Objective and Subjective Ability Values

[Demetrio]

A typical generic foe, say 2nd level with str 14 and armed with a weapon inflicting d8 damage will do 6.5 damage/round. Let's round that up to 8 to allow for the odd crit. He has an attack bonus of +4.

If a combat character gets 10 hit points at level one and 5 hit points thereafter, at level 6 he'll have 35 hit points + whatever is granted from his Con bonus. Let's give him stats of 10 across the board so he has no bonuses at all, just as a benchmark. His defence will be +4. He'll be hit by the above generic foe half the time and thus takes a average of 4 points of damage each round. He is reduced to 0 HP in 9 rounds.

Now let's boost his Con to 18, giving him 24 more hit points. This prolongues his life by 6 rounds.

Reduce his Con back to 10 and give him Dex 18. He now is hit 30% of the time. Thus average damage per round suffered becomes 2.4 and so he falls in 15 rounds, prolonguing his life by 6 rounds.

Increase his Str to 18 instead and his parry goes up... with similar results...

So at Level 6 for a d10 based character, Con, Str and Dex balance out from a 'damage soak' pov but Str wins overall because it helps you put the enemy down and Dex is the runner up because it helps you hit first.

Of course at lower levels Con is relatively poor but at higher levels its importance increases because the bonus given by Str and Dex will remain flat (for a given value).

 

[Clovenhoof]

Clovenhoff you can't compare 1 point of defense as a 5% increase in survival with a 5% hp increase the same way

Actually yes, yes you can. It's a statistical model, the point of which is looking at the long run.

If we are going to simulate, let's do it properly:

Compare 2 level 10 builds. Let's say Borderer. One with 16 Dex, 12 Con, one with 12 Dex, 16 Con, both rolling average 6HP per level.

A: DD 18, 56HP
B: DD 16, 76HP

both getting attacked by a bloke with Attack +7, 10 damage,
so A would drop <1HP after an average 11.20 rounds
and B drops <1HP after an average 12.67 rounds.

So with the same amount of build points, B is 13% more endurant.

Of course this is a simplification, that's the point about models. There are possible regimes like - for example - an attacker with a very poor Attack but awesome Damage potential, which again can go both ways depending on the exact values.

@Ichabod,

Still, it's not so much Con being underrated that I would embrace as much as Dex being overrated and Str being broken.

That holds some truth. Even in D&D a racial Strength bonus was balanced against _two_ mental abilities (Half Orc) because Str helps Attack and Damage and Carrying Capacity and Special Attacks and whatnot.
And in Conan, it is even worse because Strength now also can help your Defense so the single most powerful stat just got yet more powerful.

Sorry, phone, more later.

 

[Demetrio]

It would be possible to reduce the overpowering nature of strength (excuse the pun) by saying that melee attack bonus and parry bonus were the lower of Str and Dex - on the grounds that coordination is as important as strength for these. Damage of course would remain the domain of Str as would carrying capacity.

The downside of this approach is that players tend to dislike a 'lower applies' mechanic.

And of course players could simply maximise Str and Dex but that would leave other stats perhaps rather lower than one might like.

 

[treeplanter]

Clovenhoof: read Demetrio post as he got it right. I did not say you were completly wrong. I just wanted to point out that a 5% increase in defense IS NOT equal to a 5% increase of HP in term of increase of survavibility.

Of course if you take the optimal exemple (at 10th level, when the Con is at is maximum effect and fitghing one-on-one) then It effectively as you pointed out increase your survavibility. But this IS NOT a general case.


In any case you should not determine your score by looking at number like this. If I want a tough guy I ll just put a High consitution to get lot of HP, and if I wanna play an agile Zingaran freebooter I'll put a high Dex. And if i wanna play the most feared sword master of Hyboria i'll put high dex to have a high Parry. So all of this fun number are in the end, pointless.

 

[Demetrio]

i'll put high dex to have a high Parry

Some might consider that a mistake as Parry is based on Strength...

So all of this fun number are in the end, pointless

No it's not. It might be for you if you don't care about bias in the system. It's fair enough for there to be variance in the utility of stats but for one to be as overwhelmingly important as Strength is worthy of some consideration as to whether that is merited I think. And also we have discovered that Con is more useful to a high level character than a low level one. Which one can take or ignore as one chooses but I find rather interesting.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Oh, it may indeed be that the situation is optimal for Con at level 10, that hadn't occured to me before.
So, if the stats are reasonably balanced in power, then it is also the best strategy to distribute your points in a balanced way (assuming you use point buy). Certain character preferences notwithstanding.

What I mean is: if you can allocate 12 Buy points between Con and Dex, you can get, for example:
Dex 14 & Con 14
Dex 10 & Con 16
Dex 16 & Con 10
so here the balanced distribution gives you the best combination.
That's also the "secret" of using races with Ability mods with Point Buy. To get the most out of it, buy your augmented stat never below 16 (unmodified 14) and your penalized stat never above 12 (unmodified 14).

 

[treeplanter]

yeah I meant Strenght

Well if I want to check each thing that don't work in every RPG i'm better doing another Math class than playing. The thing is if Strenght giving attack, damage and parry is such a problem in your game just say that finesse figther and archer add Dexterity for Damage when attacking? This way there will be no real bias between Strenght and Dex both will be mostly the same fithing stat. And then say initiative add Charisma or Wisdom instead of Dex (wich is not totally unlogical).

The thing is in the end it won't really matter if your character have 5% better survival or kill 5% more monster. the GM will adapt to that.

So yes it is pointless.

 

[Demetrio]

the GM will adapt to that

In my simple way I thought it might be a good thing for a GM (and players) to be familiar with the nuances and biases inherent in the system so he could take them into account. It's not compulsory, obviously. Neither is it pointless as you seem to believe.

 

[Demetrio]

Oh, it may indeed be that the situation is optimal for Con at level 10, that hadn't occured to me before.

Let's assume any attack coming in will do 10 points of damage on a successful hit and that for any given level the opponent has a 50% chance of hitting unless the character has increased str or dex.

Lets take stats at 10 except the stat we're boosting which will be 18 and assume we're considering a d10 hit dice character who rolls 5 for every extra hit dice roll.

Con 18, thus taking 5 damage every round on average.

Level 1: 14 hit points. Survives 3 rounds.
Level 2: 23 hit points. Survives 5 rounds.
Level 3: 32 hit points. Survives 7 rounds.
Level 4: 41 hit points. Survives 9 rounds.
Level 5: 50 hit points. Survives 10 rounds.
Level 6: 59 hit points. Survives 12 rounds.
Level 7: 68 hit points. Survives 14 rounds.
Level 8: 77 hit points. Survives 16 rounds.
Level 9: 86 hit points. Survives 18 rounds.
Level 10: 95 hit points. Survives 19 rounds.
Level 11: 98 hit points. Survives 20 rounds.
Level 12: 101 hit points. Survives 21 rounds.

Now with Con 10 and Str or Dex at 18 (and assuming best defence)he is hit 30% of the time and thus takes 3 points of damage on average each round.

Level 1: 10 hit points. Survives 4 rounds.
Level 2: 15 hit points. Survives 5 rounds.
Level 3: 20 hit points. Survives 7 rounds.
Level 4: 25 hit points. Survives 9 rounds.
Level 5: 30 hit points. Survives 10 rounds.
Level 6: 35 hit points. Survives 12 rounds.
Level 7: 40 hit points. Survives 14 rounds.
Level 8: 45 hit points. Survives 15 rounds.
Level 9: 50 hit points. Survives 17 rounds.
Level 10: 55 hit points. Survives 19 rounds.
Level 11: 58 hit points. Survives 20 rounds.
Level 12: 61 hit points. Survives 21 rounds.

So you were actually quite right, Con as 'death avoidance' is balanced at pretty much every level if foes tend to 'scale' in their ability to hit. I suspect though that if foes do not tend to scale then Con will be better at high levels as hits will be less frequent anyway - though I'm not certain of that.

Of course Str and Dex are still better picks because they aid other things.

then it is also the best strategy to distribute your points in a balanced way

Possibly. It might be best in fact to concentrate on Str and Con because you only need one method of defence and Str is better than Dex mechanically speaking. It might even be better just to concentrate on Str because if the stats are balanced from a death delaying pov Str 22 Con 10 Dex 10 should be as viable as Str 14 Con 14 Dex 14 and you'll inflict more damage (in fact it might be better because you don't have a 'defence redundancy' caused by having +2 dodge and +2 parry that cannot be used simulatneously, you have an optimised parry). This assumes we're just considering combat of course. Obviously there are other situations where the relative importance of stats changes.

 

[treeplanter]

Yeah but HP also help in harsh environnement suffocation or any kind of damage so if you check it that way HP increase more your survavibility than dex in this exemple. Also you should have taken 5.5 average hit point since it should sligthly change the math. But dex help in initiavite but you don t get the bonus on the first round ect...

 

[rabindranath72]

You might find this interesting. Never tried it, so I do not know how it works:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/bellCurveRolls.htm

 

[Demetrio]

The big problem I have with bell curve rolls, especially those involving 3 or more dice, is that they make the unlikely roll much more unlikely and thus make defeating tough foes (relatively speaking of course) much harder - this will tend to disadvantage pcs in fights with monsters. Clovenhoof's idea to substitute 2d10 is a less extreme version.

 

[rabindranath72]

Dragon Warrior has an interesting system which distinguishes between rolls done with d20 and rolls done with 2d10. From the rules it seems that when there is an active opposition (an "opposed check") then 2d10 are rolled. Characteristic checks are rolled on 1d20 instead. Combat works as an opposed check but with 1d20 (probably to model the inherent uncertainty of the whole process).
Also, for characteristics checks you only roll if your ability is less than the difficulty, otherwise you automatically succeed.
I find the system simple and elegant, and I think it could be ported to d20 Conan quite easily.

 

[Deleriad]

FWIW, I have always liked the old DC Heroes 2d10 system where if you roll doubles you roll again and add, however double 1 is a fumble no matter when you roll it.

It ends up as a hybrid bell-curve and scalar random effect; i.e large random effects can happen. If you used it you would have to define a critical result as one that beats a target number by a certain amount.

Anyway, back to the MRQ forums for me...