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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1189169" data-attributes="member: 10201">Thus the "IMHO" and "meaningful".  First, statistics are a fickle lot.  There's often more than one way to look at the same situation, and psychology often comes into play when determining which way is the most "true".  So part of it is a matter of how you look at the odds.  Yes, someone with +6 on the roll will roll a number that the other guy simply can't match (much less exceed) 30% of the time.  In fact, with a net +6 bonus, you'll win nearly 74% of the time (or roughly 78% of the time if ties are in your favor).  That sounds like an awful lot.  Until you consider that with even odds you win 47.5%, or 52.5% if ties are in your favor.  So a +6 net bonus translates to a gain of less than 30 %age points--or not quite the nominal magnitude of the bonus.  It looks more favorable as a change: your odds have increased by a bit more than 50%. At my proposed transition point (bonus ≈ median of die roll, i.e. +10), the numbers are ~86% win, or 11% loss.  And there's yet another way to look at this: Yes, a +6 net bonus means that 30% of the time you'll roll a number the other guy just can't touch.  OTOH, 70% of the rolls of either party are within the range of the other party.  IOW, despite that +6, 70% of the time i'm gonna get a result i could've gotten without it.Which brings us to the second part: psychology.  This is a game.  Ultimately, what matters is a combination of the actual probabilities and how the players feel about the probabilities.  You can't just look at some statistics in a vacuum and declare that the game feels a certain way.  To me, increasing my odds by 50% is not a "significant" bonus, and ~75% chance of success is not that hot--especially when the baseline chance is ~50%.  When we get in the realm of 1-in-10 chance of failure--*that's* good odds. [and, actually, now that i look at the calculated probabilities (instead of going on a gut feeling), it looks like +12 is where you get your chance of failure under 10%, unless ties are in your favor.]  I'm not claiming that my preoccupation with the overlapping range applies to everyone, or should be the deciding factor in looking at probabilities.  Just that, for me, it has a powerful psychological effect (perhaps stronger than the actual probabilities would dictate) when considering the power of a bonus.Now, why do i look at the odds that way?  A number of reasons.  D&D3E gives us some baselines to work with.  A +2 is your basic "it's enough of a circumstance to modify the die roll" modifier.  That's gonna change your odds by less than 10 %age points (depending on what they were to begin with).  Being prone, half cover, or suffering some other significant hindrance or benefit is generally a +/-4.  Complete darkness or blindness is a 50% miss chance.  So, a really major change in the odds (i'd say not being able to see at all qualifies) is roughly equivalent to a -10 on your roll (only roughly because a %age miss chance is gonna of course interact with your probabililites a bit differently than a linear shift in the result numbers).  [aside: which is another point supporting the careful design of the rules: concealment and cover modifiers are pretty reasonable equivalents.]  D&D3E makes a +/-4 out to be a pretty significant modifier--there's nothing on it's own that's worth +/-6, other than cover.  Yet, IMHO, the actual odds don't support that.  If i'm in a fight with a trained martial-artist, i'm just plain not gonna hit her--i don't even have 1-in-10 odds.  The only way the game supports that is if she's got the advantage over me on the order af +16 or +20.  Which, IMHO, doesn't mesh well with the larger-than-life heroicism of the genre.  We're talking about a real person--real warriors should be easily representable within the mid levels of the game--leaving room for superheroic characters within the 20-level spread.  And i think the game supports me.  It certainly seems to be supporting the idea that a 10th level PC is at least as good as anything reality has to offer, and probably significantly better.  But the broad range of dierolls means that you have to have an overwhelming advantage before you are clearly superior--and +6 isn't it.  Looking at the odds, it's more like +10. So, i suffer cognitive dissonance.  The game is telling me "+2 is significant; +4 is a big deal", but when i play, it doesn't feel like a big deal.  There're still too many ways for me to fail with a +4 on my roll (~30% of the time, assuming an even baseline), and most of my results will still be in the same range, and i'll only best someone without the bonus a fairly small bit more than without it.Perhaps the problem is partly a matter of wordchoice--i probably should've said "significant" rather than "meaningful."  To me, in this context, they're close (though not interchangeable).  But significant is closer to what i meant, anyway--i just grabbed the wrong word at the time.But not by as much as feels right to me.  Nor, IMHO, by as much as she "should" for a bonus of that magnitude (relative to skill levels, etc.).-----Am i making my point clear, finally?  You're not required to agree, but do my numbers at least make sense to you?</blockquote>

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