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<blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9723050" data-attributes="member: 75787">Compare two characters attempting the same skill. One has a 90% chance of a basic success, another a 10% chance. If they compete against each other, who is more likely to win?In d20, lets assume a DC of 20, so character 1 has +17 and character 2 has +1. In a head to head, the first player wins 98.5% of the time.In a dice pool system (say we need 6s to succeed), character 1 is rolling 12 dice and character 2 is rolling 1 dice. Character 1 wins if they roll 2 or more 6s (60% of the time), or&nbsp; one 6 and the other player rolls none (30% x 5/6), so only 85% of the time.So in the dice pool system, a character with a basic success rate of 90% fails to beat one with a basic success rate of 10% 15% of the time, which is ten times as often as in a d20 system.&quot;What does it mean to say a result is swingy?&quot; has a number of possible responses, and game systems have other factors that contribute to a swingy feeling, but the chances of failing contested rolls in dice pool games when you are much, much better than the opponent are pretty high, and it can be very irritating.Every session we played of ALIENS saw at least one time that a player was rolling 16+ dice (after re-rolls) to counter a lucky 2-3 dice roll by an opponent and failing to beat it. In 13th Age, lucky rolls can have huge consequences, absolutely, but the swinginess seems more in the consequences of the unusual result rather than the probability of it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gorgon Zee, post: 9723050, member: 75787"] Compare two characters attempting the same skill. One has a 90% chance of a basic success, another a 10% chance. If they compete against each other, who is more likely to win? In d20, lets assume a DC of 20, so character 1 has +17 and character 2 has +1. In a head to head, the first player wins 98.5% of the time. In a dice pool system (say we need 6s to succeed), character 1 is rolling 12 dice and character 2 is rolling 1 dice. Character 1 wins if they roll 2 or more 6s (60% of the time), or one 6 and the other player rolls none (30% x 5/6), so only 85% of the time. So in the dice pool system, a character with a basic success rate of 90% fails to beat one with a basic success rate of 10% 15% of the time, which is ten times as often as in a d20 system. "What does it mean to say a result is swingy?" has a number of possible responses, and game systems have other factors that contribute to a swingy feeling, but the chances of failing contested rolls in dice pool games when you are much, much better than the opponent are pretty high, and it can be very irritating. Every session we played of ALIENS saw at least one time that a player was rolling 16+ dice (after re-rolls) to counter a lucky 2-3 dice roll by an opponent and failing to beat it. In 13th Age, lucky rolls can have huge consequences, absolutely, but the swinginess seems more in the [I]consequences [/I]of the unusual result rather than the [I]probability [/I]of it. [/QUOTE]

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