Do monsters/NPCs really need to roll any dice?

[frankthedm]

one thing is if the players "roll their defense" in a system with 3e &4e critical hits, the players will wind up critically failing by rolling the dice. For some folks the feeling of such won't work well.

 

[xechnao]

Okay.I'm sorry, but I don't believe that's true at all. You've made a couple of very specific claims about benefits, such as reducing the number of die rolls, speeding up the game, and increasing immersion. So I'm asking, where's the beef?

Yeah my claims are these but you could substitute the last one of the three with the phrase: "not losing immersion" or "not having a decrease in immersion". There is no specific beef to show because this will depend from the game you want to make. I wanted to only provide some ideas regarding the possibilities and show that in theory it is possible, present some ideas in an abstract or theoretic level of how or why it could work.

And it's under the microscope we actually experience the game.

I want to avoid this for the sake of this thread. Game design has infinite possibilities -I do not believe it would be practical to seek a focus like this here.

I can kinda see where you're coming from here, but I think the luck element becomes completely one-sided (either you beat the target number, or you don't) rather than a function of the interaction between two randomly-generated values out of a range of possibles. Rolling a twenty against the same twelve over and over, and rolling a twenty when the referee's rolled a nineteen, are very different experiences.I roll to hit, and I roll my defense, versus I roll to hit and the referee rolls to hit.

The luck you are talking about is about the result of the randomizer. How many sides roll a randomizer has nothing to do with luck because each side has no controlling power over the randomizer. I could easily add a third side, a fourth side etch which could roll dice that enter into the function of how the overall fate of one single conflict is decided. But the end mechanical result is the same. There is no difference in mechanics or gameplay: the difference is just a practical one and in the end it is about our habits. It is about comparing two copies of the same software, each one with a different interface. Some people may like more the one than the other depending on their habits. This is what I am seeing here.

I roll to hit, and I roll my defense, versus I roll to hit and the referee rolls to hit.

Net difference: zero.
.
.
It could work, and I'm sure there are games out there that do this, but again, I think that the loss of granularity might lessen the experience in actual play.

I want to make the distinction between significant or functional granularity and then perceivable granularity which may be nothing of the sort: just the effect of perceiving something that is presented in a more complicated form than it's most simplified model.

Certainly, some times the possibility of this simplification might be there to make and other times it might not be. For example in D&D to resolve a melee you roll for various attack and damage dice for each one combatant separately (or attacks plus defenses of one combatant as you remodeled it up there) just to figure out who is gaining an advantage and who is losing it in terms of standing power in time while engaged in melee. You could figure out the same vastly simplifying the procedure. The procedure would be different and so perhaps the experience from a practical and rather psychological POV (the luck we were talking about) but the functional end result in terms of gameplay could be the same. That is, the end result of the mechanic of the melee "balance" could be the same even using a different structure or interface of mechanics. Of course I speaking theoretically and abstractely here. To show this in practice I would have to invent the simplifying mechanics and fine tune them to arrive at the same result. I do not want to engage in this exercise. Just show the possibility in a theoretic or abstract level and talk about this. See how strong and important people believe their habits to be. The one sided roll for monster-PC interaction versus rolls for each side is the first step to ask to talk about for showcasing this matter.

 

[maddman75]

Re Buffy/Unisystem combat being fast, you only have 1 roll but you have to compare it to the success chart to determine damage, which for me is much more cumbersome than rolling a damage die.

This would be true except for my favorite example of character sheet design aiding play. With the success chart right on the front page of the character sheet, it has never been a problem for my group.

In fact one of the first things I did when I ran AFMBE was to photoshop the success chart from Buffy onto the AFMBE character sheet.

 

[1Mac]

I just started a quasi-4e game that does what the OP suggests, where the PCs roll everything: attacks, defenses, skills, etc. I just add 10 to every NPC score and make that the static DC (ties go to the NPC, since the average roll on a d20 is actually 10.5). I haven't had a chance to try it in combat, but it works pretty well with skill checks. The only unusual thing is that skill results are less "swingy," since I changed the system from "random vs random" to "random vs static." Since d20 combat as written is already "random vs static," I expect no difficulties.

That is true in a theoretical sense, but in play it doesn't give the DM anything to do. The DM gets to sit and wait for the players to actually resolve everything. Engagement is encouraged by making a person interact with the system. You are removing one of the points of interaction from the DM, which may make it rather less fun.

Of course the DM is doing things, like deciding what the NPCs do, what powers they use, what tactics they use, and so on. The only thing he is not doing is rolling a die, the result of which is by definition out of the DM's hands anyway, since the result is random. The DM has just as much actual power whether he rolls dice or not.

one thing is if the players "roll their defense" in a system with 3e &4e critical hits, the players will wind up critically failing by rolling the dice. For some folks the feeling of such won't work well.

The way I'm doing it, a critical failure on a defense roll means that the attacker-NPC scored a critical hit. That seems rather intuitive to me.

edit: one word can change the meaning of a sentence entirely.

 

[kitsune9]

In old school design the DM used random events behind his screen to decide the course of the adventure. Random tables, random treasure, random number of monsters and all that stuff. I believe it was in the same philosophy that NPCs rolled their reactions and monsters rolled their attacks and damage and saving throws.

New school design does not consider this method necessary to play the game. In 4e for example PCs roll to attack monster defenses: the saving throw that used to be is no more.

Now, I am asking do monsters really need to make any rolls at all? Couldn't it be that only the PCs make random rolls, since in fact we are playing a roleplaying game whose basic premise is personal character immersion?
In combat a PC could make one roll to see if he gains or loses advantage over his adversary. And based on that, roll again to see what damage he manages to inflict or manages to avoid - depending on the performance of the previous roll.

This was just an example for combat. I would like to pose a question for every kind of interaction of the PCs that asks for a randomizer. Couldn't just the PCs make all the rolls that are involved with what they face? Does this make sense?

Discuss.

I see your point. I can see another edition of D&D where players could be the ones rolling all the dice, but the mechanics have to be worked to address the remaining issues of 4e where monsters and NPCs do roll dice so that it's variable and to account for automatic hit and automatic miss (unless those mechanics are done away with in the future as well). One thing is that I don't think game designers would go for that because I'm sure some DM's would like to roll at least a little bit of dice.

I'm just saying I could see an edition made that way, but whether it would actually get made that way is a different discussion.

 

[Rechan]

I guess no one likes the card idea.

 

[xechnao]

I guess no one likes the card idea.

I personally prefer dice because in theory they are true randomizers. Cards are more predictable.

 

[Rechan]

Cards are more predictable.

Which is something I'm okay with. I like a level of strategy, instead of randomness.

 

[xechnao]

Which is something I'm okay with. I like a level of strategy, instead of randomness.

Sure but you can have a level of strategy with dice too, depending on how the game is build. But, yes, cards can offer this intrinsically.
I still prefer a game that uses strategy and true randomizers.