D&D General Hot Take: Uncertainty Makes D&D Better

[Ruin Explorer]

I suspect you're looking for, or expecting, a much steeper power curve in these things than the game provides.

A high-level character might be +50% vs a low-level character at performing some task or at hitting a foe in combat or whatever. A steeper curve (which you seem to want) would make that difference +100%; a flatter curve might make it +30%.

3e had a steep power curve. 4e had a flat one. 5e's seems also to be pretty flat, and also bounded at both ends.

It's got nowt to do with power. With a different resolution mechanic you can easily have low-powered stuff that doesn't have this problem. It's entirely the resolution mechanic's fault.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No. That's flat out wrong. The average DC is 15. That's a moderate check. Someone with a dump stat has a -1 to the roll and no proficiency. People very rarely pick proficiency for skills where the stat has a penalty. I'll go low level and use a 16 and proficiency for the skilled individual.

So to hit that DC of 15, the dump stat fellow has to roll a 16+ He will make it 25% of the time. The skilled fellow is going to make that roll on a 10 or higher. He succeeds 55% of the time. The dump stat guy isn't going to be succeeding while the skilled guy is failing 20% of the time. It's just not going to happen. And the difference becomes even more pronounced if the DC is 20 or at higher levels when the skilled guy will have more proficiency and maybe higher stats.

LOL this supports my point. Think it through.

 

[Maxperson]

LOL this supports my point. Think it through.

The skilled guy succeeds a lot more than the unskilled guy at moderate tasks supports you? The unskilled, dump stat guy can't ever succeed at the hard tasks that the skilled guy does pretty often supports you?

You've been saying the opposite.

 

[Irlo]

I know I'm stepping into a conversation tangential to the point of the thread, but here I go, stepping into a conversation tangential to the point of the thread.

Nothing farcical about that at all. It's actually a rather exciting combat.

LOL.

These hot takes, you're going to melt Morrus' server dude! No-one thinks two Fighters missing each other with every attack is a "rather exciting combat". I don't think even you think that!

I'm seeing Max's point here. With D&D's abstract hit points and combat resolution, any excitement -- hit or miss -- has to come from the framing in the narrative. A successful attack can be described as a glancing blow. A miss can be described as a glancing blow. The difference is the hit points decremented, which is on its own no source of excitement for most of us.

I've made some edits in bold to Max's scenario. Is it more exciting now? If so, why?

Warrior 1 moves in and thrusts his blade forward to skewer warrior 2 through the neck. Warrior 2 pivots slightly and the thrust passes by his neck harmlessly (hit #1 for 8 hp damage). Seeing this warrior 1 quickly slashes sideways intending to slice warrior 2's neck open only to find warrior 2's shield blocking the slash upward having anticipated this move (hit #2 for 12 hp damage). Warrior 1 quickly pulls his sword back for another thrust while the shield is high, but the shield again finds itself in the sword's path blocking it, causing the sword to skitter off the shield to the right (hit #3 for 11 hp damage). As quick as a blur the sword whistles back under the shield to slash low at warrior 2's legs, only to be parried deftly by warrior 2's axe (hit #4 for 9 hp damage).

Probably not exciting if the target still has 114 hp remaining after all those attacks. Probably pretty exciting if the target has 1 hp remaining after all those attacks.

Even the original series of misses would be exciting if I were the target and I only had a few hp remaining.

 

[Lanefan]

It's got nowt to do with power. With a different resolution mechanic you can easily have low-powered stuff that doesn't have this problem. It's entirely the resolution mechanic's fault.

I'm not talking about overall power level, but power difference between characters of different levels and-or skills.

If the highly-skilled higher-level character has an 80% chance of succeeding at task X while the unskilled low-level character has a 10% chance of succeeding at the same task, the way I'm defining it that's a +70% difference between those two characters.

Unless I've been reading you wrong (always a possibility!) you'd rather see the high-skill high-stat high-level character have a 100% chance of success while the low-level low-stat unskilled guy has 0% chance; ie. a 100% difference (which is the maximum possible). In other words, you're looking for a steep power curve.

And when comparing between otherwise identical characters of adjacent level, the size of that % difference taken as an average across all levels (to account for uneven jumps, tier advances, etc.) generally indicates the steepness of the power curve built into that system.

A real quick way to eyeball this at least for combat purposes is to take a typical low-grade monster (let's say, four Orcs) and figure out the range of character levels to which they'd present a viable threat without being either pushovers or a near-guaranteed TPK; and then to take a more significant monster (say, two Frost Giants) and repeat this process. A wider range of character levels points to a flatter overall power curve.

Another quick eyeball test is how well the system handles characters of different levels running in the same party. Flatter power curve = more tolerance for level variance.

3e had a very steep curve. 1e and 5e don't.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Unless I've been reading you wrong (always a possibility!) you'd rather see the high-skill high-stat high-level character have a 100% chance of success while the low-level low-stat unskilled guy has 0% chance; ie. a 100% difference (which is the maximum possible). In other words, you're looking for a steep power curve.

More like I'd like the high-skill character to have 65% chance or so and the low-skill character to have only a 5% or lower chance of rolling higher than than the high-skill character - I don't actually mind much if both succeed so long as the low-skill character has a much lower total (though I prefer margin-of-success systems which just basically eliminate this issue without karma dice or the like, which means the low-skill guy is intentionally investing in succeeding at this roll). Unfortunately that's just not going to work with d20s involved unless you put huuuuuuuge mods on them.

Re: attacks I'm increasingly leaning away from liking the full hit/total miss model of D&D but that's a separate convo I think (I see MCDM is going this way too).

 

[Lanefan]

More like I'd like the high-skill character to have 65% chance or so and the low-skill character to have only a 5% or lower chance of rolling higher than than the high-skill character - I don't actually mind much if both succeed so long as the low-skill character has a much lower total (though I prefer margin-of-success systems which just basically eliminate this issue without karma dice or the like, which means the low-skill guy is intentionally investing in succeeding at this roll). Unfortunately that's just not going to work with d20s involved unless you put huuuuuuuge mods on them.

Meta-currencies of any kind are a complete non-starter with me.

But OK, a 60% power difference isn't crazy. Once you put huge mods on the roll, however, you're largely defeating the purpose unless you up the DC (or equivalent) such that the success-fail cutoff still falls within the roll range. Otherwise, there's no roll - it's auto-success or auto-fail.

Re: attacks I'm increasingly leaning away from liking the full hit/total miss model of D&D but that's a separate convo I think (I see MCDM is going this way too).

If you're using "average damage" and not rolling it then yes, it's pretty binary. But if you're rolling damage then success on the to-hit roll is just step one.

One thing we did ages ago in our system was to incorporate what we call "minimals", to cover the gap between doing no damage and doing potentially a big number after all the bonuses. How it works is this:

If your damage die (or dice) roll is minimum, you then add your bonuses etc. to get a number. You then roll a die of that number to determine the damage you actually did.

In practice: let's say Falstaff is a mighty warrior using a longsword; between the weapon's magic, his own specialization, and his strength he's putting +10 onto his damage rolls. To us it makes no sense that he either does 11 (or more) damage or none at all, so - to fill in that missing 1-10 gap even slightly - if he rolled a 1 on his d8 damage die he'd then roll a d11 for actual damage dealt. End result: no matter how mighty you are there's always a chance you'll do but one point of damage on a hit.

 

[CleverNickName]

My players used to stress over their stats, until I pointed out that stat bonuses are overrated. Any ability score bonus is going to get absolutely swamped by the result of that d20 roll. Your 20 Strength with a roll of 2 is going to feel just like a 4 Strength with a roll of 10, and the odds of either happening are the same.

You'll get better mileage out of things that force a reroll, like Halfling Luck or rolling with Advantage. So my "power gamer" advice: roll 4d6 for your stats, and put them where they make the most sense for your character. Then later, instead of a +2 bonus to a stat, grab the Lucky feat.

 

[Vaalingrade]

My players used to stress over their stats, until I pointed out that stat bonuses are overrated. Any ability score bonus is going to get absolutely swamped by the result of that d20 roll. Your 20 Strength with a roll of 2 is going to feel just like a 4 Strength with a roll of 10, and the odds of either happening are the same.

Gotta love systems where nothing you do matters to your chances of success!

 

[Enrahim2]

No. That's flat out wrong. The average DC is 15. That's a moderate check. Someone with a dump stat has a -1 to the roll and no proficiency. People very rarely pick proficiency for skills where the stat has a penalty. I'll go low level and use a 16 and proficiency for the skilled individual.

So to hit that DC of 15, the dump stat fellow has to roll a 16+ He will make it 25% of the time. The skilled fellow is going to make that roll on a 10 or higher. He succeeds 55% of the time. The dump stat guy isn't going to be succeeding while the skilled guy is failing 20% of the time. It's just not going to happen. And the difference becomes even more pronounced if the DC is 20 or at higher levels when the skilled guy will have more proficiency and maybe higher stats.

Let us do some math, shall we? The assertment that dump succeed while skilled succeed is less than 20% is true if we look at only a single check situation over very many rolls. The actual chance is just over 11% (0.25*0.45). However the proposition that it might happen 1 in 5 times might still be very reasonable. If the dumper and the skilled is trying some task 5 times, the chances for the dumper succeeding at least once when the skilled fail is 45% (1-0.8875^5).

Moreover the assertion by @Ruin Explorer was not neccessarily tied to a single check situation. If we for instance have a contested situation that only resolves if one fail and the other succeed (both succeed or both fail is rerolled) the chances of the dumper winning actually boosts to 21.4% ((0.25*0.45)/(0.25*0.45 + 0.75*0.55)).

You are correct in that higher DCs skew the math to the benefit of the skilled, but easier checks skew it the other way around. My take is that the proposition that stat is overrated in D&D 3+ is right, and that you should be carefull to try to counter claims about statistics before conferring with the devil first. (It is amazing what statistics can justify depending on how it is spun)

(Edit: corrected the last calculation)