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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5556826" data-attributes="member: 42582">A couple of reasons.First, I don't find the trial-and-error that satisfying. The GM is, after all, working from a mathematically precise set of rules. The player is, in effect, trying to infer those rules - which include a probabilistic element - from a fairly finite data-set. This isn't a puzzle game that especially interests me as either player or GM.Second, and related, I think this is a place where the fact that the game is a game with mathematical mechanics really matters. In real life, when I try to do something physical I get pretty instant feedback - via organic sensation - as to whether or not it's something I'm capable of doing, and how much harder I can hope to push it. When it comes to going down a hill, for example, I don't need to compute in some abstract way the trade off between the penalty to a Dex check for running (on the one hand) and the reduced number of checks required because at one check per round I'll be down there quicker if I run rather walk (on the other hand) - I can pretty quickly judge whether running down the hill rather than walking is likely to be worthwhile given the greater risk of twisting an ankle.A player isn't actually experiencing what it is like for his/her PC to try and fight orcs while wielding two weapons. All s/he has to go on is the maths.Hence my preference for the maths to be transparent. And one way to do that, of course, is to design the game so that the maths almost never vary, and it is simply about rolling higher or lower - Runequest is an example of this, and Rolemaster in its simplest form also comes fairly close to this. But D&D - especially post-AD&D - with its plethora of options and modifiers and the like - is quite different. In this sort of case, for the maths to be transparent requires the player to know at least the base bonus to the roll, the modifiers being applied, and the likely range of target DCs (in the orc case, for example, this would be the AC typically associated with the armour they seem to be wearing).</blockquote>

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