Quote from: dragoner;786237Obviously, because when you have a thousand different skills and tasks, it is much easier to stop the game to sift through the rules for each individual mechanic. Kind of like taking a half hour break every fifteen minutes.

Which seems to me a good reason not to have a thousand different skills and tasks.

That's shitty game design, far more shitty than using different dice in a game.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786240Which seems to me a good reason not to have a thousand different skills and tasks.

That's shitty game design, far more shitty than using different dice in a game.

Or to create a unified task mechanic so you aren't looking up different target numbers and mechanics. Too simple, like "Gubba hits it with his axe" for the zillionth time becomes boring.

What about a chitty design? That's what I got originally, laminated chit.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786239The point is different probability curves.

If I only have a few choices I'm going to use something like 2d6.  If I have a table full of magic items I'm going to use percentile dice, especially since I'm not going to want them all to have an equal chance of occurring.  And why should I convert "Heavy foot remains on a 7+ on 2d6" to percentile dice?

Agreed, though I wouldn't consider 'random treasure' to be included in the scope of the discussion about unified mechanics. I mean, 3e has %ile tables for that, sure.

But why bend bars/break doors? Or sneak?
Those don't have a lot of options.

Quote from: S'mon;786224...In fact, IME no woman I've ever met thinks women are as strong as men.

Some women are stronger than some men. And those who are know it. When we were first dating, my wife used to enjoy beating men at armwrestling.

Men and women as groups have different averages and ranges of strength. Women compete against and sometimes outperform men in ultralong distance competitions. So maybe they should (on average) have a lower STR and a higher CON.

As a side note: if the goal is to have the upper scores the same, using penalty or bonus dice would be a better way to model variances in stats since the max and min stay the same, but average shifts.

Quote from: Will;786242Agreed, though I wouldn't consider 'random treasure' to be included in the scope of the discussion about unified mechanics. I mean, 3e has %ile tables for that, sure.

But why bend bars/break doors? Or sneak?
Those don't have a lot of options.

Because some of us like funky subsystems.  It is purely a matter of taste.

I know some don't like it, but it's neither good nor bad.

Quote from: Bren;786243Some women are stronger than some men. And those who are know it. When we were first dating, my wife used to enjoy beating men at armwrestling.

Oh yeah, my wife is a Rugby prop forward (the big slow ones who push at the front of the scrum) - she's stronger than plenty of men, I guess. But still well below average adult male strength, and obviously nowhere near as strong as a typical male prop forward.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786247Because some of us like funky subsystems.  It is purely a matter of taste.

I know some don't like it, but it's neither good nor bad.

It's not good or bad, but it is dated...

Regarding gender and scores, I've grown fond of using point systems and just ignoring 'probabilities.' It's been a good way to handle races, too.

'Ok, you can have up to 20 in a score, here's your points.'
"But I'm an ogre. Ogres normally have 24 Str..."
'So you're a small or unusually feeble ogre.'

So if your woman is 18 Str, congrats, she's an outlier. Whatever, moving on.

Quote from: Will;786256Regarding gender and scores, I've grown fond of using point systems and just ignoring 'probabilities.' It's been a good way to handle races, too.

That seems very dated to me.

Obviously, anything you don't like that is over one year old is "dated".

Rolling dice is SO 1970s.

And what's with this character sheet bullshit? Aren't we over that?

I think calling things dated is dated.

Quote from: Nexus;786265Rolling dice is SO 1970s.

And what's with this character sheet bullshit? Aren't we over that?

I chisel my character into the fucking table.

Of course, this means I am very rarely invited back for a second session.

Quote from: Old Geezer;786235Ding!  Winner.  "Unified Mechanics" is a stupid idea to me, honestly.  Or at VERY best, irrelevant; as in, "makes no difference."

"OH MY GOD!  I HAVE TO REACH FOR PERCENTILE DICE INSTEAD OF 2D6!   THE HORROR!!! THE HORROR!!!!!"

Quote from: dragoner;786237Obviously, because when you have a thousand different skills and tasks, it is much easier to stop the game to sift through the rules for each individual mechanic. Kind of like taking a half hour break every fifteen minutes.

Well, don't have a thousand different skills, then. That, as mentioned above, is a bad design decision if you want to avoid looking up info ... and that's true even if you have a unified mechanic.

If you are going to call a system mechanics idea "dated", it would be "unified mechanics", because forcing all resolution rolls into one paradigm just for the sake of a popular fashion introduces crappy design decisions.

EXAMPLE 1: Attack rolls vs. Skill rolls. Attack rolls are d20 roll high. Skill rolls, where they existed, were mostly d6 rolls of four types: 1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, selected mostly by gut feeling of probability. To switch everything to d20, you *could* have used d20 roll under ability score, which would be simple, but in the quest for unified mechanics and keeping everything roll high, 3e went with the asburdly complicated DC system, where each skill has a separate table of possible DCs.

EXAMPLE 2: Ability modifiers. 3e didn't want to have one STR modifier for some things and a different STR modifier for other things, or to have INT modifiers be different, so it tried to unify all ability modifiers. But, for example, ability modifiers added to d20 rolls for the skill rolls above wind up affecting skills much less than a straight d20 roll under ability would... plus, you have separate skill modifiers, so the roll is d20 + ability mod + skill mod, and you have a new layer of skill points to distribute. You could have just used d20 under ability for trained skills, d% under ability for untrained/hard, and everything would have been simple.

Quote from: talysman;786268If you are going to call a system mechanics idea "dated", it would be "unified mechanics", because forcing all resolution rolls into one paradigm just for the sake of a popular fashion introduces crappy design decisions.

EXAMPLE 1: Attack rolls vs. Skill rolls. Attack rolls are d20 roll high. Skill rolls, where they existed, were mostly d6 rolls of four types: 1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, selected mostly by gut feeling of probability. To switch everything to d20, you *could* have used d20 roll under ability score, which would be simple, but in the quest for unified mechanics and keeping everything roll high, 3e went with the asburdly complicated DC system, where each skill has a separate table of possible DCs.

EXAMPLE 2: Ability modifiers. 3e didn't want to have one STR modifier for some things and a different STR modifier for other things, or to have INT modifiers be different, so it tried to unify all ability modifiers. But, for example, ability modifiers added to d20 rolls for the skill rolls above wind up affecting skills much less than a straight d20 roll under ability would... plus, you have separate skill modifiers, so the roll is d20 + ability mod + skill mod, and you have a new layer of skill points to distribute. You could have just used d20 under ability for trained skills, d% under ability for untrained/hard, and everything would have been simple.

Nicely done!