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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sphyre" data-source="post: 4044315" data-attributes="member: 55424">I can see the same statement and come to a different conclusion.  Uncertainty is not bad.  We have dice to determine things that are uncertain, and rarely do I hear people who complain about getting to roll dice in D&D.  Too much uncertainty, or rather uncertainty with dire consequences as it's big brother can cause problems in a game."Fixing the Math" to me, means looking at each level and making sure the percentages are where they want to be, rather than where they fell in 3.5.Good, Average, and Poor BAB in 3e is an example of this.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">First Level Characters<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good BAB +1</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poor BAB +0</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Net Difference: The Good BAB character has a +5% chance to hit over the Poor BAB character.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">5th Level Characters<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good BAB +5</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poor BAB +2</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Net Difference: The Good BAB character has a +15% chance to hit over the Poor BAB character.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">12th Level Characters<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good BAB +12</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poor BAB +6</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Net Difference: The Good BAB character has a +30% chance to hit over the Poor BAB character.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">20th Level Characters<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Good BAB +20</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poor BAB +10</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Net Difference: The good BAB character has a +50% chance to hit over the Poor BAB character.</li> </ul></li> </ul>You'll notice that they just made a progression.  The first level fighter may be amazingly better at hitting things, but the chance at first level is pretty much negligible compared to the wizard's chance to hit.  While the Good Progression for BAB is in fact the best of the BABs, it doesn't reflect that the fighter is good at hitting things until he's significantly high level.The system they are using for 4e, on the other hand, is that every class gets +half level.  It scales the same.  So if you want a fighter to have a 30% better chance at hitting than a wizard, you give him a static +6 to hit.  That way at no matter what level you are at, he'll always be better at hitting than the wizard.Also, if you want to give the fighter a significant bonus at first level, but show that he hones it even farther than the original, you don't need a formula of BAB to do that over many levels.  If the Fighter is supposed to have a +30% chance to hit over the wizard, he gets +6 at first level, and at 6th level he gets a class feature to increase his class bonus to +7, and at level 12 he gets a class feature to increase it +8, and at 18th level it increases to +9.The reason this works is because you now have a system that you can say "We want the rogue to be this much better at doing X than Y"  And the way you do that is have everyone scale the same way, and then add a static bonus.  No matter how high level you get, you have that much better of a chance than another character.It's not so much taking out uncertainty, but designing the proper level of uncertainty, as opposed to it being an arbitrary number that the game's math fell into, like with 3e.I see the same thing, and again come to a different conclusion.  The die will still hold the same power as it once held.  But the abilities it's tied to are designed to have an overall less impact.  In a way, it draws it out and gives you more opportunity to respond to the poor rolls, rather than dictate that you can't do anything in response to the horror that the dice unveiled.In some situations, I see the outcome of a die being more important.  In the cases where a wizard had a 5% chance to hit, or you had a 10% chance to do a skill check, or a 95% chance to do a skill check or hit, it's being normalized to where if you're poor you'll have a 30ish% chance to hit as opposed to 5%, or a 40% chance to do a skill check as opposed to a 10%, or an 75% chance to hit instead of a 95%.  What you roll won't be as expected, due to the fact there's more room to succeed when it's not your focus, and there's actually a chance to fail (which means you're actually challenged) when it is your focus."Fixing the Math," with the way I interpreted it, meant fixing the abnormally high numbers and abnormally low numbers due to poorly conceived formulas, and their effects when they panned out too high.  There's a reason 3e epic level BAB and saves are normalized - because otherwise the variance between good and poor progressions would be even greater.In a way, the game design lets you play your character when something bad happens as opposed to take the control out of the players hands and put them into spectator mode.  After all, we all play to actually play the game, right?</blockquote>

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