Query on tied skill rolls
- Thread starter Verisimilitude
- Start date
weasel_fierce
Mongoose
Opposed rolls in RQ3 are positively horrible.
Bandits ambushing the PC's have a stealth skill of 60% and succeed in their roll.
The PC's now have a chance of "appropriate skill minus 60" to succeed.
Personally, I think you should stop smoking the carpet. Fumes you know.
I love RQ 2 and 3 as much as everyone else, but face it, if Chaosium had the rights, we'd see a book every 15 years. If Avalon Hill had the rights, we'd have a supplement every 4 months, and they'd all suck.
Mongoose have refreshed some of the tedious things, gotten Glorantha going for Runequest again, and are putting out stuff.
Maybe Im wrong. Maybe the "roll high" on opposed rolls is exactly what reveals the agreement with Mongoose and Wizards of the Coast.
Maybe you're just disgruntled because noone publishes RQ3 anymore, and you feel offended by someone playing a game that you dont like.
Bandits ambushing the PC's have a stealth skill of 60% and succeed in their roll.
The PC's now have a chance of "appropriate skill minus 60" to succeed.
Personally, I think you should stop smoking the carpet. Fumes you know.
I love RQ 2 and 3 as much as everyone else, but face it, if Chaosium had the rights, we'd see a book every 15 years. If Avalon Hill had the rights, we'd have a supplement every 4 months, and they'd all suck.
Mongoose have refreshed some of the tedious things, gotten Glorantha going for Runequest again, and are putting out stuff.
Maybe Im wrong. Maybe the "roll high" on opposed rolls is exactly what reveals the agreement with Mongoose and Wizards of the Coast.
Maybe you're just disgruntled because noone publishes RQ3 anymore, and you feel offended by someone playing a game that you dont like.
weasel_fierce
Mongoose
Loz said:
In fact, Pendragon did that before there was a D20 system. Surely proof of malign intentions!
Who knew the tendrils of WOTC reached so far
Trifletraxor
Mongoose
frogspawner said:
Hehehehe!!! Legendary abilities, here we come! (and could we have some classes please?)
Loz said:
The BRP opposed rolls were somewhat lacking. I fully agree to that. Another system is needed, but the roll very low or roll high system rubs me the wrong way. It's not intuitive. It works, but still don't like it. I would even prefer roll over or roll lowest below skill, as the D100 roll then at least is consistent.
GiannaVacca said:
Read: Legendary Abilities. 8)
SGL.
Baron Meliadus
Mongoose
Heck, why is it so difficult to simply place the critical range at the top end of the skill percentage? I have a skill of 60%, thus if I roll a 55-60 then its a critical. It doesn't take much mental effort.
However, for those people who obviously cannot handle simple mathematics, you could always just drop the whole concept of the Critical entirely. After all it was only used by BRP to resolve tied contests, by introducing levels of success.
The MRQ rule of highest successful roll, completely bypasses the necessity of having levels of success. Succeed or fail - how more elegant do you need it to be? Still want extra special results? Well just make them spend a hero point to bump the normal result to something heroic...
It all seems so simple to me.
However, for those people who obviously cannot handle simple mathematics, you could always just drop the whole concept of the Critical entirely. After all it was only used by BRP to resolve tied contests, by introducing levels of success.
The MRQ rule of highest successful roll, completely bypasses the necessity of having levels of success. Succeed or fail - how more elegant do you need it to be? Still want extra special results? Well just make them spend a hero point to bump the normal result to something heroic...
It all seems so simple to me.
Baron Meliadus said:
The problem is that by doing this you add more complexity than was removed by "roll high wins" rule.
I think it would be interesting to "normalize" the rule and use the 10s of the d100 roll as a "degree of success".
If the roll is under (Skill/10), read the "0" as a "10".
For skills above 100, add 1 to DoS for every 10 points above 100.
With this rule, you could simply use DoS for various usage :
*Damage = DoS+weapon offensive modifier
*Damage negated by a parry = DoS + weapon defensive modifier
*When opposed, highest DoS wins (ties resolved by comparing the units)
And so on...
Loz
Mongoose
Baron Meliadus said:
Because degrees of success represent quality of success, and that's an important distinction. It's what differentiates a craftsman from a jobaday joiner. It's what differentiates Jimmy Page from someone who's learning to play from 'Chord a Day'. It adds depth to the rather soulless exercise of dice rolling and adds a degree of meaning to the numbers.
Yes, you can use Hero Pts to bump a success upwards. But you've got a finite amount of Hero Points and that's no way to reflect depth of talent and ability to produce a quality result. What happens when you run out? Would Jimmy Page suddenly start fluffing the guitar solo to 'Stairway to Heaven'? Would the craftsman suddenly forget to sharpen his chisels? They wouldn't because they're experienced practitioners of their craft. They might play guitar or carve a chair leg less well on some days, but they wouldn't necessarily fail at it, and their mediocre efforts are always likely to be better than someone who's just learning the ropes.
Sorry, a long-winded answer to make a simple point!
Also, advocating dropping crits AND lauding Hero Point bumps doesn't seem exactly consistent... What are you bumping to, if you don't have a crit? Are crits only available with Hero Points in such a system?
And crits were never used to resolve ties in BRP. Tied crits were still a possibility.
- Q
And crits were never used to resolve ties in BRP. Tied crits were still a possibility.
- Q
duncan_disorderly
Mongoose
Trifletraxor said:
It is for me.
You have a skill of 80% and a chance to Critical of 8%
If you roll between 1 and 8 then you Critical - the higher your roll between 1 and 8 the better your critical is, should that prove to be important.
If you didn't roll between 1 and 8 then you didn't critical. If, none the less you rolled 80 or less you succeeded. The higher you rolled the better you succeeded, should this prove to be important.
If you are comparing two (or more) rolls then criticals always beat normal success, regardless of the number rolled.
This means (1) the rule for comparing criticals is the same as the rule for comparing successes
(2) No maths is involved (or at least, anyone who has dificulty in determining if one number is higher or lower than another is still going to find this easier than having to subtract one number from another to determine the degree of success)
(3) Favours the more skilled participant, since he can roll criticals that the less skilled particpant can't beat and successes that the less skilled parcipant can only beat by criticalling.
Trifletraxor said:
The roll is consistent. The higher the number below the target the better.
You are rolling one set of dice and comparing them against the Critcal chance and the Success chance, and applying the same rule to both.
Trifletraxor
Mongoose
Loz said:
In the old RQ, opposed skill rolls was never that much of an issue. Basically, you only had the perception vs. stealth roll, which RQ4 handled pretty well. Stat vs. stat went to the resistance table. It's only with the MRQ approach were all the stat rolls are exchanged for skills this has become a real issue.
Loz
Mongoose
I think that's true to an extent. I think more opposed rolling is also advantageous and could, arguably, be used more. A project I've been working on, for instance, requires some negotiation between sorcerers and creatures conjured into existence. Using an opposed roll of an appropriate negotation skill against the creature's Persistence is a very good way of determining whether or not that creature obeys the command it's been given, ignores it, or runs amok.
Similarly with offensive spells, pitting the caster's Runecasting against the opponent's Persistence in an opposed test is (to me at least) much more satisfactory than matching Magic Points or POW on a resistance table, or making simple unopposed rolls to counter the magic. It pits depth of skill against depth of resistance quite neatly.
Baron Meliadus
Mongoose
The quality of the success can be interpreted in other ways. In your eyes it appears that a Jimmy Page performance is the equivalent of rolling a critical, whereas the 'Chord a Day' learner merely rolls a success.
Unfortunately, giving such examples means that Mr Page needs a play guitar skill of nearly 1000%, since whenever he plays live his admittedly excellent performances are pretty consistent. Is he a man who always rolls a crit?
In my eyes, he is a man who has mastery of his instrument, indicating his skill is over 100%. Is is his base skill which demonstrates his excellence... not the fact that he rolls a crit.
Personally as I've grown older and more experienced, I have begun to consider critical successes to be a rather arbitrary and frankly illogical result. Even the core BRP rules has no truly definitive model of exactly what they do or should represent. Was every Picasso the result of a crit? If that was the case, where is the other 90% of his work which were merely successes? The BRP/MRQ mathematical model makes the result of skill use weirdly random.
My way of thought nowadays is that your base skill shows what kind of result you can produce... not the success level of your roll. Beginning Goldsmiths with 33% in Jewellery Making do not produce Fabergé Eggs three percent of the time. Master Goldsmiths with 100% in Jewellery Making make Fabergé Eggs every single time.
I only placed the spend a hero point suggestion in there for people who like to have superhuman results in their games. 8)
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was that crits were part of a five tier success level system designed to alleviate continually tied results.
Trifletraxor
Mongoose
Loz said:
Not sure if I agree. Pitting your skill at casting a spell against someones skill at resisting spells, isn't really that more saticefying than pitting strength of will against strength of will. (I've used to match POW vs. POW though, not MP vs. MP)
SGl.
Loz
Mongoose
Erm, no. He'll roll a crit more often than Chord a Day man, but his 'normal' success range is beyond Chord a Day man's. Even his standard successes will be better. Critical's don't really enter into it.
Consider the opposed roll position in a Page/Chord a Day play-off. Page has Guitar at 100%. Chord a Day at 30%. Jimmy rolls a 97 - a success, but not a crit. Chord a Day rolls 20 - a success, but no crit. Jimmy has the far higher roll and plays a blinder without needing to roll a crit. For Jimmy, that's just a level of his trained expertise. Chord a Day man's good, and he certainly didn't hit a bum note, but he's got a way to go before he reaches Jimmy status.
And base skill is an indication of raw talent, not trained talent. Practice, as they say, makes perfect.
Hey - at least we agree on Jimmy Page's guitaring skills! Note sure I'd go as high as 1000% mind you...
Baron Meliadus
Mongoose
Meliadus started his mile long walk up the stairs towards king-emperor Huon's globe throne. Cursing each and every step, and dreading the response he would receive once he reached the top...
*Cough, cough*
"Your divine majesty, I believe that your last explanation was both overly long and quite unnecessary..."
Meliadus paused briefly, expecting to be cut down by hidden flame lances. After several heartbeats he took breath and pushed impulsively on.
"My initial response was to the paragraph where you stated;"
"...which suggested to me that you equated the two different examples of quality to two different levels of success. Forgive my presumption in pointing own flaws in your own oration."
With that, the Baron bowed low, grinned whilst his lord and master could not see his face and swept round to descend the thousand damned stairs once more. Now if only he could roll a critical against his strategy skill to locate and destroy those damned Straw Dogs for once and for all... :twisted:
*Cough, cough*
"Your divine majesty, I believe that your last explanation was both overly long and quite unnecessary..."
Meliadus paused briefly, expecting to be cut down by hidden flame lances. After several heartbeats he took breath and pushed impulsively on.
"My initial response was to the paragraph where you stated;"
"...which suggested to me that you equated the two different examples of quality to two different levels of success. Forgive my presumption in pointing own flaws in your own oration."
With that, the Baron bowed low, grinned whilst his lord and master could not see his face and swept round to descend the thousand damned stairs once more. Now if only he could roll a critical against his strategy skill to locate and destroy those damned Straw Dogs for once and for all... :twisted:
