D&D (2024) First playtest thread! One D&D Character Origins.

[TwoSix]

And replace the R with 1 and you get...(N-1)/(N^2+N)

But in general I dislike "helpful formulas". We teach those in school, and people think that's how you're "supposed" to solve things, and wind up unable to solve anything for which they haven't memorized (or have forgotten) the formula.

In my defense, I just re-derived them this morning.

 

[Cadence]

Some helpful formulas:

Average of 1dN: (N+1)/2

Damage increase on 1dN, reroll and keep on rolls of 1 to R: R*(N-R)/2N

New average damage on 1dN, reroll and keep on roll of 1 to R: N^2-R^2+N(R+1)/2N

Proportion damage increase (damage increase / old average): R(N-R)/N(N+1)

Do you have the standard deviation formula for the new average damage so that I don't use finding it as an excuse to avoid work?

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sure, but what's colorful about Powerful Build?

I'm....not sure how to answer that. Are you saying you don't find Powerful Build to be less colorful/evocative/flavorful than +2 Str?

I keep hearing that without fixed racial ASIs the races are all identical. But if that's true, then Elves and Halflings and Tabaxi are already "identical". Do you find that to be true?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Convention and store play isn't normative, only a fraction of players interact with that. Loose goosey mixing is the norm from what I can see.

Except this time they are designing to facilitate that mixing on purpose, which I'm not sure they did with 2E (though maybe theybdid?).

i'm not sure you can say for sure one way or the other on either of these... and I will take my 'not normative' experence with 100's of players over your 'normative' with a few friends

 

[Bill Zebub]

In my defense, I just re-derived them this morning.

Music to my ears.

 

[rooneg]

I think unless the feedback on changes is harshly negative (which I doubt, as even here in grogland it's broadly positive with some concerns), we'll be looking at much larger changes than 3.5, overall, particularly in that I suspect more classes and subclasses will be tweaked/changed than 3.5, and they'll be changed more than most classes were in 3.5.

I hope that's the case (since I want some pretty significant changes to some classes), but I remain curious how much they'll let themselves be constrained by a desire to be backwards compatible with subclasses in old books. We'll know a lot more once the class playtest docs start dropping. Agreed though that I don't expect there to be some massive outcry, most people I've talked to are broadly positive what we've seen so far.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh, please. There is no "formally correct" in mathematics, there is only correct and incorrect. ((1,2,3,4) 2, 3, 4) is identical to your approach. Just multiply through.

There is when statistical distributions are involved. You cannot get the correct standard deviation from 1d{2.5, 2, 3, 4}--because "2.5" is not actually a value you can roll on the die. It will give you the correct average, but it will not give you the correct SD. SD of 1d{2.5,2,3,4} is very close to 0.829, while the SD of 1d{1,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4} is almost exactly 0.927. The informal simplification works if the only thing you care about is the average, but it doesn't work for everything. Which is why I said what I said.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I'm willing to bet that while technically possible, mixing and matching 1D&D and 5e character options is going to be more awkward than it's worth, so that by 2025 most tables will be using one or the other almost exclusively.

 

[Cadence]

And replace the R with 1 and you get...(N-1)/(N^2+N)

But in general I dislike "helpful formulas". We teach those in school, and test memorization of them, and people think that's how you're "supposed" to solve things, and wind up unable to solve anything for which they haven't memorized (or have forgotten) the formula.

Edit: Just saw the post a couple down. Completely agree that teaching there is one true way to solve things is awful.

---

I agree to a point...

Insert Rant

I certainly expect our stat majors and grad students to be able to derive stuff. But after they've shown they know what's what I'm not going to say they can't look up and use the formulas for a standard distribution or other result if they haven't done that particular derivation before themselves. (I'm sorry, you only "proved" the CLT for the binomial, and even then you glossed a lot of the MGF things, so no CLT for you!).

For the humanities majors in our general education stat course I'd be happy if they could quickly calculate and interpret a sample mean for a small sample and contrast it's properties with the median, and give me the hand wavy interpretation of the standard deviation and some of the weaknesses it has, and use a formula correctly if given one. (Bonus points if they remember why we use SD instead of the mean absolute deviation). Making them derive the formulas for the mean and standard deviation of a distribution before sharing it with them feels like a pharmacist not letting me use a medication until I can demonstrate how to make it on my own.

I'm guessing a lot of folks on here aren't stat majors?

End Rant

 

[Bill Zebub]

There is when statistical distributions are involved. You cannot get the correct standard deviation from 1d{2.5, 2, 3, 4}--because "2.5" is not actually a value you can roll on the die. It will give you the correct average, but it will not give you the correct SD. SD of 1d{2.5,2,3,4} is very close to 0.829, while the SD of 1d{1,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4,4} is almost exactly 0.927. The informal simplification works if the only thing you care about is the average, but it doesn't work for everything. Which is why I said what I said.

Except we're starting from the same point with ((1,2,3,4),2,3,4):

1) I wanted to compute the average, so I found the inner average first because it's the simplest way.
2) You wanted to compute the SD (why, I don't know) so you expanded out, then started your explanation with the next step.

I'm not quibbling with your approach; just with the notion that the standard way we are taught to do things is the "formally correct" way. I think it's incredibly damaging to use that language...to convey that misconception...to learners.