BRP-Like WHIFF Factor

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The "correct answer" is shooting for the happy probability of 66% to around 80% so that people have the reliability to feel capable with the attendant potential for failure to feel challenged. The 2/3 to 4/5 success is roughly the psychological happy place. And -- unless you are actually doing something interesting with the individual values between (like rarity in a Random Encounter Table Curve) -- a flat, A-line, and parabolic curves distribution doesn't matter in a pass/fail test because all passing values are cumulative in its probability, not isolated; reliably cresting the saddle point is good psychologically, but given you are not testing that in a pass/fail it is extraneous.

In BRPs or CoC, from experience, I automatically have pre-gens cluster the 2-3 core skills and at least 2 combat skills start with that focus around 65% to 75% (13 to 15 on a d20). They may build and diversify points elsewhere, even build up skills over time, but at least they have a core that scratches the itch straight outta the box. Third of the time whiffing is just enough failure to relate stress and challenge without people checking out tout de suite.

Psychologically this works the same with almost all games, rpgs no exception. That's why I can go back to White Wolf stuff, for example, and gladly let people run lower level dots because dropping the Rule of One Botch, and allowing adjustable difficulty (so not just successes on 6+), really means you only need two dice to assure a reasonable success on most things. This is important because it then opens dice pool division for everybody, and you are not risking Rule of One implosions in focusing fire.

It's also how you can break down a lot of other games where they try David Lettermen (tm) Stupid Dice Tricks that hide the probability. Once you know the psychological happy place, decode the hidden probability, then chargen for that happy place, put out pre-gens for your players, watch them feel satisfied. Then you know you can sprinkle GM adjusted mods plus or minus within 30% (+ or - up to a 6 mod on a d20) for most campaign challenges, and slide that scale up as necessary for super-heroic.

No sense loading the happy place at the moment with GM mod dependency while PCs are very, very low %. Front load that shit, even at the expense at minutiae customization. Just adjust the game so it works outta the gate without your players' confused on how to be reliable and end up feeling incapable. You are capable in these few things, iffy in much else, and that's it -- the rest you rely upon others and work up a skill or two over time.

When you get players better in probability, system chargen, or savoring risk and failure, you can then open up the table. Their mastery and expectations are broader to withstand different expectations. Until then no sense increasing your GM workload for every case by case basis. :shade::drink: Yes, I can be a lazy GM.
 
ffilz said:
HSwinginess doesn't exactly have to do with the dice rolled, it has to do with the relative probabilities of various outcomes.

A 2d6, 3d6, or other bell curve can be less swingy when the typical roll necessary falls within the central region.
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This plain does not make sense to me. The 3D6, which is often held up as the paragon of bell curves because of GURPS, gives precisely 16 results. Each has a determinate probability of rolling that number or under--for 9, it's 37.5%, IIRC. Making that roll is precisely as swingy, or not-swingy, as rolling a 37.5% or less on D100. The same is true of the all the other roll-or-equal probabilities.

The only way 3D6 becomes less swingy than D100 is if you are looking at the probability of rolling precisely one number, defined by the sum of the dice in 3D6 and just the roll in D100. But that's a very odd comparison.
opaopajr said:
The "correct answer" is shooting for the happy probability of 66% to around 80% so that people have the reliability to feel capable with the attendant potential for failure to feel challenged. The 2/3 to 4/5 success is roughly the psychological happy place.
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I have often seen this claimed, but I wonder about its validity, given the willingness of people to engage in real-world activities where you fail much more often than this, like trying to get a hit in baseball.
 
Eh, casino games probability knows how to ride that psychological crest to keep you giving up more, and they have a lot of experience profiting from it. Their percentages are a bit on the lower side of that above range, but nowhere the typical 20% combat I've seen in starting CoC characters. :hehe: Listen to the casinos and their business, then add a smidgen more because you are not GMing for profit. :money::shade::drink:
 
Mangoplum said:
Depends on what situation you're talking about, and how you define 'normal conditions'. A quick look for statistics regarding police accuracy in armed shootouts gave me an accuracy rating of 35%. https://daiglelawgroup.com/new-study-on-shooting-accuracy-how-does-your-agency-stack-up/
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Most cops aren't remotely pros at shooting at all (unless b y "pro" you mean "paid to do it"). They get way less training than even interested hobbyists. High level special operators are probably a better example of professionals and shooting, though I'm not sure their details are as available.

I'm still fine with more swinginess in combat (or perhaps any other time something is actively trying to hurt you back) because it's adversarial (added after thinking about it below) and it's not always obvious how much each sides skill (plus the environment) is going to matter to the people involved.

Lofgeornost said:
This plain does not make sense to me. The 3D6, which is often held up as the paragon of bell curves because of GURPS, gives precisely 16 results. Each has a determinate probability of rolling that number or under--for 9, it's 37.5%, IIRC. Making that roll is precisely as swingy, or not-swingy, as rolling a 37.5% or less on D100. The same is true of the all the other roll-or-equal probabilities.

The only way 3D6 becomes less swingy than D100 is if you are looking at the probability of rolling precisely one number, defined by the sum of the dice in 3D6 and just the roll in D100. But that's a very odd comparison.

I have often seen this claimed, but I wonder about its validity, given the willingness of people to engage in real-world activities where you fail much more often than this, like trying to get a hit in baseball.
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I don't know of any percentile games that do this. You could have skill percent's and modifiers match the 3d6 table and get exactly the same results, but it would be a lot easier to just use 3d6. I'm also not sure how you can consider 100 results less swingy than 16. 16 results is less than 1/5th of 100.

A separate criticism I have is percentiles where it's all in 5% increments where a d20 would be a lot simpler.

Baseball is an opposed test between the pitcher and the hitter, it's skill dependent both ways. So likely to be swingier and whiffier. Maybe adversarial is where swingier results make more sense.
 
Brander said:
I don't know of any percentile games that do this. You could have skill percent's and modifiers match the 3d6 table and get exactly the same results, but it would be a lot easier to just use 3d6. I'm also not sure how you can consider 100 results less swingy than 16. 16 results is less than 1/5th of 100.
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I think we are using the term 'swingy' in different ways.

With a D20, or a D100, there is a flat probability of rolling any given result, and it's the same for each result: 5% or 1%. So people describe this as 'swingy' because you are just as likely to roll a 1 on a D20 as a 10, or a 20. There is no clustering around the mean.

With a 3D6 and add the rolls, there is such clustering. You are much more likely to roll a 9, or a 10, than you are a 3 or an 18.

But--and this is where the wheels come off the wagon in contrasts of BRP and GURPS--when rolling in these systems for success, you are not trying to match a given number precisely. Instead, you are trying to roll X or less (or some variant of that).

That means the success roll is equally 'swingy'. For any GURPS target number, there is a percentage that corresponds to it exactly. Rolling that percentage on D100 is precisely the same as trying to get the target number or under on 3D6. Clustering around the mean has no effect whatever in this instance.
 
CaoCao said:
In my opinion the probem is:

(Lack of shades-of-gray/partial success/success at a cost mechanic) + (lack of fail forward mechanic)

I.e. the problem is being basically a binary success/failure rule set from the late 70s.
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Yeah. I like the fine grain and transparent probabilities of d%, but my favourite version of it is the Ease Factor: Quality Rating system in James Bond 007 and its retroclone Classified — of which my favourite dialect is the elegant generalisation in ForeSight. Ease Factors give you a graceful way to apply modifiers for easy and difficult tasks that matter to experts without annihilating tiros, and quality ratings (four different degrees of success, plus (in ForeSight) two of failure) make 160% chance meaningfully better than 140% chance and reduce the brittle dichotomy of flat-out success and failure that produces the impression of whiffing.

It seems to me that Mythras has made a couple of steps in the direction of adopting EF:QR. It's "difficulty grades" with associated skill multipliers are a sort of clunky prototype of Ease Factors, and its "critical successes" amount to distinguishing two quality ratings of success.
 
Lofgeornost said:
I think we are using the term 'swingy' in different ways.

With a D20, or a D100, there is a flat probability of rolling any given result, and it's the same for each result: 5% or 1%. So people describe this as 'swingy' because you are just as likely to roll a 1 on a D20 as a 10, or a 20. There is no clustering around the mean.

With a 3D6 and add the rolls, there is such clustering. You are much more likely to roll a 9, or a 10, than you are a 3 or an 18.

But--and this is where the wheels come off the wagon in contrasts of BRP and GURPS--when rolling in these systems for success, you are not trying to match a given number precisely. Instead, you are trying to roll X or less (or some variant of that).

That means the success roll is equally 'swingy'. For any GURPS target number, there is a percentage that corresponds to it exactly. Rolling that percentage on D100 is precisely the same as trying to get the target number or under on 3D6. Clustering around the mean has no effect whatever in this instance.
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How different dice give different results is fairly easy to understand, but I feel it results in people hyper-fixating on those results, and bell curves and things like that, and failing to recognise that it's not the bell curve (or whatever) that determines how easy it is to succeed or fail at a skill, it's all the mechanics that are built around the dice. What is the standard difficulty? How are modifiers calculated and applied? What is rolled for? What do success and failure actually represent? How competent is the average person intended to be?

(Edit: I'm agreeing with you, just to be clear.)
 
Lofgeornost said:
I think we are using the term 'swingy' in different ways.

With a D20, or a D100, there is a flat probability of rolling any given result, and it's the same for each result: 5% or 1%. So people describe this as 'swingy' because you are just as likely to roll a 1 on a D20 as a 10, or a 20. There is no clustering around the mean.

With a 3D6 and add the rolls, there is such clustering. You are much more likely to roll a 9, or a 10, than you are a 3 or an 18.

But--and this is where the wheels come off the wagon in contrasts of BRP and GURPS--when rolling in these systems for success, you are not trying to match a given number precisely. Instead, you are trying to roll X or less (or some variant of that).

That means the success roll is equally 'swingy'. For any GURPS target number, there is a percentage that corresponds to it exactly. Rolling that percentage on D100 is precisely the same as trying to get the target number or under on 3D6. Clustering around the mean has no effect whatever in this instance.
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Yes, for a specific target number, 3d6 is just as swingy. Where it can be less swingy is when you consider a small range of target numbers which often is likely in an RPG session. So depending on where the peak of the bell occurs in comparison to the target number and the typical modifiers, there may be a perception of more predictability, i.e. less swingy. But that absolutely depends on where the range falls.
 
ffilz said:
Yes, for a specific target number, 3d6 is just as swingy. Where it can be less swingy is when you consider a small range of target numbers which often is likely in an RPG session. So depending on where the peak of the bell occurs in comparison to the target number and the typical modifiers, there may be a perception of more predictability, i.e. less swingy. But that absolutely depends on where the range falls.
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A 1 - 100 roll under skill system with a typical skill value of 70 and modifiers ranging from -10 to +10 is very predictable, and not very "swingy" at all.

Using 3d6 is not what makes a system "less swingy". It's the entire apparatus built around those 3d6.
 
Sable Wyvern said:
A 1 - 100 roll under skill system with a typical skill value of 70 and modifiers ranging from -10 to +10 is very predictable, and not very "swingy" at all.

Using 3d6 is not what makes a system "less swingy". It's the entire apparatus built around those 3d6.
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Right, that's why I was saying that with a small range of target numbers in the right space it can feel less swingy. It may actually not be less swingy. And the feeling of swinginess depends on what else happens with the resolution.

In one sense, the net is that "swingy" is almost a meaningless objective measure. There are tricks that affect the perception.
 
A lot of early % games expected you to be happy with 30 to 55% probabilities. That is just too low. A nice floor for a competent novice is 60%.

The problem is that a lot of % systems don't know how to handle character advancement. They want to start characters off pretty good and then just steadily increase; as a result, they overcompensate by starting too low, and they don't know how to slow down advancement as you get closer to 100%.

Also, also, % systems don't always grapple well with the difference between flat rolls, where your percentage is your percentage, and opposed rolls, where you are actually looking at the scale of the difference between likely opponents.

You can see the same problems in 3d6 systems. Early GURPS expected you to run 100 point characters. If you had a DX 12 and you used an average difficulty weapon with no skill, you would have to roll a 7 or less. A combat between two unskilled characters was a whiff-fest. But a skilled character might have a skill of 12 to 15, which was pretty good, and since it's on a probability curve, higher and higher values effectively slow advancement.

d20-based games tend to be swingy between whiff and thud. That's because it has a similar mathematics to a percentile system. The game tries to aim around a "sweet spot" of to-hit and AC. But if you depart too far from expectations, either the AC is just too high to hit, or so low you can't miss. Again, this is because the challenge of using one value (your to-hit) versus another that also changes (AC, generally also rising, but at a different rate, as opponents become more powerful), which is a completely different scenario than beating a static DC. If you have Profession (basket-weaver) of +10, you have an 80% chance of beating a DC 15 basket-weaving challenge. But a few points of to-hit could mean you need a 20 to hit, versus a 16; a four point difference makes one character five times as likely to hit. So, the same with percentiles.

You've got to watch those expected values.
 
Sable Wyvern said:
How different dice give different results is fairly easy to understand, but I feel it results in people hyper-fixating on those results, and bell curves and things like that, and failing to recognise that it's not the bell curve (or whatever) that determines how easy it is to succeed or fail at a skill, it's all the mechanics that are built around the dice. What is the standard difficulty? How are modifiers calculated and applied? What is rolled for? What do success and failure actually represent? How competent is the average person intended to be?

(Edit: I'm agreeing with you, just to be clear.)
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Uhm... bah humbug!
Oh Noes Math.jpg
 
Agemegos said:
Yeah. I like the fine grain and transparent probabilities of d%, but my favourite version of it is the Ease Factor: Quality Rating system in James Bond 007 and its retroclone Classified — of which my favourite dialect is the elegant generalisation in ForeSight. Ease Factors give you a graceful way to apply modifiers for easy and difficult tasks that matter to experts without annihilating tiros, and quality ratings (four different degrees of success, plus (in ForeSight) two of failure) make 160% chance meaningfully better than 140% chance and reduce the brittle dichotomy of flat-out success and failure that produces the impression of whiffing.
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Yeah I remember James Bond 007 being a top game. I play it years ago, but can't remember the game mechanics too much other than it used a percentile dice and seemed pretty cool at the time. I've subsequentially bought Classified, but haven't had time to read it properly yet.
Agemegos said:
It seems to me that Mythras has made a couple of steps in the direction of adopting EF:QR. It's "difficulty grades" with associated skill multipliers are a sort of clunky prototype of Ease Factors, and its "critical successes" amount to distinguishing two quality ratings of success.
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Mythras (simple version) has bonus/penalty mods of +/-20%, +/- 40%. +/- 80%, and so forth.
Critical Success is equal to 10% of Skill Value, so I just handwave it by making it the '10s' number (eg: 48% has a crit value of 4%, whereas 72% has a crit value of 7%). Seems easy enough in play.
 
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Mankcam said:
Mythras (simple version) has bonus/penalty mods of +/-20%, +/- 40%. +/- 80%, and so forth.
Critical Success is equal to 10% of Skill Value, so I just handwave it by making it the '10s' number (eg: 48% has a crit value of 4%, whereas 72% has a crit value of 7%). Seems easy enough in play.
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So, you're one of these power-tripping GMs who think it's ok to just steal a 1% crit chance from your players!

(I am deeply saddened by the knowledge there are people out there who would post something like this in complete seriousness -- although I'm not sure if I hold them in contempt for their pearl-clutching, or pity them for whatever trauma resulted in this attitude.)
 
Sable Wyvern said:
So, you're one of these power-tripping GMs who think it's ok to just steal a 1% crit chance from your players!

(I am deeply saddened by the knowledge there are people out there who would post something like this in complete seriousness -- although I'm not sure if I hold them in contempt for their pearl-clutching, or pity them for whatever trauma resulted in this attitude.
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Hmm... you know, maybe he's a... goose!!! ::honkhonk: Get em!!!
 
Sable Wyvern said:
So, you're one of these power-tripping GMs who think it's ok to just steal a 1% crit chance from your players!

(I am deeply saddened by the knowledge there are people out there who would post something like this in complete seriousness -- although I'm not sure if I hold them in contempt for their pearl-clutching, or pity them for whatever trauma resulted in this attitude.)
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Well, I should of clarified that 01% is always a Critical Success, regardless, heh heh :grin:
Acmegamer said:
Hmm... you know, maybe he's a... goose!!! ::honkhonk: Get em!!!
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Careful...

1712809802363.png
heh heh :grin:
 
Brander said:
Most cops aren't remotely pros at shooting at all (unless b y "pro" you mean "paid to do it"). They get way less training than even interested hobbyists. High level special operators are probably a better example of professionals and shooting, though I'm not sure their details are as available.

I'm still fine with more swinginess in combat (or perhaps any other time something is actively trying to hurt you back) because it's adversarial (added after thinking about it below) and it's not always obvious how much each sides skill (plus the environment) is going to matter to the people involved.



I don't know of any percentile games that do this. You could have skill percent's and modifiers match the 3d6 table and get exactly the same results, but it would be a lot easier to just use 3d6. I'm also not sure how you can consider 100 results less swingy than 16. 16 results is less than 1/5th of 100.

A separate criticism I have is percentiles where it's all in 5% increments where a d20 would be a lot simpler.

Baseball is an opposed test between the pitcher and the hitter, it's skill dependent both ways. So likely to be swingier and whiffier. Maybe adversarial is where swingier results make more sense.
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I'm not an expert but my understanding is that hitting someone with a handgun, particular in a short range firefight that is most common situation, is a lot harder in RL than one may think. I have some relatives who served in their country's required military service and they noted this as well.
 
pawsplay said:
A lot of early % games expected you to be happy with 30 to 55% probabilities. That is just too low. A nice floor for a competent novice is 60%.

The problem is that a lot of % systems don't know how to handle character advancement. They want to start characters off pretty good and then just steadily increase; as a result, they overcompensate by starting too low, and they don't know how to slow down advancement as you get closer to 100%.

Also, also, % systems don't always grapple well with the difference between flat rolls, where your percentage is your percentage, and opposed rolls, where you are actually looking at the scale of the difference between likely opponents.

You can see the same problems in 3d6 systems. Early GURPS expected you to run 100 point characters. If you had a DX 12 and you used an average difficulty weapon with no skill, you would have to roll a 7 or less. A combat between two unskilled characters was a whiff-fest. But a skilled character might have a skill of 12 to 15, which was pretty good, and since it's on a probability curve, higher and higher values effectively slow advancement.

d20-based games tend to be swingy between whiff and thud. That's because it has a similar mathematics to a percentile system. The game tries to aim around a "sweet spot" of to-hit and AC. But if you depart too far from expectations, either the AC is just too high to hit, or so low you can't miss. Again, this is because the challenge of using one value (your to-hit) versus another that also changes (AC, generally also rising, but at a different rate, as opponents become more powerful), which is a completely different scenario than beating a static DC. If you have Profession (basket-weaver) of +10, you have an 80% chance of beating a DC 15 basket-weaving challenge. But a few points of to-hit could mean you need a 20 to hit, versus a 16; a four point difference makes one character five times as likely to hit. So, the same with percentiles.

You've got to watch those expected values.
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These issues are one of the things I like about Cold Iron. Every ability has a rating. The normal distribution is then used to turn a random number between 0 and 1 (using decimal digit dice) into a modifier that is distributed by the normal distribution (+0 is the peak of the bell). Take your rating, add modifier, compare to target's rating. As you gain levels, the ratings just slide up and lower power things become easier and easier to hit (but never automatic). Harder things are never impossible to hit, just very low probability. The numbers overall work well. The system was designed by someone who understood probability and then refined through play.
 
Voros said:
I'm not an expert but my understanding is that hitting someone with a handgun, particular in a short range firefight that is most common situation, is a lot harder in RL than one may think. I have some relatives who served in their country's required military service and they noted this as well.
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My cousin in the police force says point blank is dead easy of course, but anything after that with a handgun gets tricky - especially for mobile targets.

He was trained to aim for the torso and not the legs, on account of the quite high numbers of innocent bystanders getting shot by police missing their leg shots at intended targets.

It's a big deal for police to legally pull out their guns in Australia - unlike the USA where a police officer can hold a gun just to reinforce their verbal directions (something deemed very excessive here). Police shootings are always nation-wide news down here in Australia, and there are routine internal investigations whenever handguns are drawn, let alone used.

Police are far more likely to use grappling holds, batons, or tasers in Australia. They legally draw firearms only if the situation is justified as extremely high risk (such as the assailants having firearms).

So yeah he says alot of data was taken from police department statistics in the USA where many bystanders have been mistakenly shot by police who missed their targets. The numbers are quite high apparently, and likely a source of concern (and embaressment) for the police departments. Not sure how old the data is, but it will be at least a decade now, it's nothing new.

However if that's anything to go by, mobile targets even at short range are quite challenging for most handgun users.
 
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PencilBoy99 said:
I ran my first long campaign using a d100-ish system and my players and I really disliked how wiffy it was. An average score in a dice pool system (because of the distribution) is more effective than a flat system (d20, d100). My players even after a while were at best around 60% in things. When you combine that with situational penalties OR even worse an opposed roll (like a parry), they failed quite frequently. While I don't mind failure, this was more uninteresting and frustrating than fun. Even when mostly only calling for rolls when "it mattered" the problem didn't go away (and in an "it mattered" situation you're more likely to have situational penalties).
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A lot of BRP family games give you fairly low starting scores, but that should even out by session 5 or so, IME.
Also check my reply to Raleel in this same post.

Fenris-77 said:
I've had this same experience with d100 systems. Most recently in a Delta Green game where my very competent character looked like one one the keystone cops session after session. I'm not sure why these small sample size rolling trends feel so much worse in d100 systems but somehow they do.
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Delta-fucking-Green:shock:? Where a brand new character has at least 40-to-60 in most skills?

Just checking whether I'm not misunderstanding... strings of bad rolls also happen, true. One of my regular players (who's running Fate of Chthulhu) swears she can't roll a good d20 roll to save her life, too.

Raleel said:
The other side of this is that generally successful effects are MUCH stronger in BRP family games. While it doesn't apply to your goblin (7HP, he's got a very strong chance to drop that goblin with his d8+3), hit point accumulation will impact this at later levels. It won't with BRP.

So you end up with a whiff whiff whiff SMACK without some careful guidance.
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That's often underestimated, but it's one of the huge draws of d100 for me... In comparison, d20's version "you hit, you mark off 3 HP out of 14, the fight continues" feels to me like my attack was simply inefficient!

In comparison, attacking successfully but being parried feels simply like the opponent is competent enough to survive this round. "I'll get you next time!"

Also, let me quote what I just wrote in my previous post, in the Black Company thread.
"In most games that (expect you to roll less often, but) give you low skills across the board, like WFRP, you're fishing for bonii before using the skills...
So your Fellowship is 29, but you get +10 for actually knowing these guys your PCs are trying to dupe into letting you pass into the Nobleman cultist's abode, +20 for having spent last night drinking with them, +30 for having an Inquisitor present, and merely -25 for their loyalty to him, that's 64%, let's roll!"

So couple this, and you have:
Less frequent rolls, where competence in unchallenging situations is assumed.
Hunting for bonii before the roll (including, yes, to obviate the need for a roll!)
Possibly big rewards.

...and you have the picture of how d100 works IME::honkhonk:.

robertsconley said:
I understand if folks perceive this as splitting hairs.
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:thumbsup:
Sorry, man, it is what it is...

Also, different legal standards change your odds of a successful legal defense.
Different dice don't. Whether you're rolling head-or-tails, 4 dice in ORE, or 1d100 with 50% TN, it's the same thing, assuming a binary success-fail mechanic.
It's opposed checks and the other mechanics that make it different, but the type of dice? No, not really. What would matter is if the 60-to-80% roll is opposed by a 40-to-50% defense.
Then your odds drop down to 36-to-40%.

Sable Wyvern said:
How different dice give different results is fairly easy to understand, but I feel it results in people hyper-fixating on those results, and bell curves and things like that, and failing to recognise that it's not the bell curve (or whatever) that determines how easy it is to succeed or fail at a skill, it's all the mechanics that are built around the dice. What is the standard difficulty? How are modifiers calculated and applied? What is rolled for? What do success and failure actually represent? How competent is the average person intended to be?

(Edit: I'm agreeing with you, just to be clear.)
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Yes, this.

pawsplay said:
A nice floor for a competent novice is 60%.
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...only if you're not expected to be hunting for bonii. Even a novice should know to do that.
"60% odds where a normal person would fail" sounds like a pro to me.

Sable Wyvern said:
So, you're one of these power-tripping GMs who think it's ok to just steal a 1% crit chance from your players!

(I am deeply saddened by the knowledge there are people out there who would post something like this in complete seriousness -- although I'm not sure if I hold them in contempt for their pearl-clutching, or pity them for whatever trauma resulted in this attitude.)
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Yeah, it's an example of how trying to simplify at all costs ends up screwing the players:crygoose:!
 
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Mankcam said:
However if that's anything to go by, mobile targets even at short range is quite challenging for most handgun users.
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There's a century-old by now accident in Shanghai. A cop with a revolver and a guy with a pistol shot at each other from the opposite sides of a balcony, about 2 meters, and neither scored a hit when they ran out of bullets.
The cop captured the criminal by approaching him and beating him upside the head with the handle of his service gun:gooseshades:.

It's sometimes quoted as an abject lesson in not forgetting the importance of "oldie but goodie" methods:grin:!
 
AsenRG said:
There's a century-old by now accident in Shanghai. A cop with a revolver and a guy with a pistol shot at each other from the opposite sides of a balcony, about 2 meters, and neither scored a hit when they ran out of bullets.
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I'm not surprised
AsenRG said:
The cop captured the criminal by approaching him and beating him upside the head with the handle of his service gun:gooseshades:.
It's sometimes quoted as an abject lesson in not forgetting the importance of "oldie but goodie" methods:grin:!
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In true time-tested pulp style, the old ways are the best ways, heh heh
 
AsenRG said:
Yeah, it's an example of how trying to simplify at all costs ends up screwing the players:crygoose:!
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Yeah, my Fumble!
(But I later clarified that I should of included that a roll of 01 is always considered a Critical)
You buggas heh heh
 
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Mankcam said:
C'mon you buggas, I clarified later that I should of included that a roll of 01 is always considered a Critical !!!
heh heh
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...Now you're just trolling the math guys in the thread::honkhonk:!

(You'd need a skill of exactly 0 for that to be untrue, anyway, so this isn't any kind of gain that you wouldn't have under the normal rules:thumbsup:).
 
Mankcam said:
You and your crazy Maths magicks can stay outta my game, heh heh !!!
(It's not a place for logistics, heh heh)
:grin:
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Guys, I just found Mankcam's stats in Mythras... :tongue:


Chars
STR: 15
CON: 7
SIZ: 8
DEX: 12
INT: 9
POW: 15
CHA: 11
Attributes
Action Points2
Damage Modifier+0
Magic Points15
Movement6
Strike Rank7(10-3)
Cult rankCommon
CultZorak Zoran Initiate
1D20LocationAP/HP
01-03Right leg
1/3​
04-06Left leg
1/3​
07-09Abdomen
2/4​
10-12Chest
2/5​
13-15Right arm
1/2​
16-18Left arm
1/2​
19-20Head
2/3​
Skills: Athletics 46%, Brawn 50%, Endurance 37%, Evade 58%, First Aid 31%, Folk Magic 53%, Lore(Region) 28%, Perception 50%, Unarmed 50%, Willpower 44%
Folk magic spells: Avert, Bludgeon, Extinguish, Ignite, Speedart
Devotional pool: / Maximum intensity:
Theism spells/Miracles: Fear


Combat Styles: Trollkin Skirmishing 54%
Weapon​
Size/Force
Reach​
Damage​
AP/HP​
Effects​
ClubST1d64/4Bash, Stun Loc
SlingM10/150/3001d81/2Stun Loc
 
I was always cool with the 30-50% chances on old 1920's amateur investigators CoC. There was just the assumption, for me, that any time you weren't being chased, shot at, tentacle raped, etc., was always an Easy roll. That made the starting DG characters with 50-60% (or elderly CoC professors with 70% history) look like real trained experts in their fields. I also loved how shotguns started at around a 30% hit chance. Once the bullets started flying and the tentacles were in your pants was the time for straight rolls.

The dominance of post 2000's D&D with its "roll flat base chance for every single thing all the time" ethos is what I think fucks with everything. Like in D&D 5e where characters are incompetent even in "proficient" skills once the target numbers go over 10 if they don't have a 18+ stat and/or no way to throw a bunch of bonus d4/d6 on it. The game would work fine if you only had to roll when there was literal combat or active opposition. But that's not what the "roll if there's a chance and consequence for failure" DMG instructions tell GMs to do. D&D 3e got away with it because after enough levels your bonus was a bigger deal than the die most of the time. It still caused issues, but different ones and you didn't feel like your 15th level 20 intelligence wizard didn't know shit aboug magic just because you rolled under 11 four times in a row and the barbarian rolled a 19.

Where "roll for everything" with flat dice works is comedy. A flat d20 blackjack roll is perfect in Paranoia. Fast, no math, swingy as all get out, and failure is supposed to be as (if not even more) entertaining as success.
 
Personally, I make the base for professional skills 90%. Of course, the skill levels for, say, controlling psychic powers, may be a lot lower. It’s not as if we have any real world analogues for the latter.
 
SJB said:
Personally, I make the base for professional skills 90%. Of course, the skill levels for, say, controlling psychic powers, may be a lot lower. It’s not as if we have any real world analogues for the latter.
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The question is whether that's 90% to paint a masterpiece using oils on canvass while skydiving, or 90% to manage a stick figure diorama while in calm and idyllic surrounds.

Or, to look at it another way, while 90% may be an accurate representation of the likelihood that I successfully muddle my way through any given task at work (while not posting on the Pub), a 10% failure rate would not be acceptable from anyone who reports to me.
 
AsenRG said:
Guys, I just found Mankcam's stats in Mythras... :tongue:


Chars
STR: 15
CON: 7
SIZ: 8
DEX: 12
INT: 9
POW: 15
CHA: 11
Attributes
Action Points2
Damage Modifier+0
Magic Points15
Movement6
Strike Rank7(10-3)
Cult rankCommon
CultZorak Zoran Initiate
1D20LocationAP/HP
01-03Right leg
1/3​
04-06Left leg
1/3​
07-09Abdomen
2/4​
10-12Chest
2/5​
13-15Right arm
1/2​
16-18Left arm
1/2​
19-20Head
2/3​
Skills: Athletics 46%, Brawn 50%, Endurance 37%, Evade 58%, First Aid 31%, Folk Magic 53%, Lore(Region) 28%, Perception 50%, Unarmed 50%, Willpower 44%
Folk magic spells: Avert, Bludgeon, Extinguish, Ignite, Speedart
Devotional pool: / Maximum intensity:
Theism spells/Miracles: Fear


Combat Styles: Trollkin Skirmishing 54%
Weapon​
Size/Force
Reach​
Damage​
AP/HP​
Effects​
ClubST1d64/4Bash, Stun Loc
SlingM10/150/3001d81/2Stun Loc
Click to expand...
1712824866759.png
Zorak Zoran Initiate?!!!
Are you sayin' I'ma Uzko?!!!
A Troll?!!!
heh heh
Cool :shade:
 
ffilz said:
Right, I think GURPS (more so than TFT, but TFT to some extent) leverage the curve so a typical skill roll feels good and your observations about intuitive feel about the chances all work together. And yes, when the curve is being leveraged in that way, 3d6 works really nicely and it's much easier to get that feel than with d20. In comparison, to take another d20 system, Bushido feels very whiffy, I don't even feel good about making a 12 or less roll on the d20, and many rolls are 8 or less.
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At least Bushido has most characters' main skills start in the 10-12 range, and many tasks will be 'long tasks', so you're building up successes, and not just looking at pass/fail.

I find that D&D's d20 feels more swingy than a d100 does, for some reason. I suspect it's that the DCs and modifiers used in a lot of d20 games feel pretty arbitrary, so the whole experience just feels really random. Most games that use a d100 have pretty grounded rules for modifiers, etc. Rolemaster is, of course, the exception, but the serious swinginess of its open-ended d100 rolls is the point, so it's much more acceptable (for me, at least).

Funnily enough using a d20, roll low, in TNE does not feel wiffy or swingy to me. It's difficult modifiers help with that - they are really coarse (you half or double the effective skill with each difficulty step), and like GURPS with its bell curve (so any time you're outside the middle, you know things are very likely to pass or fail) they make it very clear what the expected outcome is.
 
Telok said:
The dominance of post 2000's D&D with its "roll flat base chance for every single thing all the time" ethos is what I think fucks with everything.
Click to expand...

Yep, I agree. In most games (of any sort) I don't have players roll for things that they are likely to be able to do without any difficulty, unless there is something distracting them or they are trying to rush things.

In a percentage system, the way I run things (and the limits I put on initial character builds) means that a 70% score would indicate a very experienced professional, like a university math professor who is really well respected within that field. Something in the 90% range would be someone who is one of the top minds of the century in a given area of knowledge, like Godel or Von Neumann in mathematics. A graduate student or a young professor in some area of mathematics would probably be closer to a 50% score. In essence, the percentage is an indication of how much skill and knowledge that person has versus the most skillful or knowledgeable person in that field who is alive in that time period.

So, having a 50% score in math doesn't mean that the character has a 50% chance of making a mistake any time they do a calculation. It means that if the problem is complex enough to call for a roll, they may only have a 50% chance of making it in that particular situation. For example, if the character needed to do something that required a level of math equivalent to basic Calculus, a math graduate student (or someone even more experienced or knowledgeable) wouldn't even need to roll. Some more advanced areas of math might require anyone under the "well respected experienced university professor" level to roll. Really complex stuff might mean that even the Godel-level ones would need to roll. It is situation dependent, and very much falls under the "rulings, not rules" approach to things. Since I tend to be very fair, consistent, and open to listening to well-reasoned arguments when I GM, that approach has never bothered any of my players. In fact, it tends to be more beneficial for them, in the long run.
 
robertsconley said:
First off, GURPS I feel has the same issue as I am about to criticize BRP for.

Here is what the rules state

View attachment 80587

View attachment 80588

The problem, what is considered East, Average, Difficult, or Impossible, is defined either incorrectly or not well enough. And this problem is not limited to BRP either.

From GURPS
View attachment 80589

I find both sets of advice (and other system's advice) on when to make rolls and assigning difficulty unsatisfactory. My fix isn't to radically change how a system assigns skill levels. But to think very differently about what is trivial, easy, average, and difficult.

For example, over the past decade, I read or watched a lot of stuff on extreme mountain climbing as well as deep cave exploration. For the most part, my impression is that people quickly develop competence in the basic skills needed to handle these situations. When things go wrong, in many cases, most times* they screwed up the planning. They got themselves into situations where no amount of success on skill rolls would have gotten them out of because of a bad plan.

Now I admit I am biased in the way I referee. I tend to use skill rolls to resolve specific actions done as a character in pursuit of a plan created by the player. Rather than as a way of bundling up both planning and execution into a single abstract roll.

There is a high rate of casualties and injuries among even experienced mountaineers, and cavers, so a 50% "professional" rating may make sense if you just using skills in a very abstract way to resolve in one fell swoop whether the mountain was climbed or the bottom of a miles deep cave was reached.


*The other big source of screw ups are random events that are hard to account for. Unexpected flash floods in caves, the stratosphere is lower than normal when above the 8,000m mark, and so on.
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The problem with the BRP rules there is as you say - they call an unmodified check 'average', and I think most people don't think an 'average' task is one where a professional fails half the time.

When GDW published TNE they changed the names of the various difficulty levels because of this. Previously Twilight:2000 had called the unmodified check 'average' (MegaTraveller and 2300AD called it 'Routine'), and that meant your competent character had around a 50% chance of succeeding on something that the normal language meaning of the difficulty implied to most people they shouldn't have any trouble with.

So TNE went with 'Difficult' as the unmodified check (which is what GURPS claims, but then it piles on penalties as well), with 'Average' being double your skill (what BRP calls 'Easy'), and 'Easy' being four times your skill. On the other side, 'Formidable' is half skill (rounded down), and 'Impossible' is a quarter your skill. There are a decent number of times where skill checks are given that are Average or Easy, too.
 
robertsconley said:
This is a different standard than deciding whether an activity is that mundane, that routine, or that the circumstances are that favorable. If there is time available with the right equipment/resources, then success is all but guaranteed. I have a crit failure exception for certain tasks, but that's about it. Plus, the task be one that somebody of that general skill level would be competent at (apprentice, journeyman, master, grandmaster, etc.).
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One really good set of rules in D&D3, that've since gone, and seem to be very often ignored or actively stomped on by GMs, were the 'take 10' and 'take 20' rules. Take 10 allowed you to just states that you'd take a 10 as your roll, as long as there were no extraneous distractions - so you could take it on a climb check, even though that had the risk of falling, but not a climb check to attempt a climb whilst being shot at. Take 20 let you assume a 20 on the roll, but at the cost of taking twenty times as long, and you couldn't do it if there were negative effects from failing, or the task was non-repeatable, as it was assumed you'd be trying several times and failing a few before you got it right.

While they were fairly strictly limited in when you could use them, they got rid of the whiff factor for non-adventuring and non-stressful tasks and made characters with lower skill levels (either from low level, or from trying a skill outside their speciality) able to do basic things at a reasonable level of competency.

I don't know why they were removed, or apparently so disliked by the D&D community.
 
Well, both Delta Green and I think Raiders of R'lyeh suggest that the GM can easily assign a skill (or even trait) level and only those under it need to roll.

I'm not sure if this isn't in Mythras as well, but I suspect it should be.
 
Brander said:
Most cops aren't remotely pros at shooting at all (unless b y "pro" you mean "paid to do it"). They get way less training than even interested hobbyists. High level special operators are probably a better example of professionals and shooting, though I'm not sure their details are as available.
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Most of the time they'll have a rather low hit rate, because a lot of their fire won't be with the express intention of hitting someone, and when they do they'll be firing bursts or at the very least 'until the target falls over'. I'd suggest SWAT officers or the like, but they seem to go for 'aimed shots at people who are not firing back' or 'massed unaimed fire'. A professional hunter might be your best bet, though they generally work to have lots of favourable circumstance bonuses, and very seldom are 'in combat' when they're shooting.
 
Voros said:
I'm not an expert but my understanding is that hitting someone with a handgun, particular in a short range firefight that is most common situation, is a lot harder in RL than one may think. I have some relatives who served in their country's required military service and they noted this as well.
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A lot of people think, possibly because of TV and movies, that pistols are the 'easy' or 'beginners' gun', and that rifles are harder to use. It's actually the other way round - rifles point better and even if you've no idea how to use sights they're easier to aim because the barrel is longer and the sight-line down it more natural than with a pistol. What's more, once you do know a little, rifles are simply more accurate. What pistols have going for them is their much smaller size, weight, and general handiness - using a rifle once someone is up in your face is harder (but if you smack someone with your rifle they'll feel it, so there's that).

But probably the easiest to use is a shotgun (not because of the pellets spreading - that's irrelevant at normal 'civilian' combat ranges), because they're designed for aiming by sighting down the barrel (in general), not via sights, per se. Point and shoot. Also, like centre-fire rifles (and unlike pistols), usually one hit is enough to finish the fight.
 
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