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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 5164266" data-attributes="member: 71699">I believe you are correct in characterising my reasoning as a leap,&nbsp; but I feel that does not invalidate it.Imagine a foe with 27hp,&nbsp; whom you hit on a 9+ dealing 1-8 damage. This foe hits you back on 16+&nbsp; dealing 1-6 damage. You have 18hp.Run this fight several dozen&nbsp; times. The graph of fight outcomes, including specifics from who won, to&nbsp; number of turns it took, to end hp of victor, will plot onto a bellish&nbsp; curve. The middle will fall on you winning after about ten turns with&nbsp; about 10hp left. At either end are fights where you win without taking a&nbsp; point, and where you lose without landing a point. The distribution&nbsp; will be lopsided due to the biased setup I have provided.Now add&nbsp; three other characters and four more foes. That's a lot of dice.&nbsp; Enough dice that expected outcomes become strongly favoured.&nbsp; Still, those outliers are always there.To feel that the linear&nbsp; nature of the 1d20 you roll to attack means that D&amp;D combat is not&nbsp; like life for reasons of distribution alone (i.e. something that can be solved by using multiple dice for that one roll) would only be true if that&nbsp; single roll also ended the combat. That would make it more like a 3ed SoD/SoL spell where a&nbsp; single saving throw determined the outcome. Even then, you would have&nbsp; to be facing just one foe, and won initiative... another&nbsp; roll.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />-vkEDIT On that, we have to remember that one doesn't really know the value of a +1 unless we also know other details of the encounter. I need to rethink my conclusions (in earlier posts) in that regard.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 5164266, member: 71699"] I believe you are correct in characterising my reasoning as a leap, but I feel that does not invalidate it. Imagine a foe with 27hp, whom you hit on a 9+ dealing 1-8 damage. This foe hits you back on 16+ dealing 1-6 damage. You have 18hp. Run this fight several dozen times. The graph of fight outcomes, including specifics from who won, to number of turns it took, to end hp of victor, will plot onto a bellish curve. The middle will fall on you winning after about ten turns with about 10hp left. At either end are fights where you win without taking a point, and where you lose without landing a point. The distribution will be lopsided due to the biased setup I have provided. Now add three other characters and four more foes. That's a lot of dice. Enough dice that expected outcomes become strongly favoured. Still, those outliers are always there. To feel that the linear nature of the 1d20 you roll to attack means that D&D combat is not like life for reasons of distribution alone (i.e. something that can be solved by using multiple dice for that one roll) would only be true if that single roll also ended the combat. That would make it more like a 3ed SoD/SoL spell where a single saving throw determined the outcome. Even then, you would have to be facing just one foe, and won initiative... another roll. :p -vk [B][I]EDIT[/I][/B] [I]On that, we have to remember that one doesn't really know the value of a +1 unless we also know other details of the encounter. I need to rethink my conclusions (in earlier posts) in that regard. [/I] [/QUOTE]

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