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OP is butthurt about big numbers

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So I was reading the Eclipse Phase Rulebook, and noticed that the writers suggest using increments of five for abilities and skills, and a lot of derivative stats are calculated by dividing an ability score by five. Would it not be easier then to just use scores on a 1-20 scale and d20 instead of 1-100 scale and d100?
What is about 1-100 scale that make it so attractive to people?
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1-100 is not the same as 1-12, even in increments of 5.
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>>49619740
1-100 = -99
1-12 = -11
And -11 = -99 because imaginary numbers are not real.
Back2School with you, baka.
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I think it's because d100% is more intuitive, because the numbers are exactly what they represent. It's true that GMs of d100 games rarely or never use increments lower than 5, but a 65% tells you exactly what it is.

On a sidenote: Looking back at the games I've played or watched, rolling anything but over 10, 15 or 20 rarely comes up if not directly dictated by the rules. Is it just me, or do GMs heavily gravitate towards those numbers and barely use those in between?
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>>49619801
>I think it's because d100% is more intuitive, because the numbers are exactly what they represent
I am aware of this argument, but I never get it. How having a 65% chance is more intuitive than having 13 in 20 chance?
>Is it just me, or do GMs heavily gravitate towards those numbers and barely use those in between?
That's why I argue for using smaller scales, because most people would just use increments of five or ten anyway.
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>>49619838
I forgot to mention in D20 games. All I ever see there are 10, 15 or 20, anything in between is very rare.
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>>49619838
>I am aware of this argument, but I never get it. How having a 65% chance is more intuitive than having 13 in 20 chance?
Percentages show up much more in every day life. Scientific studies, polls, test grades, whatever. Most of the time if something is expressed as a X in Y chance, X is 1. Like "1 in 5 OPs are butthurt about big numbers". The only common deviation from this that comes to mind is "4 in 5 dentists recommend Colgate."
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>>49619801
The first one gives you fifty-fifty odds of succeeding so it's sorta hard, the second halves that so it's really hard, and the last is a longshot. Those are pretty simple and fast degrees of challenge to use, which is why they tend to crop up.
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>>49619700
Because Eclipse Phase was designed by fuckwits
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>>49619921
Yeah, I know, but it's not just Eclipse Phase.
Back when I was a middle-school fuckwit myself I played horrible homebrew RPGs with my friends, the games my friends designed used exclusively 1-100 scale for scores even though we had only d6 dices.
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>>49619700
For some reason, game designers are obsessed with percentiles.

Anima? d20 pretending to be percentile.

Call of Cthulhu? Could just as easily be d20 roll under.

I can only think of one game where the use of percentile dice actually added something Unknown Armies, specifically, but maybe there are more like it.
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At a glance odds and granular fine tuning. Why use a d20 when you can simulate it entirely and do more if you need to with a simple alternative?

The only thing it doesn't do simply, which a d20 also does not do, is create outcomes for central tendencies + deviations. But even systems that do this usually have tables, which is pretty much what you'd also do.
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I always found d100% more intuitive, but there's honestly no logical reason, that I can think of.

That being said, I'm playing Eclipse Phase soon, and I have only ever played other d100 games that -do- use numbers not divisible by 5. But even those do tend to stick to 5's and 10's when it comes to modifiers.

So all I can say is that I feel at home with the d100, much more than I would with d20's, and I feel that d100 is more intuitive, and arguably, the fact of the matter is that you -can- still have numbers that are not divisible by 5; something d20's just can't handle, I guess.

I'm a lot more confused by the fact that a result of 99 is always a success and a result of 00 (100) is always a failure. I'm so used to it being 1 and 00 (100).

Feels odd as hell to me, since I'd expect a 100 to always fail anyway, and a 1 to always succeed anyway, since low rolls are generally successful and high rolls are generally not.
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Made an Eclipse Phase General, if anyone is interdasted:

>>49622497
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>>49620282
>For some reason, game designers are obsessed with percentiles.

That reason is really basic, honestly - they want to be able to work out "the odds" fairly easily.

Now, this isn't always true or easy, but it feels that way, and therefore it's doing it's job. It ultimately doesn't matter if it's true or not, as long as it feels right.
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>>49619700
The big numbers that piss me off are these anime card games where health and attack power are always multiples of 1000. Like some guy with 3000 attack and 5000 health. It's not functionally any different than 3 or 5.
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>>49622573
>I always found d100% more intuitive, but there's honestly no logical reason, that I can think of.

Not having to multiply by 5 to get the odds is a good enough reason for most people. It's really not a big deal, but that tiny bit is enough to make d100% more intuitive to most.
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>>49622573
>So all I can say is that I feel at home with the d100, much more than I would with d20's, and I feel that d100 is more intuitive, and arguably, the fact of the matter is that you -can- still have numbers that are not divisible by 5; something d20's just can't handle, I guess.
But does it really matter whether the character has a score of 61 or 63? Using smaller scales not only simplifies the math and reduces the amount of space taken up by zeroes, but also lets every score raise feel meaningfull.
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>>49622765
Like I said, it just feeeeels like it's easier to tell the odds, even if it's not always true (some games use buttloads of modifiers and you never have time to really think of the odds by the end, you just roll, and you either succeed or fail; the GM may still adjust it even more after that, based on factors unknown to you).

It just feels better and even if that's a form of safety blanket, that's honestly enough of an argument.

I guess some people are the opposite; they are intimidated by the large (or many) numbers, think of it as math, and consider it cumbersome.

Neither is entirely right or wrong. I just like d100 better.
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>>49622827
>But does it really matter whether the character has a score of 61 or 63?

Bitch, it might.

Usually, you're entirely correct, of course. But I've had extremely important outcomes be decided by a single point here or there. Many times, even.

>Using smaller scales not only simplifies the math

It really doesn't. The math is still largely the same. And if we're dealing with steps of 5 (like the OP argued; not entirely true to the games I've played, like, at all) it becomes entirely moot.

>but also lets every score raise feel meaningfull.

Depends entirely on the system. Every system I've dealt with that used d100 used steps of 5 for increasing (or decreasing) points. Granted, this means that modifiers may matter even less, but the fact is that it would allow me as the GM to impose, say, a penalty of 1 for you having recently sprained an ankle or something.

Sometimes, you don't *want* every score change to feel energizing or debilitating. Sometimes, in the games I've played, there's cases where you gain or lose bonuses that are randomized, as in 1d10.

Assuming that 5 is the "feel meaningful" bracket, equal to the 1 in d20, this means that the event or effect can range from "barely anything; phew!" to "oh my god my leg, fuck, fuck, fuuuck!".

These ranges aren't as easily determined by a d20. You either lose 1 (equal to 5) or you lose 0, or you lose 10. There's no granularity. It's either nothing, meaningful, or massive. d100 gives you everything in-between.

Also
>amount of space taken up by zeroes
C'mon. I recognize your general argument, but that's just grasping at straws, man.
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>>49623275
You are right, yet I can't remember an instance in all the games of CoC, DH or BRP I played where a DM imposed a modifier <5 that didn't seem silly and pointless to everyone involved. Heck, the 1%-Joke-Modifier saw more use than anyone actually bothering seriously with a 2 or 3% modifier.
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>>49619700
For Eclipse Phase the system actually uses the D100 to make criticals work. When you roll dubs it's a critical result of success or failure depending on how the roll went. That wouldn't port over to D20 cleanly, and is one of the better parts of the system.

If a D% system doesn't have something like that it's hard to justify using. I personally like it because you *can* have more granular results, even if you don't usually use them. D20 can't really get more granular.
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>>49623967
Also the blackjack mechanic and the number flipping mechanics used by Moxie.
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>>49622573
>I'm a lot more confused by the fact that a result of 99 is always a success and a result of 00 (100) is always a failure. I'm so used to it being 1 and 00 (100).
But that's wrong. In EP, 99 is always a failure and 00 is always a success, because it is actually 00, and not 100.

Also, all doubles are crits, crit success if it's a success and crit fail if it's a fail. That's something you can't do with a d20, and also the only good mechanical innovation in EP.
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>>49623698
>DH

DH does make common use of d10 for effects, though. Sometimes, it's just not up to the GM.

That being said, I confess that it's not super-common or anything, generally speaking.

>>49624113
>But that's wrong. In EP, 99 is always a failure and 00 is always a success, because it is actually 00, and not 100.

Oooooooh, OK. I guess that makes sense. I was, again, simply assuming that 00 was 100. So Eclipse Phase runs 0-99, rather than 1-100.

>all doubles are crits
I remember that. Note, I haven't actually played Eclipse yet, I'm just learning the ropes and preparing to play it.

>That's something you can't do with a d20, and also the only good mechanical innovation in EP.

It's not entirely unheard of, though. WH40kRP uses doubles for certain effects, notably on some weapons and on when using psychic powers.

Whether it's good or bad comes down to if you want there to be a 10% chance of critical success/failure, though. A base 10% is fairly high, and it never changes.

It beats the shit out of WH40kRP:s feebling attempts at a good critical hit system, though. Man, from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to Dark Heresy 2, it's been all over the place, and none of it's worked well.

A blanket 10% to roll an extra dice or something would basically be a godsend in it's simplicity.
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>>49624493
>Whether it's good or bad comes down to if you want there to be a 10% chance of critical success/failure, though. A base 10% is fairly high, and it never changes.
d20 also has a 10% chance of critical success or failure, when such a thing applies.
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>>49623967
>I personally like it because you *can* have more granular results, even if you don't usually use them.

This, to me, is more than enough of a reason.

Sure, rolling that d10 to determine if you suffer 1 Agility Damage (potentially nothing) or 10 Agility Damage (debilitating) might not come up that often, but it's possible for that to be there at all, and it's a mechanical good that it's there.

D20-based systems just can't do that - at least not without rolling multiple dies and comparing to tables.

Also, many d100-systems use a lot of derived statistics. Such as in the case of the Agility, if, say, movement is derived from Agility (as is sometimes the case, for some awful reason), getting a -2, moving you from 31 to 29 Agility can be somewhat debilitating, despite the low score.

D20:s can't do that either. In d100:s, you often have two scores to use when determining overall stats, such as derived statistics - you can use both the tens and the singles, for different things.

Sure, as someone said, it might most-often come down to the singles digit, with the 10's essentially being padding, but with the 10's there, you can determine other things.

This also reminds me of the elegant (at least on paper, in play it's a bit of a hassle since a table needs to be consulted) way WH40kRP handles Hit Locations - you simply switch the singles and the 10's, and you get a semi-randomized hit location.

Can't do that with d20's.
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>>49624571
Yes, of course, I was just commenting on how Eclipse Phase supposedly does it. This really has nothing to do with d100 vs. d20.

The critical chance of any system is entirely debatable. There's many d100 systems that use different forms of different hits.

However, the fact that you -can- create such an elegant way to handle it as Eclipse Phase does, is thanks to d100.

I was merely questioning whether you really want to have a 10% critical chance or not. I personally think it sounds pretty high - but on the other hand, I'm used to WHFRP2 or WH40kRP, where the critical hits in combat aren't nearly as common or as intuitive, and there's no critical system for skill use at all.

I always treated the "always success" of 1 and "always failure" of 100 as "criticals", though; a far, far cry from 10%.
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