.  It will just never happen because they've been selected out.  You can't say it's the training unless they are training everyone up to the same standard, but they aren't.  They aren't accepting most, and they are bouncing most of the ones they do accept.  There is no amount of pre-training that is going to result in them taking on a blind retarded midget.

You are just blurring the line of what "skill" represents here by including selection (even Natural Selection) as a factor.  If on your first day at the shooting range the instructor takes your rifle and sends you to file papers, in RPG terminology it's not because Natural Selection hasn't furbished you with the "skills", it's because you rolled a 3 Dex Ranger and need to go do something where your clumsiness is potentially less fatal.

 
Now this is an interesting point and one I put into a Modern squad military game I made up years ago.

The idea is that in each skill a character has a potential based on their attributes but they can only reach that potential through training.

So in the system each skill had a formula (Stat+stat)/2 or similar. the maximum you could get in the skill was 5x formula (stats were 2-20 on 2d10) and your starting score was formula%.
Each skill point spend on the skill got you 1d6 increase in your score.

This system supposed that your final skill level was controlled by your abilities but you had to train to get there.

The system also limited your active skills. So you had a number of skills that were active, a second set that were passive and the rest of your skills were unused. After you used a passive skill a few times it became active if you didn't use a skill for period it slipped down to passive and then down to unused. And these had different penalties.

Some of it I would reuse, skill potential I thought was quite good but active/passive/unused was a pain to bookkeep although has potential in a computerised format.

Quote from: flyingmice;644959No, it *denies* "that mighty creatures with low skill exist". Any dangerous critter is skilled in combat. Your assuming something which is not there. Any troll who makes it to adulthood is a master at troll warfare. Elephants are very skilled at defending themselves. Leopards are extremely skilled at killing things. Why do you assume low or no-skill? These are things they do all the time. Why wouldn't they be skilled?

-clash

Since we seem to be focused on combat:

You, vs. a cat, in a metal cube. The cat has way more "skill", but I'd never bet on it.

A ten year old with a black belt vs. a 6'4" 280 pound farm boy who throws 100 pound bales of hay around all day, but has never been in a fight in his life. I'll take the farm boy.

Quote from: jibbajibba;645098Now this is an interesting point and one I put into a Modern squad military game I made up years ago.

The idea is that in each skill a character has a potential based on their attributes but they can only reach that potential through training.

So in the system each skill had a formula (Stat+stat)/2 or similar. the maximum you could get in the skill was 5x formula (stats were 2-20 on 2d10) and your starting score was formula%.
Each skill point spend on the skill got you 1d6 increase in your score.

This system supposed that your final skill level was controlled by your abilities but you had to train to get there.

The system also limited your active skills. So you had a number of skills that were active, a second set that were passive and the rest of your skills were unused. After you used a passive skill a few times it became active if you didn't use a skill for period it slipped down to passive and then down to unused. And these had different penalties.

Some of it I would reuse, skill potential I thought was quite good but active/passive/unused was a pain to bookkeep although has potential in a computerised format.

That's kind of like the (simplifying a lot of systems here) basic BRP method of roll between your skill and stat x 5 to raise a skill.

I can hit someone in the heart with a paintball gun from 1000 yards in high wind all day long and nothing will happen.  If I hit them in the eye though, it might.

Likewise, if the farmboy with no skill decides to do what he's good at, and throw the ten year old black belt against the wall, he might lose an eye as he picks him up.

Obviously if you go to the extreme of generated force insufficient to injure, then you cannot injure.  But even in that extreme there may be ways skill can be used.

The "clash of extremes" really has nothing to do with whether something that kills everyday should be bad, average or good at killing.

Quote from: apparition13;645252You, vs. a cat, in a metal cube. The cat has way more "skill", but I'd never bet on it.

A ten year old with a black belt vs. a 6'4" 280 pound farm boy who throws 100 pound bales of hay around all day, but has never been in a fight in his life. I'll take the farm boy.

I would hope that the damage system would deal with these sort of differences, if not- that's where the failure exists at.

And if you've lumped your skill and damage together in a single roll and left it at that, you get what you deserve- an inability to represent anything well that isn't clustered around human norm.

Quote from: The Traveller;645027What percentage of the danger in facing a troll is in its skill alone would you say? For my money, maybe 10% to 20%. An arnisador, a batadóir, these are people who know what to do with a knobbly cudgel. A troll would rarely have any need for anything more than a quick bash to get what it wants, without getting into the tos and fros of troll society (although the trolls in the Hobbit seemed to be on fairly amicable terms).

Take away the giant strength, the speed even, and you haven't much left. Some seem to feel that a troll's strength is barely relevant to its combat abilities, this to my mind is self apparently wrong.

You do seem to ignore the fact that a troll possibly fight other trolls as well ... other trolls with similar strength and body/toughness/whatever, and with clubs.
I'm making a guess that that is what CRKrueger is referring to.

Quote from: apparition13;645252Since we seem to be focused on combat:

You, vs. a cat, in a metal cube. The cat has way more "skill", but I'd never bet on it.

A ten year old with a black belt vs. a 6'4" 280 pound farm boy who throws 100 pound bales of hay around all day, but has never been in a fight in his life. I'll take the farm boy.


That's kind of like the (simplifying a lot of systems here) basic BRP method of roll between your skill and stat x 5 to raise a skill.

Everyone on the "Stat-heavy" side seems to love throwing these examples around! It's the same damn thing. That cat is going to scratch the crap out of my hands, hitting me a dozen times and biting me once or twice, all for little apparent damage*. Clumsy me will maybe get one hit in, but that cat will be fucked up. It's all about scaling damage, not attributes. The cat is *way* more skilled than I am. She is far, far, far more agile. Pound for pound, she's far stronger than I am. Thing is, we are not the same scale. All the damage she does is scaled WAY down, and all the damage I do is scaled WAY up. If she and I were the same scale, I'd be whisker lickins in a few seconds.

* I say apparent, because I was put in a hospital for days on antibiotics because of a cat bite. My hand and arm swelled up like a string of sausages and turned black. I would have been dead in a setting without antibiotics or magic.

Quote from: Catelf;645259You do seem to ignore the fact that a troll possibly fight other trolls as well ... other trolls with similar strength and body/toughness/whatever, and with clubs.
I'm making a guess that that is what CRKrueger is referring to.

Yeah - there is no scaling there.

Quote from: Catelf;645259You do seem to ignore the fact that a troll possibly fight other trolls as well ... other trolls with similar strength and body/toughness/whatever, and with clubs.

That's why I said "without getting into the tos and fros of troll society (although the trolls in the Hobbit seemed to be on fairly amicable terms)".

Trolls are imaginary creatures with imaginary social mores, an equally valid description might be that trolls only very rarely fight one another and only pick on things smaller and slower than them that they can squish with one whack from a log. Like sheep. They are also reputedly stupid and lazy in the common understanding, neither of which are qualities which lend themselves to the acquisition of high skill levels.

It's pointless to discuss what trolls do and don't do in definitive terms since they are imaginary; in this case I used them to represent a large and powerful creature of low skill, and there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be, nobody can legitimately say "that's impossible". For some reason this seems to have offended some people who flatly deny even the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill.

Trolls as used here are representative of the fact that sheer muscle mass or reflex speed can be just as important as skill if not a lot more so when it comes to outsize monsters. I seriously can't understand why this is a point of contention, never mind bitter disagreement, unless I'm accidentally stepping on someone's pet system or something.

Quote from: flyingmice;645291Everyone on the "Stat-heavy" side seems to love throwing these examples around!

Oh hey I'm not saying stats uber alles at all, just that skill weighting to the extent that jibbajabba was proposing, or anywhere near it, has some serious systemic flaws. If anything I encourage players to develop and focus on their skills.

I had a player once who just wasn't getting that message so we ran a minigame called The Arena - and he knew I was trying to demonstrate something beforehand. As per the name, he jousted and battled with a series of increasingly powerful and dangerous monsters, and won easily every time, from lions to dinosaurs.

Then I put him up against a single scarred knight with an eyepatch. Fearless the PC roared forward, before the knight flipped his morningstar around his wrist once and threw it at the character, buried the thing in his forehead from five meters, killing the PC stone dead. After that he focused on skills, no his character wasn't permanently killed.

Keep in mind though that the knight used four seperate skills in concert here (quickdraw, throw weapon, aiming and use morningstar) so it wasn't as simple as sheer skill versus skill, that's not how my games work. All I'm saying is that the system that jibbajabba outlined is flawed for non humans.

Quote from: The Traveller;645299It's pointless to discuss what trolls do and don't do in definitive terms since they are imaginary; in this case I used them to represent a large and powerful creature of low skill, and there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be, nobody can legitimately say "that's impossible". For some reason this seems to have offended some people who flatly deny even the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill.

Trolls as used here are representative of the fact that sheer muscle mass or reflex speed can be just as important as skill if not a lot more so when it comes to outsize monsters. I seriously can't understand why this is a point of contention, never mind bitter disagreement, unless I'm accidentally stepping on someone's pet system or something.

I do think it is a typical case of "talking past one another", where people .. yes, including you, do not seem to grasp what others are saying, and they do not seem to grasp what you are saying.

It is also the case of bad wording, flawed conclusions, plus the tendency to ignore nuances, and the possible middle ground that exist in comments, like "the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill" when you, before that comment, rather came off as sounding like all large and powerful creatures has low skill.
Now, that may not have been what you meant, but it read like that, just like CRKrueger gave the impression of meaning the opposite.

Quote from: Catelf;645308and the possible middle ground that exist in comments, like "the possibility that any large and powerful creature might have low skill" when you, before that comment, rather came off as sounding like all large and powerful creatures has low skill.

I 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.

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.

Quote from: Imperator;646010I 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.

...right up until a grizzly bear tears the head off your unarmed special forces ninjaman.

Quote from: The Traveller;645403While 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.

Usain bolt is racing with people who are all in the top 1% neigh the top 0.0001% of runners.

In your 1:1:1 Random:skill:attribute model based on a d10 for ease. someone with average skill and average training say a 6:6 can beat Usain who is 10:10 1 time in 10  (Usain rolls a 1 for a total of 21 and the Other guy rolls a 10 for 22).

This is simply not the case. its never going to happen Usain can race teh 20th best guy in the world and will beat him every single time, unless Usain false starts and gets disqualified.

the same is true of Federer at tennis or Man U playing football. The idea that inexperienced  team can suprise Man U is laughable. In soccer you can play a spoiling game and defense with 10 men behind the ball and rather like San Marino did against England the other week you loose 7-0.

Taking combat directly lets look at MMA. Anderson Silva is currently pretty much unbeatable. 16 consecutive wins.  He is like Tyson in his pomp.
The facts do not indicate a 1:1:1 model works well to emulate skills.

Now like I said 1:1:1 might be fine for a game and might produce the correct sort of play but it isn't close to producing real emulation of skill which is closer to 70:20:10  Skill: stat :Random.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646020Usain bolt is racing with people who are all in the top 1% neigh the top 0.0001% of runners.

In your 1:1:1 Random:skill:attribute model based on a d10 for ease. someone with average skill and average training say a 6:6 can beat Usain who is 10:10 1 time in 10  (Usain rolls a 1 for a total of 21 and the Other guy rolls a 10 for 22).

The last sentence there was "Obviously when it comes to the Olympics we're talking about 25+1d10 versus 30+1d10 but same idea." The subtext was that (1-10)+(1-10)+1d10 can be pushed beyond those boundaries by a dedicated minmaxer.

Maybe he's got a base 12 in the stat (as a benefit), excellent quality shoes (+2 on the roll) and he's been doing nothing else but sprint since he first saw daylight (skill 16). Very difficult to do, but possible, skill training gives diminshing returns as you advance but if you're doing something for many years you are going to get very good at it. That gives him a base 30. The best normal racer would have skill 10 + stat 10 + 1d10 which means even on his best day he isn't outrunning Usain, unless he rolls open ended flukes and so on. In completely outsize skills you can move the numbers around until they fit, while still staying logically consistent.

A competing minmaxer who only managed 25 might win one race out of five with Usain, while still regularly kicking the ass of the best normal sprinter.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646020The idea that inexperienced  team can suprise Man U is laughable.

Good thing nobody was saying that then.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646020Now like I said 1:1:1 might be fine for a game and might produce the correct sort of play but it isn't close to producing real emulation of skill which is closer to 70:20:10  Skill: stat :Random.

Sorry, it looks very much like 1:1:1 base produces by far the best emulation in a repeatable manner, and doesn't suffer from weaknesses due to outsize monsters etc. Keep in mind though that in the example of Usain given above skills are somewhat weighted, in real numbers it's more like 6:8:5 stat:skill:dice, but it's not nearly as weighted as you're talking about while still producing realistic results.

Quote from: The Traveller;646019...right up until a grizzly bear tears the head off your unarmed special forces ninjaman.

I am perfectly happy with that, to be honest. As others have pointed out, wild animals should be very skilled apart from having good stats. We succeeded in hunting them because we hunt in packs and we use traps, mostly.

In a one-to-one hand-to-hand combat between a bear and a special forces guy, I would bet on the bear.

Quote from: Imperator;646047In a one-to-one hand-to-hand combat between a bear and a special forces guy, I would bet on the bear.

It would be the result of such a conflict in my game as well. Mankind's natural weaponry is just too wimpy to damage the bear, and the skill difference would just drag the fight out.

This of course goes out the window with some fantasy characters. Anyone willing to bet against Conan for example?

Quote from: Imperator;646047I am perfectly happy with that, to be honest. As others have pointed out, wild animals should be very skilled apart from having good stats. We succeeded in hunting them because we hunt in packs and we use traps, mostly.

In a one-to-one hand-to-hand combat between a bear and a special forces guy, I would bet on the bear.

I was being ironic, the point is if you weight skills disproportionately as yourself and jibbajabba seem to favour doing, the special forces guy should be tearing the head off the bear.

Quote from: The Traveller;646122I was being ironic, the point is if you weight skills disproportionately as yourself and jibbajabba seem to favour doing, the special forces guy should be tearing the head off the bear.

Well, that is going to depend on other factors apart from skill.

For example, in RQ 3 an expert warrior (75+%) armed with a sword and shield is going to be able to attack once a round for 1d8+1+damage bonus (most probably 1d4 or maybe 1d6), and his sword and shield may stop on a sucessful parry 12 points of damage.

A brown bear can do either 2 claw attacks or a claw & bite attack. Claws do 3d6 in damage, minimum skill 45%. Bite is 1d10+2d6, minimum skill 30%. These are the basic skills of a barely adult bear, is only reasonable to assume that the bear may be more skilled. The bear has a natural armor of 3 points, so sword's damage goes to 1d8-2+db. Also, the bear has more hitpoints and more fatigue points.

Yeah, the warrior may be able to win, but odds are quite against him

Quote from: Imperator;646295Well, that is going to depend on other factors apart from skill.

For example, in RQ 3 an expert warrior (75+%) armed with a sword and shield is going to be able to attack once a round for 1d8+1+damage bonus (most probably 1d4 or maybe 1d6), and his sword and shield may stop on a sucessful parry 12 points of damage.

A brown bear can do either 2 claw attacks or a claw & bite attack. Claws do 3d6 in damage, minimum skill 45%. Bite is 1d10+2d6, minimum skill 30%. These are the basic skills of a barely adult bear, is only reasonable to assume that the bear may be more skilled. The bear has a natural armor of 3 points, so sword's damage goes to 1d8-2+db. Also, the bear has more hitpoints and more fatigue points.

Yeah, the warrior may be able to win, but odds are quite against him

Again you missed the point. The kung fu master of the deadly unarmed arts should beat the crap out of a bear most of the time if you weight skills heavily, instead of almost never which is what would really happen.

Let's go back to Usain Bolt, he's getting a good workout today. Since he's got a ridiculously high world beating dash skill, he should be able to outrun an average cheetah right, since a cheetah might be quite skilled at dashing but not world class or anywhere near it? Of course not, this is ridiculous, the animal's skill is hugely outweighed by its stat.

Unless you want to get rid of skills and stats entirely and just use "proficiency" or something as a base, not derived from anything.

Quote from: The Traveller;646122I was being ironic, the point is if you weight skills disproportionately as yourself and jibbajabba seem to favour doing, the special forces guy should be tearing the head off the bear.

No give the Seal his core weapon an assaut rifle and I will give him better than fair chance of killing a bear ....

In hand to hand combat you are forgetting some core stuff.
The Seal can avoid the bears blows and hit the bear far more often. This is likely. However, the bear's size and strength render the blows of a human silked opponent  useless. The Bear is protected by a lot of muscle you need to get through to hurt it and the impact of the human to the core mass of a bear is really important.
Basically in 'game terms' a bear can ignore the first 10 points of damage from a hit they can roll this much damage off each blow to the mass of it's body.
A man just doesn't do enough damage to get past that buffer, not without a spear or a sword or an AR15.

The bear on the other hand  will not hit the skilled fighter often but when he hits the force of his blow will break bones and his natural weapons will cut someone open like a ripe melon.

So you need to differentiate combat skill from damage and damage resistance.
A flyweight boxer might have loads more skill than a heavyweight but the fact that the small guy does 1d6 dmage with a punch and the heavyweight can buffer 4 points off each punch makes the small guy weak in combat. On the other hand the heavyweight deals 1d6+2 damage and the flyweight can only buffer 2 points of damage so the damage the Heavyweight does with each punch is much greater if he can hit.

So separate the skill system from the damage resolution mechanic.

Now with weapons things change a heavyweight can not buffer blows from a knife any more than a small guy, so the small guy hits 3 or 4 times more often and that does huge amounts more damage.

Quote from: The Traveller;646302Again you missed the point. The kung fu master of the deadly unarmed arts should beat the crap out of a bear most of the time if you weight skills heavily, instead of almost never which is what would really happen.

Not necessarily because, again, we are talking about different scales. Now, the kung fu master should beat the crap out 99 times out of 100 of an unskilled oponent with excellent stats that fights in his same scale.

QuoteLet's go back to Usain Bolt, he's getting a good workout today. Since he's got a ridiculously high world beating dash skill, he should be able to outrun an average cheetah right, since a cheetah might be quite skilled at dashing but not world class or anywhere near it? Of course not, this is ridiculous, the animal's skill is hugely outweighed by its stat.

Or maybe the cheetah has a ridiculously higher dash skill. Or maybe its dash skill is not in the same scale as a human.

Quote from: Imperator;646295Well, that is going to depend on other factors apart from skill.

For example, in RQ 3 an expert warrior (75+%) armed with a sword and shield is going to be able to attack once a round for 1d8+1+damage bonus (most probably 1d4 or maybe 1d6), and his sword and shield may stop on a sucessful parry 12 points of damage.

A brown bear can do either 2 claw attacks or a claw & bite attack. Claws do 3d6 in damage, minimum skill 45%. Bite is 1d10+2d6, minimum skill 30%. These are the basic skills of a barely adult bear, is only reasonable to assume that the bear may be more skilled. The bear has a natural armor of 3 points, so sword's damage goes to 1d8-2+db. Also, the bear has more hitpoints and more fatigue points.

Yeah, the warrior may be able to win, but odds are quite against him

Stupid question unrelated to the main thread topic: how deadly is BRP, without all the D&D hit point inflation and such? In a long campaign of it, would people be likely to be replacing characters after a couple of sessions, or do most manage to keep a character for a full campaign?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646318Stupid question unrelated to the main thread topic: how deadly is BRP, without all the D&D hit point inflation and such? In a long campaign of it, would people be likely to be replacing characters after a couple of sessions, or do most manage to keep a character for a full campaign?

when I played runequest back ine hday and a good few days ago it was... the first few encountewrs are kind of luck based. As you start to add experience and equipment, you survive more. Then it's a matter of what you decide to fight.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646318Stupid question unrelated to the main thread topic: how deadly is BRP, without all the D&D hit point inflation and such? In a long campaign of it, would people be likely to be replacing characters after a couple of sessions, or do most manage to keep a character for a full campaign?

It is deadly, certainly. How much depends on the concrete iteration of the system, but weapons hurt a lot. A human character usually won't be able to soak more than two hits before going down. For example, a dagger does 1d4+2, and you probably may add another d4 due to size and strength, so youwill be doing 7 points of damage every hit and the average human has 12. Nasty.

This forces people to be ultra-smart and careful with combat, even with low-skill foes. If you are careful, avoid unnecessary combat and try to use every advantage, you may do well. Certainly, you won't be replacing PCs every 2 sessions, or at least not in my 25 years of experience since I got RQ and CoC. Attrition rate is not that high (specially if you play RQ and have magic healing), but unless you try to turn every combat to your advantage, is highly unlikely that you will end the campaign without some PC turnover.

Cool thanks :) Just curious.

More importantly perhaps than death itself, if you use the location HP rules, it is rather quick to toss someone out of combat, since most locations on average will have 3 - 4 HP, and loosing all of them in a location is a severe hindrance for your fight abilities - if you can stand from pain at all.

I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646337Cool thanks :) Just curious.

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Rincewind1;646339More importantly perhaps than death itself, if you use the location HP rules, it is rather quick to toss someone out of combat, since most locations on average will have 3 - 4 HP, and loosing all of them in a location is a severe hindrance for your fight abilities - if you can stand from pain at all.

Exactly. Most fights in RQ are not to death because you can be easily incapacitated of a non-lethal wound.

Quote from: Bill;646347I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Yup, those demonweapons are wicked.

Quote from: Imperator;646424Exactly. Most fights in RQ are not to death because you can be easily incapacitated of a non-lethal wound.

I expect this very notion is very important to Aces & Eights (planning to run a campaign now), and my players will need a swift "learning curve" to discover that fights themselves may not be deadly - and that's a problem. It's watching your friend die in screams from a gutshot or perish away in fever from gangrene that's painful.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303No give the Seal his core weapon an assaut rifle and I will give him better than fair chance of killing a bear ....

Why not give him a tank and use his driving skill. I've no idea how you're missing the point here unless you're doing it intentionally.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303In hand to hand combat you are forgetting some core stuff.
The Seal can avoid the bears blows and hit the bear far more often. This is likely.

Hahaha! I take it you've never seen a bear go to work. 'Slow' is not a word I'd use to describe them. No, a serious apex bear will take your head off your shoulders before your neural impulses have a chance to tell your midriff muscles to duck. Polar bears are one of the very very few animals that actually stalk and hunt humans successfully.

Still, you can hold off a decent sized bear with a sharp stick if you know what you're doing and it isn't too hungry.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303The bear on the other hand  will not hit the skilled fighter often

Hahaha!

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303So you need to differentiate combat skill from damage and damage resistance.

I do!
 

Quote from: jibbajibba;646303A flyweight boxer might have loads more skill than a heavyweight but the fact that the small guy does 1d6 dmage with a punch and the heavyweight can buffer 4 points off each punch makes the small guy weak in combat. On the other hand the heavyweight deals 1d6+2 damage and the flyweight can only buffer 2 points of damage so the damage the Heavyweight does with each punch is much greater if he can hit.

So separate the skill system from the damage resolution mechanic.

Now with weapons things change a heavyweight can not buffer blows from a knife any more than a small guy, so the small guy hits 3 or 4 times more often and that does huge amounts more damage.

You switched back to humans again for some reason. I dunno, this is getting ridiculous.

Quote from: Imperator;646312Not necessarily because, again, we are talking about different scales. Now, the kung fu master should beat the crap out 99 times out of 100 of an unskilled oponent with excellent stats that fights in his same scale.

Or maybe the cheetah has a ridiculously higher dash skill. Or maybe its dash skill is not in the same scale as a human.

But I can represent statistical probabilities perfectly well within the one scale, I don't need a new higher megadamage scale tacked on.

It's actually a hell of a lot of fun, once you can approximate a realistic system that scales from cat to human to horse to bear to rhino to elephant, you can slot in imaginary monsters were you see fit and get a feel for how they would perform in real life. Quite a rush.

Incidentally, even a cheetah with a shitty dash will outrun Usain almost 100% of the time. It's about the stats in that case. Yes it is, don't bother arguing.

Does BRP use a particularly skill weighted system or something, because religious defence of some system is the only reason I can imagine for the utterly bizarre arguments being put forward in some parts.

If a Navy Seal is swiftly mauled by a deaf bear in an otherwise uninhabited forest, does the dying Seal make a sound?

This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills. And it warms my heart to watch Lord of Engineers Duckman to fall into this trap. Because if we'd be looking for a truly "realistic" system, we'd need to have a form of both added bonus to skills via D20, and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak. And that'd even apply to academic skills as well - you can't keep up with stuff so fast when you're growing older.

Quote from: Bill;646347I played a lot of Elric, and that is similar to brp as far as I recall.

You had to max out your dodge and or parry, and wear heavy armor or you were toast.

Elric and CoC are basically BRP, except BRP extends the rules of combat towards more tactical uses of firearms than featured in CoC.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills.

Exactly. There are a hundred ways to make the same point but none of them seem to be making a dent.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak.

That's an interesting point, which would certainly limit the 'professor with intelligence 3/10 because he worked really really hard'. I must ponder the ramifications of this. Base stat as a modifier in terms of how fast you can advance? Does it cross the playability versus reality boundary?

Hmm.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age...

While that may be how you and Traveller view the discussion, that's not how others here have been viewing it.

They've been viewing it as matter of using stats where stats matter and using skill were skill matters. Most in favor of that have even allowed for stats providing a cap on skills.

Traveller and yourself seem to be hung up on the idea that the only possible solution is one pool of dice that determine the entire result. That's only only a flawed model- it's one that only he (and it seems you) are suggesting.

Quote from: The Traveller;646466But I can represent statistical probabilities perfectly well within the one scale, I don't need a new higher megadamage scale tacked on.

Hum, I don't see those values as megadamage. 3d6 is the same amount of damage that a very strong human can do with a big Danish axe.

QuoteDoes BRP use a particularly skill weighted system or something, because religious defence of some system is the only reason I can imagine for the utterly bizarre arguments being put forward in some parts.

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

Quote from: Imperator;646519Hum, I don't see those values as megadamage. 3d6 is the same amount of damage that a very strong human can do with a big Danish axe.

You're talking about a seperate scale for exceptional whatever. This isn't a great design idea since you almost immediately run into edge cases which are better represented in one scale but fall into the other. This is the megadamage problem. In the system I've outlined you don't need finicky patches like that, just bigger numbers.

Quote from: Imperator;646519Sorry, I don't understand the question.

You don't understand why athletes retire after a certain age? It's not because their skills got rusty, it's because their body can't compete. So the question is why on earth would anyone refuse to accept the importance of stats, is there some beloved game system that heavily weights skills or something?

I'm genuinely puzzled as to why this might be contentious, yourself and jibbajabba seem to have pulled an assertion out of a hat and are dead set on defending it in the face of reality, as in example after example after example. You even agreed with one of the examples when you said the bear should maul the special forces guy most of the time.

Quote from: The Traveller;646466Why not give him a tank and use his driving skill. I've no idea how you're missing the point here unless you're doing it intentionally.


Hahaha! I take it you've never seen a bear go to work. 'Slow' is not a word I'd use to describe them. No, a serious apex bear will take your head off your shoulders before your neural impulses have a chance to tell your midriff muscles to duck. Polar bears are one of the very very few animals that actually stalk and hunt humans successfully.

Still, you can hold off a decent sized bear with a sharp stick if you know what you're doing and it isn't too hungry.


Hahaha!


I do!
 

You switched back to humans again for some reason. I dunno, this is getting ridiculous.


.

So we agree the bear is a skilled fighter with a lot of combat knowlege and that its size and strength impact its damage potential and its ability to resist damage but not its actual ability to hit in combat...good.
My bear was slow and not good at hitting stuff becuaase you postulated a navy seal has higher 'skill and more trianing' buit it wasn't enough to overcome the bears Strength. Now you are saying that he bear is really fast and good at combat. meh...

I switched back to Humans because you didn't like the bear is a highly skilled combatant argument.
Comparing 2 fighters one flyweight and one heavyweight seemed to be a simpler task as they can both be trained in the same way. Like I said the flyweight might be a much more skilled boxer but his blows won't pack enough force to hurt a heavyweight. Surely you can see how this is just a mirror of the bear who is exponentially larger and stronger. He deals and can take more damage.
If we move to weapons then things change and the buffer of strength is much less critical. so a highly skilled hunter with a spear against a bear ... much more even.

So Skill in combat needs to be separated from damage in combat. High skill might lead to more damage but strength and size need to be considered especially in blunt damage.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646468If a Navy Seal is swiftly mauled by a deaf bear in an otherwise uninhabited forest, does the dying Seal make a sound?

This whole discussion leads to a suggestion that athletes should be doing sports well into their 80s, since if skill is so much more important than (what we call in RPGs) abilities, and skills only raise with age... Bolt may be the best runner for now, but in a few next years he'll start loosing to his younger opponents - not because they are more skilled than him, but because their bodies are more capable to utilise their lesser skills. And it warms my heart to watch Lord of Engineers Duckman to fall into this trap. Because if we'd be looking for a truly "realistic" system, we'd need to have a form of both added bonus to skills via D20, and for the attributes to limit "maximal" skill level, so to speak. And that'd even apply to academic skills as well - you can't keep up with stuff so fast when you're growing older.

.

Now aging is really important very few RPGs try to handle it at all.
I mean imagine a system where a female's appearance drops by 1 point per year after she hits 32, the boards would go mad :D

Uppost I refered to a game I made up where maximum skill was limited by stat. And you have Active, and inactive skills.

If we supposed Running was a skill based on Strength + agility. so your starting skill was S+A and you could increase the skill to 5x(S+A) then if you maxed the skill out stats would be 25% of skill, but as your stats dropped your skill would diminish.  
Now youy have to be pretty harsh with stats and maybe there is a better stat that Str or agility to determine sprinting , but I think its a workable compromise.

Quote from: The Traveller;646531You're talking about a seperate scale for exceptional whatever. This isn't a great design idea since you almost immediately run into edge cases which are better represented in one scale but fall into the other. This is the megadamage problem. In the system I've outlined you don't need finicky patches like that, just bigger numbers.

But that solution you outline is just what BRP does. A bear does more damage than a regular human weapon, and can soak more damage. How is that a different scale?

QuoteYou don't understand why athletes retire after a certain age? It's not because their skills got rusty, it's because their body can't compete. So the question is why on earth would anyone refuse to accept the importance of stats, is there some beloved game system that heavily weights skills or something?

No one is refusing the importance of stats. In BRP having great stats give you a clear advantage over those who haven't the same. But for the kind of activities that PCs usually do, experience trumps stat any day. I don't see the problem. Actually, running a 100 m sprint at the Olympics is a very fringe case, one that you could easily simulate on BRP using the stats.

QuoteI'm genuinely puzzled as to why this might be contentious, yourself and jibbajabba seem to have pulled an assertion out of a hat and are dead set on defending it in the face of reality, as in example after example after example. You even agreed with one of the examples when you said the bear should maul the special forces guy most of the time.

Sure. Because there are other factors apart from skill involved on that. But I was talking about most typical activities in an RPG session, like two guys in a fistfight, where the idea of an inexperienced guy with good stats having the same chances of winning as an average stats guy with lots of training looks weird to me.

Of course, one could reason that if you have lots of points in a combat skill you probably have good stats as a result of the same training.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;644889Attribute 3 Skill 1

against

Attribute 1 Skill 3

Same result. Should Attributes function differently rather than just "skill + attribute"?

Two points:

First, this is an over-simplification that ignores the rest of the system. If attributes cost 5 times as much to improve as a specific skill, the system isn't actually placing an equal value on them. Alternatively, you might have a system like Godlike in which your attribute value provides a cap on the maximum skill value you can have.

Second, I tend to think of ability scores in ability+skill systems as basically being very broad skills. This becomes really obvious in systems which feature sub-skills: You pay 10 points to increase your ability by +1; 3 points to increase your skill by +1; or 1 point to increase a specialization by 1 point. The tiering at play is really obvious.

And you can use that sort of tiering to apply slightly different models to each tier: Ability scores can decay with age. Specializations can be the place where players can define their own categories. Et cetera.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563My bear was slow and not good at hitting stuff becuaase you postulated a navy seal has higher 'skill and more trianing' buit it wasn't enough to overcome the bears Strength. Now you are saying that he bear is really fast and good at combat. meh...

Speed is a stat as well, not a skill.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563I switched back to Humans because you didn't like the bear is a highly skilled combatant argument.

A bear is going to be less skilled in hand to hand combat than one of a group of the world's foremost killers. The bear will still win. A cheetah is going to be less skilled at dashing than the world's fastest human runners, but it will still run faster than them. A teenage tennis player is going to be less skilled than a former tennis world champion in their 80s, but they will still beat the former world champion.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646563So Skill in combat needs to be separated from damage in combat. High skill might lead to more damage but strength and size need to be considered especially in blunt damage.

Let's stay focused on your claim of 70:20:10, which represents reality not some form of game where you are trying to emulate an atmosphere. I'm saying that's wrong, plenty of others are saying that's wrong, and giving lots of examples to back that up.

Yes play can be complicated considerably by other factors but we aren't talking about that, we're talking about the 7:2:1 ratio.

Quote from: Imperator;646604No one is refusing the importance of stats.

Jibbajabba is, and you were emphatically agreeing with him.

Quote from: Imperator;646604In BRP having great stats give you a clear advantage over those who haven't the same.

I not only don't know how BRP does things I'm not even sure what BRP is. All I'm asking is, is there an RPG system that reflects what jibbajabba is saying to cause this confusion. Apparently there is not.

Quote from: Imperator;646604Sure. Because there are other factors apart from skill involved on that. But I was talking about most typical activities in an RPG session, like two guys in a fistfight, where the idea of an inexperienced guy with good stats having the same chances of winning as an average stats guy with lots of training looks weird to me.

If you mean a shortish asian ninja having the same odds as a hulking German bierhall brawler, it would look a bit weird, but that's because you haven't the skills cranked up high enough for the ninja, plus the ninja will have a variety of other skills like trip, push, nerve pinch and so on.

Quote from: Imperator;646604Of course, one could reason that if you have lots of points in a combat skill you probably have good stats as a result of the same training.

You'd figure that out at chargen usually. I'm leery of changing base stats on the fly in response to player activities because I actually want them to focus on their skills. All I'm saying is that the 7:2:1 mix is wayyyy too skills heavy.

Quote from: The Traveller;646624I not only don't know how BRP does things I'm not even sure what BRP is. All I'm asking is, is there an RPG system that reflects what jibbajabba is saying to cause this confusion. Apparently there is not.

BRP is the system used in Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Elric, Nephilim and other games. It's the classic percentile system.

QuoteIf you mean a shortish asian ninja having the same odds as a hulking German bierhall brawler, it would look a bit weird, but that's because you haven't the skills cranked up high enough for the ninja, plus the ninja will have a variety of other skills like trip, push, nerve pinch and so on.

I think we can agree on this.

QuoteYou'd figure that out at chargen usually. I'm leery of changing base stats on the fly in response to player activities because I actually want them to focus on their skills. All I'm saying is that the 7:2:1 mix is wayyyy too skills heavy.

It's a perfectly valid preference. In BRP changing stats require lots and lots of training.

Quote from: Imperator;646632BRP is the system used in Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Elric, Nephilim and other games. It's the classic percentile system.

Oh right, I didn't know what that was called.

Quote from: Imperator;646632It's a perfectly valid preference. In BRP changing stats require lots and lots of training.

It's perfectly valid if you're trying to emulate a universe with heavy skills weighting. Jibbajabba is claiming this represents reality instead, which is where all the confuffle comes from.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646565Now aging is really important very few RPGs try to handle it at all.
I mean imagine a system where a female's appearance drops by 1 point per year after she hits 32, the boards would go mad :D

Uppost I refered to a game I made up where maximum skill was limited by stat. And you have Active, and inactive skills.

If we supposed Running was a skill based on Strength + agility. so your starting skill was S+A and you could increase the skill to 5x(S+A) then if you maxed the skill out stats would be 25% of skill, but as your stats dropped your skill would diminish.  
Now youy have to be pretty harsh with stats and maybe there is a better stat that Str or agility to determine sprinting , but I think its a workable compromise.

Oh you sexist so. ;)

It's quite a good idea to ponder - and for BRP, it'd be not too hard to try and whip up some ideas of mechanical tables/notions, which would discuss the issue of skill atrophy as you age. Of course, some changes'd also need to be to applaud for genre - for example, CoC can do fine without intellectual skills atrophying too much, Post Apocalyptic setting would probably be in reverse.

I'd say that a random roll, based on your corresponding attribute, may be a decent idea of "age atrophy" mechanic, at least as far as BRP is concerned.

Awesome! We could get a thread going that includes age and gender bias!



It's a touch subject for some people.

All I know is my personal stats have declined with age, except perhaps Wisdom and CHA.

But STR, CON, DEX, and INT have taken some hits.

In Traveller: The New Era (using the GDW house system I mentioned in an earlier post), the usual task asset is attribute plus skill. Task difficulty factors are successive doublings or halvings of this.

Attributes are rolled up with 2d6-1 (giving a range of 1-11), and can potentially reach 13. "Elite" (in combat capability) NPCs have an average of 8 in the physical attributes, and if memory serves an average combat asset of 14.

I don't recall any stipulated cap on skill ratings, but I think there ought to be one.

Anyhow, most skills begin with a null value. This is distinguished from having level-0, which gives twice the chance of success.

This means that an average attribute of 6 initially outweighs a skill rating above level-0, but eventually the skill counts for more if one develops it enough.

I don't recall details, but I am sure it's much harder to improve an attribute than to improve a skill.

In addition, some tasks can be attribute only, or involve other weightings. The text calls attention to some such methods, from which a GM could easily extrapolate more.

Effects of aging were a notable innovation when Classic Traveller was released (1977), and I think have been included in all later rules sets as an expected element of "the Traveller flavor".

The use of attribute scores (and to a slightly lesser extent skill ratings) was very little formalized in the original set. In keeping with the prevailing ethos of the time, it was expected that GMs would adapt the tools at hand to the needs of the situation.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646651I'd say that a random roll, based on your corresponding attribute, may be a decent idea of "age atrophy" mechanic, at least as far as BRP is concerned.

The Pendragon aging system also appeared in the Avalon Hill edition of RuneQuest. Stormbringer offered another method (aimed more at character generation), and Call of Cthulhu I think something similar.

I would be surprised to find that Chaosium's "D100 System" omnibus offers no treatment.

Quote from: Phillip;646769The Pendragon aging system also appeared in the Avalon Hill edition of RuneQuest. Stormbringer offered another method (aimed more at character generation), and Call of Cthulhu I think something similar.

I would be surprised to find that Chaosium's "D100 System" omnibus offers no treatment.

The BRP's aging mechanic reduces attributes not skills.

Quote from: Bill;646755Awesome! We could get a thread going that includes age and gender bias!

Please don't. This is a board that can't handle radical ideas like engaging genre conventions, using maps and miniatures, or actually reading and following rules. I don't need to see what it does with age and gender bias.

Another thing about the original Traveller rules is that skill training and physical fitness programs are on a time scale of a similar order of magnitude to that involved in aging. The same holds in Pendragon.

Quote from: Rincewind1;646773The BRP's aging mechanic reduces attributes not skills.

Ah, I see! One variant I've seen has attribute scores limiting skill % (even more notably than in old RQ), which would naturally carry over any reduction in the former.

Quote from: Phillip;646801Ah, I see! One variant I've seen has attribute scores limiting skill % (even more notably than in old RQ), which would naturally carry over any reduction in the former.

That variant may very well be in BRP's Big Golden Book - I'll check later at some free moment, thanks for the notice.

I think my outlook on this issue would be some compromise and mix between the attribute limiting skill, and rolls for skills dropping as the age raises - with bonuses to that roll. That random roll and modifiers to it (as well as first a roll if that roll even applies, with proper modifers) would represent the unequal nature, and the modifiers could for example represent the fact that if someone is more active, both physically and mentally, the atrophy rates are much lower.

Quote from: gleichman;646782Please don't. This is a board that's transcended mundane ideas like engaging genre conventions, using maps and miniatures, or actually reading and following rules.

fixed your typos.

Quote from: Bill;646755Awesome! We could get a thread going that includes age and gender bias!



It's a touch subject for some people.

All I know is my personal stats have declined with age, except perhaps Wisdom and CHA.

But STR, CON, DEX, and INT have taken some hits.

It's interesting.
Strength is really tricky because in reality anyone can increase their Strength through training (or drugs) it really is simple but people don't becuase it's time consuming and boring and people are people.
Certainly I have been training a lot more since I moved to Singapore and am stronger now than since I was 20 or so. But no doubt there is a point where things drop.
Con is hard because you can easily increase fitness but you can't repair your internal reistance to disease etc and injuries take longer to heal when you are older just as a thing.
Dex I guess drops though Dex itself is such a broad thing covering agility accuracy hand eye coordination... there are plenty of old illusionists who can still palm a coin or splice a deck of cards and their are plenty of OAPS that can still shoot much better than I ever will.
Int is hard, again memory might diminish but there are plenty of memory masters who would disagree. Same is true of chess grandmasters, Yes academics do a lot of their best work when they are young but is that because of youth or tenure and Hawking still seems pretty sharp. I know my IQ is in the same zone from the last test I took a year ago to the first test I took when I was 10 so ...
I also don't think old people are necessarily wise. As Lilly Allen so eloquently said
What the fuck do you know?
Just cos you're old you think your wise,
But who the hell are you though,
I didn't even ask for your advice

I would be interested to see some genuine medical stats on the effect of aging on a slew of physical and mental faculties