Trifletraxor said:
In crit-crit or success-success rolls, lower wins. And failures beat fumbles of course. Subtracting the amount you make it by involves a bit more difficult maths than the subtract skill above 100% from both skills-rule though. (Me and my players often drink when we play, must make it as simple as possible
)
Yeah. The problem I have with opposed skills using the (admittedly simpler) "subtract over 100%" system is that it creates a "lucky guy wins" situation. As several people have pointed out, the actual odds of successs doesn't ever actually represent a true comparison of the two skills. Not in an opposed roll system.
In a combat roll system, it does work. Because both are rolling purely to determine if their skill succeeded, with the results of all combinations determined after that point. If you boil a 130 to 100 contest into a 100 v 70 contest, it works just fine. One has a 100% chance to succeed with his skill. The other has a 70% chance. Done. Easy. Works great.
But opposed rolls, by their very nature require that we resolve
one winner. We don't have a result that handles both succeeding or both failing. What we're really measuring in an opposed roll is "who did
better?". And in that situation, direct rolling just off the skill values does not work because your roll doesn't tell you who did "better" then the other. It only tells you who rolled lower.
In that 100 v 70 contest, if one guy rolls a 50 and the other rolls a 25, the guy who rolled 25 wins. In fact, he wins regardless of what his skill is. The fact that he may be 30% more or less skilled then the other guy had absolutely zero impact in this case. He rolled lower then the other guy, so he won. This becomes significant at the high skill levels since the odds that both will succeed are pretty decent, but when both do succeed, then it's just a matter of who rolled luckier then the other (which is a mechanic I despise and try to eliminate where possible).
Under your system, if player A has 130% and player B a 100% chance, then their skills are boiled down to 100/70, then in the resuling rolls of 50 and 25 respectively, player B wins. He won because he succeeded and rolled lower then the other guy.
In my system, Player A would have won that roll. Because he rolled (130-50) 80% under his skill, while Player B only rolled (100-25) 75% under his skill. In my system, the winner is determined, not just by the guy who rolled lowest out of a possible 1-100 range, but by who rolled better in relation to their skill. Yes. It's a bit more math, but not that much so. It has the advantage of *always* accurately reflecting relative skill points at all times and on all rolls while also allowing the exact same mechanic to be used every time you roll the dice.
Consistency and accuracy are good things.
Got it the second time around! :wink: It's logical, but involves more calculation than the subtract skill above 100% rule.
Actually, it really isn't. It just appears to on first glance. In both systems, both rolls involve a single subtraction. Arguably, it's easier to subtract the amount one is over 100%, but that does not guarantee an easier subtraction on the other end. For example. If I have a 137% skill, and you have a 74% skill, you're going to have to subtract 37 from 74, which is pretty much exactly as difficult as subtracting what you rolled from your skill (if you rolled a 37 for instance, it would be *exactly* the same subtraction).
Beyond being more accurate, my system is effectively a "double blind" system. It allows both sides to roll their skills without knowing the skill level of their opponent. This is important because in many cases the GM does not necessarily want the players to know why they're rolling a skill, much less how skilled their opponent is. Sometimes you just ask your players to roll a skill and tell you how much they made it by and then you determine whether they succeeded or failed at whatever the roll was for. This is important for both non-opposed and opposed skill rolls. If I ask someone to make a perception roll, I don't really want them to know whether the roll was to spot a trap on the floor, or notice a bad guy sneaking up on them. In the first case, they're effectively rolling against a static value (the difficulty of the spot). If I've determined that one must make a perception roll at -40% to spot the trap, the player just rolls his perception skill as normal and if he makes it by 40% or more, he spotted the trap. If it's to spot/hear someone sneaking up on him, I roll my bad guy's skill and compare the results. If my bad guy make it by more, then the player failed to detect him. I don't want to clue the player in that someone's sneaking up on him by letting him know he's making an opposed roll, now do I? :twisted:
My process allows the exact same roll methodology to be used regardless of what type of roll the player is making. One method is always used. You ask a player to make a skill roll, and he always rolls and subtracts his roll from the skill and reports how much he made it by. As the GM you then figure out what the result of that roll is based on why you asked the player to roll in the first place. Once players get used to this, it becomes an incredibly simple process. They don't have to do different things in different situations, and they don't necessarily know why they're even rolling.
It's that flexibility of use that makes the process work well IMO. As a GM, it gives me the ability to manage more things behind the scenes, providing a more realistic game for my players to enjoy.
