D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Maxperson]

Oh, wait a minute. I was told in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that the d20 ONLY represents skill. No luck at all.

So, now, which is it?

It really doesn't have to be one or the other. By RAW it's not luck, but a variable range of the skill since skill ability even in real life isn't static. However, if a DM wants it to be luck, he's free to change the rule. Perhaps that's what @Lanefan has done. Or maybe in 1e/2e which he plays, it did represent luck. I can't remember for sure.

 

[Pedantic]

The statement "we cannot know" isn't accurate. My players have a die that they roll for their checks. When they have advantage or disadvantage they pick a second die which never looks like the first, because like most gamers, we don't buy d20s that look like other d20s we have.

I actually do buy all my dice with matching colors by side count. It's fast and convenient when you put aside the dice superstitions. I have a couple sets of D20s, but I do roll identical dice when I have advantage.

 

[Hussar]

Not if there's penalties on it. Then it misses because of some combination of situations in the modifier and the die roll.

Then neither do target numbers. To suggest there's a meaningful difference there approaches magical thinking.

I can tell you what the die roll means. The problem is you want it to mean only one thing and it probably doesn't, it likely means more than one.

As I've said before, success in most things has a lot of small factors that no one running--or playing--a game will know all of up front; they drop below the level of possible management. That's most of the reason for having die rolls in the first place.

You're missing the point though. It's not that the answer must be definitive. It simply has to be informed by the mechanics. Sure, it could be wrong. Any interpretation can be wrong. But, it must be informed by the mechanics if it is to be simulationist.

If you succeed in a GURPS die roll and would have succeeded regardless of modifiers, then you can, with a fair degree of certitude, say that you succeeded due to your skill. After all, we've taken the bigger factors into account in order to determine that. If you succeed or fail because of the modifiers, then it's fairly clear that the modifiers caused the success or failure. Is it perfect? Nope, but, it's at least something.

Which is a helluva lot more than you get in something like D&D where your success or failure is never determined by your character alone but by the comparison of a bonus derived from your character sheet (which is defined) and a d20 roll (which is not defined in any meaningful way - only that it is narratively interesting) vs a DC which can be determined by any number of very nebulous factors, including the level of your character.

 

[Maxperson]

The rules do not make this distinction. There is not supposed to be a way to tell which is first or second. Now, adding that in, sure, you could make the argument. But, I thought house rules were off the table here in this discussion. I mean, I have an add on in my VTT that tells me which die is first and which one is second. It's not difficult. But, it's not part of the actual rules of the game either.

But, sure. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Ok, so, in cases of disadvantage, you might be given a bit of information about why you failed - you failed due to disadvantage. Fair enough. That's satisfying my definition. It's providing any information about how the result was achieved.

So, in any roll where you don't have disadvantage or advantage, you would say that you can still tell? That you are given just as much information? In a normal d20 Test, how do you tell what caused the failure or the success when the die roll is only called for when it is narratively interesting?

I'm not adding it in. It's simply how it works in real life. The game doesn't tell us to grab two identical d20s and roll them together so that we cannot know which is the advantage die. It just says to roll two dice and people grab two different looking dice, because that's what they have. There's no house rule happening here. People just know which is which because they aren't completely oblivious and can see two different dice, one of which they just added for advantage.

Actually, looking at the advantage/disadvantage rule, it just says to roll a second die and take the higher/lower of the two rolls. It doesn't say to roll them together. The rule as written implies rolling them consecutively, but certainly doesn't have to be done that way.

Edit: I missed the last question. As I said earlier, there is no rule to only roll when it's narratively interesting. The DMG suggestion is to only roll if there is meaning to failure(narratively interesting). The actual PHB rule is to only roll when the outcome is in doubt.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I actually do buy all my dice with matching colors by side count. It's fast and convenient when you put aside the dice superstitions. I have a couple sets of D20s, but I do roll identical dice when I have advantage.

Like, all your d20s are brown or all your d20s are Pantone 17-1230, Mocha Mousse (it's the Color of the Year, I guess)?

Edit: added link, because why not.

 

[Maxperson]

I actually do buy all my dice with matching colors by side count. It's fast and convenient when you put aside the dice superstitions. I have a couple sets of D20s, but I do roll identical dice when I have advantage.

Fair enough. I was sure people out there did it. It's just not something that I've seen yet in my personal play. Also, I don't think it's superstition most of the time. I know that I do it because I like the way this d20 looks, so I buy it. Then I have one that looks that way and don't need another, so I look for a different cool looking d20. Then the sock gremlins claim some of them and no matter how many I buy, I never get past 7 or 8 of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You're missing the point though. It's not that the answer must be definitive. It simply has to be informed by the mechanics. Sure, it could be wrong. Any interpretation can be wrong. But, it must be informed by the mechanics if it is to be simulationist.

If you succeed in a GURPS die roll and would have succeeded regardless of modifiers, then you can, with a fair degree of certitude, say that you succeeded due to your skill. After all, we've taken the bigger factors into account in order to determine that. If you succeed or fail because of the modifiers, then it's fairly clear that the modifiers caused the success or failure. Is it perfect? Nope, but, it's at least something.

Which is a helluva lot more than you get in something like D&D where your success or failure is never determined by your character alone but by the comparison of a bonus derived from your character sheet (which is defined) and a d20 roll (which is not defined in any meaningful way - only that it is narratively interesting) vs a DC which can be determined by any number of very nebulous factors, including the level of your character.

You're still making a meaningless distinction. Let's show this.

You have a D20 system that is designed so the default roll is your attribute + skill as a target value to roll equal to or below. This is functionally what GURPS or Hero does, its just subbing in a D20 for the 3D6 rolls, since both of those systems use an attribute or attribute based value plus a bonus representing skill. Let's say that the combination of the two adds up to 11. So you're rolling an 11 or less on the D20, for a 55% chance.

Now let's use a system that rolls high, using that total against a target number. So let's say the default target number is 21. You're rolling the D20 and adding that 11, and therefor needing a 10 or better on the D20. Your chance of success is 55%.

In both cases there are four factors that influence that result: your attribute, your skill, the coarse difficulty of the task, and the random variables below the coarse difficulty represented by the D20 roll. The individual systems might have different ideas how much the coarse modifiers should vary (ignoring here strange things like D&D 5e Advantage/Disadvantage which is representing them in really coarse and random ways) but whether you apply a -5 in the first case or set a difficulty of 26 in the second, both the probability change and how much impact the four components have is the same.

They're just different ways of expressing it. Both approaches give you the same four pieces of information and do not change the probability of success.

 

[Maxperson]

Like, all your d20s are brown or all your d20s are Pantone 17-1230, Mocha Mousse (it's the Color of the Year, I guess)?

Edit: added link, because why not.

I'm mildly amused that the site with the mocha mousse picture asked me to verify cookie settings.

 

[Pedantic]

Like, all your d20s are brown or all your d20s are Pantone 17-1230, Mocha Mousse (it's the Color of the Year, I guess)?

Edit: added link, because why not.

Mostly I'm just a monster at the FLGS counter, sifting through all the bins for anything that matches in sufficient quantities.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Mostly I'm just a monster at the FLGS counter, sifting through all the bins for anything that matches in sufficient quantities.

I hear it. One of the joys I have in going to cons out here is Games of Berkeley's booths and the amount of dice they bring.