Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skallgrim" data-source="post: 5163090" data-attributes="member: 79271">I think that it is entertaining (though admittedly I didn't read the whole thread over there, just over here) how few people have actually had (or actually discussed having) experience with GURPS, which has been around for YEARS and has used 3d6 for combat and skill checks (since all combat is based on combat skills) for forever.The long and short of it. A single +1 or -1 is going to radically shift the center of the bell curve. It has very little effect on the far reaches. Obviously, as it is a bell curve.  However, what that means, in practice, is that a +1 (for a higher stat) or a +2 (for say, combat advantage) is a HUGE factor if your original chance of success was about 50%. Given that PCs seem to be intended to have "success rolls" that are in the 50-65% range, this means that the PC who goes with an 18 rather than a 16 in a prime attribute is going to, on average, be MUCH better off in a 3d6 system than a d20 system. +3 Proficiency Weapons will be MUCH better in such a system. Any source of bonuses to hit will be MUCH more desirable in such a system, and will have a LOT more of an impact.I suspect that if you adopted such a system, you would see a real decimation of race/class combos where the primary stat was not boosted by race, as well as a wholesale abandonment of +2 proficiency weapons. Weapon expertise would become MORE desirable than it is now (and now it is often considered practically mandatory). The attractiveness of such a system in GURPS is because of three factors, none of which applies to D&D:First, the system has lots of bonuses AND penalties, so it is possible to boost your chances to hit (say by using a telegraphed attack) and trade that off for a desirable outcome with a penalty (telegraphing that axe swing to the neck). Second, the system depends on opposed rolls, so (except for criticals), it sometimes doesn't matter that you have an effective skill of 27 or less on 3d6. Your opponent has a dodge of 14 on 3d6, and so dodges 87% (or whatever) of your attacks anyway.Third, the system (as it is point based) makes it MORE expensive to obtain higher skill levels. While D&D has this to a minor extent with the point buy system for attributes, after creation, it is no more expensive to increase an 11 to a 12 than it is to increase a 18 to a 19. In GURPS, the second increase costs substantially more than the first. Go ahead and try it. You will get improved accuracy, but you'll see every problem with ruthless optimization made a lot worse, and you'll see the entire system become less tolerant of sub-optimal builds, I predict.</blockquote>

Verification