TN 11 -- does it cause a problem?

[Jake Norwood]

I'm with warboss, here. I think the issue is pretty inane, but if it floats your boat...game on.

Jake

[MrGeneHa]

Personally, I think it depends on what's most intuitive for you.

Let's say you're making an Evasive Attack, and you're totting up the new TN for your opponent (he's using a poleaxe, TN 7, I increase it by +4).

If you prefer to keep it orthodox, keep TN 11 statistically the same as TN 10.

If you REALLY want the term TN 11 (or 21) to mean something, roll die 0-9.

If messing with dice bugs you more than messing with TNs, turn that TN 11 into 12.

It's not gonna mess up anyone else's game.  Personally, I don't know which I'll use.  I could easily use any of the last two.

Gene

[prophet118]

statistics suck.... in theory, if you raise the tn to 12, they will have a chance for failure, which is what you are looking for... why punish them?

[Durgil]

statistics suck.... in theory, if you raise the tn to 12, they will have a chance for failure, which is what you are looking for... why punish them?

Who's being punished?

Let's say you have two players in the above situation with the Evasive Attack only our second player has a TN of 6 with his poleaxe instead of 11.  After you make your adjustments, one has a TN of 11 and the other has a TN of 10.  I don't think they should have the same chance of success or failure.  Making the 11 a 12 only increases that players chance for failure by 1% for each dice thrown.

I guess I just don't see what you're calling a punishment.

[prophet118]

strictly speaking from the system mechanics, where are you going to get the "extra +1", and why add it... how are you going to explain it to your players?...

"oh sorry man, i cant let you have a TN of 11, even though it adds up perfectly to that, so im going to give you a TN of 12 instead, to satisfy statistics"

you know there are 3 kinds of lies...

lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Durgil]

If you want to talk reality, then there is no such thing as a TN of 11.  If a player rolls a 10, then there is no sense to have them roll again, it is automatic.  Another thing too is that if you just spring it on the players in the middle of a game, then I'd expect them to get pissed.  I'd simply explain that because of the mathematics, an 11, 21, or 31 is really a 12, 22, or 32.  And by the way, the numbers don't lie.  You can look at them in different ways, not account for everything, or take them out of context, but unless your math is wrong, the numbers don't lie.

[Bob Richter]

It's no more simple to "just remove TN 11" than it is to "just read the 0 as a 0 on subsequent die rolls."

Actually it's a bit more difficult to do that in my opinion, because now you have to do a contest of 9's, so to get TN 20 you have to get a 10, a 9, and a 1, because 0 is 0 therefore the roll over die changed to 9 because 0 cannot be used for that anymore. It's bieng 0 and all. this doesn't seem to be much of a prob untill you realize TN 56 is also like this (10+9+9+9+9+9+1) It begins to be a bit confusing for some players. Time is the reason that they didn't do this in the first place. It's easier to count 10's than 9+1's.

At least that's my opinion. Leaving the rule as stands speeds up gameplay, rather than counting up dice.

Um, so you could just use my original idea and subtract a number equal to the tens column from the result.

Basically, you rolled a 56...but wait, subtract 5 from that (each ten beyond the first only adds nine, after all.)

So you actually have a 51.

This works as follows.

1) A 10 is actually a 9.
(Don't worry, though, you can't actually ROLL a 10, after all.)
2) Therefore, an 11 is actually a 10.
3) A 20 is an 18. A 30 is a 27. A 40 is a 36, and so on.

Unless you actually just find it convenient to add a number equal to the tens column of the target number to the target number, making TN 11s TN 12s, and etc. Your call, I guess. I just prefer being able to roll every little number along the way and not having these funky unnatural lumps.

The only question here is whether subtraction is easier than addition, which I think is a matter one must answer for themselves.

[Durgil]

I went to bed thinking on this subject, prophet118.  Would it work to add a number equal to the tens number of the resulting TN?  example: you compute a TN of 13, add 1, it is now 14.  The only one it doesn't work for is 10; just leave 10 alone.  An 18 becomes 19, 19 becomes 20, and 20 becomes a 22.  Do you see what I'm talking about?

[Durgil]

Here's a table I just thought up.  This should cover any possibility.

Code:

Computed TN Resulting TN
1                1
2                2
3                3
4                4
5                5
6                6
7                7
8                8
9                9
10               10
11               12
12               13
13               14
14               15
15               16
16               17
17               18
18               19
19               20
20               22
21               23
22               24
23               25
24               26
25               27
26               28
27               29
28               30
29               32
30               33
31               34
32               35
33               36
34               37
35               38
36               39
37               40
38               42
39               43
40               44
41               45
42               46
43               47
44               48
45               49
46               50
47               52
48               53
49               54
50               55

[prophet118]

so now you increase the tns making it more difficult?... somehow you didnt make it work better thn the others... you still have the problem i mentioned

"sorry your tn isnt 11 although it is supposed to be"....

im all about being fair to my players, would you guys realize how friggin hard it is to even roll a 10 anyway?.. granted in theory you have a 1 in 10 chance for each number, but real world applications do not show that, some people are more lucky, some people arent, some people roll on carpet, some people roll on a firm surface, some people have those cut d10 whos side are fairly sharp, and dont roll much, and some people have those rounded d10s..

that all comes down to this: statistics get thrown out because there is no way to duplicate the results of any given die roll... get a random number generator.... use any of the online die rolling... those are more random..so in my wifes sorcery pool, she has 6 dice, her tn got pretty high, lets say shes doing the regrowth spell, her CTN is 11... on 6 dice what are the odds that she will roll a 10, then a 1...not as high as you think... then she has to turn around, and roll her aging roll, at the same CTN...

apply this to combat, someone is using some god aweful unwieldy weapon, his tn is 11.. if thast dude somehow manages to score a 10... thats great man... but again, thats 1 success... how likely is that player going to roll those successes... and dont tell me about "statistics" they never take in to account the human element

[prophet118]

i just rolled 12 d10s, as i would normally roll them, heres my results

2,8,1,8,3,9,5,9,5,5,7,7

second roll
8,4,5,3,6,1,1,2,3,10,9,7

third roll
8,4,4,9,9,10,2,4,7,9,9,2

fourth
8,6,4,7,10,10,7,8,4,1,2,6

as you can see the results are very very varied

i would roll some more, but its time for breakfast

[Durgil]

I really don't what to tell you.  I believe in tweeking a game a bit to correct some percieved problem or increase the realism, but if you have that much of a problem with this game's basic dice mechanic, maybe you should just move on.  I know I am from this post.  Good luck and Happy New Year.

[Henry Fitch]

Uh... guys? Is there any reason this TN10=TN11 thing would actually cause a problem in play? 'Cause I'm not seeing why this is a problem.

[Durgil]

The odds for making a TN of 10 is the same as a TN of 11 (90% per die rolled).  You only get to roll the dice again if you roll a 10, if you roll that then all you need to roll is a 1, which is the lowest number you can roll.

[MikeSands]

Uh... guys? Is there any reason this TN10=TN11 thing would actually cause a problem in play? 'Cause I'm not seeing why this is a problem.

Probably just that the intuition would be that the difference between TN 10 and 11 should be the same as between 9 and 10 or 4 and 5, but this isn't the case.