Bell Curve - Ramifications?

[GnomeWorks]

In a nutshell, randomness favors the "loser," and since most fights are stacked in the PCs' favor, predictability favors them.

This is the kind of thing that is good to know.

But this brings about the question - why is the game stacked in the PCs' favor? What makes that so?

You clearly haven't met my players.

Fair enough.

 

[evileeyore]

This is the kind of thing that is good to know.

But this brings about the question - why is the game stacked in the PCs' favor? What makes that so?.

Off the cuff? Numbers.

By that I mean having PCs abilities being "slightly" better than the monsters.

If you reverse that, then things tip away from the PCs.


This is why some groups prefer the d20, their DMs toss out monsters with higher stats than the PCs can reasonably epect to have themselves (often on purpose - I'm looking at all you RatBastards TM) and "luck" plays a large factor in winning.


I'm very used to this having played GURPS for the last 20 years, which is a 3d6 system.

 

[Staffan]

But this brings about the question - why is the game stacked in the PCs' favor? What makes that so?

Because the players are supposed to get into, and survive, hundreds of fights over the course of their career, while each monster is only going to be in, and lose, one.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Someone mentioned that it basically means everyone is always taking 10, and that's kinda true. Overall, I'd say it makes things more...well, boring. While it makes the extremes more rare, I think getting the extreme is already exciting. Making them rarer just means your players get excited less often. Plus, as others have said, easy becomes easier, hard becomes harder, and EVERYTHING just gets...middle lined to boredom.

 

[Jack99]

How attached to the d20 are you?

On a scale from 1-10, my blue d20 is about a 69. I have had it for nearly 20 years, and aside from poison saves (when I am a player), it rarely ever lets me down, and my players fear when I get it out of the bag of dice.

Also, to me (and I know I speak for the 7 other people in my group), D&D is rolling a d20. Remove the d20, and I will be one of those screaming: "$e isn't D&D" or whatever is the cool thing to say.

So while you might argue that using 3d6 might be better for the game, I am pretty sure it is going to be one of the last sacred cows that get slaughtered, before D&D truly no longer is D&D no more.

 

[Pbartender]

It also makes bad for PR for D&D... After all, critical successes would now occur when you roll a "6-6-6" with dice.



But seriously folks, unless you changed the rule, critical hits in combat would become almost non-existant.

Personally, I'd prefer using 2d10. It keeps the natural 20 a maximum, but eliminates the natural 1 as a minimum. It introduced a "bell curve" of a sort (it's more of a bell pyramid, really), that skews toward the average result, but keeps the dice results on the outside edges common enough to still be useful. Plus, it's only two dice to add together*.


*I don't consider multiple dice a problem... Spellcasters are regularly adding half a dozen dice or more for damage, and now in 4E it's not uncommon to see a fighter-type do the same.

 

[Tervin]

Rolling 3d6 would mean that roughly
1/4 of your rolls were 3-8
1/4 were 9-10
1/4 were 11-12
and 1/4 were 13-18.

This would of course be possible to make good game design around, but I think it would take a lot of rethinking from a d20 point of view. Fun things that could be done with the system are (off the top of my head) abilities to reroll one d6 out of three by using character powers or have special effects happen whenever you roll three equal numbers (like a crit on 666 and a fumble on 111 - but something for the others as well).

On the whole I think a really good game system could be made, but it would be best to not even try to start from a d20 mindset.

 

[roguerouge]

It would affect high level games too.

A fighter with 4 attacks with d20s would roll 8 color-coded dice at once: 4 attack dice and 4 damage dice for any that might hit.

A fighter with 4 attacks with 3d6 would roll 16 color-coded dice at once: 12 attack dice and 4 damage dice for any that might hit. The chances for cocked dice and dice rolling off the table and pauses to put the right 3d6 together for adding would go up a lot.

 

[Mercurius]

d20 is fun, classic to D&D. d6 is boring and commonplace. Actually, one of the things I like about D&D over many other RPGs is the use of all major die types. It is fun those unwieldy d4s out, or the rarely used d12s. Maybe the d30 even has a place for some kind of strange house rule.

 

[Thanee]

I like the 3d6 approach, because it puts more weight on the average case and less on the extreme cases, but the whole system has to be built on that foundation, you cannot just swap the d20 out for 3d6 in D&D, since the whole system is built on the linear progression.

Bye
Thanee