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Replacing 1d20 with 3d6 is nearly pointless
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<blockquote data-quote="Esker" data-source="post: 7892155" data-attributes="member: 6966824"><p>There is if you use the confirmation die. Rolling a 6 on the 3d6 yields a 2 after the transformation. You then have a 50% chance of that turning into a 1. Outside of critical fumbles or whatever, the distinction between rolling a 1 and rolling a 2 only matters if the number you need to succeed (i.e., the adjusted DC) is a 2, so there's no point in rolling to confirm unless you wind up with exactly 6 on the dice.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>With the confirmation mechanic it's about 93.5%. But it's not actually sensible to add the two discrepancies together, since (again, setting aside special outcomes on 1s and 20s) they're never relevant at the same time. There might be some DCs where the 3d6 method has a 3.2% chance of succeeding whereas the d20 method has 0. But those are not the same DCs when the 3d6 method has a 3.2% chance of failing and the d20 method is guaranteed to succeed.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You keep saying this but I don't know what you mean by it. We're talking about rolling dice and doing math on the results. It's as physical as anything else in D&D, even if some of the calculations wind up being slightly more complicated.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No, not the <em>same</em> thing, but the <em>analogous</em> thing, according to the correspondence that was proposed. The original claim (to refresh your memory) was not that 3d6 and 1d20 are the same. The claim was that 3d6 is approximately equivalent to 1d20 if you adjust bonuses and DCs (but only for the d20). So you're not comparing a roll in one method to the same roll in the other; you're comparing a success probability in one system using the original bonuses and DCs, to the success probability <em>of the same check</em> using the other roll method after applying the necessary adjustments to bonuses and DC in the latter case only.</p><p></p><p>It's a bit like comparing monetary values across time: if you wanted to say that "the median U.S. household has similar buying power today as they did 30 years ago", it would be flat out <em>wrong</em> to compare median 2020 income with median 1990 household income directly. You have to multiply one side (but not the other) by an inflation adjuster to be able to make any sense of the comparison, because there's a correspondence between $ in 2020 and $ in 1990. In my graphs I've done the equivalent of adjusting the 1990 dollar values for inflation so that they are in 2020 terms, and left the 2020 values alone.</p><p></p><p>Or, perhaps an even more apt comparison: suppose you wanted to claim that "Classroom A and Classroom B have similar academic aptitude, as measured by standardized tests." But one class all took the SAT and the other took the ACT. You can't compare their scores directly; you have to recenter and rescale to make any kind of meaningful comparison. You could do that either by converting both to z-scores, say, or you could convert ACT scores to SAT equivalents based on their z-scores.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Esker, post: 7892155, member: 6966824"] There is if you use the confirmation die. Rolling a 6 on the 3d6 yields a 2 after the transformation. You then have a 50% chance of that turning into a 1. Outside of critical fumbles or whatever, the distinction between rolling a 1 and rolling a 2 only matters if the number you need to succeed (i.e., the adjusted DC) is a 2, so there's no point in rolling to confirm unless you wind up with exactly 6 on the dice. With the confirmation mechanic it's about 93.5%. But it's not actually sensible to add the two discrepancies together, since (again, setting aside special outcomes on 1s and 20s) they're never relevant at the same time. There might be some DCs where the 3d6 method has a 3.2% chance of succeeding whereas the d20 method has 0. But those are not the same DCs when the 3d6 method has a 3.2% chance of failing and the d20 method is guaranteed to succeed. You keep saying this but I don't know what you mean by it. We're talking about rolling dice and doing math on the results. It's as physical as anything else in D&D, even if some of the calculations wind up being slightly more complicated. No, not the [I]same[/I] thing, but the [I]analogous[/I] thing, according to the correspondence that was proposed. The original claim (to refresh your memory) was not that 3d6 and 1d20 are the same. The claim was that 3d6 is approximately equivalent to 1d20 if you adjust bonuses and DCs (but only for the d20). So you're not comparing a roll in one method to the same roll in the other; you're comparing a success probability in one system using the original bonuses and DCs, to the success probability [I]of the same check[/I] using the other roll method after applying the necessary adjustments to bonuses and DC in the latter case only. It's a bit like comparing monetary values across time: if you wanted to say that "the median U.S. household has similar buying power today as they did 30 years ago", it would be flat out [I]wrong[/I] to compare median 2020 income with median 1990 household income directly. You have to multiply one side (but not the other) by an inflation adjuster to be able to make any sense of the comparison, because there's a correspondence between $ in 2020 and $ in 1990. In my graphs I've done the equivalent of adjusting the 1990 dollar values for inflation so that they are in 2020 terms, and left the 2020 values alone. Or, perhaps an even more apt comparison: suppose you wanted to claim that "Classroom A and Classroom B have similar academic aptitude, as measured by standardized tests." But one class all took the SAT and the other took the ACT. You can't compare their scores directly; you have to recenter and rescale to make any kind of meaningful comparison. You could do that either by converting both to z-scores, say, or you could convert ACT scores to SAT equivalents based on their z-scores. [/QUOTE]
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