Do PCs get enough improvement rolls... and more?

[cthulhudarren]

Last night we started a new MRQ2 game, the first time for any of us. My players tend to want to do the best they cane with the rules and are big on character advancement.

So they are already saying that 3 improvement rolls per session is not enough and that it would take forever to have real improvements, since for a skill at 50%, only a little more than 50% of the time would you improve more than 1%.

Of course there is paid training as well.

My PCs seem to really be bent on improving their characteristics, and one player with an 18 str was bitching that it'll take 18/3 sessions to improve by one point.

I tried to stress that a character is much better off being balanced. The guy playing "tank" wants HPs galore, and is already at the point where he has the best row in the HP chart in the book. I'm trying to tell him to boost stuff like resilience and persistence, better armor and weapon skills... But he is focused on straight HP because he got critted in the chest by a Beetle (ignore armor and max damage) an came within 1 HP in the chest of dropping. I also told him that is what Hero Points are for... I also told him to work on casting "Vigor".

I was saying this: Say this is the LoTR movie and that Cave Troll just popped out swinging. If he crits you in the head you are dropping, I don't care if you are a warrior king or peasant. They don't like this.

What do you say to these folks complaining that they cannot be Gods in one month of playing? Are we playing the wrong system?

 

[Old timer]

If they want to be gods, then yes, this is not the system for this. I think the players are under estimating how quick you can advance though, after all you could put all your improvement rolls into one skill, and it would quickly hit 100+. Attributes take longer, but that is logical, and spells can be a great way to become powerful, if only for a few game minutes. Also, are they adding their INT to the improvement roll, as that will change the odds of gaining more than 1%, and even a failed roll gives 1%.

 

[Mixster]

What do you say to these folks complaining that they cannot be Gods in one month of playing? Are we playing the wrong system?

They should learn to abuse spirit magic or the sorcery system.

I don't think it would be a big problem if your group wants to improve faster that you give them twice as many improvement rolls, as long as you remember to scale the challenges that are supposed to challenge them accordingly.

 

[soltakss]

I give our players 1D6+6or 1D8+8 Hero points at the end of a scenario.

But, our scenarios normally last 3-4 weeks and we use Hero Points for Improvement Rolls as well.

They also get 1 Hero Point each week just for turning up.

If yiou increase the number of Improvement Points you give out then the world will not end.

 

[cthulhudarren]

I think the players are under estimating how quick you can advance though, after all you could put all your improvement rolls into one skill, and it would quickly hit 100+.

Well, if you start at 50% and have, say, an Int of 10, you start off having a 60% chance of increasing by 1d4+1. It gets worse from there. I guess at the very worst it could take 50 improvement rolls to get to 100%. If you give out 3 per scenario that's ~17 scenarios.

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

Personally I am trying to encourage BALANCED growth and Balanced stats. My group is all veteran DnD guys who think if you don't have 18's you aren't any good. This is totally untrue in MRG2.

 

[cthulhudarren]

They also get 1 Hero Point each week just for turning up.

If yiou increase the number of Improvement Points you give out then the world will not end.

Great idea and great sentiment!

 

[Loz]

Personally I am trying to encourage BALANCED growth and Balanced stats. My group is all veteran DnD guys who think if you don't have 18's you aren't any good. This is totally untrue in MRG2.

What you're doing, or will have to do, is challenge the level-based mind-set. As a skill-based system RQ relies on improvement across a wide range of skills, all of which contribute to overall effectiveness.

For example, being a good and resilient fighter doesn't just rely on Combat Style percentage. A good all round fighter needs effective skill levels in Athletics, Brawn, Evade and Resilience. If these skills are ignored at improvement time, then the character will find himself at a serious disadvantage against foes that do have them.

Likewise magicians need to good skills in at least two higher magic skills (Pact and Lore, for Divine, for instance), plus Evade, and Persistence. Again, ignoring them will see the character at a disadvantage.

It might be helpful to point out to your players that there's a subtle interlocking of different skills for their key roles and that these need some development when it comes to choosing how to spend IRs. They can focus on what they consider the primary area of importance, but after a couple of times failing a Resilience or Persistence roll because they neglected it they should start to see the importance of broadening their horizons.

Ultimately though the onus is on the players to realise they are playing a different game with different rules. You can only do so much.

 

[Mixster]

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

I'm prone to doing this just to brush up on my differential equations & statistics that I know I'll need next semester. I'll have something for you by friday.

Personally I am trying to encourage BALANCED growth and Balanced stats. My group is all veteran DnD guys who think if you don't have 18's you aren't any good. This is totally untrue in MRG2.

What!? Veterans of D&D should know that they only need an 18 in int and everything else is meaningless. 'Cos they'll be playing a polymorph-abusing Grey-Elf Necropolitan StP Erudite or Incantatrix with faeries mysteries initiate. (So they'll be at d12+4+int mod hp/level)

Apart from that Loz is correct. As an example a player in my group mentioned how good he was at sneaking because his Stealth was 101%. While I agree that is an awesome score he was confused when I told him I was almost as good at 81%, because the next thing I asked for was his perception score, see the character I'm playing has 81% in both, his character had a more uneven 50%/101%. Which means while he probably sneaks by most opponents, he also will not see those that are hidden and attempt to spot them.

For example, being a good and resilient fighter doesn't just rely on Combat Style percentage. A good all round fighter needs effective skill levels in Athletics, Brawn, Evade and Resilience. If these skills are ignored at improvement time, then the character will find himself at a serious disadvantage against foes that do have them.

Personally I haven't seen much use of Brawn if you don't impale, but the others I agree with, and you should add Unarmed to that as well. However, the skill I actually find the most useful for combat is actually Evade, it is rolled against a lot, and often in opposed rolls where it is more important to be able to do well when you roll high than in combat style rolls. This is probably because I'm looking at it from a shield-less guys perspective though, were evade means: Protection from ranged attacks, Disabling my opponents from hitting me, staying on my feet dodging various spells. And many more things, while my combat style mainly is for hitting enemies in the head (or actually I prefer to disarm).
- Apart from that small anecdote, I completely agree with Loz.

Ultimately though the onus is on the players to realise they are playing a different game with different rules. You can only do so much.

Amen, old habits die hard, and just saying: "I hit it with my sword" is the oldest habit of the fighters.

 

[cthulhudarren]

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

I'm prone to doing this just to brush up on my differential equations & statistics that I know I'll need next semester. I'll have something for you by friday.

Cool. Can you post the solution as well? I had differential equations and statistics about 20 years ago.

 

[Malakor]

One thing I've done with my players in our games is to give them an automatic 1% increase in a skill anytime they roll a critical (success or failure). I typically give out 3 to 4 advancements per session and over a 1 year long campaign my players had their characters become well rounded and reasonably good at the skills they used often.

Another thing I did was at the beginning of the campaign was tell them that a skill of 50% or higher was considered 'professional' level, and on non-critical applications of a skill (i.e., not during combat of course), would tell them they could always succeed if they had enough time to work without stress.

I know this doesn't answer the critical questions posed above, but I thought I would share what worked quite well in our campaign.

Oh, and a the end of the campaign my guys (5 player characters, no NPC's involved on their side) took out a large number of frost giants and their queen. No one had a skill that exceeded 100%

 

[Mixster]

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

I'm prone to doing this just to brush up on my differential equations & statistics that I know I'll need next semester. I'll have something for you by friday.

Cool. Can you post the solution as well? I had differential equations and statistics about 20 years ago.

Sure, this is what I've got this far:
skill value when improving I label S0, Skill value after increasing I label S1. I label amount of Improvement rolls as I, Thus we can say that:
The increase per step (improvement roll) is
dS/dI = (S-10)/100+(1-(S-10)/100)*3.5 <=>
S/100-1/10+3.5-3.5S/100+3.5/10
dS/dI = S/100-1/10+3.5-3.5S/100+3.5/10<=>
10*ds/dI=37.5-2.5S/10<=>
ds/dI=-2.5S/100+3.75
This is a differential equation, the solution to which I'm still about to solve, I'm pretty bad at it since integrals never was the classes I paid the most attention to in class. Will edit this post with an answer once I realize how to get it.

EDIT:

One thing I've done with my players in our games is to give them an automatic 1% increase in a skill anytime they roll a critical (success or failure). I typically give out 3 to 4 advancements per session and over a 1 year long campaign my players had their characters become well rounded and reasonably good at the skills they used often.

I just realized how awesome this rule is, especially when including critical failures, a chance to say, "well that worked well" or "better not do that again" seems pretty darned awesome!
The only problem I see with it is that the curve for how fast you'll advance will go down as your character nears 100, and then it will start rising again. I don't know whether this is particularly good or bad, but it is something to think about.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Well, if you start at 50% and have, say, an Int of 10, you start off having a 60% chance of increasing by 1d4+1. It gets worse from there. I guess at the very worst it could take 50 improvement rolls to get to 100%. If you give out 3 per scenario that's ~17 scenarios.

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

39 - no, that's wrong, 35
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av1ya3beT07YdFZRUEVmeTc1MkZfaDAwZUJWOGRjNVE&hl=en_US
Chance of an average +3.5 is the chance of rolling over your skill (Col D) or the chance of rolling within your INT of 100 (Col E) whichever is higher (Col F) plus the chance of failing the roll (Col G) giving an average improvement of Col H. Adding that to the skill, and repeating the calculation on each row.

Next up, I'll write a program to simulate it thousands of times and average the result.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Next up, I'll write a program to simulate it thousands of times and average the result.

Seems that the calculation has rounding errors, as the simulation says 27.5 rolls on average. With an Int 18, it's 25.85 rolls.
Perl code:

my $times = shift;
my $int = shift;
my $skill = shift;
print "skill $skill, int $int, times $times\n";

my $rolls=0;
my $irt=0;
while ($rolls<$times) {
  my $sk = $skill;
  my $irs = 0;
  while ($sk < 100) {
    my $roll = int(rand(100))+1;
    $roll += $int;
    if ($roll > $sk or $roll > 100) {
      $sk += int(rand(4))+2;
    } else {
      $sk += 1;
    }
    $irs++;
  }
  $irt += $irs;
  ++$rolls;
}
printf "%5.5s\n", $irt/$rolls;

 

[Mixster]

Well, if you start at 50% and have, say, an Int of 10, you start off having a 60% chance of increasing by 1d4+1. It gets worse from there. I guess at the very worst it could take 50 improvement rolls to get to 100%. If you give out 3 per scenario that's ~17 scenarios.

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

39 - no, that's wrong, 35
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av1ya3beT07YdFZRUEVmeTc1MkZfaDAwZUJWOGRjNVE&hl=en_US
Chance of an average +3.5 is the chance of rolling over your skill (Col D) or the chance of rolling within your INT of 100 (Col E) whichever is higher (Col F) plus the chance of failing the roll (Col G) giving an average improvement of Col H. Adding that to the skill, and repeating the calculation on each row.

Next up, I'll write a program to simulate it thousands of times and average the result.

Ofc, why didn't I think of just making it a spreadsheet.

EDIT: Did a spreadsheet, I get the answer of increasing a skil of 50 to 100 takes 28 improvement rolls.

 

[PhilHibbs]

EDIT: Did a spreadsheet, I get the answer of increasing a skil of 50 to 100 takes 28 improvement rolls.

Clearly your spreadsheet is better than mine, as it agrees with my simulation, which I trust more. Can you put it up on Google Docs or upload the file somewhere?

 

[PhilHibbs]

Well, if you start at 50% and have, say, an Int of 10, you start off having a 60% chance of increasing by 1d4+1. It gets worse from there. I guess at the very worst it could take 50 improvement rolls to get to 100%. If you give out 3 per scenario that's ~17 scenarios.

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

I question the usefulness of this question.

What you're saying is, "If I am a bit thick and I have a mediocre skill that I haven't concentrated on at character generation, how long does it take for me to become awesome at it?"

If you only have 50% in your favourite skill, you aren't really trying. You should have 25-30 base chance, +10 for your profession and/or background, +30 from Free Skill points, and +10 for a Party Relationship Bonus, giving you 75%. Even if you don't allow relationship bonuses to exceed the 30 point per skill limit then that's 65%, or 55% if it's an Advanced Skill. If everything is going in your favour, you should be starting with a skill approaching 85%, which is 10 IRs away from 100% if your INT is average (13). Actually, INT 10 or 13 makes very little difference, 10.63 rolls vs 10.19 rolls.

 

[Mixster]

EDIT: Did a spreadsheet, I get the answer of increasing a skil of 50 to 100 takes 28 improvement rolls.

Clearly your spreadsheet is better than mine, as it agrees with my simulation, which I trust more. Can you put it up on Google Docs or upload the file somewhere?

Erm just deleted it again. Well, I'll make one on google docs.
EDIT: Here's the link
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArEmE5zij6VzdFotQmN6eWtneFJfN3ROSk9QVFFkVlE&hl=en_US

 

[cthulhudarren]

Well, if you start at 50% and have, say, an Int of 10, you start off having a 60% chance of increasing by 1d4+1. It gets worse from there. I guess at the very worst it could take 50 improvement rolls to get to 100%. If you give out 3 per scenario that's ~17 scenarios.

Anyone know enough statistics to figure out the average number of improvement rolls it would take to reach 100% in this scenario?

I question the usefulness of this question.

What you're saying is, "If I am a bit thick and I have a mediocre skill that I haven't concentrated on at character generation, how long does it take for me to become awesome at it?"

If you only have 50% in your favourite skill, you aren't really trying. You should have 25-30 base chance, +10 for your profession and/or background, +30 from Free Skill points, and +10 for a Party Relationship Bonus, giving you 75%. Even if you don't allow relationship bonuses to exceed the 30 point per skill limit then that's 65%, or 55% if it's an Advanced Skill. If everything is going in your favour, you should be starting with a skill approaching 85%, which is 10 IRs away from 100% if your INT is average (13). Actually, INT 10 or 13 makes very little difference, 10.63 rolls vs 10.19 rolls.

First of all, thanks for solving the equation. I don't understand it. Second, it was just a theoretical example.

 

[cthulhudarren]

EDIT: Did a spreadsheet, I get the answer of increasing a skil of 50 to 100 takes 28 improvement rolls.

Clearly your spreadsheet is better than mine, as it agrees with my simulation, which I trust more. Can you put it up on Google Docs or upload the file somewhere?

Erm just deleted it again. Well, I'll make one on google docs.

Thanks for the maths. Anyone care to explain the calculation a little better for the daft?

 

[Mixster]

Thanks for the maths. Anyone care to explain the calculation a little better for the daft?

Sure,
What we've calculated is how much you will increase your skill with one improvement roll on average given a fixed int.
So what we are looking at is the increase per improvement roll, I label this "growth", which will vary depending on your skill level.

To find out whether we increase by 1 or 1d4+1, we'll have to calculate the change of each:
To increase by 1, we would have to roll under our skill deducted by our INT. IE, chance of increasing by 1 is (Skill Value - Int)/100.
To increae by 1d4+1 we would have to roll over our skill deducted by our INT. IE, chance of increasing by 1d4+1 is 1-((Skill Value - Int)/100)
However, since the second option increases our skill by 1d4+1 (avg 3.5) we multiply it by 3.5
We can now add the two together to get the growth
Growth= (Skill Value - Int)/100 + 3.5*(1-((Skill Value - Int)/100))
If we then go and look at how we can write this in a spreadsheet. We can say that the next value must be the earlier value + the growth.
Thus we have, when increasing by 1 improvement roll:
New Skill value = Old skill value + Growth <=> New Skill Value = Old Skill Value (Old Skill Value - Int)/100 + 3.5*(1-((Old Skill Value - Int)/100))

Did this clear it up a bit?