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Worlds of Design: Always Tell Me the Odds
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 7998518" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>Ok. That clears it up. Your initial post made it sound more like math doesn't really matter because the group will just "work around" bad math. </p><p></p><p>Yes, we need to give the DM pretty wide latitude, fair enough. But, there does come a time when it should be appropriate, or, at least not seen as antagonistic, to question the DM's math. I find that in situations where the rules aren't terribly explicit, DM's often err far too much on the side of caution which turns a difficult task into one that's virtually impossible, or, where the rewards aren't worth the risk.</p><p></p><p>Take the old saw about swinging by the chandelier across the room to attack someone. There is a school of thought which says that you have to break that down into several individual actions in order to succeed. Jump to the chandelier, cut the rope holding it in place, make an attack. And, if any of those checks fail, the entire attack fails and the action is lost.</p><p></p><p>So, what sort of benefit should we give the PC for attempting something like this? Say it's a 50:50 chance for each step. That's a 1 in 8 chance of success. IOW, even though each step doesn't look that hard, (most DM's wouldn't consider a 50% chance of success as hard), by requiring so many checks, it becomes extremely unlikely to succeed. So, if you have a 1 in 8 chance of success, the reward has to be at least 4 times greater than if you just shot him with a ranged weapon. </p><p></p><p>How many DM's would allow you to deal 4X damage for this maneuver?</p><p></p><p>This is what I keep coming back to. Because the risk:reward calculation is so bad, no one tries doing anything outside the box because, most of the time, anything outside the box is either going to fail, or will never actually reward you as much as it should.</p><p></p><p>-----</p><p></p><p>Edited to fix math. Dammit. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 7998518, member: 22779"] Ok. That clears it up. Your initial post made it sound more like math doesn't really matter because the group will just "work around" bad math. Yes, we need to give the DM pretty wide latitude, fair enough. But, there does come a time when it should be appropriate, or, at least not seen as antagonistic, to question the DM's math. I find that in situations where the rules aren't terribly explicit, DM's often err far too much on the side of caution which turns a difficult task into one that's virtually impossible, or, where the rewards aren't worth the risk. Take the old saw about swinging by the chandelier across the room to attack someone. There is a school of thought which says that you have to break that down into several individual actions in order to succeed. Jump to the chandelier, cut the rope holding it in place, make an attack. And, if any of those checks fail, the entire attack fails and the action is lost. So, what sort of benefit should we give the PC for attempting something like this? Say it's a 50:50 chance for each step. That's a 1 in 8 chance of success. IOW, even though each step doesn't look that hard, (most DM's wouldn't consider a 50% chance of success as hard), by requiring so many checks, it becomes extremely unlikely to succeed. So, if you have a 1 in 8 chance of success, the reward has to be at least 4 times greater than if you just shot him with a ranged weapon. How many DM's would allow you to deal 4X damage for this maneuver? This is what I keep coming back to. Because the risk:reward calculation is so bad, no one tries doing anything outside the box because, most of the time, anything outside the box is either going to fail, or will never actually reward you as much as it should. ----- Edited to fix math. Dammit. :p [/QUOTE]
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