|
Ferrinus posted:Rolling to just check if something happens or not without immediately being on the hook to complicate the results is perfectly fine. I like being able to ask for a skill check to just see if a player knows a guy or can get around an obstacle the easy way or whatever.
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 20:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 14:27 |
|
|
Epi Lepi posted:I play (and enjoy!) Pathfinder 2e for 3ish hours almost every week so you've got me curious. I'm usually making 2 checks each round of combat, between attacks and knowledge checks (outwit ranger with a two handed weapon) assuming I'm using an action to move or do non check actions each round. Our combats probably average about 4 rounds maybe? We probably average about the same amount of combats per session. So just from my turn in combat that's like 32 a night. Plus saving throws like you said, plus initiative rolls, plus all out of combat stuff. That's pretty light as far as PF2e goes. For a power martial you should be using Double Slice (or Hunted Shot/Twin Takedown) every round (2 rolls), plus trying to get in an AoO (+1 roll), and once the party are high enough level you should go for Combat Reflexes too (+1 roll) and someone should be Hasting you for another Strike (+1 roll). So that's up to 80 rolls a night based on the other values.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 20:59
|
|
|
I'm running Shadowrun 3e at the moment and many sessions we only have one or two die rolls per player for Perception or Etiquette or Music Performance or something, but when it comes time for combat everybody is wanting to roll dice a lot.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:02
|
|
|
I'm rolling dice right now! Might not even need to!
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:07
|
|
|
Splicer posted:A properly designed "fiddly" system has an easy fallback for when you just don't feel like coming up with something, e.g. the modiphius systems have "Grab a <particular release's name for threat> for use later", and the FFG funny dice has "Take some stress". That's specifically the poo poo I don't like because it turns routine exercise/acknowledgment of a given character's skills into a threat and therefore makes me think twice before asking for so much as a knowledge check. I can understand making every roll really count in strategic terms as a goal but I extremely don't share it. Now, "skill challenge" situations in which each PC can do one thing of consequence a week and they have three weeks to prep for the enemy army, or something, sure, but as an indelible aspect of the dice themselves?
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:23
|
|
|
hyphz posted:That's pretty light as far as PF2e goes. For a power martial you should be using Double Slice (or Hunted Shot/Twin Takedown) every round (2 rolls), plus trying to get in an AoO (+1 roll), and once the party are high enough level you should go for Combat Reflexes too (+1 roll) and someone should be Hasting you for another Strike (+1 roll). So that's up to 80 rolls a night based on the other values. Double shot and twin takedown are not in my build (outwit hunters edge and two handed weapon, not dual weapon as I said) and we just hit level 4 so I just got the ranger AoO ability which is just for my hunted prey.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:26
|
|
|
Also Hyphz is operating under the "only the most optimal damage build matters" thing so his expected dice roll numbers are gonna be inflated
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:31
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I'm rolling dice right now! Might not even need to! hell yeah. i love to roll the dice -- especially when a high number shows up !!
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
Andrast posted:Also Hyphz is operating under the "only the most optimal damage build matters" thing so his expected dice roll numbers are gonna be inflated Fair enough, I shouldn't have used the word "should" (although if you're playing a system that crunchy, I figure embrace the crunch) but the example was quite low on rolls for even an average PF2e martial.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:39
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:That's specifically the poo poo I don't like because it turns routine exercise/acknowledgment of a given character's skills into a threat and therefore makes me think twice before asking for so much as a knowledge check. I can understand making every roll really count in strategic terms as a goal but I extremely don't share it. Once I started treating binary rolls not as "pass/fail", but as "succeed/succeed with cost", where a player was guaranteed to do whatever they wanted and were just rolling to see if they could do it without things getting wild, I started calling for rolls a lot more. Less of a "can I think of something interesting to happen on a failure" (which was always a bit of a stress point), but instead "is there an evil genie way this could go pear-shaped", which is a hoot.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 21:41
|
|
|
*Taps thread title*
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:14
|
|
|
Andrast posted:Also Hyphz is operating under the "only the most optimal damage build matters" thing so his expected dice roll numbers are gonna be inflated I suspect that in any system with rolling to hit, a small numeric difference can have outsized impacts in perceived experience because of how it affects the length of combat. More misses means more turns spent in battle, which means more rolling, which creates a feeling that combat takes forever and your character can't do anything. IME the real solution is auto hit, at least for character classes or build options that are supposed to be good at personal combat. But that would require painstaking across-the-board rebalancing of any system you introduced it to.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:19
|
|
|
The stats conversation made my mind descend back into old intro to statistics classes - if you toss a d20 into a power calculator, statistically you'd need 29 rolls for an a beta of .2 To get the sample size down to 12 you'd need to set the power to .45 - worse than even odds of failing to notice a difference. So I think on 12 rolls a night it's reasonable to call a +3 hard to notice.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:47
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:"Is optimal character building necessary" is a valid concern to raise about a game balanced around the assumption that the players will have a given numeric power level. The question is how much system mastery in character creation/play is reasonable to expect, and how far away you can stray from the expected power curve before it starts to noticeably affect your play experience. The main issue is generally if the party has different power levels and how much they can differ. If everyone is optimized or everyone is roughly the same level of "sub-optimal," the GM can relatively easily crank things up or down, but if we've got a BMX Bandit vs Angel Summoner thing going on...
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:51
|
|
|
Alderman posted:The stats conversation made my mind descend back into old intro to statistics classes - if you toss a d20 into a power calculator, statistically you'd need 29 rolls for an a beta of .2 I'm not sure if I buy that. 15% per roll should be pretty easy to see after 12. Let's say your target number is 15, and your baseline is +0, right? +3 means that instead of 15-20 hitting, it's 12-20. If you roll 12-14 you notice the difference. The probability of you getting 12-14 at least once in 12 independent rolls is (1-(85%)12) = 86%.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:56
|
|
|
system mastery-based balance should assume maximum optimization and if that's so far away from naive optimization that it causes problems your game probably has too much vertical scaling performance mastery is a little more troublesome but that's where niche protection, consequences for losing that aren't "game over", and encounter budgeting rules that outright tell you how to adjust for player ability come in
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 22:57
|
|
|
like 4E encounter balance being "XP / monster points per player per level" on the front-end but also explicitly telling you what the expected resource expenditure per encounter is so that you can adjust up or down after the fact to hit a quantifiable target, TPKs being almost unheard of but healing is a limited resource to enable attrition, and the roles being at least a workmanlike implementation of the MMO holy trinity (even if that arrangement still leaves a lot of room for a heavily optimized damage or CC character to make everyone else obsolete) there's room for improvement but at least they understood the stakes! Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:04
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:I'm not sure if I buy that. 15% per roll should be pretty easy to see after 12. Let's say your target number is 15, and your baseline is +0, right? +3 means that instead of 15-20 hitting, it's 12-20. If you roll 12-14 you notice the difference. The probability of you getting 12-14 at least once in 12 independent rolls is (1-(85%)12) = 86%. "Notice" here is a bit vague, for sure - obviously a roll of 21 is gonna be noticeable if it's being compared to a straight roll, which the stats don't really take into account. It's asking "how many rolls would you need to tell that your new population of dice rolls (d20+3) are statistically different from a population of plain d20 rolls" which is less about "did i ever notice a difference" and more "are my rolls, as a whole, noticeable better this evening". I also did several tests of just rolling 12d20 versus 12(d20+3) and then punching the results into a t test. And no, a lot of the time you do just not end up with a set of results which look appreciably different - in one case i got a set where the d20+3 group was noticeably lower than the plain d20 group. A d20 is just very swingy, you need a very large sample size for a bonus as small as +3 to be statistically noticeable. Alderman fucked around with this message at 23:13 on May 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:06
|
|
|
i don't have enough background in statistics to keep up with this argument but i will say that if your tactical combat TTRPG's design is such that one die single roll going differently based on a 15% bonus is hugely noticeable, your game probably stakes too much on the dice and should give players more control over outcomes instead which is also one of the reasons i like miss tokens, "reliable" powers, and limited-use rerolls better than flat bonuses, if you absolutely must roll to-hit at all
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:14
|
|
|
Alderman posted:"Notice" here is a bit vague, for sure - obviously a roll of 21 is gonna be noticeable if it's being compared to a straight roll, which the stats don't really take into account. It's asking "how many rolls would you need to tell that your new population of dice rolls (d20+3) are statistically different from a population of plain d20 rolls" which is less about "did i ever notice a difference" and more "are my rolls, as a whole, noticeable better this evening". The +3 doesn't affect the dice you roll, so I'm not sure why you're doing two samples here instead of looking at one sample and seeing how the +3 affects the outcomes.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:16
|
|
|
Alderman posted:"Notice" here is a bit vague, for sure - obviously a roll of 21 is gonna be noticeable if it's being compared to a straight roll, which the stats don't really take into account. It's asking "how many rolls would you need to tell that your new population of dice rolls (d20+3) are statistically different from a population of plain d20 rolls" which is less about "did i ever notice a difference" and more "are my rolls, as a whole, noticeable better this evening". Like of all the things to go "Eh, but does it really matter" on, combat to-hit is the absolute worst possible one to choose. It's the thing most tables will have you roll most commonly, in rapid succession, around other people rolling similar dice against similar or possibly the same target number, and failures are the most obvious and frustrating kind possible outside missing an social check. Unless the GM is fudging like hell it becomes very obvious when you miss with a roll that "should have" or "could have" been a hit.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:18
|
|
|
theironjef posted:I'm rolling dice right now! Might not even need to! When are we going to get a modern take on craps?
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2022 23:47
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:When are we going to get a modern take on craps? Favour of the Pharaoh by Bezier Games feels very much like a modern take on a casino dice game
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 00:04
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:When are we going to get a modern take on craps? Indeed! And especially when will it be used as the engine for a great game about dysfunctional sitcom families of cartoon ducks?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 00:04
|
|
|
Alderman posted:"Notice" here is a bit vague, for sure - obviously a roll of 21 is gonna be noticeable if it's being compared to a straight roll, which the stats don't really take into account. It's asking "how many rolls would you need to tell that your new population of dice rolls (d20+3) are statistically different from a population of plain d20 rolls" which is less about "did i ever notice a difference" and more "are my rolls, as a whole, noticeable better this evening". 1) You're treating the two sets as independent. They're not. You have one set of die rolls which either does or does not have the +3. You can never have a cluster where having the +3 makes you "roll worse". 2) (tentative) You seem to be saying that you're just comparing the raw numbers. As in if I roll two 6s and a 19 that night is "better" than a night where I roll three 10s. That's not how it works in a binary pass/fail system. You need to compact each roll into a "pass" or "fail" by comparing them to level-appropriate DCs, then determine how many of those fails would have been passes with the additional +3. Determining how often bad nights get turned into good or awesome nights, and how many good nights get turned into awesome or amazing nights. For example, in a cluster like the below (I swear these are genuinely 12 random generated rolls): 2, 14, 15, 7, 20, 1, 5, 7, 19, 14, 14, 17 Comparing these against DC10* we get 7 passes and 5 fails. With the +3 you're now at 9 to 3. If those 7s had been 6s though there'd be 0 difference, and if those 15s had been 9s there'd have been a difference of 5. We then pick a threshold for "bad" night vs "good" or "awesome" and/or what increase is considered "Noticeable". *arbitrarily chosen, I'd need to have a proper think about methodology for this but it's late where I am Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:09 on May 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 00:07
|
|
|
In my experience, most people are completely unable to fully understand variance and how random patterns work, and their gutfeel is going to tell them something's wrong when they fail five rolls in a row regardless of whether that's because they forgot a +3 bonus or because they just rolled low five times in a row, which should happen frequently, and they're incorrect that something's wrong. Soooo many gamers think they're "super unlucky" or have bad dice or even are being cheated somehow, because rolling a 1 three times in a row is, in their gutfeels, not a fair or reasonable possibility.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 00:59
|
|
|
I mean it is a pretty wild set of random rolls, but in addition to that it's kind of got the exacerbating issue that you're waiting maybe 10 to 15 minutes between each roll, and if you roll a 1 the result is that you get to wait another 10 to 15 minutes before you can do anything. It's pretty not fun! It's one of the things that make me mentally check out of combats in games if I'm there just to miss because the game system is a trash pile of RNG I can't really affect in any way.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:04
|
|
|
Well sure but that's still true whether you remembered that +3 a bunch or not. "I seem to be succeeding more/less than expected" is a very poor tool for determining whether you remembered all your applicable bonuses during a D&D session, because most of us who aren't experienced statisticians are horribly miscalibrated to judge that.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:15
|
|
|
But also, "oh, wow, I just made it, good thing I had that +3 from XYZ" is a thing that can happen because people see the raw dice output, too.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:20
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:Once I started treating binary rolls not as "pass/fail", but as "succeed/succeed with cost", where a player was guaranteed to do whatever they wanted and were just rolling to see if they could do it without things getting wild, I started calling for rolls a lot more. I do that some of the time (like, a roll to see if some basically-trivial task is completed quickly enough, or if someone can get by some obstacle without being injured by it) but I'd be pretty exasperated if that was just how stat or skill checks all had to work. Sometimes "you fail" is a perfectly fine twist on its own!
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:35
|
|
|
Another problem with "succeed at cost" is that now you have to come up with cost.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:36
|
|
|
A system designed with that in mind ought to provide a lot of help for coming up with costs, and should have a default option when nothing else appeals. Modiphius 2d20 does, for example (although it does have a "you fail" option, but it's under the control of the player as to whether to use resources to guarantee some level of success or not).
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 01:55
|
|
|
PerniciousKnid posted:When are we going to get a modern take on craps? My man there were five editions of it already
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 04:22
|
|
|
Absurd Alhazred posted:The +3 doesn't affect the dice you roll, so I'm not sure why you're doing two samples here instead of looking at one sample and seeing how the +3 affects the outcomes. Imagine two heroes, Alice and Barbara. They're otherwise identical but Alice hits orcs on a roll of 8 while Barbara needs an 11. How many orcs do they have to fight for the difference between them to become clear? We can’t just have Alice roll and represent Barbara with those rolls+3, because that would clean up the randomness we're trying to measure. Thank you, Alderman, for doing the math that I can't. Siivola fucked around with this message at 05:27 on May 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 05:23
|
|
|
Siivola posted:My original argument was that a player can’t actually tell a difference between a session where they roll d20 and one where they roll d20+3, and that's because the dice only give average results over the long period. To test this, we’d need to roll several sets of dice with and without the bonus and see if we can actually see the +3 difference between the sets' results. One, if they both roll 8s.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 05:24
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:One, if they both roll 8s. Chances of that (both rolling 8, 9, or 10) happening is 1.5%, though. In 98.5% of all cases, you’re going to need more than one roll to tell any difference that way.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 05:51
|
|
|
Xiahou Dun posted:One, if they both roll 8s.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 05:52
|
|
|
^^^It's a pretty simple conditional probability problem. We're basically taking the inverse of the chance that everyone is rolling distinct die rolls (because that's the only way they can all have different ones, but we don't know which number they might have in common, right?). It's easier if we abstract this into rolling events and then divide it up, but that's really on my end and we're only going up to like 20 rolls so it doesn't matter. (Note : 20 rolls in 20 rounds of combat is quite small, assuming a party of 3-4 PCs. Like, I'm really tipping the math your way by a lot.) So to do this with words cause I'm too lazy to type equations, let's say Aaron rolls first and rolls a 1. Then Billy rolls and it has to be different so we'll just say it's 2. Then Catherine rolls a 3. And David rolls a 4... You said 20 rolls right? On a 20 sided die? And they all have to be unique? You see now? It's mathematically impossible to roll more than 20 distinct numbers on a 20 sided die, so they have to share at least one number by 20 rolls. LatwPIAT posted:Chances of that (both rolling 8, 9, or 10) happening is 1.5%, though. In 98.5% of all cases, you’re going to need more than one roll to tell any difference that way. I was being flip to point out that the question isn't being phrased well. Comparing two identical results side by side that have different outcomes is a much easier task than looking for statistical significance and probably more emotionally salient than the actual math. While actually seeing the difference between slightly different modifiers can take a while, it's really easy to notice "Hey, Todd rolled n and succeeded, but I rolled n and failed, that's weird". Also, if we're being fully pedantic, we should really be comparing failure ranges versus success ranges on the die rolls. I picked "8" just to be pithy, but the exact same thing would apply to any given identical set of die rolls and target numbers. Additionally, we should assume this person has some amount of memory and can remember rolls from at least a few minutes before. Really you should treat this like the Birthday Problem but with fuzzy ranges. Xiahou Dun fucked around with this message at 06:14 on May 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 06:00
|
|
|
I run PF2 regularly and generally make a point to tell the players when they hit/crit (or make the enemy miss and stuff like that) specifically because of a de/buff, flanking or some other thing they did. It comes up very often and really helps the players to see how much impact their their actions are having during the combat. It's definitely difficult to tell as a player otherwise.
Andrast fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 06:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 14:27 |
|
|
Siivola posted:Yeah, that's also kind of a neat way to approach this problem! So since the full extent of their skill disparity is only revealed when they both roll an 8, what are the odds of that happening in the first 20 rounds of combat this evening?
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2022 06:02
|
|