Why are they keeping ability scores?
- Thread starter Nikosandros
- Start date
No, sorry, you are entirely wrong. (Unless you're thinking of a fixed, never changing DC of, say, 15. But that happens now also. *cough**Tumble**cough**Diplomacy**cough*)xechnao said:
A line is a special form of curve (at least if you're a Physics major, like me) and the relation here is actually a straight line - as is the current one.
Your notion of how differences at the ends influence things is wrong. At exactly all points of the curve a set amount of ability increase gives you an equal increase in your probability to succeed (as long as the DC makes it a challenge). Which is exactly how it is now.
The only thing this would change (except for the need to recalibrate DCs) is that +2 ability gives you +2 on the die roll, instead of +1. That's why I say it's twice as steep.
It's still linear, though, and nothing catastrophic happens at either end of it.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
But it's very unlikely that there will be rules that use such a steeper curve.Cadfan said:
If the modifier to damage is the same generic str modifier, we are back to square one.Cadfan said:
Nikosandros said:
Not if you factor in hardness.
In 3e, if a fighter does 1d3+4 with an unarmed attack and a rogue does 1d3+0, and the object you're attacking has a hardness score of 5, the rogue can never, ever break it. The fighter breaks it 2 out of 3 tries.
With a straight up strength check, say of DC 11, the fighter breaks the object about 2 out of 3 tries, while the rogue breaks it 1 out of 2.
Lonely Tylenol
First Post
Two things:xechnao said:
People who do probability distributions call every continuous function a curve, even when that function is a straight line. Quite often, statisticians attempt to fit data to a linear curve because it illustrates a particular type of correlation.
The scale of the difference is important. If you differ by 6 points, it doesn't matter whether you differ between 3 and 9, or between 9 and 15. Your relative abilities will be the same. Compare this to a hypothetical system in which your bonus is the square of your ability. In that case, the guy with a score of 3 would be rolling +9, and the guy with the score of 9 would be rolling +81, a difference of 72. The 9 and 15 pair would be rolling +81 and +225, respectively, a difference of 144, twice the magnitude of difference. In a linear system, a given difference between ability scores is always worth the same amount. In a non-linear system, a given difference is worth different amounts depending on the values of the particular ability scores.
In a linear system, having a 10 Str compared to a 12 Str is exactly the same as having a 18 Str compared to a 20 Str. Your opponent always has a +2 advantage.
GreatLemur
Explorer
Damn, what is with all these people replying without even reading the first damn post? Come on, folks. It's three sentences long and completely clear.
Personally, I strongly believe there is no goddamned point in using both scores and modifiers if only the modifiers ever actually do anything. The fact that ability scores are actually addressed when feat prerequisites and ability damage comes up ain't all that meaningful, since the same mechanical effects can be achieved using ability modifiers instead.
I do think Kamikaze Midget has a point about working with scores giving such effects a greater continuum to work with, but it really is a false granularity, since only every other point actually matters. There's some really immersion-breaking absurdity in situations where the whole party suffers a -1 to Dexterity, and only the folks with even numbers in their Dex are meaningfully affected.
And anybody who's taught new players knows knows that the whole score/modifier thing is just one more mental hurdle to deal with. Not a big one, but players really need as few as possible during that process.
Really, when you come down to it, it looks like the reason they're keeping the ancient 3-through-18 ability spread is tradition and nothing more.
Personally, I strongly believe there is no goddamned point in using both scores and modifiers if only the modifiers ever actually do anything. The fact that ability scores are actually addressed when feat prerequisites and ability damage comes up ain't all that meaningful, since the same mechanical effects can be achieved using ability modifiers instead.
I do think Kamikaze Midget has a point about working with scores giving such effects a greater continuum to work with, but it really is a false granularity, since only every other point actually matters. There's some really immersion-breaking absurdity in situations where the whole party suffers a -1 to Dexterity, and only the folks with even numbers in their Dex are meaningfully affected.
And anybody who's taught new players knows knows that the whole score/modifier thing is just one more mental hurdle to deal with. Not a big one, but players really need as few as possible during that process.
Really, when you come down to it, it looks like the reason they're keeping the ancient 3-through-18 ability spread is tradition and nothing more.
Not really recalibrate that much. Just making sure that DCs are relevant for the task.xechnao said:
Say the stuck door is DC 21. The weakling with Str 3 would need to roll 18 (15% chance), while the burly fighter with Str 18 would only need 3 (90% chance). If any of them could temporarly increase their Strength by +1, they would each gain 5% on their probability to succeed. That's linear.
The present system is also linear. However, the guys in the example (but let's first recalibrate the DC to 11) would need to roll 15 (30% chance) and 7 (70% chance) respectively. Their probabilities are much closer since the huge difference in ability scores is moderated by the halving involved in calculating the modifier.
In both cases I simply calibrated the DC to give someone with Str 10 a 50% chance of success. No fuss.
P.S. Sorry for going off on a tangent like this. Back to our scheduled discussion.
Hmm. A thought:
The origin of the modifier, mostly -3 to +5, being the actual ability score in and of itself, is Ars Magica, a roleplaying system that was co-autored by Jonathan Tweet, one of the authors of 3e. I also believe that was the source of the concept skill+ability+die vs. set difficulty (or opposing roll) as a consistent principle throughout the game. Also the "pyramid scheme" (1, 3, 6, 10 etc) behind the xp cost of levels is derived from ArM, where it is used as the principle for calculating all escalating costs.
However Ars Magica is currently published by Atlas Games. I wonder if there could be legal issues if D&D left its 3-18 roots and used ArM stats?
The origin of the modifier, mostly -3 to +5, being the actual ability score in and of itself, is Ars Magica, a roleplaying system that was co-autored by Jonathan Tweet, one of the authors of 3e. I also believe that was the source of the concept skill+ability+die vs. set difficulty (or opposing roll) as a consistent principle throughout the game. Also the "pyramid scheme" (1, 3, 6, 10 etc) behind the xp cost of levels is derived from ArM, where it is used as the principle for calculating all escalating costs.
However Ars Magica is currently published by Atlas Games. I wonder if there could be legal issues if D&D left its 3-18 roots and used ArM stats?
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