Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Level based ability score increases pointless?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5731159" data-attributes="member: 11300"><p>Sometimes though to model things effectively and with a degree of elegance, such transparency is not really ideal. I agree to a point but when the "opacity" of a model gets too much, as long as the mechanic does what it says on the tin, and mirrors fairly well the actual mathematics, I'm OK with that too.</p><p></p><p>One thing that bothers me about Burning Wheel (which I seem to remember saying you were looking at for a new game - and I've been looking at it too, although mostly trying to incorporate its GMing advice into my 4e game) is that its maths is quite non-transparent. To work out the impact of a +1 Ob penalty or a +1D advantage requires doing fairly complex combinatorial calculations.</p></blockquote><p>You can picture this by imagining a bell curve, and each die added to the mix for a particular Ob attracting the curve to right (increasing the probability of success). I agree that this is opaque and from my limited understanding of the effect of "artha" on the calculation, the statistics are a little bit muddy. Seems like fun though! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>I've had the Gold edition for about a week and I'm really impressed so far. I'm slowly going through it because it is all new to me. 600 pages for just over 20USD is a real bargain and as a product, it feels very nicely polished.</p><p></p><p>I'm not the greatest fan of 4e's relative scaling DCs. I prefer the absolute system of 3e which was designed brilliantly but then let down here and there by poor implementation (the save system tried to borrow the mechanic and struggled).</p><p></p><p>Best Regards</p><p>Herremann the Wise</p><p>[/QUOTE]</p>
[QUOTE="Herremann the Wise, post: 5731159, member: 11300"] Sometimes though to model things effectively and with a degree of elegance, such transparency is not really ideal. I agree to a point but when the "opacity" of a model gets too much, as long as the mechanic does what it says on the tin, and mirrors fairly well the actual mathematics, I'm OK with that too. One thing that bothers me about Burning Wheel (which I seem to remember saying you were looking at for a new game - and I've been looking at it too, although mostly trying to incorporate its GMing advice into my 4e game) is that its maths is quite non-transparent. To work out the impact of a +1 Ob penalty or a +1D advantage requires doing fairly complex combinatorial calculations.[/quote]You can picture this by imagining a bell curve, and each die added to the mix for a particular Ob attracting the curve to right (increasing the probability of success). I agree that this is opaque and from my limited understanding of the effect of "artha" on the calculation, the statistics are a little bit muddy. Seems like fun though! :) I've had the Gold edition for about a week and I'm really impressed so far. I'm slowly going through it because it is all new to me. 600 pages for just over 20USD is a real bargain and as a product, it feels very nicely polished. I'm not the greatest fan of 4e's relative scaling DCs. I prefer the absolute system of 3e which was designed brilliantly but then let down here and there by poor implementation (the save system tried to borrow the mechanic and struggled). Best Regards Herremann the Wise [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Level based ability score increases pointless?
Top