All or nothing (split from older thread)

[Ted E. Childers]

Maybe I'm missing the boat, but it seems that many games that have an all or nothing limit (roll X number to succeed, otherwise you fail) has this problem.

Take the classic DnD example.  A first level fighter may need a 15 to hit a orc.  A 10 level figher needs a 5 to hit that same orc.

If both fighters rolled a 3, they both missed.  

I recently picked up the Buffy RPG and I love the system that Eden uses (Unisystem?) where you add the die roll to your attribute + a skill (or double your attribute).  Base/min success is 9.  Anything over that is a range of successes (higher the roll, the more successes).

Using your example, Tiger Woods would have a stat+skill of 19,  you have a stat+skill of 5.  You each roll of 2.  Well, you shanked it with a 7, where as Tiger is on the green with a 21.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Hi Ted, and welcome to the Forge. You posted to a thread from July in 2001, which is pretty old. The usual thing to do at this site, when you want to pick up an old topic, is to start a new thread and provide a link to it, like this:
Dice again

... so people can check out what you're responding to.

You've raised a good point and everyone, please feel free to carry on.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Ted, there are a lot of solutions to that problem; I'm going to toot my own horn and suggest one from Multiverser.

Multiverser uses the ideas of relative success and relative failure. Relative success is pretty easy to illustrate first. The die roll is not merely that you succeeded, but how well did you succeed. In combat attacks, this means that the hit roll is also the damage roll--if I've got a 70% chance to hit and I roll a 60%, I did 60% of the damage of which the weapon (as used by me) is capable; if I roll a 3, I still hit, but I only did 3% of the damage possible. (There are other nuances, but this is the core concept.

Relative failure suggests that I might have failed in my objective but still accomplished something. Let us suppose I'm trying to hit a golf ball into the hole from the tee, and I have a 15% chance of doing so. If I roll 16, I didn't get my hole in one--but I'm on the green, right up next to it. If I roll 35, I'm probably pretty close to the green. At 60, I'm somewhere down the fairway and will probably make it on my next shot. If I roll 100, I botched; maybe I curved into the rough, or landed in the water or the sand; or maybe I took a huge divot out of the ground and sent the ball all of twenty feet.

Using relative success and relative failure together, the game can create a continuum between the best outcome you could hope to do and the worst that could possibly happen. There's still the appearance of an "all or nothing" limit, because there is a success number being targeted; but there's less feeling of that.

Is this what you mean?

--M. J. Young

[Ted E. Childers]

Hey howdy Ron,

Heh.  Sorry about that.  I didn't realize that I ended up replying to an old thread.  When I normally come to the Forge, I just click on the "show links since last login".  For some reason, that old thread must have come up.  When I read it, I had not even notice the date.  Wierd.

<Back to the Topic at Hand>

Hey howdy M. J.,

Your system is very interesting, but I'm not quite sure I follow how your relative success/failure system works when used in combat.  I'm also a tad confused on the percentage of success.

In your combat example, you have a skill rating of 70%.  Anything below that is a success.  Now, If you rolled a 70%, wouldn't that be a 100% success?  Or is that a measurement of max potential performance?  ie, someone with 90%  has the ability to do 90% of the max damage of whatever attack they're attempting, where as that 70% guy can only max out at 70%?  

Your relative failure example is also a tad confusing when trying to apply it to combat.  If I have 70% and I roll 71%, Do I completely miss?  That still seems to be an all or nothing sort of deal.  

I'm personally not sure there's a way around the all or nothing problem that's mechnically economical.  I'd love to see some other examples if anyone has any.  

Unknown Armies (which was actually mentioned in that old thread) has a pretty fair way of grading successes that sounds similar to M. J.'s system.  Say you have a firearms skill of 60%.  Below and up to your skill rating is a hit.  Above it is a miss.  You're wielding a Colt .45 pistol that has a max damage of 40.  If you roll 01-40, you hit and do the damage of the roll.  If you roll 41-60, you only do 40 damage since that's the weapon's max.  Anything above your skill rating is a miss.  Once again, there's that sheer drop of failing after reaching a certain point.

Thanks for your time,

Ted

[Alan]

Hi Ted,

I'm personally not sure there's a way around the all or nothing problem that's mechnically economical.  I'd love to see some other examples if anyone has any.  ... Once again, there's that sheer drop of failing after reaching a certain point.

This seems contradictory.  The example mechanic you gave generates results from 0% success to 100% success - how is this all or nothing?

I can guess that perhaps you mean that you want the curve of the dice mechanic to fall back to 0% - but I'm not sure I understand why this is important.

[M. J. Young]

Hey howdy M. J.,

Your system is very interesting, but I'm not quite sure I follow how your relative success/failure system works when used in combat.  I'm also a tad confused on the percentage of success.

In your combat example, you have a skill rating of 70%.  Anything below that is a success.  Now, If you rolled a 70%, wouldn't that be a 100% success?  Or is that a measurement of max potential performance?  ie, someone with 90%  has the ability to do 90% of the max damage of whatever attack they're attempting, where as that 70% guy can only max out at 70%?

Well, I didn't lay out the entire system in one post; but yes, it is inherent to the system that the person who has more skill with a weapon can do more damage with it. I think somewhere it says "this explains why people get shot with guns every day and survive, but an expert sniper can kill a man on a single shot" (or something like that). We also allow high skill levels to increase the base damage of the weapon--that is, a sword in the hands of an amateur might do up to five points of damage (if he had a high enough chance to hit), twice that in the hands of a professional. Short answer is yes, if you've only got a 70% chance to hit, you can only do 70% of the weapon's potential damage (given any other modifying factors) with it. Thus defenses reduce both the chance of being hit and the amount of damage you're likely to sustain if you are hit--since -20 for your armor means not only that the attacker is less likely to hit, but any hit he scores will be less damaging.

Your relative failure example is also a tad confusing when trying to apply it to combat.  If I have 70% and I roll 71%, Do I completely miss?  That still seems to be an all or nothing sort of deal.

Perhaps I'm not fully understanding the "all or nothing" problem. If my theoretical swordsman has a dangerous level of damage, and he rolls 61 or better (with his 70% chance to hit after all modifiers), he's going to do 7 points of damage with it (all fractions are rounded up). If he rolls 10 or less, he's going to do 1 point of damage with it. If he rolls 71, he's going to do 0 points of damage with it. Now, from 71 to 00 is a lot less defined, but relative failure is still present here. A near miss includes your blade bounced off his armor with loud ringing noise; you slice the air as your opponent dodges; he parries your thrust, which passes just inches from his throat. A far miss would be more likely described as there is nothing but air in reach; or you are suddenly off balance and have to step away to keep your feet; or he outmaneuvers you smartly leaving you wondering how he did it. These don't have any mechanical effect in combat (although in some cases relative failure will have mechanical effect), given that you're primarily interested in whether you hit or miss, and how much damage you do. It isn't until you reach the worst possible rolls--the botch, for which this character would have a 3% chance (because he has a 30% chance of failure)--that you have real in-game effects. Combat botches are usually limited to temporary loss of attack form (that is, out of combat you can hurt yourself, but in combat you can only do so if you're trying something that has clear potential to go wrong that way), so a botch here would be something like the blow on your sword stings your hand and you drop it, or the parry twists the weapon from your grasp and it falls to the ground, or as the opponent sidesteps your thrust, the force drives it solidly into the doorframe behind him, sticking there for the moment.

It should be said that characters can also have skills that are inherently tactical, such as attack types that are designed to put opponents off balance (whether or not they also do damage) so as to bonus the situation for the next attack. I suppose you could build this sort of thing into your relative failure side, such that on a near miss you didn't hit him but have an opportunity to try again. We didn't, in part because we wanted to distinguish combatants with tactical skills from those with simple aggressive skills, and in part because we wanted to make it possible for combat to be simple if those involved did not complicate it (that is, if neither side uses tactical skills, the fight is much quicker to run than if both sides do).

I'm personally not sure there's a way around the all or nothing problem that's mechnically economical.

I'm not certain exactly what is between one point of damage and no damage at all; unless you're looking for tactical outcomes (such as bonuses/penalties on the next combat), what can you have that isn't damage?

--M. J. Young

[Andrew Martin]

For my Ratio system, which uses infinite precision, bounded percentiles, with a single D10, I use FitM and the concept of Concessions and Complications, half of which I got from Vincent's Chalk Outlines. Basically, after the D10 is rolled indicates that there's a failure, the player is allowed to add Complications to the character to get success. For example, Aleph's Sniper skill is 78.345% and the player rolls 9 on the D10. This is two steps above the target number of 7, and the player wants success, so the player states, "Aleph hits the general, but the general's two bodyguards know my location (two complications)!" This allows the player to have their character look cool, and add interest to the game. The system of complications and concessions is very nice and easy to add into RPGs that have narrow range of results.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ted,

I may be misunderstanding the very foundation of your post, so let me know if that's the case.

Are we discussing the issue of degree of effect? Let's say that Sebastian (a character) has 71% in "broadsword."

In Game System X, if Sebastian's player rolls 71 or under on d100, Sebastian hits. We then turn to a completely different set of dice - say in this game that the broadsword is rated at 2d8, so we roll 2d8 to see the effect. In other words, the entire range of 1-71 is "the same thing" in game terms.

[Ignore for the moment the role of "criticals" at the 1-5 range in many games; not relevant to my argument. But I will discuss them in a minute.]

In Game System Y, no secondary roll is involved at all - we look at some feature of the already-existing roll to see how much damage is delivered. All sorts of methods are possible: adding the 7 and the 1, or consulting some chart, whatever. Therefore the effect is incorporated into the resolution roll.

[Back to criticals - I think it's easy to see that criticals and fumbles are an ancient attempt to tweak System X into behaving just a little bit more like System Y.]

When you refer to "all or nothing," are you talking about System X? If not, can you clarify?

Best,
Ron

[Ted E. Childers]

Hey howdy everyone,

This entire discussion was actually spawned by me adding 2 cents to a year old post (foolishly and unknowingly I might add).  I hadn't realized a thread would grow from it.  I'm actually glad it did for your posts have addressed mechanics issues that have concerned me.  Unfortunately, I think me using the term "all-or-nothing" has started this discussion on the wrong foot.  

My original desire was to discuss alternative resolution systems (to the one brought up in the original post Dice Again http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392).

In the original post, Supplanter mentioned (if I understood him correctly) that he didn't like the way equal die rolls can mean the same thing between two completely different people.  If person A needs 15 to succeed, and person B needs 5, they both are going to miss just as bad if they both roll below 5.  to me it sounds like an inherit flaw in the system that was introduced in Dungeons and Dragons.

I pointed out that I liked the way Unisystem's alternative approach of taking the randomness (luck) of die roll probability (which is equal between everyone) and adding the rolled result to stat+skill ratings (which adds raw potential and learned training).  This gives you a number that combines randomness to a persons physical ability and skill.  Minimal success is set at a base number (9 I believe) that someone with a lot of skill can easily achieve (with little luck/low die roll), where as someone will little skill needs a lot of luck (higher die roll).

I'm sorry if my comment mislead anyone.  I was originally trying to provide answers, not a problem for discussion.  I have enjoyed the alternative mechanics that you have presented.  I need to expose myself to other systems if I'm to create my own some day.  I would love to hear other alternative methods, although I understand if people think this thread is now rather moot.

Thanks for your time,

Ted