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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8119122" data-attributes="member: 29398">More common, perhaps, but not exclusive - some "born unlucky" adventurers will survive despite their "unluckiness".  And it's fun to see, for those who like cheering for the underdog.I largely agree here, and I wonder if part of the problem is that the game's terminology use and the common meanings are getting in each other's way.Instead of "easy", for example, something with a 90+ success chance should be labelled as "trivial" or "simple"."Easy" then covers those tasks with maybe a 65-85% success chance."Moderate" then hits those in the 40-60% range."Difficult" takes care of the 15-30% range."Formidable" is 10% or less."Nigh impossible" is just that: if you roll 01% you might succeed, or might not; and on anything higher you fail.There's an argument to be made that if something has a 90+% success chance and failure carries no real danger then just let it happen and carry on.  It's when failure carries a real danger that even the most trivial tasks need to be looked at e.g. you're climbing a ladder (trivial task) but if you get unlucky and fail those ghouls are gonna catch you... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It'd be a refreshing change, now and then, from "You emphatically, unequivocally, consistently can't be stopped" which 4e-5e play tends toward at anything other than very low levels.Stealth is its own hot mess, to be sure.  I'm in the camp that says one roll represents your best attempt until-unless something materially changes in the fiction.  So, if you're trying to stealth your way across a large lawn or open field to the side of a castle, one roll says how well your stealth attempt goes for the whole distance.  Even if it takes you 7 rounds to cover it, you only roll once.Were you to then have to use a gravel path to get around the corner of the castle to the entrance, that'd be another stealth roll as something - in this case the type of surface you're walking on - has changed.You're not getting it.  I don't care what the specific numbers are - 10% vs 30%, 65% vs 85%, whatever; or how they relate to the specific game system - my point is the mere presence of that amount of difference between them makes the higher "born lucky" and the lower not.::sigh:: well, so much for that attempt at humour...carry on...You're conflating success with contribution.  They are not the same!Contribution is in the attempt to do something.  Does a Fighter who stands into melee and manages to miss on every single swing she takes still contribute?  Hell yes.  Or a Rogue who can't get in to a combat due to lack of space but who instead keeps watch behind is still contributing, even if there's nothing back there to see.Not contributing is to attempt nothing.  The Rogue who, instead of keeping watch, just tunes out until the battle's over contributes nothing because he isn't even trying.I'm not a statistician so I've no idea why you'd divide by anything.  If I have 47 anecdotes where 27 of them say one thing (more or less), 14 say a second thing (more or less), 3 say a third thing but they're all exactly the same, and the other three are outliers all I need is an eye test to tell me that one of those is fairly common, one is uncommon, one is rare but probably can't be ignored, and there's some outliers. Whether that sample of 47 translates to anything bigger is open to question, but it still indicates a trend.Look at the differing views and opinions people have of the various D&D editions we've had.  Listen to one and it won't tell you much, but listen to enough of them and you'll get a good idea about how popular each one is/was in relation to the others.But what this does indicate beyond question is that it can be done, because it has been done; and therefore can be done again.  What I'm arguing against is a system that prevents it from being done again because that system is designed to not allow that situation to arise in the first place.True average on 4d6k3 would be 12-12-12-12-13-13 or 12-12-12-12-12-13.I don't even try to square it, because I see that advice as being horrible, and as something that I would never wish to promote or support.Hypothetical example: I as DM might for some reason want to see a high degree of character continuity through the next campaign.  But, knowing how the game system* works and knowing that my players tend to be reckless**, I can easily come to expect (or predict, same thing in this case) that the degree of character continuity is very likely going to be somewhat lower than I want.* - I can change this.** - I can't change this.I was measuring survival time, in terms of adventures survived/appeared in.  I could measure in terms of sessions played (I have those numbers too, or at least the data to generate such) but digging down and analysing to that degree of granularity is extremely tedious: these aren't in any database, I do it all by hand.And at some point every character either perma-dies or perma-retires, with some of those perma-retirements being forced by the campaign ending; so there's always a hard start point (the character's introduction to play) and a hard end point; long-term characters often have several sub-stops and sub-starts in between.It's also probably worth noting that my campaigns go on for many years, with some turnover of long-term characters occurring due to player choice: they want to play something new now, and maybe cycle the old character back in later (as player, I do this all the time!).  An analysis like this in a much shorter campaign would be far less useful, as the campaign would end before any of that long-term turnover could occur.I have no idea what all those numbers mean in what I quoted.My evidence is that encounter-builders simply make far too many assumptions about far too many things to be of much real use once the puck drops.  3e's CR system assumed 4 PCs all of the same level and wealth, containing a certain spread of classes.  4e's EL system assumed 4 or 5 PCs all of the same level and wealth, and with each 'role' represented.How many DMs have those perfect parties?  Not many!  And so every DM who doesn't have one of those perfect parties is left in trial-and-error mode but with the added complication of having to either argue with or dispense with an encounter-building system that's just getitng in the way.Better, I say, that DMs learn by trial-and-error right from the start; as they're inevitably going to need that skill eventually anyway.I was referring to the bit where I noted my number-crunching re starting stats vs expected length of adventuring career.By the same token, a system full of save-or-dies can always have some of them toned down or stripped out entirely - it runs both ways.I take it you're not a fan of 'rogue-like' computer games, then. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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