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Siivola posted:Yes. Yeah, no, that's fine, I'm really not trying to call you specifically out, I realize there are people who don't care about those details (heck, I often am that person when I don't have my DM/analyst hat on), but when somebody's throwing statistical analysis tools at a problem they need to actually be based on the problem at hand, and it's definitely not a problem of sampling from two black boxes and seeing whether you can tell the difference.
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May 5, 2022 18:37
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Leperflesh posted:Siivola doesn't necessarily know the DC of every roll they're tryign to hit, if the GM only gives a pass/fail response. A lot of the responses to Alderman have been assuming the player always knows what DC they're trying to hit, and at least some seem to have presumed that DC is always the same. I don't think those are safe assumptions. Alderman posted:Edit: and with your "X nights of better rolls" method we're still missing "how hard is it to tell if that's what is happening, or if you've just had several nights of bad rolls"
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May 5, 2022 18:40
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, no, that's fine, I'm really not trying to call you specifically out, I realize there are people who don't care about those details (heck, I often am that person when I don't have my DM/analyst hat on), but when somebody's throwing statistical analysis tools at a problem they need to actually be based on the problem at hand, and it's definitely not a problem of sampling from two black boxes and seeing whether you can tell the difference. That's what led us on this journey of sampling black boxes. It seems intuitive to me that because rolls are truly random, one build can easily have streaks that are indistinguishable from the other's expected results. That would create messy results that would need aggregation to actually reveal the build's overall strength.
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May 5, 2022 18:58
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Tulip posted:And I want to get into Changeling, because I want to know what the Changeling fans are getting out of it, but every time I try and read it I just kind of go "uggggggh" Late, but honestly having ran a Changeling game for about a year over lockdown, it made me swear off running WoD games entirely. All sorts of fiddly extra rules and subsystems tacked onto the basic system were hidden around the text like an easter egg hunt, and eventually I started to feel like I was working against the game, not with it. And it's a shame, because while you can get vampires and such-and-such elsewhere, I don't know if there's anything that pulls off what Changeling was going for.
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May 5, 2022 19:05
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Siivola posted:I think you missed my first post on the topic and I'm curious to hear if you have a take on it: I argued that a player can't tell by gut feel whether two builds that are within three points of each other on a stat (say attack) and broadly speaking both good. I insisted that they'd have to keep track of their rolls over several character's careers (that's hyperbole, mea culpa) to find out if one is actually better and not just confirmation bias.
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May 5, 2022 19:11
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Splicer posted:It's not missing it's irrelevant. It's not about "Will you spend a significantly larger number of turns whiffing attacks than if you had a higher to-hit and realise it's because of your lower to hit", it's just the first half. And by the numbers you will waste a meaningfully larger number of turns on whiffed attacks than if you had a +3. You the player don't have to be able to work out why you're missing a bunch to not enjoy whiffing a bunch. And, by the numbers, 1 in 4 of your sessions will have a significantly worse (using the arbitrary metric of significantly worse being "three less hits on twelve rolls") whiff rate than if you had a +3 bonus. It doesn't matter if you are able to go "Yes, yes, I'm having a bad time because I don't have that specific +3", it just matters that you are having a bad time because you can't hit poo poo, and yes, I did the math, and on a 12 roll night -3 to hit is absolutely enough to drastically impact the number of bad nights vs OK nights and OK nights vs kickass nights where you can do no wrong. Okay, but how much variance is there in that one-in-four? The number of bad nights doesn't really tell us much if we don't know how much our results vary around the average. If it's one in four but very swingy, such that streaks in extreme directions happen often enough, then telling the difference becomes much harder.
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May 5, 2022 19:22
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Splicer posted:As per my last post though, having a bad build doesn't make you immune to bad streaks. It makes you more vulnerable to "bad streaks" because my OK rolls are your bad rolls, and it combines with genuinely bad streak to give you absolutely godawful streaks. Well, thanks all for taking this time. I think my takeaway here is going to be that taking a -3 penalty to get a bonus somewhere else won't bite me in the rear end much more than once a month. Edit: Alderman posted:Okay, but how much variance is there in that one-in-four? The number of bad nights doesn't really tell us much if we don't know how much our results vary around the average. If it's one in four but very swingy, such that streaks in extreme directions happen often enough, then telling the difference becomes much harder. Siivola fucked around with this message at 19:34 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 19:23
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Yeah, no, that's fine, I'm really not trying to call you specifically out, I realize there are people who don't care about those details (heck, I often am that person when I don't have my DM/analyst hat on), but when somebody's throwing statistical analysis tools at a problem they need to actually be based on the problem at hand, and it's definitely not a problem of sampling from two black boxes and seeing whether you can tell the difference. Like Silvola said, the problem at hand is "can someone who doesn't do all of those things tell if there is a difference just by looking at the results?" that's exactly the thesis. The question isn't "can someone with all that information available and checks it tell when a roll would have succeeded if they had a bigger bonus?" because, yes, obviously. The question is specifically "can you tell by looking only at the results on two samples of 12 rolls each, which group had +3 and which one didn't?"
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May 5, 2022 19:30
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Siivola posted:Yeah okay, that's well explained.
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May 5, 2022 19:31
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Cureall posted:Late, but honestly having ran a Changeling game for about a year over lockdown, it made me swear off running WoD games entirely. All sorts of fiddly extra rules and subsystems tacked onto the basic system were hidden around the text like an easter egg hunt, and eventually I started to feel like I was working against the game, not with it. And it's a shame, because while you can get vampires and such-and-such elsewhere, I don't know if there's anything that pulls off what Changeling was going for. The nWoD / Storyteller system is like Monopoly: if you don't play by the rules, it's an excruciating mess where nothing works and eventually you just give up and (quit / ignore everything except the core Xd10 resolution system). If you play by the rules, it goes a lot smoother and there is a point to most of the mechanics, but it's still not a good game. 
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May 5, 2022 19:36
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Splicer posted:Also keep in mind that if the bonus requires you to hit in the first place the -3 penalty is also -3 to the bonus.
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May 5, 2022 19:36
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Cureall posted:Late, but honestly having ran a Changeling game for about a year over lockdown, it made me swear off running WoD games entirely. All sorts of fiddly extra rules and subsystems tacked onto the basic system were hidden around the text like an easter egg hunt, and eventually I started to feel like I was working against the game, not with it. And it's a shame, because while you can get vampires and such-and-such elsewhere, I don't know if there's anything that pulls off what Changeling was going for. I'm presuming this was CtL, was it 1e or 2e? I know 2e is infamous for that poo poo.
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May 5, 2022 19:36
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among other things i've really done a 180 on the value of XP rewards for correct or thematic roleplay. it's a shitload of unnecessary bookkeeping for something your players should be doing anyways, and even worse, it makes doing those things a function of reward-seeking behavior instead of something intrinsically enjoyable
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May 5, 2022 19:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:among other things i've really done a 180 on the value of XP rewards for correct or thematic roleplay. it's a shitload of unnecessary bookkeeping for something your players should be doing anyways, and even worse, it makes doing those things a function of reward-seeking behavior instead of something intrinsically enjoyable I don't think XP rewards should only be for RP. If Leigh always describes their character's dialogue rather than performing it, but is great at I dunno, taking notes for the party, or coming up with clever plans, or remembering everyone else's attack bonuses for them, that's rewardable too. And I also think "everyone gets 150xp, Leigh gets a 10xp bonus for that great PR in the scene he played out with the bandit" carries any sort of bookkeeping burden. Bonuses shouldn't be so large that they actually disadvantage someone at the table who isn't comfortable with RP (or for other things than just "you RPed well"), and XP bonuses should be given at the same time as all other XP is handled/given out so all players need to do is add their XP earnings, whatever it is. But aside from that, rewards don't have to be an XP bonus, you could just explicitly thank people out loud at the end of each session for their particularly good contributions. The key to me is to provide noticeable positive feedback to players, especially if there's also negative feedback/critique being offered during or after play.
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May 5, 2022 19:47
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Siivola posted:Eh, used to be you could get a bunch of spell slots if you took a hit to your base attack bonus (and hit dice). I'm sure I'll find something cool. EthanSteele posted:Like Silvola said, the problem at hand is "can someone who doesn't do all of those things tell if there is a difference just by looking at the results?" that's exactly the thesis. The question isn't "can someone with all that information available and checks it tell when a roll would have succeeded if they had a bigger bonus?" because, yes, obviously. The question is specifically "can you tell by looking only at the results on two samples of 12 rolls each, which group had +3 and which one didn't?" Alderman posted:Okay, but how much variance is there in that one-in-four? The number of bad nights doesn't really tell us much if we don't know how much our results vary around the average. If it's one in four but very swingy, such that streaks in extreme directions happen often enough, then telling the difference becomes much harder. Splicer fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 5, 2022 |
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May 5, 2022 19:47
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:among other things i've really done a 180 on the value of XP rewards for correct or thematic roleplay. it's a shitload of unnecessary bookkeeping for something your players should be doing anyways, and even worse, it makes doing those things a function of reward-seeking behavior instead of something intrinsically enjoyable
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May 5, 2022 19:49
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The nWoD / Storyteller system is like Monopoly: if you don't play by the rules, it's an excruciating mess where nothing works and eventually you just give up and (quit / ignore everything except the core Xd10 resolution system). Truth.
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May 5, 2022 19:58
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hyphz posted:Ok, PF2e again. There's three classes I'd take as examples: the Fighter, Barbarian, and Swashbuckler. Each is supposed to represent martial ability by some means or other. The Fighter can use more weapons and hits and crits more often. The Barbarian doesn't hit as often as the Fighter, but does more damage when they do. The Swashbuckler gets extra action options to do stunts which set them up for even more likely hits and additional special effects. The swashbuckler can do damage on a miss as well which further separates it from the other classes. So each class is going to feel different in combat which is the goal and depending on the person playing it, they may prefer each different play style. I'm not really sure what your point is to be quite honest.
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May 5, 2022 20:07
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Cureall posted:Late, but honestly having ran a Changeling game for about a year over lockdown, it made me swear off running WoD games entirely. All sorts of fiddly extra rules and subsystems tacked onto the basic system were hidden around the text like an easter egg hunt, and eventually I started to feel like I was working against the game, not with it. And it's a shame, because while you can get vampires and such-and-such elsewhere, I don't know if there's anything that pulls off what Changeling was going for. Oh for sure, my participation in the WOD thread is full of winging about this. I've been running Promethean off and on over the last two years and the PTC specific stuff is incredible (if in BAD need of editing) and I love it, but the vast WOD interior is basically poison. We already were getting pretty fed up with WOD when we did Demon a few years ago and noticed that arguably the most important rules for the entire game, Cover, were somehow too short and too broad, practically unusable in a system where they were supposed to come up constantly, but even past that there's too many exemptions and special rules and conditionals and conditions and fiddly little bits that you have to reference multiple times a session. The only reason I have not full stripped out the core rules and replaced them with some homebrew PBTA is that the players are already pretty attached to their characters. I'd like to do that with Changeling before I start a campaign of Changeling, but in order for that to happen I need to understand Changeling first and my rear end just gets tired trying to get through a rulebook that I know has ideas that, like virtually all WOD books, are massively let down by the core rules. Plus this is so far off the horizon at this point given the games I'm running/playing in.
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May 5, 2022 20:11
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I admit I haven't kept up with the rules changes in Vampire V5 or the second editions of new WoD games. But White Wolf sure does have a long history of not seeming to understand how their own system math works, and occasionally being snide when called out on it.
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May 5, 2022 20:19
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The 2E nWoD games are regrettably often sidegrades because while they expand and refine the setting in cool ways and fix a lot of longstanding problems they often can't help but loading down the base supernatural templates themselves with like a dozen-odd weird powers and rules exceptions that all have their own bespoke resolution systems and get dumped into your lap before you've put a single dot in a Discipline. Werewolf: the Forsaken 2E is probably the worst for this; I think a freshly-made werewolf PC has more to remember about their own special capabilities than a freshly-made Solar Exalt, and that's before you give the werewolf any Gifts. That said the nWoD is simply my favorite setting to play in and the rules are basically fine, like you can either use group beats or ignore beats entirely and make a few changes to how some values are calculated and you're basically in business. A lot of systems that look too fiddly at a glance end up pretty rewarding to fiddle with in play, especially Mage 2E's spellcasting rules.
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May 5, 2022 20:32
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Halloween Jack posted:I admit I haven't kept up with the rules changes in Vampire V5 or the second editions of new WoD games. But White Wolf sure does have a long history of not seeming to understand how their own system math works, and occasionally being snide when called out on it. NWoD2e/CoD is very generally pretty inoffensive dice math-wise, but they remain overcomplicated and even in the best ones there are more than a handful of parts where it just falls over. (Still very traditional game design though, so don't expect really strong genre emulation tools or anything.) V5 dice math is pretty simple in comparison, but the way they're used can either be fun or annoying, and it can flip between the two rapidly. oWoD, including the 20th Anniversary stuff, is a total mess. I think most of the authors are more resigned to these facts than snide about it anymore.
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May 5, 2022 20:36
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The kind of stuff that sticks out to me is when there are combat abilities like "You take a penalty to the roll but get 8-again" when that's a net loss.
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May 5, 2022 20:42
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Leperflesh posted:I don't think XP rewards should only be for RP. If Leigh always describes their character's dialogue rather than performing it, but is great at I dunno, taking notes for the party, or coming up with clever plans, or remembering everyone else's attack bonuses for them, that's rewardable too. ah, sorry, i probably should have made that an edit of my previous post: this was specifically in the context of nWoD games where every single diegetic behavior or state of mind your character finds themselves in has an XP hook attached to it. it's not a generalized "you RP'd well, have a benny" it's "as a member of the Paranoid Shithead Wizard Caucus, you vocally suspected a teammate of secretly being an Abyssal manifestation, so take a beat" or whatever. and then every character has like 20 of these and also every temporary status effect comes with one
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May 5, 2022 21:36
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Oh god that sounds horrific. Yeah I'm 100% against that.
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May 5, 2022 21:40
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Leperflesh posted:Oh god that sounds horrific. Yeah I'm 100% against that. When a nWoD 2e game builds its condition system well, that whole system works fine. You're a Mage so you get beats from focusing on your pet interests, and you have the Scared and Broken Arm conditions so you get beats when you play those very clear things, and it all makes sense. Most of them aren't that. Sometimes you're a Promethean and everyone just has a bunch of weird, unclear conditions based on the kind of mystic path of discovery you're on, or you're a Sin-Eater and every power you have places a Condition on someone and the only place those Conditions are fully detailed is in the appendix four chapters away and I am going to scream. It's just a system that only works when the design is really tight.
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May 5, 2022 22:55
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:ah, sorry, i probably should have made that an edit of my previous post: this was specifically in the context of nWoD games where every single diegetic behavior or state of mind your character finds themselves in has an XP hook attached to it. it's not a generalized "you RP'd well, have a benny" it's "as a member of the Paranoid Shithead Wizard Caucus, you vocally suspected a teammate of secretly being an Abyssal manifestation, so take a beat" or whatever. and then every character has like 20 of these and also every temporary status effect comes with one
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May 5, 2022 23:31
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Halloween Jack posted:D&D should give you XP when you get stunned D&D should give you a bonus action you can redeem later when you get stunned or just not have enemies use hard CC in a game where a whole combat might only be four turns long
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May 5, 2022 23:38
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:D&D should give you a bonus action you can redeem later when you get stunned You know, a game I otherwise disliked on Steam, but the name of which eludes me right now, did conditions much better than any other game I've ever seen. No hard instakills or stuns, instead conditions just added... conditionals, to your actions. Like are you "stunned"? Then making an attack move might damage you or drain some resource. So you could either try to clear the condition, "fight through" it and take the cost, or take alternate actions until it cleared on its own.
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May 5, 2022 23:42
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PurpleXVI posted:You know, a game I otherwise disliked on Steam, but the name of which eludes me right now, did conditions much better than any other game I've ever seen. No hard instakills or stuns, instead conditions just added... conditionals, to your actions. Like are you "stunned"? Then making an attack move might damage you or drain some resource. So you could either try to clear the condition, "fight through" it and take the cost, or take alternate actions until it cleared on its own.
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May 5, 2022 23:47
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Epi Lepi posted:The swashbuckler can do damage on a miss as well which further separates it from the other classes. So each class is going to feel different in combat which is the goal and depending on the person playing it, they may prefer each different play style. I'm not really sure what your point is to be quite honest. The point is that the different styles need to avoid any obvious percieved differences in math, but that's very difficult without the style not mattering. Arguably, there shouldn't be Fighters and Swashbucklers in one game, because inevitably either the Swashbuckler will be the comic relief or the Fighter will be Frank Grimes. But the damage on miss is definitely in the category that Halloween Jack mentioned of "a dice bonus that's actually a penalty".
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May 6, 2022 00:30
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hyphz posted:The point is that the different styles need to avoid any obvious percieved differences in math, but that's very difficult without the style not mattering. Arguably, there shouldn't be Fighters and Swashbucklers in one game, because inevitably either the Swashbuckler will be the comic relief or the Fighter will be Frank Grimes. I disagree. Having two styles that math out the same overall but feel different is great. Imagine you have the following: -dude who does lots of little hits/multiattacks -dude who does big hits and misses a lot -dude who does medium hits and rarely misses. They can all average the same DPS and be fair, but they will all feel different. And it will not just be feels because they can have very different outcomes for certain enemies. For enemies with high armor/damage resistance, you want the second guy. For tons of enemies with low HP, you want the first guy because the second is prone to waste damage on overkill. Same thing if the enemy has a way to ignore a certain number of hits - the first guy doesn't mind if you ignore one of his 3 hits, while the second guy gets his huge hit turned into a whiff. The third guy is better when the enemy has a higher AC to hit: the third guy might go from hitting 1.5x more often and doing 30% less damage to hitting 2x more often and doing 30% less damage. Jimbozig fucked around with this message at 01:43 on May 6, 2022 |
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May 6, 2022 01:37
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i think classes should mainly be distinguished by function and distinguishing by feel is a better left to different systems, partly out of concern for how easy it is to cause balance problems by using different mechanics for purely experiential reasons and not anticipating the ways in which they actually are functionally different, but also because i just don't think distinguishing things by "feel" is worth much to begin with
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May 6, 2022 02:03
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and if you insist, i'm gonna play the guy who does lots of "little" multi-attacks and break your game in half
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May 6, 2022 02:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i think classes should mainly be distinguished by function and distinguishing by feel is a better left to different systems, partly out of concern for how easy it is to cause balance problems by using different mechanics for purely experiential reasons and not anticipating the ways in which they actually are functionally different, but also because i just don't think distinguishing things by "feel" is worth much to begin with Tuxedo Catfish posted:and if you insist, i'm gonna play the guy who does lots of "little" multi-attacks and break your game in half I too really do enjoy myself some d&d 4e 
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May 6, 2022 02:18
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Jimbozig posted:I disagree. Having two styles that math out the same overall but feel different is great.
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May 6, 2022 02:31
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obviously the only good rpg is chess
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May 6, 2022 03:44
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Backgammon is better - it's got dice. 
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May 6, 2022 03:48
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Halloween Jack posted:That's the problem, they rarely do. And even if they do, they don't once various player options get involved. There are always these situations where it's always best for a ranger to wield two longswords and whatnot. And if you really mess up, oh poo poo we accidentally made the glaive-guisarme the best weapon for anyone who isn't a spellcaster. That's without getting into gimmick builds you'd only figure out from seeing it on a forum, etc. So uh, how many games fall into this that aren't DnD? Like I can think of some but they're already FATAL&Friends candidates before you even get to balance issues so it's kind of beating a dead horse. Basically no RPGs that I've played in the last two decades have felt like this was a real problem.
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May 6, 2022 04:22
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Tulip posted:So uh, how many games fall into this that aren't DnD? Like I can think of some but they're already FATAL&Friends candidates before you even get to balance issues so it's kind of beating a dead horse. Basically no RPGs that I've played in the last two decades have felt like this was a real problem.
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