Quote from: RPGPundit;1033093Actually, it's very elegant if handled correctly.

Disagree. This is because a single roll of a d20 does a terrible job of distinguishing between levels of skill in a way that anywhere close maps onto human experience. Just meeting these two conditions:

1. Model tasks that are difficult for novices, easy for journeymen, trivial for masters
2. Model tasks that are impossible for novices, difficult for journeymen, easy for masters

means die modifiers have to have at minimum a 20 point spread. If you throw in a 3rd sort of task:

3. Nearly impossible for anyone who is inexperienced, but not very difficult for anyone trained.

now you can't handle it. The reason d20 isn't an issue in combat is you roll it several times in the course of a battle. Not only does the fighter have a better chance to hit than other players, he also makes more attacks (both because he picks up extra attacks and because other classes often do things other than attack on their turn). So the bell curve you need to model task resolution emerges. But I can capture all 3 kinds of tasks pretty easily with a dice pool system. (Notably, the thief skills in 1e work this way.)

QuoteYes. That was a big problem. Because both 3.x skills and feats were point-buy systems.

If you converted the 3.5 NPC interaction table into 5e, it would still be a disaster waiting to happen. The more you have hard and fast rules about "if you roll over X, Y happens" the more likely you'll get silly results, even if there is no way for players to game the system by choosing things like class archetypes or racial bonuses.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1033546Disagree. This is because a single roll of a d20 does a terrible job of distinguishing between levels of skill in a way that anywhere close maps onto human experience. Just meeting these two conditions:

1. Model tasks that are difficult for novices, easy for journeymen, trivial for masters
2. Model tasks that are impossible for novices, difficult for journeymen, easy for masters

means die modifiers have to have at minimum a 20 point spread. If you throw in a 3rd sort of task:

3. Nearly impossible for anyone who is inexperienced, but not very difficult for anyone trained.

now you can't handle it. The reason d20 isn't an issue in combat is you roll it several times in the course of a battle. Not only does the fighter have a better chance to hit than other players, he also makes more attacks (both because he picks up extra attacks and because other classes often do things other than attack on their turn). So the bell curve you need to model task resolution emerges. But I can capture all 3 kinds of tasks pretty easily with a dice pool system. (Notably, the thief skills in 1e work this way.)

This is correct. About the only good thing you can say about the d20 over, say 3d6, for non-combat resolutions (particularly for actions that succeed or fail on a single check or which fail on the first failed check (ex. climbing) is that the math is slightly easier since you're only adding die result and the modifier while 3d6 is adding three die results plus a modifier. Yes, its easy math, but it IS longer math due to the three operations instead of just one.

d20 task resolution systems generally uses the kludges of Take 10 (allows consistent performance at a certain skill level so long as 10+modifier hits the target number while those whose modifiers aren't up to must roll and hope for a better than 10 result) and labeling some tasks as Trained/Proficient Only (meaning even if the actual target number is low, those without the right training can't even attempt them), but those are not actual bell curve distributions, just thresholds that, once met, do not require rolling to achieve.

Personally, I've always wanted to try something akin to attack/damage rolls for skills. The "attack" part would be a d20 check to determine whether or not conditions would even allow you attempt the skill this turn (with the ability to 'take 10' outside of combat or with certain abilities inside of combat) while a "damage" roll would determine how much progress was made with the skill that turn. Outside of combat you'd take 10 and have a nice bell curve by making the "damage" part of the skill say 3 dice + modifiers; inside of combat you'd use d20 check first to see if the Orc and your buddy going at it and moving for position doesn't completely confound your ability to reach the trap or make the leap across the crevice that turn.

QuoteIf you converted the 3.5 NPC interaction table into 5e, it would still be a disaster waiting to happen. The more you have hard and fast rules about "if you roll over X, Y happens" the more likely you'll get silly results, even if there is no way for players to game the system by choosing things like class archetypes or racial bonuses.

The funny thing is you can actually lay most of the blame for 3.5e's bad interaction results on bad GM calls as to Diplomacy's effects, the epic level material adding the "Fanatic" category to the Diplomacy table, and additional splats adding in tons of options to push your Diplomacy check to ridiculous levels (because the DC 50 needed to move initially hostile to friendly doesn't happen reliably without a +40 check modifier and only 23 of that comes from having maximum ranks in the skill and only at 20th level).

Used as the designers wrote it, the best result possible was helpful... not a virtually mind-numbed fanatic who agrees to everything you say... just that they'll treat your words as coming from a friend they're inclined to help out; but the player still has to supply the words and they have to be something a friend would be willing to do (i.e. turning on their own family and other friends isn't very likely).

Further, within the more realistic realm of checks without being loaded down in magic items tailor made to the task, a starting PC with a 16 Cha and 4 ranks in Diplomacy would have a 40% chance to talk an initially hostile foe down to "unfriendly" (i.e. "wishes you ill; will mislead, gossip, avoid, watch suspiciously and/or insult you) with a 15% chance of getting a Reaction of "Indifferent; will engage only in socially required interactions with you." Friendly won't even happen on a natural 20 if they start out hostile.

It further notes...

Try Again

Retry: Optional, but not recommended because retries usually do not work. Even if the initial Diplomacy check succeeds, the other character can be persuaded only so far, and a retry may do more harm than good. If the initial check fails, the other character has probably become more firmly committed to his position, and a retry is futile.

So its almost always a one-and-done check... no, "I got him to unfriendly, lemme try it again."

As written, its not that much different than the Basic and AD&D reaction roll results, just using a d20 instead of 2d6 and allowing experience to impact the results instead of just raw Charisma (where +3 has a much bigger effect on 2d6); not nearly the bug-a-boo of virtual mind control that Pundit makes it out to be.

Skills IMO were the biggest missed opportunity in 5e. The band-aids are:

1. You only roll skills when the DM tells you to, so a smart DM won't have you roll for trivial crap.
2. You can pretty trivially get Help, i.e. roll with advantage, nearly all the time.

d20 vs DC has been with us since 2000, though, so people probably would have screamed if there had been a different method. IMO they should have just dumped d20 and had a dice pool system...like have N d6s up to your proficiency, or stat + proficiency. Come on, Mearls, isn't a little complexity okay?

Quote from: Chris24601;1033559Personally, I've always wanted to try something akin to attack/damage rolls for skills. The "attack" part would be a d20 check to determine whether or not conditions would even allow you attempt the skill this turn (with the ability to 'take 10' outside of combat or with certain abilities inside of combat) while a "damage" roll would determine how much progress was made with the skill that turn. Outside of combat you'd take 10 and have a nice bell curve by making the "damage" part of the skill say 3 dice + modifiers; inside of combat you'd use d20 check first to see if the Orc and your buddy going at it and moving for position doesn't completely confound your ability to reach the trap or make the leap across the crevice that turn.

If I ever get my current homebrew system working, you might be interested in taking a look, as that is more or less the basis of how it works. I'm actually using a slight curve (not bell) for the "test" as well (for other reasons).  

The tricky part is exactly where to make the conceptual split between "test" and "effect" (replacing "attack" and "damage").   I've been gradually moving towards the "test" being more about speed than anything else, but we'll see how it goes.

Quote from: AsenRG;1033502Which is its own share of issues when it comes to worldbuilding. Come on, Pundit, what happens to Cymri or Scotman guys who are born in the society with no way out, but don't get 9+ on the connected attribute?

They're 0-level Cymri or Scotsmen, like most other Cymri and scots men throughout the world.

QuoteAnyway, you're missing my point: your earlier statement that if a game rewards knowing the rules, it's a bad RPG, is simply wrong. All RPGs reward some amount of rules knowledge - like knowing how many people with what weapons fit in a 3-meters corridor (2 with swords or axes, but three with spears).

There is a GARGANTUAN difference between a system where a guy who knows how to make the most of the 'reach' quality of a spear gets a slight advantage over player characters who haven't figured it out yet, and a system where you get 400 points and carte-blanche to create every tiny detail of your character from it.

Quote from: Chris24601;1033528I prefer it to the "I'm Right! I'm Right!! I'm Right and if you disagree you're a poopy-head!!!" school of debate. You've already lost this and you know it or you wouldn't need to resort the personal attacks to try and save face.

Bitch, please. I don't need any excuse to engage in personal attacks. I'm the motherfucking RPGPundit.
How could I "lose" when you haven't made a single relevant argument?

QuoteI asked because you seem to attribute

No, you asked because it was yet another of your ridiculous rhetorical pants-shitting diversions that you seem to have been taught is how to build an argument, in lieu of actually having one, Wimp Lo.

QuoteYou do understand that the system with the Diplomancer problem is 3rd Edition D&D right?

There's all kinds of systems that have that problem. Almost all of them involve some degree of point buy (though again, in theory a game with no point-buy but hard-coded social mechanics could also have that problem).

QuoteThe system where the default ability score generation is 4d6 drop lowest? The one where your skill points you receive are based on your class and your randomly rolled Intelligence score, and which has hard limits on how many skill points you can put into a skill at every level?

Yes. That's point-buy. You literally get points, and then buy things with them.

QuoteBecause you're currently railing at an imaginary point-buy system that doesn't even exist as part of the actual game that has the problem with its mechanics.

Editions of GURPS, Shadowrun and Champions are all literally "here's X number of points, now go splooge all over the rules with it".


 

QuoteYou are claiming that the imaginary system

It's literally all of the most popular pure point-buy systems in the world.

QuoteI don't know what game you're referring to but a starting character in 3rd Edition (the one with the Diplomancer issue) only gives you one feat at first level (two if you're a human because that IS your racial feature). Similarly, even a Human Rogue with an 18 Intelligence (52 skill points) can only spend 4 points on the Diplomacy skill at level 1 and can only spend one additional point on it per level.

Yes, those are all POINTS that you use to BUY things.

QuoteInventing rules system that don't exist

Shadowrun
GURPS
Champions
countless others.

QuoteAgain, you're confusing me for someone who prefers point-buy. I've said several times already that my preferred method is Allocation (i.e. assign stats from an array, pick X of Y listed skills/traits)

That's technically a type of point-buy as well, albeit a very restrictive variety.

QuoteOr it means they get better results on the Reaction Roll table; you know, that thing in the other thread you tout as the height of good RPG design where you randomly roll how the NPCs you populated an area with react instead of actually thinking about how they would react in character?

If a reaction table was used to determine the result of diplomacy rather than to determined the predisposition of characters, you'd have a point. It would then also be utterly awful just like all result-determining social mechanics are. With the exception that if there weren't social skills besides that, at least there would be no restriction on the GM to just ignore it as a subsystem entirely. You see, the problem is that with games that have social SKILLS, you can't do that, unless you remake the entire skill system.

QuoteI'd always kinda taken people at their word that the older rules didn't allow things like the Diplomancer. But actually reading the rules as written the old Reaction Roll tables are RIDICULOUSLY mechanistic in their resolution and allow outcomes every bit as crazy as the 3e Diplomancer rules allowed. The only difference was that who got the Diplomancer ability was a random roll instead of something that could be chosen.[/I]

Well then you're a first class imbecile. You're willfully misreading the worst possible interpretation of the reaction roll table, and assuming that in actual play that's how the old-school style handles it. And again, all to try to score a cheap rhetorical point, because that's all you amount to, a chump that thinks his diversionary moves are the same as having a solid left hook.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1033546Disagree. This is because a single roll of a d20 does a terrible job of distinguishing between levels of skill in a way that anywhere close maps onto human experience. Just meeting these two conditions:

1. Model tasks that are difficult for novices, easy for journeymen, trivial for masters
2. Model tasks that are impossible for novices, difficult for journeymen, easy for masters

Roll a D20 plus skill modifier plus ability score modifier plus level.
1. DC15; a 1st level character with a +1 skill and no modifier will fail the check most of the time. If he had a +3 ability score modifier (the maximum) he'd at best succeed half of the time because of amazing talent.
A mid-level character will succeed most of the time.
A character with level 10+ will succeed almost all of the time.

QuoteIf you throw in a 3rd sort of task:

3. Nearly impossible for anyone who is inexperienced, but not very difficult for anyone trained.

"If any of your characters have training in X lore, they will automatically know this fact. Anyone without training will not know it"




There.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1033808Roll a D20 plus skill modifier plus ability score modifier plus level.
1. DC15; a 1st level character with a +1 skill and no modifier will fail the check most of the time. If he had a +3 ability score modifier (the maximum) he'd at best succeed half of the time because of amazing talent.
A mid-level character will succeed most of the time.
A character with level 10+ will succeed almost all of the time.

For DC 15 to be easy, your mid-level character bonus needs a modifier of at least 12 (failing 1 in 5 attempts isn't easy!). Master skill level would be +15. So you have to have rapidly rising bonuses like in 3.5. And, of course, you still have the problem that low-level characters aren't particularly "good" at anything. And if Master is only +15, there are no significant differentiators between journeyman and master, so master probably needs a bonus more like +25, and now we're back into "roll a d20, add a number bigger than 20" absurdity.

Quote"If any of your characters have training in X lore, they will automatically know this fact. Anyone without training will not know it"

Right, you need to start introducing ad-hoc rulings like in 5e. Kind of a band-aid IMO, and it's not been received that warmly by many of the fans.

A dice pool system has neither of those problems. You can get significant distinctions among all skill levels without shooting numbers to the moon or ad-hoc rulings.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1033806There is a GARGANTUAN difference between a system where a guy who knows how to make the most of the 'reach' quality of a spear gets a slight advantage over player characters who haven't figured it out yet, and a system where you get 400 points and carte-blanche to create every tiny detail of your character from it.

Exactly.  And the difference is "knowing something about the basics of the historical period the game pretends to be set in."  If you know a damn thing about ancient or medieval warfare, you'll have the second rank using long spears in OD&D even if you've never played any sort of RPG or wargame before.

Quote from: AsenRG;1033504And I agree with that:).
My point is that even the "Even Playing Field" might not be the best way. In some games, it's sometimes better to put the more experienced players at an additional disadvantage, and that's not "unfair", it just makes for a more interesting game that's not dominated by one person;).

I think we may have wandered into the odd state of "aggressive agreement".

Fortunately, I haven't run into the problem. More experienced players have been happy to help noobies, or they aren't interested in power gaming min maxing the ultimate campaign ruling pile of number but creating an interesting character and enjoying the game. I've heard some horror stories (who hasn't?) but that's been with any game with mechanical complexity beyond Twerps (cue member with power gaming stories about twerps). Ass gonna be assholes regardless.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1033806They're 0-level Cymri or Scotsmen, like most other Cymri and scots men throughout the world.

That's how your book says PCs are supposed to start as well. But they can't choose the class unless they'd rolled 9+ in the controlling attribute. Why can the NPCs:)?

QuoteThere is a GARGANTUAN difference

Only in degree;).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1033849Exactly.  And the difference is "knowing something about the basics of the historical period the game pretends to be set in."  If you know a damn thing about ancient or medieval warfare, you'll have the second rank using long spears in OD&D even if you've never played any sort of RPG or wargame before.

And if you know a damn thing about ancient or medieval warfare, but the GM thinks that "this is cheating to get more attacks"?
True story, BTW.

Quote from: CarlD.;1033860I think we may have wandered into the odd state of "aggressive agreement".

It totally beats "aggressive disagreement".

QuoteFortunately, I haven't run into the problem. More experienced players have been happy to help noobies, or they aren't interested in power gaming min maxing the ultimate campaign ruling pile of number but creating an interesting character and enjoying the game. I've heard some horror stories (who hasn't?) but that's been with any game with mechanical complexity beyond Twerps (cue member with power gaming stories about twerps). Ass gonna be assholes regardless.

It's not exactly a problem. As in, it wouldn't break the game if you don't do that.
But it might make it better if you do;). And that's regardless of whether the more experienced players help the noobs, or not.

Quote from: AsenRG;1033887And if you know a damn thing about ancient or medieval warfare, but the GM thinks that "this is cheating to get more attacks"?
True story, BTW.

See the underlined sentence at the bottom of my sig.

Quote from: AsenRG;1033887It's not exactly a problem. As in, it wouldn't break the game if you don't do that.
But it might make it better if you do;). And that's regardless of whether the more experienced players help the noobs, or not.

I meant more system adept folks dominating the game.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1033896See the underlined sentence at the bottom of my sig.

I'm glad to report that I did exactly that, despite it being nominally my first "official" RPG campaign:).
But I digressed, and the whole episode is irrelevant. My point is, if players don't understand the first thing about warfare in the period OD&D is using as a model, will put long weapons in the second rank if they read and understand the rules.
Therefore, with systems that aim for this, system mastery can contribute to better roleplaying, too. The two need not be opposed;)!

Quote from: CarlD.;1033902I meant more system adept folks dominating the game.

And I mean giving the more adept players less system resources. Note: I'm not talking about the players more adept at using the system, but the better players, period.
It's been over a decade since, but other people still refer to the time when two excellent players killed a Dragon-Blooded warrior* with calligraphy, poetry, embroidery and a pillow:D.

Quote from: AsenRG;1033999And I mean giving the more adept players less system resources.

Oh, no,  I understood that's what you were talking about I've haven't found that to  be necessary or desirable step myself but I can where it might be in some situations. Different experiences and all.