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Message: <blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6159570" data-attributes="member: 6681948">Provided they are prepared to spend their time adding to an educational infrastructure.  There are quite a few quantum physicists on our world, and we have the Internet.  Can you explain Dark Matter and Dark Energy off the top of your head?  Do you think you could work with a crisis involving these from memory, or even from the info available online?If the only thing we wanted was standardized description, a few standardized descriptors and a line for "skills and knowledges" would do the trick just fine.  No need for mechanics.Here is where we clearly will differ.  I do not believe an articulate, passionate player with an 8 CHA character who invests nothing in social skills should gain an advantage because the player is persuasive, nor that the wallflower stuttering player running a suave James Bond character with a high CHA and significant social skill investment should be penalized.  I don't ask the couch potato player to demonstrate a shouler roll, tucked into a triple front roll,fkipping sidelong to launch himself upwards, drawing a kitchen knife from a belt loop in the process, when his character attempts to tumble through the enemy ranks to attack the wizard in the back, nor would I give a player with a Black Belt any bonuses in HTH combat.  There is no reason player skill should influence social skill success.Now, I would certainly give a bonus for having, say, useful info to enhance those skills (for example, knowledge that the Baron likes fine wine, and a gift of a rare vintage, would certainly be worth a bonus to Diplomacy).  But we also give bonuses in combat for things like higher ground or being invisible.  Given those are +1 or +2 bonuses, that's the level I would expect in social situations as well.  Mind you, the right intel, gift, threat, bribe, etc. might well be the equivalent of a coup de grace...The d20 system is inherently random.  Why can't Knowledge-history give the player a DC 20 roll to speak or read a dead language or be proficient with an ancient weapon.  After all, everyone knows a few random esoteric things, right?Once again, the issue here is whether we have a "trained" concept.  I have little difficulty with the concept there are things an untrained person cannot do.  That doesn't bother me as much as, say, setting the DC to train a horse so high (because untrained people should not be able to accomplish that task) that a horse trainer needs 15 ranks to be able to do his job.As I said, doesn't sound inordinately restrictive.  Just go find a monster with appropriate HD, and don't let it bleed out after you defeat it.  Then pull out the scroll, or just start casting the spell.And why would it matter whether this rule is an "official variant" (whatever one takes that to mean) or a pure homebrewed rule?  It seems to make no real difference to the rest of the discussion.The importance of luck can be managed.  Let's assume two combats.  In each one, one combatant requires a 17+ to hit (20%), and the other needs a 5+ to hit (80%).  They have equal stats in all other respects (so, for example, who wins initiative is 50/50).  In one battle, a single hit will take down the opponent.  In the other, it will require 4 hits to take down the opponent.There is a 50% chance the poor combatant wins initiative, in which case he has a 20% chance of ending the battle immediately, so he has a 10% chance at a win with no counterattack.  There is a 50% chance he loses intiative, and a 20% chance his opponent misses, followed by a 20% chance he hits.  That's a further 2% chance he can win in the first round.  12%, plus a declining chance of a win the longer the battle drags on.What are the odds he will hit four times before his opponent hits him four times?  One round where he hits and his opponent misses? 50% chance he wins initiative and hits four times in a row?  That's a 0.08% chance.  His opponent has a 41% chance of hitting four times in a row, so it's more than 40% likely the fight ends with his win in four rounds. The above isn't as clear as I might like, but the bottom line is that the more rolls must be made, the less luck will influence the results and the more likely the higher bonus succeeds.  There can still be statistical outliers, but their likelihood declines.  SoD requires only one roll, so it makes luck a much greater factor.  Whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on the play style desired.  And randomness plays against the PC's.  They will make and face many more rolls than any NPC.  If Nameless Opponent #473 rolls a 1 and dies, Nameless Opponent #474 will be along soon (and no matter how Big Bad #473 was, that fight wasn't too memorable when he dropped so easily, so he will be Nameless soon enough).  But when PC rolls a 1 and dies, well, roll a new character.  Or, if Resurrection costs 5,000 gp and a captured monster, then death is a trivial condition and can easily be dealt with anyway.  Just don't hit me with a Rust monster, as it's much more difficult to replace my magic arms and armor than to get Raised!We can make it more about luck.  Let's use d% instead of d20.  We can reduce the importance of luck - roll 3d6 instead of 1d20 and the bell curve changes the probabilities a lot.</blockquote>

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