Quote from: Omega;801408True. But you would have been getting that anyhow so you were still kicking ass with a supposedly crippled character.

But on the other hand, it prevented impossible stuff like Will pointed out where I simply CAN'T succeed.  In many of the tests, it doesn't matter by how MUCH you exceed the target number, just as long as you exceed it.  Having the boost thereby kept me from suffering overmuch.

An interesting wrinkle is that the rules state that your defense assumed you were "taking ten" and that referees could make players roll a d20 and adjust their defense accordingly.

The rules also say burning a Force point will help on ANY d20 roll.

I'm sure you see where this is going.  Instead of a Defense of 10 + some other stuff, it was d20 + 4 or 5 d6, eventually + some other stuff.  By rolling at crucial moments I got base defense well over 20 more than once.  Not being allowed to "take 10" didn't turn into much of a disadvantage.

Yet another case where I'm convinced the damn rules were just never playtested.

Quote from: Will;801326It's not spherical cow.

It better not be. Per Lewis Carroll, spherical cows move at arbitrarily high speeds, so a stampede would kill you before you were even aware they were on the same continent.

Thanks for extra info, Old Geezer. I was a little puzzled at how your 3e experience was so different, but I don't know much about the Star Wars mods.

Quote from: Will;801491Thanks for extra info, Old Geezer. I was a little puzzled at how your 3e experience was so different, but I don't know much about the Star Wars mods.

Your explanations helped.  Lacking Force Points it would have been a very different game indeed; if I had 3 levels in a skill, and no stat bonus, a DC of 20 would indeed be pretty much impossible.

My own personal answer to that problem (ymmv and all that) is "don't play those damn rules."  When I've brought players into my OD&D game who are used to later editions, one major cultural shift for them is not "stats don't matter," but WHY stats don't matter; if you're a 4th level whatever, I figure you are a 4th level in all kinds of general "adventuring stuff."

Quote from: Sacrosanct;801094"realistically never happen".  Don't bold a quote from me and then conveniently drop the first conditioning word.

Don't be such a cry baby. The qualifier was included in what I quoted and in what I bolded.

QuoteTell you what.  You tell me the odds of coming up with a set of stats like that.  Because if something only has a 1 in a million or billion chance of happening, I feel safe in saying that it will "realistically never happen" and not consider that hyperbole.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million plus people have played D&D over the past 40+ years. For various reasons, players almost always roll up more than one character unless they stop playing after only a few sessions. Many players roll up dozens of characters. Therefore I feel quite safe in saying that one in a million stats have come up more than once in the hundreds of millions of PCs that have been rolled up by all the D&D players world wide. So now we have shown that such large differences do, in reality, occur in actual play somewhere. They just don't seem to have occurred in your play.

So do you still maintain that those sorts of differences aren't going to ever  occur in anyone's play or do you agree that they do occur, just not in your personal play experience and in so far as you've noticed?

Quote from: Natty Bodak;801164I only had the one cookie to give out on thyla count. Bren got to it first, and made that good point succinctly. I'm sorry there's no second place cookie, but I can acknowledge that you also contributed if that helps.

What flavor cookie?

Quote from: Natty Bodak;801143Bren went that farthest to answer the question by noting that he notices other folks rolls and almost can't help doing the math in his head. So there's somebody that notices (a question Saacro had).

I didn't answer that specifically – in fact nobody asked. But I have more than once mentioned that I prefer games with some variation between the PCs abilities, stats, etc. both as the GM and as a player. Also that I am often not bothered by significant differences in abilities, stats, etc. However, at some point, such differences can become too large to be viable as a game, plausible in the setting, or fun to play.

Quote from: Bren;801633I didn't answer that specifically – in fact nobody asked. But I have more than once mentioned that I prefer games with some variation between the PCs abilities, stats, etc. both as the GM and as a player. Also that I am often not bothered by significant differences in abilities, stats, etc. However, at some point, such differences can become too large to be viable as a game, plausible in the setting, or fun to play.

I think the difference is personal and a good GM will pitch their game to make the most players happy.
As a Player I will play whatever gets rolled but that comes from playing for 35 years right, you get to see the fun in the challenge .... I can definitely see that other players are going to have a different limit.

Sacro has still to admit that as a DM he has any flexibility on stats as rolled.
Surely as a DM he wouldn't make a new player run a PC with 4 stats under 8 ?

Maybe he would who can say.

Quote from: Bren;801633Don't be such a cry baby. The qualifier was included in what I quoted and in what I bolded.

Which you completely ignored in your response.  This is what you said:

"Do you really believe that it is physically impossible ..."

Since your response was missing that qualifier (which is pretty important in the context of what I was saying), I can then only assume you were setting up a strawman?  After all, I never said it was physically impossible as you had tried to frame my argument.

QuoteSomewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million plus people have played D&D over the past 40+ years. For various reasons, players almost always roll up more than one character unless they stop playing after only a few sessions. Many players roll up dozens of characters. Therefore I feel quite safe in saying that one in a million stats have come up more than once in the hundreds of millions of PCs that have been rolled up by all the D&D players world wide. So now we have shown that such large differences do, in reality, occur in actual play somewhere. They just don't seem to have occurred in your play..

So then that's a 'no', you don't have the odds of that happening?  You know what?  I'm guessing you probably have really small odds of rolling an 18/00 strength with 00% psioncs in AD&D too, and by your logic it must have happened several times, but that in no way means that the rules for generating stats and psionics is unfair and gimps and punishes every other player does it?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;801668Which you completely ignored in your response.  This is what you said:

"Do you really believe that it is physically impossible ..."

Since your response was missing that qualifier (which is pretty important in the context of what I was saying), I can then only assume you were setting up a strawman?  After all, I never said it was physically impossible as you had tried to frame my argument.

I ignored the qualifiers in my question because I was asking a question to clarify your meaning not debating what you said. The "?" at the end of the sentence was one clue that I was asking you a question not making a point, the interrogative "Do you believe..." was another.

Since you seem to be, for some reason, reluctant to clarify your intent, I’ll make it easier for you by spelling out several answers in a multiple choice fashion so you can just pick the answer that best corresponds to your belief.

   (A) It is logically impossible for someone to roll stats like those mentioned. (I don’t think you meant that due to the qualifiers, but wanted you to actually do your own clarification.)

   (B) It is logically possible but so statistically unlikely as to be a virtual impossibility. As an example, say the odds of you personally (or anyone really) being struck and killed by an asteroid while posting a reply to me. While it is logically possible for that to happen, it is statistically so unlikely as to be ignored in almost all contexts.

   (C) It is logically possible but statistically of a very low probability, but still something that will, given enough people playing RPGs for enough sessions, occur. For example, being dealt a royal flush in cards, buying the winning lottery ticket.

   (D) It is logically possible and something that is significantly more frequent than say a royal flush. Something that some people may not see after years of gaming. For example, anything any one person hasn’t seen occur in an RPG after years of regular gaming.

   (E) It is logically possible and something that does not occur in most game sessions but something that the majority of gamers who play for an extended period of time will see happen. Various critical hits in certain game systems would be a pretty good example of this. (I don’t think you meant this due to your use of the phrase “never occur” but again, it’s not really easy what you think the probability of occurrence of events are since you provide no actual probabilities.)
Which of these five answers best corresponds to your belief when you said, something would never occur in a roleplaying context?

QuoteSo then that's a 'no', you don't have the odds of that happening?

I have not calculated the exact odds. (Although see below for a calculation of odds of rolling 18-00 Strength and Psionic Strength of 100.) I have a fairly good intuitive notion of the underlying probabilities and the number of characters that have been rolled in 40 years of D&D are in the hundreds of millions. The odds are some roll at least as good as that has happened.

I also note that other people have provided their estimates of the probability which you seem to have dismissed without providing your answer for the probability. You’ve done zip statistically. Since so far you have been claiming that it can’t ever happen in an RPG to anyone it really is up to you to provide the numbers or to stop claiming it isn’t possible for it to occur just because you haven’t noticed that it happened in your games.

QuoteYou know what?  I'm guessing you probably have really small odds of rolling an 18/00 strength with 00% psioncs in AD&D too, and by your logic it must have happened several times, but that in no way means that the rules for generating stats and psionics is unfair and gimps and punishes every other player does it?

The odds of rolling 18-00 strength on 3d6 is 1/21,600. I don’t recall the psionic rules in AD&D. Does everyone have a psionic strength or is there some qualifier before rolling a number? Assuming everyone rolls psionic strength on 1D100 then the odds of that are 1/100. Therefore the odds of both happening are 1/2,160,000. So given that estimates for the number of D&D players world wide are around 10 million. If every D&D player only ever rolled one character in their whole life we’d expect to see 4 or more characters with those stats. Since we know most players roll up far more than one character in their whole life and we know that many people use some method like roll 4 dice pick best 3 dice that increase the probability even further, we should expect that dozens of characters (if not hundreds) would have stats of that sort of low probability. So hundreds or thousands of players have seen such an event occur. We can also observe that it is unlikely that any single player of the millions of people who have played D&D would see 18-00 with 100 Psi rolled on 3d6 once, let alone more than once.

Whether or not something like that is likely to have occurred is an analyzable, statistical question which you seem to be dodging or ignoring. Whether when it occurs it is perceived to be unfun or something that “gimps” or “punishes” other players is a subjective question, not an objective question. Therefore the answer will vary from person to person. You appear to me to be conflating the objective with the subjective and vice versa.

In 1e, a human (possibly dwarves and halflings if allowed) has a chance for psionics if at least one of the three mental scores are an unmodified 16 or greater, I assume this means before any racial or post-rolling stat adjustments. In order to have psionic power you need to roll a 100 or higher on d%. Every point of Int over 16 adds 2.5 to the roll. Wis adds 1.5, and Cha adds .5.

Anecdotally, I remember rolling up several characters with psionics, but cannot remember rolling up any with percentile strength and psionics.

Quote from: Bren;801695Which of these five answers best corresponds to your belief when you said, something would never occur in a roleplaying context?

You just did it again.  I said it would realistically never happen.   You're taking something that is not an absolute and strawmanning it to something that is.

Also, I already answered your question when I made the reference to winning the lottery above.  You had no need to type out lengthly options when I already clarified my point.


And I'll note I don't think it's as subjective as you think it is.  I'll expand my analogy.

You've got a million people.  Half invest a $100 into an investment they know will return a 10% rate of return after a year.  Half invest $100 into the lottery.  Most of those either end up with a slightly less return than 10%, or a slightly higher return.  One (or even two) people hit it big, and win a million bucks.  Are you saying it's subjective if the people who invested in the assured 10% return feel cheated and punished because those two people won it big?  Maybe on a very literal definition, but I think it is widely accepted that if someone feels cheated and punished because they didn't play the lottery and one or two people won big, then that person complaining has the problem.  The problem is not with the system, nor with the people who won.

Because that's what's happening in these discussions.  heck, just look at this thread.  I ask why would someone feel gimped, punished,  or cheated, and all the people who said they would only came up with examples that realistically would never happen, much the same as the one or two people who won the lottery.  No one (here at least) has admitted they'd feel gimped or cheated or punished if another PC only had one additional +1 bonus somewhere.  It's always something outrageously unlikely to ever happen.  And my point, is if that's the case, why are you (general you) whining about being treated unfairly or cheated or punished, just like the person whining about being cheated and punished because someone else won the lottery?

The first time I rolled 5 sets of '4d6, drop lowest' sample characters for one of the threads (I forget, now, which thread), I ended up with one character with nothing above a 13, and another with an 18. (And most of the rest had 16s, if I remember right).

A difference between a high of 13 and 18 (in 3e-5e) is 25%, which is pretty significant.

Going to do another batch:
15, 12, 15, 15, 12, 14
11, 13, 14, 8, 14, 11
9, 12, 15, 14, 11, 12
12, 12, 13, 10, 11, 7
11, 12, 14, 9, 12, 15

(highest max 15, lowest max 13)


A second:
11, 18, 15, 13, 13, 11
12, 11, 16, 7, 12, 12
9, 11, 11, 14, 12, 15
15, 6, 16, 10, 10, 10
15, 9, 12, 8, 9, 14

(18, 14)

15, 11, 13, 11, 13, 10
8, 11, 12, 8, 15, 7
14, 9, 13, 15, 12, 17
12, 15, 12, 14, 13, 15
11, 10, 11, 14, 13, 14

(17, 14)

13, 10, 13, 11, 12, 16
13, 14, 9, 10, 11, 14
15, 9, 14, 13, 17, 5
11, 15, 13, 13, 16, 12
14, 13, 3, 9, 18, 14

(18, 14)

So, out of five batches of 5 characters, the 'spread of highs' ranges from 2 to 5.

So I'd say roughly half the time, the spread is enough to be noticeable (in 3e-5e). Though 5e's ability score system helps mitigate issues a bit.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;801698You just did it again.  I said it would realistically never happen.   You're taking something that is not an absolute and strawmanning it to something that is.

No I am not. Do try to actually read what I wrote rather than just reiterating that same comment.

QuoteAlso, I already answered your question when I made the reference to winning the lottery above.  You had no need to type out lengthly options when I already clarified my point.

Which like very high stats is something that multiple people who are not you have noticed because they have occurred. Statistically from the numbers of players and characters we know they have to have occurred.

So we now have established.

(1) The modest difference in stats that you say no one will notice, some people do in fact notice. Even though you don't notice it.

(2) The large difference in stats that you say will never occur in a roleplaying setting occurs to multiple people playing a roleplaying game. This is just like the fact that someone wins the lottery even though for millions of people the someone that wins is not them.

QuoteAnd I'll note I don't think it's as subjective as you think it is.  I'll expand my analogy.

Why? Seriously, why do you bother?

It seems you are hell bent on trying to prove that people who notice things you don't notice, experience things you haven't experienced, and who have a subjective reaction different from the reaction that you hypothesize you would have (in the event that you ever noticed it had happened to you at all) are playing elf games wrong. Why?

QuoteBecause that's what's happening in these discussions.  heck, just look at this thread.  I ask why would someone feel gimped, punished,  or cheated, and all the people who said they would only came up with examples that realistically would never happen, much the same as the one or two people who won the lottery.

So now you are back to claiming that something that is statistically likely to happen to the level of a certainty never happens in fact because you haven't ever noticed it happen around you. Bullshit!

QuoteAnd my point, is if that's the case, why are you (general you) whining about being treated unfairly or cheated or punished, just like the person whining about being cheated and punished because someone else won the lottery?

They use the word unfair or punished to describe their emotional response to an outcome they find unfun. Now I agree that they are using "unfair" in a statistically invalid and unmeaningful sense. But it seems clear that the people on this site are not trying to use the word unfair to prove anything objectively about games but only as emotive language to try to describe their feeling. People often have a non-rational, statistically invalid sense of what is probable and statistically fair. That fact, while occassionally frustrating, is so common as to seem hardly worthy of needing it pointed out. As just one example, if people made decisions in a rational, statistically accurate manner no one would play the lottery since the roulette wheel offers a far, far better rate of return than does any state lottery.

What I find particularly ironic in this discussion is your use of the phrase "realistically would never happen." A phrase that is statistically invalid and unmeaningful because you are objectively, statistically wrong about the odds of high stats occurring over all D&D players. So I don't see where you have the grounds to complain about other people's definitional inaccuracies when you yourself are similarly inaccurate.

Backing up Bren's point, I did 5 runs of 5-player groups.

In 3 of the five groups, there was one person whose highest score was at least 4 points below the highest score of the rest of the group, which translates to a 20%+ greater chance of missing.

So, _realistically_, this is going to come up more often than not.

Bren, go read the thread again, and pay particular attention to the examples people used to show why they would feel cheated.  Then pick up a dictionary and realize that "I noticed the difference" does not mean the same thing as "I feel cheated/punished/gimped."

If someone is going to say they feel cheated/punished/gimped and uses an example that realistically never happens, then they need to evaluate the basis of their entire position.  Just like if I say I feel cheated and/or punished because someone else won the lottery and I chose to not even play.  "Realistically not going to happen" is a perfectly valid statement.  You don't go around wearing a helmet all day do you, because it will realistically never happen that someone hits you in the head with a rock.  So why would you complain about getting hit with a rock?  I'm guessing you don't.  I.e., rational people typically don't complain about something that realistically never happens.

Quote from: Will;801716Backing up Bren's point, I did 5 runs of 5-player groups.

In 3 of the five groups, there was one person whose highest score was at least 4 points below the highest score of the rest of the group, which translates to a 20%+ greater chance of missing.

So, _realistically_, this is going to come up more often than not.

This is all well and good, but has jack shit to do with the point of this thread.  That being, why would you feel gimped/cheated/punished for using array or point buy just because someone else wants to use random rolls?  None of your examples are comparing the average bonues of random rolls to those of non-random choices.

Quote from: Bren;801633What flavor cookie?

It was dark chocolate with pecan. I'm ashamed that I need to emphasize "was" in that sentence. Rain check!

Quote from: Bren;801633I didn’t answer that specifically – in fact nobody asked. But I have more than once mentioned that I prefer games with some variation between the PCs abilities, stats, etc. both as the GM and as a player. Also that I am often not bothered by significant differences in abilities, stats, etc. However, at some point, such differences can become too large to be viable as a game, plausible in the setting, or fun to play.

You answered the question of how/why some people do notice those differences, though.