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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3395196" data-attributes="member: 4937">Oh.  That.  Well, there really nothing to be done about that.  It's a feature of every system that it begins to break down as bonuses near its numerical range.  GURPS begins to break down as bonuses approach 15.  D% systems break down when bonuses get near 100.  D20 will always break down as bonuses get near 20.  Dice poll systems begin to break down when the average exceeds the most difficult of challenges.  The problem is that a system like this depends on its random factor, and eventually as the bonuses get large the random factor is dwarfed by the bonus.  The system becomes non-random.  It becomes deterministic.In the example you site, a Wizard could already have a +25 bonus or so if they worked on it.  But what would be the point?  As the bonuses get large, pure specialization becomes more and more attractive.  Why bother being good at something you don't do when you can be so overwhelming at something that you do do?  Why rely on something you could randomly fail at, when you could succeed at something almost every time?  And the thing is, its an absolute you are fighting here.  There isn't a tweak to the system you can do.  Oh, you could change the size of the dice, but the problem would just show up elsewhere then.  The gap is problimatic, but there isn't a darn thing to be done about it.And really, this problem isn't just confined to the game.  The dice are what limit games at a mechanical level, but there is a real world issue that this corresponds to.  Suppose you take two ordinary youths.  They play chess and ping pong together.  They have different dispositions and skills and so one is slightly better than the other in one game or another, but because they've both just picked up both games, the contests are interesting.  One wins most of the time at chess, but occassionally picks up a game through a bit of luck.  The other wins most of the time at ping pong, but its still a close contest and the outcome isn't gauranteed.  But what happens when the two players begin to hone thier natural talents?  A problem, that's what.  Soon the contest is no longer interesting.  One youth plays ping pong all the time.  The other is devoted to chess.  In a very short amount of time, the two players are no longer adequate contests for the other.  The outcome becomes predictable.  The match becomes one sided.  It becomes boring.  And what's worse, neither player is a good match for the sort of challenges that is a strong challenge for the other.  This one can't play ping pong against the rivals of the other.  The ping pong player can't play chess with the international masters that the chess player faces.Lastly, this isn't a new issue with the D20 system.  It's always been a part of D&D.  In a prior edition I had a thief with a -4 AC.  Even with a magic weapon, I could barely a hit -4 AC.  But the fighter in the party with a -4 AC could barely miss a -4 AC.  If anything, the problem has gotten to be alot less of a problem than it was because at least now it isn't just fighters that get multiple attacks.  There isn't alot to be done about it unless you are willing to assume universal competance in everything on the part of all players, and that has its own problems.</blockquote>

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