25% chance?
33% chance?
50% chance?
66% chance?
75% chance?
Unskilled 1 in 4
Skilled 1 in 2
Proficient 2 in 3
If you are talking about riding a horse or jumping a rather small to normal distance, don't do a skill roll. Way too many rolls once skills was introduced to be a bloody pain in the arse to the players. Just keep that in mind when asking for a roll.
I remember something about actual research done, prolly by WotC, that concluded that a 70% hit rate was the most fun in combat. That probably generalizes.
Probably 2 in 3, depending on the action. If failure leads to death and it's "level appropriate" then 80%+.
I think I saw a report somewhere that most people most of the time will not try things, at all, that they don't thing that can guarantee to succeed at 100% of the time. IE people do not try to climb a fence etc, unless they know that they can. In a normal situation, they get a ladder etc. Failure on most of these rolls should be you didn't try it as you thought you might get hurt.
Normal success should be concentrated in the 50% to 70% range. 60% average is a little low for expectations on the base math, but once players focus on what they do well, it will push it up right around the 2/3 chance that non-entitled players enjoy.
You need to leave some room for the poor and excellent skills, too. Nothing wrong with people having poor to developing skills in the 20% to 50% range, or pushing excellent up to around 85%. It gets dicey once you drop below 20% or go above 85% in any moderately complex system, because there are bound to be some edge cases that push the numbers further.
However, the big problem is "level-appropriate". For skills, there should just be "appropriate", with some distinctions for a few difficulty categories. Low level characters should typically start with poor to developing skills, with perhaps an option to be competent in 1 or 2 if they focus. High level characters should have better skills. But the nature of the difficulty stays the same. A combat treadmill has some obvious utility, but a skill treadmill is frustrating for no good reason.
Quote from: zincmoat on August 07, 2024, 06:15:42 AMI think I saw a report somewhere that most people most of the time will not try things, at all, that they don't thing that can guarantee to succeed at 100% of the time. IE people do not try to climb a fence etc, unless they know that they can. In a normal situation, they get a ladder etc. Failure on most of these rolls should be you didn't try it as you thought you might get hurt.
Part of the reason I say: in most cases, you do not have to make a roll to
do something, you just have to make a roll to do it
quickly or
well. "I look for a ladder," means the person has chosen
not to do it quickly, for example.
Doing something poorly and slowly doesn't require a roll.
We always roll for combat because in combat, you always want to do it both well and quickly.
Quote from: zincmoat on August 07, 2024, 06:15:42 AMI think I saw a report somewhere that most people most of the time will not try things, at all, that they don't thing that can guarantee to succeed at 100% of the time. IE people do not try to climb a fence etc, unless they know that they can. In a normal situation, they get a ladder etc. Failure on most of these rolls should be you didn't try it as you thought you might get hurt.
It is always annoying when your character inexplicably fails to do something they're supposed to be good at, for no reason other than dice luck.
This bothers me particularly with things like jumping and climbing. Most people, especially athletes, can eyeball how far they can jump or what they can climb with a high degree of reliability. It's one of the reasons I like the attribute test system from Dragon Warriors. If the difficulty rating for the task is beneath your relevant attribute score, you don't roll. Having to roll represents a task which is right on the edges of your capability.
In a system that doesn't have that automatic success rule, I'd say somewhere around 70-80% success rate for a task which should be within your character's competence. Go much higher and you're in "shouldn't bother with the roll" territory, but any lower makes the characters look incompetent.
Combat shouldn't work this way, though. A combat check is in principle always an opposed roll, even if that's not how the system works mechanically. The best boxer in the world doesn't have an 80% hit rate against another great boxer. I prefer combat systems where it's much more difficult to hit and wound an opponent, but wounds are more devastating.
I've read several people recommend succeeding on a 8+ (d20). So, 65%. Sounds about right.
Not all skills are the same difficulty. Some are so easy that the unskilled will succeed like fishing, first aid, swimming, shield. Others are very hard like surgery, alchemy, nuclear physics where the unskilled have near zero chance of success.
66% to 75%, is where I have ended up. Sometimes even a higher percent chance of success; or else just making the roll with advantage.
Notice this is very abstract; in D&D, part of the idea (well, at least for thieves), is that your chances get better as you level up.
I have the (4e-ish) idea that DCs rise with your level, so the chances are always the same, but now you're disabling more "advanced" locks.
In some videogames (and 5e D&D, probably 3e-4e too), that happens when random encounters are adjusted to your level.
Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 07, 2024, 01:11:44 PMNotice this is very abstract; in D&D, part of the idea (well, at least for thieves), is that your chances get better as you level up.
I have the (4e-ish) idea that DCs rise with your level, so the chances are always the same, but now you're disabling more "advanced" locks.
In some videogames (and 5e D&D, probably 3e-4e too), that happens when random encounters are adjusted to your level.
The way I explain the old school style of skills with escalating success chance is by reference to "Schroedinger's Lock". Basically, the number on your character sheet represents the percentage of all the locks in the world which you have the ability to pick. When you roll a check, you aren't determining how good your attempt in that moment is. You're rolling to see whether the lock is one you have the skill to pick. Not perfect, but I think it's the most coherent interpretation of the system.
I never considered this before, but if that's the logic, then certain skills should be able to be rolled before the actual attempt is being made. Say a thief is walking around the Duke's palace to case the establishment the day before he intends to break in. As he walks past the south wall, he could pause to examine it, roll his climb check, and when he comes back the next night he now knows whether he can climb the south wall.
Quote from: zincmoat on August 07, 2024, 06:15:42 AMI think I saw a report somewhere that most people most of the time will not try things, at all, that they don't thing that can guarantee to succeed at 100% of the time. IE people do not try to climb a fence etc, unless they know that they can. In a normal situation, they get a ladder etc. Failure on most of these rolls should be you didn't try it as you thought you might get hurt.
Sadly true, yet a rather serendipitous insight for me as my current design resolves this by presenting problems the player can
choose to address, but if they don't the Pool of Peril (which is a GM facing metacurrency) increases by one. So not taking risks still leads to increasing tension and eventually consequences they
can't avoid.
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 07, 2024, 09:29:19 AMMost people, especially athletes, can eyeball how far they can jump or what they can climb with a high degree of reliability.
Athletes are working in good light and in good weather on a track or in a sandpit, with a mat on the other side, wearing shoes especially designed for that task - seriously, there are shoes to sprint with, shoes to run 5km with, shoes to do marathon with, jumping shoes, throwing shoes, etc etc - and everything's set up ideally for them.
This is rather different to taking that same athlete and having them (for example) wearing jeans, t-shirt, hoodie and $10 runners from KMart which should have been thrown out three years ago, run from police along a street with smashed-out streetlights and down a dark alley strewn with rubbish and try to leap over a fence which might have bits of broken glass stuck in the concrete on top of it, or barbed wire, or might be a rickety old fence that might break under them, maybe there's an angry dog on the other side, also it's night and there's shouting, etc.
So we do not care about rolling dice for the competive athlete, we care about rolling dice for him when he's a cop chasing a criminal, or a criminal fleeing the cops. We care about
adventure activities.
Quote from: DocJones on August 07, 2024, 12:12:02 PMSome are so easy that the unskilled will succeed like fishing, first aid, swimming, shield.
If you watch
Alone you'll find that most people find fishing quite hard. They quite literally lose 0.5-1kg a day, and the winners go an average of 74 days - it's essentially a starvation challenge. And these people are all trained in survival.
First aid for minor wounds and burns is trivial, I agree. But if you find yourself in or around a car crash, house fire, the aftermath of a violent brawl, etc, you'll see that most people do nothing at all. Well, nowadays they film it on their mobile phones, but there you go.
As for swimming, tragically it's not as easy as you imagine. In this story (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-01/two-men-drown-in-gold-coast-hotel-pool-rescue/103653242), two men drowned trying to save (successfully) a toddler who'd slipped and fallen into a rooftop hotel swimming pool. Not a raging river or sea with rips, but a not particularly deep hotel swimming pool.
Now, I would argue the base level of these sorts of skills would have been higher for people in the middle ages, just as it'd be higher for rural people today. The flipside of that is that with modern people as characters we can assume that just about every adult is literate, can drive a car in good conditions following the road rules, etc.
This is why in game rules I've written I've distinguished between
general and
specialist skills. General skills are those which everyone has at some basic default level; specialist are those which if you haven't studied them specifically, you can't do them at all. General skills are also just the skill, while specialist skills have specialties within them, like piloting different kinds of aircraft. In each case, which are general and which are specialist depend on the era and culture. If you're a 13th century Mongol, even 3 year olds can ride a horse - but none could fire one of the primitive muskets to be found here and there; if you're a 21st century guy from Virginia, the reverse is true.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on August 07, 2024, 09:00:31 PMQuoteMost people, especially athletes, can eyeball how far they can jump or what they can climb with a high degree of reliability.
Athletes are working in good light and in good weather on a track or in a sandpit, with a mat on the other side, wearing shoes especially designed for that task - seriously, there are shoes to sprint with, shoes to run 5km with, shoes to do marathon with, jumping shoes, throwing shoes, etc etc - and everything's set up ideally for them.
This is rather different to taking that same athlete and having them (for example) wearing jeans, t-shirt, hoodie and $10 runners from KMart which should have been thrown out three years ago, run from police along a street with smashed-out streetlights and down a dark alley strewn with rubbish and try to leap over a fence which might have bits of broken glass stuck in the concrete on top of it, or barbed wire, or might be a rickety old fence that might break under them, maybe there's an angry dog on the other side, also it's night and there's shouting, etc.
So we do not care about rolling dice for the competive athlete, we care about rolling dice for him when he's a cop chasing a criminal, or a criminal fleeing the cops. We care about adventure activities.
I should probably have been clearer there. I meant "athletes" to mean "athletic people", which would include fantasy adventurers. Perhaps a better example would be people who do parkour, since while they're still using modern shoes, that is done under real world conditions. By dint of practice and experience, I imagine they would have a very good idea of what their long jump is and could spot which surfaces they can climb very quickly.
What I'm trying to say is that someone who is experienced at an activity can usually predict their own success rates at that activity under the conditions they're used to. I think the same logic applies to an adventurer. With enough experience climbing rock walls, they should be able to eye up a rock wall in a dungeon and make an educated guess at their ability to climb it.
EDIT: of course different activities are more or less reliable. A professional musician can play a song almost perfectly night after night, but a professional golfer can't always hit the same shot on the same course.
I don't think we disagree here. To my mind, the dice are there to represent either challenges that are at the very edge of the character's capability (where the difference between success or failure might be whether they're having an "off" day), or unforeseen factors out of their control (such as the rock wall having loose stones they couldn't see from below).
Incidentally, I posited in another thread that one of the things an adventuring profession would probably invent long before it was invented in the real world is better shoes. Because yeah, medieval shoes have notoriously poor traction.
Again, my basic idea is that it goes like this:
1. Can you do it at all? A caveman can't fly a rocket. Tolkien couldn't have put down his calligraphy pen and pole vaulted. In this case: NO ROLL.
2. If you can do it at all, are you happy to do a mediocre job and take ages? In this case: NO ROLL.
3. If you can do it at all, and you want to do it either well, or quickly, or both: in this case, ROLL.
Don't be an autistic DM and make them roll in all three cases, since eventually everyone will fail and get bored and leave your game. Equally, don't be a wuss DM and give them such huge bonuses they can do all three automatically, or almost certainly.
Holy shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
In most of the games out on the market which are not based on D&D, a useful skill system determines success by the GM judging what level of skill is involved vs the complexity of the task. Someone making a microwave dinner? Very easy by someone with Cooking-4, even no roll required. Trying to build an AI computer and program it using only stone knives and bearskins with a skill of Computer-0? Impossible task.
For OSR D&D based games, a good thumbrule is to have the task be decided by the DM as a roll under d20 check against the appropriate characteristic with a modifier of the characters level subtracted from the roll (and divided by the number of steps the task is away from the character class of the PC or NPC).
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
Care to elaborate?
Quote from: Eric Diaz on August 08, 2024, 09:55:07 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
Care to elaborate?
Sure. When people post about gaming here, it is strongly biased towards OSR D&D to the point that the majority of the conversations are about that. Period. It has even been declared that if a game is not D&D based, it isn't OSR - which makes the OSR a closed off clubhouse in the eyes of this forum. Makes this forum almost Dragonsfoot.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except when the discussion turns to RPGs which handle tasks differently from D&D and you want a new perspective for insight. Then the D&D myopia makes itself apparent.
Regardless of the type of game, the term 'level appropriate' has little meaning as it relates to performing activities. Different characters can have varying levels of expertise in wide variety of things. Just because a character is level X doesn't mean a guaranteed level of competency across the board at everything. There are also situational modifiers that can come into play. Baselines need to be established to put ballpark success chances on a level playing field.
As Kyle Aaron mentioned upthread, if a skilled character tries to do something in a calm environment, and can take their time, then just calling it an automatic success is fine. If the skill is being used to attempt getting the very best results and/or doing so quickly then a roll is called for. I see the attempt at the best possible work, and/or completing the task in a hurry as modifiers to the base skill level. The chances of success will thus depend on the base skill level.
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 10:19:28 AMQuote from: Eric Diaz on August 08, 2024, 09:55:07 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
Care to elaborate?
Sure. When people post about gaming here, it is strongly biased towards OSR D&D to the point that the majority of the conversations are about that. Period. It has even been declared that if a game is not D&D based, it isn't OSR - which makes the OSR a closed off clubhouse in the eyes of this forum. Makes this forum almost Dragonsfoot.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except when the discussion turns to RPGs which handle tasks differently from D&D and you want a new perspective for insight. Then the D&D myopia makes itself apparent.
On other topics I'd agree with you, but I don't see it here. Aside from the couple of comments about the OSR percentage system for thief skills, everything here has been universally applicable across different games. I guess you could argue the "level-appropriate" in the thread title implies a class-and-level based system, but I took it more broadly to mean "appropriate for the character's supposed skill level at a given task".
I guess I can only speak for myself, but I consider this more of an issue more worth discussing in regard to skills-based games than class-based ones.
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 10:19:28 AMQuote from: Eric Diaz on August 08, 2024, 09:55:07 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
Care to elaborate?
Sure. When people post about gaming here, it is strongly biased towards OSR D&D to the point that the majority of the conversations are about that. Period. It has even been declared that if a game is not D&D based, it isn't OSR - which makes the OSR a closed off clubhouse in the eyes of this forum. Makes this forum almost Dragonsfoot.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except when the discussion turns to RPGs which handle tasks differently from D&D and you want a new perspective for insight. Then the D&D myopia makes itself apparent.
Ah, well, I see your point, although I believe OSR is most useful as a TSR-D&D-compatibility logo.
"Level appropriate" is indeed mostly a D&D thing; when I was playing Pendragon, UA CoC, GURPS, etc., this kind of thing wouldn't come up.
By level appropriate, I wasn't merely referring to the D&D level system, per se.
You attempt a task that should be within your ability range, all things considered. You have a good chance of success, but success isn't guaranteed.
Is that a 2 out of 3 chance?
3 out of 4?
4 out of 5?
5 out of 6?
Sounds like you're trying to pin down the difference between shades of gray.
There is no single answer, no clear line.
In 3e, for example, your chances of jumping over a 5 ft chasm are something like 55%, 60% for 6 ft, 65% for 7 feet and so on.
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/3e_SRD:Jump_Skill
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 08, 2024, 12:46:01 PMOn other topics I'd agree with you, but I don't see it here. Aside from the couple of comments about the OSR percentage system for thief skills, everything here has been universally applicable across different games. I guess you could argue the "level-appropriate" in the thread title implies a class-and-level based system, but I took it more broadly to mean "appropriate for the character's supposed skill level at a given task".
I guess I can only speak for myself, but I consider this more of an issue more worth discussing in regard to skills-based games than class-based ones.
Quote from: Man at Arms on August 08, 2024, 02:17:40 PMBy level appropriate, I wasn't merely referring to the D&D level system, per se.
You attempt a task that should be within your ability range, all things considered. You have a good chance of success, but success isn't guaranteed.
Is that a 2 out of 3 chance?
3 out of 4?
4 out of 5?
5 out of 6?
While I acknowledge the posts above, I have a caveat in that only one sentence has gotten the most attention while the next two paragraphs which directly address the OP were ignored does lend credence to my claim.
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
In most of the games out on the market which are not based on D&D, a useful skill system determines success by the GM judging what level of skill is involved vs the complexity of the task. Someone making a microwave dinner? Very easy by someone with Cooking-4, even no roll required. Trying to build an AI computer and program it using only stone knives and bearskins with a skill of Computer-0? Impossible task.
For OSR D&D based games, a good thumbrule is to have the task be decided by the DM as a roll under d20 check against the appropriate characteristic with a modifier of the characters level subtracted from the roll (and divided by the number of steps the task is away from the character class of the PC or NPC).
So an example of the above in action. A 7th level fighter with a 14 intelligence is trying to decipher the magical writings in an ancient tome (which would make more sense for a magic-user to do). So a 14 + 7 for stat + level comes out to 21, but a fighter is three steps away from a magic-user so that target number is divided by 3 and is now a 7. 7 divided by 20 (for the d20 roll) makes it a 35% chance of success or 1 in 3.
Quote from: ForgottenF on August 07, 2024, 04:41:51 PMThe way I explain the old school style of skills with escalating success chance is by reference to "Schroedinger's Lock". Basically, the number on your character sheet represents the percentage of all the locks in the world which you have the ability to pick. When you roll a check, you aren't determining how good your attempt in that moment is. You're rolling to see whether the lock is one you have the skill to pick. Not perfect, but I think it's the most coherent interpretation of the system.
I never considered this before, but if that's the logic, then certain skills should be able to be rolled before the actual attempt is being made. Say a thief is walking around the Duke's palace to case the establishment the day before he intends to break in. As he walks past the south wall, he could pause to examine it, roll his climb check, and when he comes back the next night he now knows whether he can climb the south wall.
I've decided to use the same idea for things like Strength rolls. Don't roll to see how "strong" someone is at that very minute, which opens the door to absurdities like a STR 8 character lifting a portcullis that a STR 18 failed at. Rather, roll to see what STR is required to achieve the feat. Once rolled--or decided by the GM--that result stands for the rest of the game, for all comers. "This is a STR 17 portcullis, deal with it."
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 10:19:28 AMQuote from: Eric Diaz on August 08, 2024, 09:55:07 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on August 08, 2024, 09:41:57 AMHoly shit, this is where this forum's OSR D&D bias really makes itself known.
Care to elaborate?
Sure. When people post about gaming here, it is strongly biased towards OSR D&D to the point that the majority of the conversations are about that. Period. It has even been declared that if a game is not D&D based, it isn't OSR - which makes the OSR a closed off clubhouse in the eyes of this forum. Makes this forum almost Dragonsfoot.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem, except when the discussion turns to RPGs which handle tasks differently from D&D and you want a new perspective for insight. Then the D&D myopia makes itself apparent.
That is very true, and I am about to massively trigger the "but that's not D&D / OSR!" brigade because of it.
I think boiling this question down to percent chance of success is probably the wrong way to view this. IRL most people can succeed at most tasks given infinite time. You can do anything given enough time, but time is also a valuable resource you should use efficiently.
It also might not look at all like what another character does.
Take jumping a chasm. An athletic person might immediately go for dice, jump, and cross the chasm in 5 seconds. A less athletic person might backtrack to a ladder and use that to make an improvised bridge, which could take more like 20 minutes. So the question in my mind is rarely if you succeed, but if you tried to use a shortcut your character can't actually manage or how much time it actually took you to do.
This is why my homebrew system does NOT give players a set probability of success. It gives them 5 possible Action Depth choices. If you want a high probability of success, it will cost you a lot of action economy in the form of a high AP cost. If you are willing to accept a lower probability of success, the AP cost is actually lower.
Specific example to see that in action? Sure. Say your pool is 2d10s and 2d8s. If you pay 4 AP and buy a default action, this action will on average produce a little more than 1 success on average. 1.35 successes to be exact. If you increase the AP cost by 1, you reroll one of the d8s, and you will on average add 0.375 successes (this is a system where you roll low, so the best dice are the smaller dice). You can repeat this process of spending 1 more AP to reroll one more die all the way up to your last die, at which point you have spent 8 AP and functionally doubled the average result of the roll.
(If you'll note, there's even diminishing returns here; the d8 produces on average 0.375 successes, but the d10 only produces 0.3.)
Because you had to spent more AP on your action, you will have less AP left to spend on other stuff like moving or reloading or drinking potions or such.
My point is that giving players a set chance of success is a touch backwards. The number of things they want to do informs their risk tolerance, and the player's risk tolerance is what actually sets their odds of success. It isn't something which exists in a vacuum.
Generally:
Untrained: 0 to 30%
Basic trained: Start at 60%
Best trained: 95%
Assumptions:
1. There's always a 5% chance to fail on any check, no matter how good you are.
2. There's no need to make checks for tasks that automatically succeed or fail.
3. There's also difficulty modifiers and degree of success to consider, but that's outside the scope of the question.
Quote from: Aglondir on August 09, 2024, 01:27:44 PMGenerally:
Untrained: 0 to 30%
Basic trained: Start at 60%
Best trained: 95%
Assumptions:
1. There's always a 5% chance to fail on any check, no matter how good you are.
2. There's no need to make checks for tasks that automatically succeed or fail.
3. There's also difficulty modifiers and degree of success to consider, but that's outside the scope of the question.
I think you're close to being spot on.
Quote from: Mishihari on August 07, 2024, 03:50:30 AMI remember something about actual research done, prolly by WotC, that concluded that a 70% hit rate was the most fun in combat. That probably generalizes.
This. Game theory says people consider a 70% success rate as, "fair."
I know it makes no sense, but people like to win.
I'm not just talking tabletop RPG's. Video game programmers try to make the medium difficulty level be 70%. They collect data about how many people die and need to restart a level/section of a game, or kill the level's boss. Then they tune their game so the majority of players win 70% of the time.
Quote from: weirdguy564 on August 09, 2024, 07:04:21 PMQuote from: Mishihari on August 07, 2024, 03:50:30 AMI remember something about actual research done, prolly by WotC, that concluded that a 70% hit rate was the most fun in combat. That probably generalizes.
This. Game theory says people consider a 70% success rate as, "fair."
I know it makes no sense, but people like to win.
I'm not just talking tabletop RPG's. Video game programmers try to make the medium difficulty level be 70%. They collect data about how many people die and need to restart a level/section of a game, or kill the level's boss. Then they tune their game so the majority of players win 70% of the time.
I suspect 70% is rounded up and the actual threshold number to be 66.667% because humans have an odd affinity for threes and as the old saying and the Meatloaf song goes; "two-out-three ain't bad."
Quote from: Man at Arms on August 09, 2024, 02:14:18 PMQuote from: Aglondir on August 09, 2024, 01:27:44 PMGenerally:
Untrained: 0 to 30%
Basic trained: Start at 60%
Best trained: 95%
Assumptions:
1. There's always a 5% chance to fail on any check, no matter how good you are.
2. There's no need to make checks for tasks that automatically succeed or fail.
3. There's also difficulty modifiers and degree of success to consider, but that's outside the scope of the question.
I think you're close to being spot on.
Thanks! Here's what a simple D20 roll-over system could look like, using those parameters:
Attributes: Range 1 to 5. Average is 3.
Skills: Range 1 to 10.
Checks: Roll D20 + Att + Skill >= 19. If you are trained, add 6 to your skill.
Crit/Auto-fail: 20/1
Example 1: Alan has Dex 4 and Stealth 1. He rolls D20 + 4 + 1 + 6 >= 19 to succeed (60% chance)
Example 2: Bob has Dex 4 and no Stealth. He rolls D20 + 4 >= 19 to succeed (30% chance)
Example 3: Curt has Dex 4 and Stealth 10. He rolls D20 + 4 + 10 + 5 >= 19 to succeed (105% chance, but a 1 always fails)
Conclusion: The DF 19 looks high, but the math is solid. Another option is to reduce the att range to -2 to 2 and adjust the TN to 16. Actually I like the look of that better.
Here's (almost) the same thing, but with a simple D100 roll-under system:
Atts range 15 to 35, average 25
Skills range 1 to 50
Roll D100. You succeed if the result <= Att + Skill.
If you are trained, add 25% to your skill rank.
CS/CF: doubles under/doubles over
Example 1: Alan has Dex 30 and Stealth 05. He must roll D100 <= 30 + 05 + 25 to succeed (60% chance)
Example 2: Bob has Dex 30 and no Stealth. He must roll D100 <= 30 to succeed (30% chance)
Example 3: Curt has Dex 30 and Stealth 50. He must roll D100 <= 30 + 50 + 25 to succeed (105% chance, but a 00 always fails)
Nothing really new there, as there are tons of D100 systems that do something like that. But it is lightning fast, and easy to see the odds.
I am stumped as to why so many people in this thread are assuming 50-50 is the gold standard for fair and that players are wrong for preferring otherwise. Fairness is not determined by what your personal odds of success are; they're determined by how your odds of success compare to the other player characters' and to the enemies you fight.
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 10, 2024, 09:09:22 AMQuote from: weirdguy564 on August 09, 2024, 07:04:21 PMQuote from: Mishihari on August 07, 2024, 03:50:30 AMI remember something about actual research done, prolly by WotC, that concluded that a 70% hit rate was the most fun in combat. That probably generalizes.
This. Game theory says people consider a 70% success rate as, "fair."
I know it makes no sense, but people like to win.
I'm not just talking tabletop RPG's. Video game programmers try to make the medium difficulty level be 70%. They collect data about how many people die and need to restart a level/section of a game, or kill the level's boss. Then they tune their game so the majority of players win 70% of the time.
I suspect 70% is rounded up and the actual threshold number to be 66.667% because humans have an odd affinity for threes and as the old saying and the Meatloaf song goes; "two-out-three ain't bad."
I would actually say this is almost certainly about breaking bad luck streaks. 50-50 odds are infamous for producing long streaks and if one of those streaks goes against the players it could break the game balance. A 70% success rate will almost certainly not produce a long bad luck streak the way a 50-50 success rate will.
There's also the matter of lost turn economy. A 70% success rate means that you are making efficient use of 20% more action economy than you would with a 50% success rate. Obviously this logic has diminishing returns because you do need to miss eventually, but systems with higher hit rates are faster and feel more responsive than systems with lower hit rates, all other things being equal.
The disconnect is not in that players prefer higher success rates. They do, in all kinds of games. The 2 out of 3 center comes up again and again. Though note that this is the rate where players will settle. They'd prefer 99.99% if you'd give it to them.
What is less clear is what rate is good for the game. I submit that it varies depending on the feel, style, and a lot of other intangibles. I've got a lot of players dealing with 40% to 60% chances, frequently. They don't like the individual failures, but they do enjoy the overall experience. Part is the challenge. Part is removing the treadmill. That is, a person will put up with 50% or even lower for some time, if improving their skills is a thing they can do, and the world doesn't shift under them to keep them at the same point.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on August 11, 2024, 07:35:57 PMThe disconnect is not in that players prefer higher success rates. They do, in all kinds of games. The 2 out of 3 center comes up again and again. Though note that this is the rate where players will settle. They'd prefer 99.99% if you'd give it to them.
What is less clear is what rate is good for the game. I submit that it varies depending on the feel, style, and a lot of other intangibles. I've got a lot of players dealing with 40% to 60% chances, frequently. They don't like the individual failures, but they do enjoy the overall experience.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a 100% success rate. In an RPG, many actions have a 100% success rate - they're just not usually described as skill rolls. Many things like running, jumping, speaking languages, casting spells, and others are automatic. And I think it's a reasonable expectation that, say, an experienced pilot PC shouldn't have to roll a 60% chance to have to land an airplane -- but someone who has never flown should have a very difficult roll.
The problem is that automatic actions are common in games - but 95% success rates are boring to roll on, because the outcome is almost always the same. (The same is true of 5% success.) In terms of game play, you want rolls to be unpredictable to keep up tension.
The simplest way to keep uncertainty is degree of success systems. So even if a PC has a 100% chance of minimal success, they can still have uncertainty over getting a higher degree of success. I think there are other system principles that can help as well - I'll have to think on that.