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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dbm" data-source="post: 9864274" data-attributes="member: 8014">First, let me put my cards on the table as a person who really like triangle and bell-curve distributions.In my opinion, it’s not about normalising people. It’s about having a more normalised set of outcomes. In a system like GURPS someone who is high skill can reliably perform at a given level of competence. A system like D20 has more swingy outcomes where even a person with high bonuses might fail at moderate tasks more often than is desirable. In my group we even have a name for this phenomena- “the tyranny of the d20”.So, a high capability person in a system likes GURPS can often deliver more reliably than a person with high capability in a system like d20.Another, more subtle benefit* of the bell curve is that modifiers mean different things to different people. If your skill is 10 then a +1 increases your chance of success from 50% to 62.5%.  Character with skill 15 would go from 95%-ish to 98%-ish with the same bonus. Small differences have a big impact on lower skill people than high skill people, which I like. The same effect in reverse is even better. A -1 penalty on a person with skill 10 reduces their chances from 50% to 37.5% while that skill 15 person only drops from 95-ish to 90-ish%. People with high skill can absorb more difficulties than low skill people while still retaining a level of capability. I really like that. It’s a kind of ‘bounded accuracy+’ in my book.* I am aware that this phenomena is why some people dislike non-linear distributions. Different folks / different strokes.</blockquote>

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