Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Esker" data-source="post: 7893487" data-attributes="member: 6966824">[USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER], here's an analogy for you. I'm curious what your intuitions are.Suppose all this time 5e had used a percentile system to resolve checks, instead of the d20, and you had to roll at or under the DC to succeed. A medium difficulty task was DC 60, a really hard task was DC 10, etc. The proficiency bonus started at +20 and went up in increments of 10, and ability scores went from 0 to 100, with modifiers set to 0 at a 50 and going up by 10 whenever the ten's digit goes up, so, when you hit 60 you're at +10, 70 is a +20, etc., all the way up to +50 at 100. Also, instead of adding your bonus to the roll, you added it to the DC (thus making it easier to succeed).Now someone comes along and says, "It's a pain to have to roll two dice for every check, and also wouldn't it be nice if the DM could keep some DCs secret without having to know everybody's bonuses? What if we scaled ability scores and bonuses down by a factor of 10, rolled a d10 instead of a d100 to resolve outcomes, added bonuses to the roll instead of the DC, and said that a success was rolling at or above the target instead of at or below it? To keep things comparable, we'll modify all the DCs to be DC' =1  + (100 - DC)/10, so 60 becomes 5, 50 becomes 6, 40 becomes 7, and so on."First question for you: if nobody ever used DCs that weren't multiples of 10, would this change have any effect on the outcomes in the game? (I'm not asking whether it would have an effect on how much work it is, just whether it would affect outcomes)Second question: Suppose somebody objected to this change, saying: "You can't say that this won't have an impact! We used to have 100 increments, and now we only have 10!" The designer shows the objector a line graph, with two different sets of labels on the x-axis: The first set of labels go from 0 to 100, representing DCs in the old (percentile) system. The second shows the corresponding DC in the new system: 0 is aligned with 11, 5 is aligned with 10.5, 10 is aligned with 10, 20 with 9, 30 with 8, etc. Then there are two lines. The one for the old system shows that a DC 50 check has a 50% success rate, a DC 55 has a 55% success rate, a DC 60 check has a 60% success rate, etc. The second only has points at whole numbers, but at those spots, lines up with the first one."Nobody uses DCs that aren't a multiple of 10," they say. "The graph lines up where it matters."Supposing it's true that DCs are always multiples of 10, who is right?Third: Suppose the objector were a DM who actually liked to use DCs in multiples of 5. They approach the redesigner, red-faced, saying: I have a DC 65 check, which worked perfectly well before, but now you're telling me the DC is 4.5! You can't roll a 4.5!""You're right," says the designer. "How about this: round your DCs down to the nearest whole number, but keep track of whether it was a half originally. So your 4.5 becomes a 4. But if the player rolls exactly 4 on their d10 (after modifiers), have them then roll a d6. If they get 4 or more, they succeed, otherwise they fail."They then go to their graph, and fill in points on the second line at 10.5, 9.5, etc., which sit at 5% success, 15% success, etc., explaining, "Your DC 65 check becomes almost like a DC 4 check, except it's a little more difficult because there's an extra step involved to succeed. A DC 4 check has a 70% chance of success, since you can roll anything but a 1, 2 or 3. In your case, they have one extra way to fail: by rolling a 4 and then rolling a 1, 2 or 3 on the d6. That happens (1/10) * (3/6) of the time, or 5%. So there's now a 35% chance of failing, and a 65% chance of succeeding, just like there would have been before.The objector thinks for a minute and says, "That's a B.S. kludge. Those points you're drawing don't exist! You can't just say that you can have a DC 4.5 check, if you can't roll 4.5! What kind of statistics mumbo jumbo is this?"Is the designer pulling a fast one? Does their suggested fix allow for 55 or 65 DCs, etc. to work as intended? Or is something wrong?</blockquote>

Verification