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<blockquote data-quote="Goken100" data-source="post: 5162236" data-attributes="member: 42968">Rodney is a nice man who will hopefully continue to make wonderful toys for all of us.&nbsp; Its just that he's wrong right now, and here's why.Point 1:&nbsp; I must quibble with 3d6 being lumped in with wilder dice games.&nbsp; A 3d6 system is not a dice pool system.&nbsp; Dice pool games are games where the pool of dice varies, thus creating an ever changing averages and variances.&nbsp; As a trained statistician, I too find such games abhorrent.&nbsp; But a system that uses a static number of dice, but it 1 die or 3, has a completely knowable statistical behavior.Point 2: What Rodney might have been getting at is that the DM or game designer does not know the exact bonuses and targets of a given roll when awarding a shiny new +1 sword.&nbsp; A skilled character might already be hitting most of the time (be in the tail of the bell curve), so the +1 does not significantly increase the skilled player's success.&nbsp; But an unskilled player who hits only half the time (is in the middle of the bell curve) will be greatly affected by a +1.&nbsp; This disparity of probability affect is not seen in a linear distribution.In conclusion, I do not think that Rodney's argument holds much water.&nbsp; Yes, probability changes depend on the relative position on the bell curve, but the random element is static.&nbsp; The game will hold up just fine.&nbsp; A +1 will always shift the difficulty of tasks that are reasonable to accomplish up by 1, no matter where you start.&nbsp; The value does not change based on &quot;how the dice fall&quot;, as Rodney claims.Cheers!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Goken100, post: 5162236, member: 42968"] Rodney is a nice man who will hopefully continue to make wonderful toys for all of us. Its just that he's wrong right now, and here's why. Point 1: I must quibble with 3d6 being lumped in with wilder dice games. A 3d6 system is not a dice pool system. Dice pool games are games where the pool of dice varies, thus creating an ever changing averages and variances. As a trained statistician, I too find such games abhorrent. But a system that uses a static number of dice, but it 1 die or 3, has a completely knowable statistical behavior. Point 2: What Rodney might have been getting at is that the DM or game designer does not know the exact bonuses and targets of a given roll when awarding a shiny new +1 sword. A skilled character might already be hitting most of the time (be in the tail of the bell curve), so the +1 does not significantly increase the skilled player's success. But an unskilled player who hits only half the time (is in the middle of the bell curve) will be greatly affected by a +1. This disparity of probability affect is not seen in a linear distribution. In conclusion, I do not think that Rodney's argument holds much water. Yes, probability changes depend on the relative position on the bell curve, but the random element is static. The game will hold up just fine. A +1 will always shift the difficulty of tasks that are reasonable to accomplish up by 1, no matter where you start. The value does not change based on "how the dice fall", as Rodney claims. Cheers! [/QUOTE]

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