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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drawmack" data-source="post: 399103" data-attributes="member: 4981">The grim -n- gritty battle system handles this issue very nicely. It makes the modifiers smaller and everything is an opposed roll instead of just going against your opponents AC. So if someone has a high defense bonus they are still hard to hit. As far as the commoners arm wrestling problem that you mentioned there is an intrinsic 8 point spread that must be covered. There are 400 possible die rolls (20^2 little set theory) when two people are rolling d20s against each other. Only rolls where the stronger commoner rolls 12 or less can be tied or beaten by the weaker commoner. Also the weaker commoner has to roll at least a 9 in order to tie the stronger commoner's 1. So we have a situation where the set has reduced to (12 * 11) 132 combinations possible combinations with enough of a spread that the weaker commoner can win. Now take into account that half of those rolls acctually have the stronger commoner with the higher score and you have (132/2) 66 possibilities that leave weaker commoner winning.  So the chances of the weaker commoner winning are (66 * .25) 16.5%. This means that the payoff should be in the neighborhood of 6 times the bet if the weaker commoner wins. There is always a chance that the weaker commoner could win. Maybe the stronger commoner is hung over, not taking the challenge seriously, drunk, etc. This seems pretty realistic to me.</blockquote>