CONFESSIONS THREAD: D&D is a piece of shit and the d20 is

I have a secret to ppl who dont like d20's. Roll 3d6 instead.

Done.

Does not fix dnd tho, but its atleast better than using d20

By "confession" you mean hackneyed expression of an incredibly common sentiment on /tg/?

These threads are always good and the in-depth discussion is top notch.

>>50760714
every day until your right!

It's definitely more game than simulation, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Please just fuck off already, you retarded troll.

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When I discovered Fantasy HERO. June of 1986. Why do you ask?

>>50760714
How would you build an interesting psionic level 1 character for a one shot with premade characters, to be played by noobs?

>>50760714
Only True AD&D is not garbage. You have unfortunately focused on inferior false editions like 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 5.0, Pathfinder, d20, and the like. Only True editions are Canon, only True editions grant you XP and gold in real life.

Only through True AD&D can you know true power and pleasure. True AD&D — 2nd Edition, 1st Edition, BD&D, OD&D — these are the stuff of legend, the stuff of Truth. Know these editions and you shall know religious ecstasy.

>>50761099
I don't see how going from a 5% chance per side to a 5.5% chance with a minimum of 16.5% success rather than 5% changes anything. d20 resolution isn't even the problem with the d20 system.

If you really take issue with the d20, use d% roll under. Suggesting 3d6 to people who hate d20 when they're almost fundamentally the same thing is absurd.

I like D&D but I can't keep track of the mechanics. Even shit like rolling initiative I look at my notes every goddamn time.

My group must think I'm a fucking idiot.

Are there flash cards that I can use?

>>50762647
>4.0, 5.0
stop

>>50760714
>confessions thread
>starting with a picture posted on /tg/ for what feels like half a decade
Wow such a crazy confession!

I try not to filter people for disagreeing with me but this isn't even an argument anymore. Every thread with this OP winds up to be pure garbage. Filtering this pic's md5 and I suggest that everyone else, regardless of opinion on D&D, do the same

But D&D isn't garbage, Anon. It's not to everyone's tastes, but it's a game that does reasonably well at what it tries to do for most editions out there.

But holy shit, I learned d20 Modern was garbage around the time I realized my houserules reworked half of the mechanics.

>Figure out how to easily convert D&D monsters into system of your choice
>Play D&D with mechanics you enjoy
It's surprisingly easy to roughly convert monsters, I'm actually managing it for a D6 Fantasy game. After the mechanics and crunch is nailed down, the rest fairly quickly falls into place.
I do think D&D is still a good game though.

>>50762647
AD&D was shit back in the day and it's even worse now because there are actually good systems to compare it to.

>>50762654
>d20
>every result is equally likely
>3d6
>bell curve probability, with a concentration around 10.5
It's like you don't try anon

>>50762884
Fucking make me you false edition heretic

>>50763390
How fortunate for you, then, that you were able to resist pencil & paper RPG systems all throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in order that you could finally embrace them in the new millennium. Truly you are enlightened and not a little baby child who wasn't there and doesn't know shit.

>>50763502
AD&D has nothing going for it other than the nostalgia of grognards.

>>50763532
If only it could be wholly comprised of a couple rulebooks like your modern, perfect RPGs rather than comprising tens of thousands of pages of superlative material printed over the course of many decades.

>>50763268

Hey colton, you horsefucker.

When I found Rifts and discovered I have more fun with worse systems.

>>50760714
When I learned what linear probability is and how it impacts outcome variance. 5E with 3d6+2 is p legit. Bell curve probability plus bounded accuracy and advantage/disadvantage is an interesting combo.

The 2 step system of 'to hit/damage' can be such drudgery as well.

I think the main grievance with the d20 system is its' rigidity. It doesn't help explain the projected reality, but rather binds the projected reality to its' mechanical limitations. Because of the nature of the 'roll over' mechanic with the specificity of the character customization options you're very limited in what you can do.

Then you throw in the godawful prerequisite combat feat system and the ship is decimated.

In pathfinder you can only choke up on a reach weapon if you're a fighter of some arbitrary archetype. Basic warfare and combat physics are denied completely to keep its' grid combat system inherently 'balanced'- for a PvE game.

Also, STR mod to damage for melee weapons and DEX mod to ranged weapons is apalling; if anything they should be switched.

How are people still giving this retard the time of day?

>>50760714
Only reason I'm playing L5R is because everyone else in my group wanted to. I made a Shugenja thinking it would be like a mage, just asian. I don't like it or the system very much.

I liked Mk II Warmachine and Mk III looks like complete dog shit to me. Only reason I'm considering playing is because I haven't played in several years and I have just enough models that I should be able to adapt to the new rule set. I'm going to give it a chance and play a few games (probably 10) before I decide if I want to keep playing or drop it completely.

I really want to run a Shadowrun 5e campaign but I don't know if I will have the time and I know for a fact that I will use the modules rather than creating stuff myself.

I want to run a Iron Kingdoms campaign even more but I only know of a few missions and a conversion for the Witchfire Trilogy. Not enough for a multi-year, in real time, campaign.

Hell, speaking of gaming companies in general, I'm worried where Privateer Press and WoTC are going. I really like Warmachine/Hordes and Iron Kingdoms but I've been hearing some pretty questionable shit going on there. Some staff members I knew and liked don't work there anymore, some other shit has happened. All I've seen for MTG is utter bullshit. I mean standard was always pay to win but now it's fucking ridiculous. I've even started seeing this infect EDH. It's like they're going full GW and ruining everything they touch. Almost seems bad enough for me to go full /v/ and /k/.

I hate AD&D and I am still glad 3.0/3.5 killed it.

>>50764376
3d6 requires you to really, really, really need to eyeball monsters, though. Doing stuff like fighting 18 AC monsters at low levels is going to be completely fucking retarded and completely reliant on getting advantage to have any chance of hitting them at all, and GWM and Sharpshooter's primary effects might as well be useless under 3d6.

>>50760714

The d20 System isn't D&D, OP.

Since you've clearly never actually played D&D, I recommend that you give it a try before leveling judgement. Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord are the most accessible clones out there; go ahead, go play. We'll wait.

>>50760714
>When did you realize /tg/ was garbage?
FTFY

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>>50761099
>I have a secret to ppl who dont like d20's. Roll 3d6 instead.

Fucking this.

>These threads are always good and the in-depth discussion is top notch.
This is my first thread...

>>50762654
3d6 and 1d20 are not the same thing.

http://anydice.com/program/a2f
See picture attached

>>50764815
Sure, an unforeseen consequence is that advantage is needed more and that disadvantage is also a bit more powerful.

Hand them out more liberally! Use the inspiration system! Make 'em roleplay for their lives!

>>50760714
Actually it was D&D that made me not ever want to play PnP because of how it worked. GURPS was my first PnP. Then I switched to Shadowrun 4th ed and pretty much ran that for 3 years straight.

>>50760714
I don't particularly think D&D is particularly more garbage than any other system that has mainstream appeal. I favor FATE and other narrative driven, streamlined games, but while DnD is weighted down heavily by its mechanics, it's also got the support to pull it off. Items, monsters, loads of classes and supplementary material, there's enough there to support the game to prevent gameplay from becoming too bogged down or overwhelming to prepare for. Yes, there are issues with balance across editions, but when you're dealing with such large and diverse systems, things fall through the cracks and a good DM can fix those problems as they come up.

FATE on the other hand is super streamlined and fun to play, but it also puts a whole lot of the responsibility to making it interesting and balanced on the players. At best it's a framework and that requires dedication. The base game isn't really robust enough to support something has crunch on the level of say, forgotten realms to reflect uniquely in the mechanics. Instead it would end up as a weak generic aspect that would only differ in fluff.

So yeah, DnD is garbage at some things, but so are most game systems. They have to be doing something right though, because they're still around, aren't they?

>>50760714
Relatively new to /tg/ but I've been playing D&D 4e with my friends for almost two years now. What is wrong with it exactly?

>>50767061
If you haven't tried any other system then you won't understand why D&D is bad.

Just give a couple systems a whirl and you'll quickly get it.

>>50767061
>4e
You're either trolling or a fool. Either way, lurk moar.

>>50767061
If you're having fun, nothing

I personally didn't enjoy my time with 4e and prefer 5e by a large margin, but I'm not gonna yuck your yum.

I've tried a few other systems but I just keep coming back to D&D

My friend tried to put me onto the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games but those dice pool mechanics were just way to faggotty for my taste

>>50766851
>FATE

jump off a bridge holy shit

>>50766586
I played Fantasy Age/Dragon Age before D&D and I find myself missing the 3d6 system often. What other decent RPGs use it?

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>>50767127
Stirring argument there, friend. Is this the part where I respond with "no u" and post some sort of witty reaction image?

>>50767082
>>50767101
It's the first and only system we've ever used simply because we didn't know of any other systems.

Is it just the dice rolling that is bad? It always seemed pretty straight forward to me. What other systems are there?

>>50760714
>At first blush 3.5's item creation system looks pretty good, but it's swingy as fuck, and tends to break - in both directions - when doing anything interesting.
>Example: Trying to make a potion pouch that allows you to make Witcher 3-style potions costs hundreds of thousands of gp, despite it requiring materials, taking time, and having a hard limit on potions available per day based on how powerful the potions you want are.
>On the other hand, you can gain, "fast healing," that only works outside of combat for 1,000 gp - 500 gp if you make it yourself - using cure minor wounds. It works once a round as a standard action, and restores 1 hp on use. Use it once a round out of combat to emulate fast healing 1, or in combat to end effects that can be ended by gaining 1 hp or more.

I use Mutants & Masterminds now. Statting stuff as Equipment or Devices is just as easy as statting it as a power and costs less.

>>50767210
The dice rolling isn't bad, GURPSfags are just obsessed with bell curves.

>>50767169
that would be nice, yes

>>50767210
Oh no. The way it constructs the systems doesn't appeal to me, but if you're having fun, by all means. Try out other systems in the future, but 4e is a fine introduction.

I was more referencing to all the strife 4e has created on /tg/, which you can still see today almost every time 4e is brought up, hence LURK MOAR.

>>50760714
My confession is that I find system-advice from /tg/ to be utterly devoid of any kind of merit or value. Because I play games for fun and the playing of them makes them fun. And the rules of the absolute best game possible would contribute little to that, and the rules of the worst game possible wouldn't take that much away.

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>>50767255
Very well.

>>50767127
>He doesn't like streamlined systems that are perfect for testing original settings and character high concepts, and playing more relaxed sessions that spend 4 hours on combat that had to get brought over from the last session because you had random encounter with five goblins.
No U

>>50767287
Remember when /tg/ shilled fantasycraft 2 or 3 years ago?

I am very hesitant to ever buy a game recommended here.

>>50760714
D&D is a great system. It's no Dungeon World, but you can't expect it to be. It's an idea from the 80s after all.

>>50767345
Ehh I've had fun with fantasy craft.
However I bought it before ever hearing about it on /tg/.

>>50764376
how do you score a critical? just asking as regards the current 5% chance to crit/ auto miss. don't know the probability of throwing 3 6s or 3 1s but pretty sure is way less than 5%.

>>50767345
And now Dungeon World (>>50767377
happened while I was typing this)? Yes. I don't understand why people keep stating these "let's fight about system" threads.

Sure, ok: there are genuinely bad games out there. They aren't hard to recognize.

Virtually every other opinion is based on "I had fun playing this system, and it has colored my opinion of it." There isn't an objective measure of the superior game. It is all going to come down to who you play it with and how you play it together..

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DnD 5e is my favorite system.

Such simplicity, such grace.

I've played dozens of different systems, starting with Pathfinder which is actual garbage, Paranoia, Shadowrun 3 4 and 5, A Song of Ice and Fire RP, Bounty Head Bebop, homebrewed modern systems, and every DnD from Advanced to 5e.

Nothing comes close to the beauty of 5e. The classes are diverse and have distinctive flavors and feels without being unbalanced, the combat is swift yet feels dramatic and powerful, and it has all of the monsters and magic items and spells we all know and love. The system has support, with new material coming out every week, and thats just from the developers, let alone the cornocopia of homebrewed material.

Have an inspiration, OP, for sucking cock magnificently.

>>50767388
It's extremely rare to crit with that system. You could even make it so that a 19-20 is the crit range and it's probably way less than 5% probability, speaking out of my ass.

But you don't roll straight 3d6, it's 3d6+2, so the range is from 5-20. If you did do crit fail, it'd be triple ones. There's different ways to do it, I mean salt to taste, you're already houseruling the core resolution mechanic at this point.

>>50767388
So you would then reward crits with bigger gains, like an auto kill or something. That's what I'd do if it wasn't egregiously improbable to the situation.

>>50767241
My group's been using Mutants and Masterminds for fantasy, supers, and horror for a while now. We switched the base D20 to 2d10 and never looked back. It's not perfect but with it's pretty good with only the bare minimum of house rules needed.

As for Dungeons & Dragons being shit, I grew up with the light red box and 1st Edition AD&D, and it simply broke too much fucking ground to be shit. Have some respect for the first generation games that paved the way.

>>50767681
Paving the way does not excuse its flaws now. We don't hold up stone clubs as the epitome of weapon design just because they were where we started.
If people use stone clubs, making it themselves and surviving with it, then we go "wow, that person is able to survive with nothing but his wits and a basic tool".

If someone plays 1st edition, we go "wow, that's a group actually playing first edition, having fun despite the system he's using".

When I found out that there was a good chunk of the player base that disregard levels as a sort of balancing mechanic, and believe that casters, by default, should always be better than martials, although levels are frequently the balancing mechanic for encounters.

The other thing, D&D players playing nothing but or branching out. I consider D&D to be the first step into the roleplaying hobby, but rather than trying new systems for different feels of games, it ends up cut-and-pasted into every possible genre with the D20 system. D20 Fantasy games... Forever. No WoD, No CoC, no Dark Heresy, No anything.

Only endless D&D.

>>50767132
The only one I know off that uses 3d6 is Ops and Tactics and that system is autistic as fuck.

>>50767846
Fuck off and stop polluting /tg with your narrative bullshit faggotry. Go choke on a dick.

Play OSR and learn that not all DnD is 3.5. There's nothing wrong with a d20 as a standard roll, making a curve just waters down the randomness.

>>50767887
That's because WotC set a precedent for making a splat-book, or optional rules, for everything that they noticed that their fanbase enjoyed. Horror a la Call of Cthulhu? Heroes of Horror. Playing as werewolves or vampires? Savage Species level adjustment buy-off and/or Libris Mortis. Etc.

It just... it became prolific.

>>50767132
GURPS is 3d6 roll under

>>50760714
>A single d20 roll is almost entirely unsuited when dealing with tasks in which someone demonstrates competence.

So the issue isnt DnD, It's that you have a shitty DM. Why are you rolling on things that you demonstrate competence in? Your DM shouldn't make you roll a strength check every time you open a door. You roll when multiple outcomes are just as likely. If it's uncertain if your base skills could overcome this particular obstacle, you roll a die.

>>50760714
I want to buy and scan/run Eoris at some point in the near-ish future

>>50762679
This is bait

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>>50767210

4th ed doesn't get a good reputation on the board for the shitstorms it brought up, combined with flaws in the system itself (D&D is a very combat heavy game, and 4th edition is much more combat focused than other D&D versions). This doesn't mean that roleplay can't happen, but it's not facilitated by the rules as well as it could be. Plus, there's a fair amount of homogenization of the classes in an attempt to balance them out (previous editions of D&D would have huge power variances between the classes, and this gap was slightly closed).

I actually regret saying this a bit because if you're enjoying the campaign you're in and the player's your running a game with, you should feel no need to change. While I personally don't care for D&D (or Pathfinder, for that matter), they're still good games, especially for newer players.

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>>50769560
>homogenization of the classes
This meme again.

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>>50760714

>>50767132
The Swedish RPG Eon does, if you know Swedish its prolly the best realistic fantasy game out there

>>50767927
spot the grognard

>>50771362
Spot the faggot.

Every time I decide to go back into painting models/terrain I buy 100-150 dollars of new stuff and never finish it all. I have an ever increasing backlog of models and terrain/buildings

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>>50766586

I don't get it. Why is the d20's line completely straight? I mean I get that rolling three separate dice can hold a probability different to a d20, (The minimum is three, and the added dice can make for certain numbers to appear over others) but can it really change the rolls up that much?

At that point aren't you making the dice rolls goes from random to a more centralized result? If you can hit the monster on a 9 to 12 you're going to be hitting much more often than on a D20, where as before it was roughly half and half miss or hit. On that same token if you're having trouble hitting something, rolling to hit is going to be that much harder to do.

>>50771575
It's in order to make things nore consistent via bell curve. You know, simple probability? Average rolls (9-12) are much more common than extreme rolls (1 or 20) with this method.

>>50767846
System does not matter. The Forge lied to you. Their conclusions are unfounded, and the only attempt to empirically quantify this did not provide anything to evidence this assertion

>>50760714
"Hurr, I don't like random chance, even though I can control the minimum results through distribution of skill points."

Git gud.

>>50764477
There's a few butthurt guys who will bump this thread because they NEED to feel like they're doing something to reduce D&D's popularity, or they otherwise start to worry about things like their dead end lives.

>>50772006
It's not like Shadowrun or WoD where the bonuses translates to another die (and thus, another opportunity to gain a success) being rolled. In a d20 system, the bonuses are always placebos because the biggest bonus you'll receive, and the thing that will determine your success overall, is the d20 in and of itself, not the bonuses.

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>>50766586
>3d6 and 1d20 are not the same thing.
When you're using a roll-under system it doesn't matter. In this case, the probability distribution is not relevant. The CUMULATIVE distribution is what matters, and furthermore the cumulative distribution can be freely stretched or squashed linearly without changing the behavior of the dice. In this case the standard deviation of 3d6 is almost exactly half that of 1d20, making it very easy to swap between a 1d20 and 3d6.

3d6 to 1d20: Double all modifiers; ex. a +2 bonus becomes a +4 bonus, and a +5 bonus becomes a +10 bonus. Also double the distance of each DC from 10.5; ex. a DC 11 check becomes DC 12, DC 20 becomes DC 29.
1d20 to 3d6: Halve all modifiers, and halve the distance of each DC from 10.5.

While the probabilities of success aren't exactly equal with these conversions, they're within 2 percentage points, which is a tiny difference. There are absolutely criticisms that can be made about D&D, but its choice of 1d20 over 3d6 isn't one of them.

http://anydice.com/program/a244
See picture attached.

>>50772115
In a d20 system, you can always acquire a large enough bonus that a roll on the d20 becomes irrelevant. For example, a character with +15 to a skill will never fail at a DC 16 skill check. On the other hand, if a higher bonus means more dice, there is never a guarantee of success, and the thing that determines your success overall are the d6s in and of themselves, not the bonuses.

>>50772426
There's always systems like Scion where you can accrue auto-successes.

>>50772426
The more dice you're rolling, the more likely you are to succeed, or at least not fail.

For example, compare a dice pool of 4d6 to a dice pool of 20d6.

In the former (assuming SR rules), if I roll two [1]'s, then I glitch. If I roll two [1]'s and no successes, I critically glitch.

However, if I were rolling 20d6 instead, I'd need to roll ten [1]'s to glitch or ten [1]'s or no successes in order to critically glitch.

Each die has a 33.33% chance of coming up as either [5] or [6] and you also have the option of spending edge to reroll and [6]'s that you rolled.

Not to mention, you can also just forgo rolling and just take an automatic success for every 3 dice you would've rolled as well.

In a d20 system on the other hand, what a [1] signifies differs from table to table. In fact, some will still rule a crit fumble on skill checks just because it still gives a chance for failure.

>>50767388
I'd steal GURPS crits: crit on 17-18 and fail on 3-4.

>it's another my system than your system episode
Fucking pathetic.

>>50760714
5e introduced me to tabletop.
It's the only system I know well enough to DM for.
I like D&D's fantasy kitchen sink aesthetic.

>>50760714
Well, mechanically, TDE is much more accurate, but it involves rolling 3 dices for every most checks, and attacks can be thwarted by parries.

It's a lot slower.

D&D is really good for... combat. I feel that d20's curve is way more fun for combat situations than a bell curve would be, and it's even far easier to balance encounters that way.

It's just that no D&D ruleset was ever designed to do non-combat stuff as more than an afterthought, though (except for magic)

That's not really a confession, but I agree. The d20 shines in combat encounters, but it's annoying for skill resolution. Skill resolution is the most annoying thing in any edition of D&D, and they should have always kept proficiency rules as optional.

>>50772929

4e is actually infinitely better when you use 3d6 and whiffs become less frequent.

5e is built mostly to play around d20 statistics and works fine.

3.x and Pathfinder are clusterfucks in which the dice don't matter once you are doing meaningful stuff, unless you're unoptimized, and then the dice are all that matter.

>>50772929
TSR D&D has a bunch of exploration mechanics, probably in equal proportion to combat. And the exploration is far more common at the table due to the speed of combat.

>>50760714
I never really played DnD
I did play with a group who played exlusively DnD though.
They were kind of veterans, they said they started with 3.0 and played it, because it was the only thing on the shelves.
As time went on, they started to remove the useless shit, "(...)like health points, because it doesn't work like that in real life, some tables because they were crap..."

When started playing with the they have long stopped playing the system and moved to freeform.
Those stubborn fuckers decided not to switch to something better, but to remove all the bad from DnD.
And all that remained of it was the "name" prompt on the character sheet.

>>50772950
Should've been done like GURPS.

Hear me out.

In OSR games I would usually do success rolls as d20+ability score v.s. 20. Unless there was a real skill system like LMFOP. You got two rolls take highest if it was something relevant to your class.

Skills could "default" to attribute - 5 then be increased with skill points or something of that sort. Would keep things bounded. So at 1st level rogue might have 13 in Stealth despite Dex of 15 but that's better than your average Dex 15 person would still have Stealth at 9.

Something to consider. Probably a fucking terrible idea but I loved how GURPS handled skills, I just didn't like the boringness of 3d6 quite as much.

>>50772115
So what, you'd rather try for probability than have the bottom line of what you're capable of automatically be higher while also increasing the upper limits of what you could possibly do?

It may not be perfect, but it's closer to what actually getting better at skills is like.

>>50760714
i never did. my two friends ruined the game for me.

one always made chaotic stupid fuckboys that always had to be the center of attention & really wanted us to play his GoT fanfic as a campaign

the other was a guy who was too afraid to leave his comfort zone and rather than learn a ruleset that's suits his needs more than DnD he just houseruled DnD to give it more "depth".

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>>50761533
So we can ship you off to the Near Death Star.

>>50772055
Oh, Richard's ban expired again.

>>50771575
>I don't get it. Why is the d20's line completely straight?
How many ways can you roll a 10 on a d20? Only one, by rolling a 10. Same as a 20, or a 1, or anything else.

How many ways can you roll a 10 on 3d6? Well, you could roll a 3, a 3 and 4. Or a 3, a 2 and a 5. Or a 6, a 2 and a 2, etc.

But you can still only roll an 18 one way (three 6s), and a 3 one way (three 1s).

>>50760714
largely I just hold the book behind the DM screen and make it up as I go along

>>50775181
Yet in most editions, a dude who has no fighting experience still has a chance of hitting the level 20 badass warrior just because he rolled a [20] and the badass can trip and gouge his own eye out because he rolled a [1].

That and a person can achieve the same effect as someone rocking a +20 to their roll based solely on the fact that they got lucky. Doesn't even matter if they have no ranks or anything in it, they rolled a [20] so for this particular instance, they're just as capable as someone that has trained their entire life to be good at that one particular skill.

To say nothing on the fact that physical skills like climb and swim are bought using skill points in 3.PF, which means that a bookworm who has barely even heard of sunlight can be just as physically able as someone who has been working out their whole lives.

Yet somehow it's closer to what getting good at a skill is like than one's skill translating into more dice to roll a success with.

>>50777099
you have a 5% chance of being incredibly lucky and a 5% chance of being incredibly unlucky.

Sometimes we do things that surprise us, and sometimes we just goof. That's human.
If you roll a 2-19 in combat, the result is, like your skill checks, within a certain possibility of success based on how good you are and how difficult the task is.

On the other hand, you can't crit or crit fail skills, you can only succeed or fail within a certain range of your abilities. If you really want to get nitpicky, then the difference is that combat is made more complex (and probably more exciting) by the addition of critical chances.

>>50777260
A 5% chance of anything is actually pretty favorable when you compare it to most impossible situations.

There's like a 100,000,000,000 to 1 odds for winning the lottery but in D&D, you have a 20 to 1 odds for winning the lottery instead.

>>50777099
>To say nothing on the fact that physical skills like climb and swim are bought using skill points in 3.PF, which means that a bookworm who has barely even heard of sunlight can be just as physically able as someone who has been working out their whole lives.

Except that's not true. The bookworm who has barely even heard of sunlight probably has no ranks, feats, or other training in those skills, and probably also has lower ability scores in the related areas to, by default, reduce how good of a result that he can achieve.

Let's pretend for a moment that this guy has a STR 8, no ranks in Swim, and even has a -1 Flaw penalty for being a non-outside kind fo guy and has to make a swim check to swim on calm water (DC 10). He's going to get a -2, so his chances of being able to handle this relatively easy challenge is only about 40%, less than half.
Now let's put in a guy who's pretty strong, say with a 16 STR and 3 ranks in Swim because he practices it. He has a total of +6, so his chances of succeeding go up to about 85%. Pretty drastic difference, every little bit matters and some people are more suitable for different things.
Now consider that unless the water is stormy, taking 10 is a possibility. The lad with low strength won't survive if he does that, and HAS to take a relatively slim chance for survival, while the other guy would easily handle it. In fact, the stronger guy is so much better at swimming that taking ten would let him survive in rough waters, no problem. And swim checks are something that you need to make a lot. One of the characters is incredibly more likely to survive than the other (particularly when you remember that not all creature have an innate Swim Speed, and therefore can't take 10).

You seem to be generally confused about character building and stats: this isn't a game of pure chance, you can manipulate the possible outcomes until some things aren't possible anymore and other things become possible instead.

>>50777495
Luck rolls aren't a thing, unless you're using variant rules. Something with that high of odds would have an unreasonably high DC to clear. And you can't crit on skill checks.

Go read a book.

>>50769586
They look the same at first glance, and you know how first impressions are.

About the time I learned troll threads like this are garbage.

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The d20 works quite well when you want a system where (1) you measure bonuses in increments of 5% and (2) you want to compare your result with one or more values on a single scale from X to Y. A lot of the complaints about the d20 are actually complaints about specific rules of d20 games; for example, the Nat 20 Success and Nat 1 Failure rules. I'm certain that those rules don't apply to all checks, and they're different in every edition of D&D. I'm pretty sure that if you attempt a DC 10 skill check in most editions, and you have a +15 bonus, you just succeed without having to roll. If you attempt a DC 50 skill check and you have a +2 bonus, you fail no matter what.

Every edition of D&D has horrible flaws but it's not because of the d20, it's because of the rules that surround that d20. Symbaroum uses the d20 for attribute checks and the d4/6/8/10/12 for damage rolls, just like D&D, but it's actually designed competently so the d20 works just great.

Honestly? If you want low-powered dark fantasy that reminds you of D&D, only without the caster supremacy and hit point bloat, just play Symbaroum. It's far from perfect but it's a damn good game with nice art.

I realised d&d was garbage when I saw a blog post that explained why d&d can't be fixed.

This was the eureka moment for me.

>>50763268
>well at what it tries
that is.....?

PS:Answer that for any edition that is not Od&d

>>50761099
>Non linear dice
>better than linear dice

not everyone here is a math guy

>>50772774
>My system (or your) is not better than fatal, or racial holy war

>>50777960
What blogpost?

>>50777825
Most of the problems come from the fixed numbers being to low in comparison to the variable.

The only objectively good system is the democratic system, whereby an action is suggested and players vote on outcomes. The resolution is as fast as you're able to make conversation, the probability distribution is 100% fun/0% unfun and nobody has to bring dice.

>>50779177
Which is fantastic if everyone is experienced and on board, but can easily fall apart if somebody isn't.

>>50779177
Hmm, might actually try this.

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>>50760714

>Mtg was created to pass the time between DnD games.
>DnD was created to pass the time between war drills.
>war drills were created to pass the time between wars.
>wars were created to pass time.
>Time was created because boredom.
>boredom was created because of Wynaut.(You know, from the Pokemon games?)
>Wynaut was created because Wobbuffet needed a prior evolution(for reasons unknown reason)

And Wobuffet was created because Why not.
In summation, I have no idea whats going on. I guess its some sort of chicken-egg type thingy?

>Attached picture is only partially related.

>>50760714
t. simulationist

>>50760714
> Answering to OP's Pic
First time I played past level 10. And I consider myself a bit retarded, because our games failing as we reached level 7-8 should have been all I needed to realize that.

> A single d20 roll is almost entirely unsuited when dealing with tasks in which someone demonstrates competence.
Agreed. I really like ([Skill Level x d6]; take highest) and similar rolls (Like Edge of the Empire) and really dislike d20 / counting hits like Pathfinder and Shadowrun.

> Despite this, I still run D&D because I'm familiar enough with the shittiness of the system because I can kludge it into something resembling playability.
It still fits a genre, I guess, and won't turn down a game based on it. But you can be sure I'll optimize the shit out of it, cuz such a spread of potential results means the die is your main opponent.

>>50777825
> A lot of the complaints about the d20 are actually complaints about specific rules of d20 games; for example, the Nat 20 Success and Nat 1 Failure rules.

Nope. The problem is that 20 is such a friggin' high range and that every result has an equal chance of happening. Combined with a binary result, it makes for too random of a game to plan anything on.

Keep auto-miss / threat of Pathfinder, but switch the dice roll to 2d10 instead of 1d20 (counting a result of "2" as a nat "1"). You get 1% chance auto-hit and auto-fail and much more chance to score average (+/- 10% chance to have an 11).

This means the result of your attacks is a little bit more predictable, and whatever resource you may spend easier to spend (E.G. enchanted arrows, anything that says "thus a missed attempt ruins the ability"). It also make low circumstantial modifiers much more important. Which includes the Fighters +1 BaB at level 1 compared to the wizard's.

>>50779885
In fact, redo the balance so that STR doesn't add to-hit (but still add to damage), remove the bonus to-hit a masterwork weapon gives, BaB adds both to-hit and AC, keep the flanking / elevation bonuses, make sure buffs don't stack and remain minor (like bless does), use 2d10 instead of 1d20, and add +1 to the damage roll for each margin of two by which you beat your opponent's AC and you get hell of a better game.

>>50779944
That would make STR 100% pointless in the face of DEX because now neither of them give damage but one gives you a shitload of other benefits.

>>50779976
Str still adds to damage. Learn to read

>>50779944
why 2d10 over 3d6?

>>50779885
If it's binary it doesn't matter that every result is equally likely to happen. D&D's problem is with its static numbers not its die.

>>50779137
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. Trying to get a 4+ on a d6 has the same odds as trying to get an 11+ on a d20. The only difference between the two is that a +1 modifier is an increase of 16.66% on a d6 and a modifier of 5% on a d20. Like I said, a d20 works well if 5% increments is something you WANT in your system. In Symbaroum, for example, your stats range from 5 to 15 and you roll under to succeed; a +1 to an attribute counts as succeeding 5% more often or one more success out of every 20 attempts on average. That can be exactly what you need to, for example, balance the benefits of +1 to a stat with a class feature or other special ability. If you used a d6 then each stat increase would represent a much larger rise in character power in that particular field or ability.

>>50779885
Like I said, auto-fail and auto-success is inconsistent among D&D editions and it's probably a bad idea to implement it. Even with a 2d10 setup you shouldn't have a 1% chance to throw a rock and hit the moon. Likewise you shouldn't have a 1% chance to trip and fall when walking. Some things are better suited to be simply impossible to succeed or fail at, no dice rolls involved.

Now this is just my opinion, but dice pool rolls (2d10, 3d6 etc) have their own major flaws. Reducing the frequency of extremely high and low results doesn't stop those results from being possible, but it does make attribute bonuses grant an inconsistent benefit based on the DC. Sometimes a +2 bonus will raise your odds by 25%, sometimes it'll only raise them by 5%. In a d20 system it'll always raise it by 10%, so long as the thing was always possible in the first place.

>>50780309
It's mostly in that the numbers between someone untrained and trained are really small.

>>50760714
I wouldn't use the word "garbage" because it's still fun and functional despite its issues (even the editions I don't like very much), but:

The need for exhaustively delineated differences between characters by way of 2e's extensive and sometimes contradictory kits and racial options. This got dozens of times worse in 3e, but partly as a symptom of the much maligned "Ivory Tower" school of rule presentation.

>>50780309
> Even with a 2d10 setup you shouldn't have a 1% chance to throw a rock and hit the moon.
Why would you even roll dice for such a thing? If something is to be made completely impossible (such as harming your DMPC?), there shouldn't be a roll in the first place.

Making the most ludicrous, yet technically possible thing happen 1% of the time is reasonable. And the bellcurve being at 28% chance to hit a 10,11 or 12 with diminishing odds as you reach the end of said bellcurve makes for a much more tactical decision.

It also reduces the odds that the fighter routinely outstealth the rogue just because he happens to be luckier.

Finally, yes, any bonus/penalty stacking gives diminishing returns on such roll, and it's a good thing. If you also decrease opportunities to stack them, each choice and tactical decision the player makes have that much more of an influence.

>>50764815
With an average of +5 to all attacks getting a 13+ on 3d6 is not "going to be completely fucking retarded and completely reliant on getting advantage to have any chance"

>>50779531
Wynaut and Wobbuffet are named jokingly in the original Japanese to create a never-ending, humorous conversation of "Really?" followed by, "That's the way it is."

>>50771575
>and the added dice can make for certain numbers to appear over others
Yes, that's why.

Rolling an 18 is only available on one combination of dice.
Rolling 17 is three combinations of dice - three variants of 6, 6 and 5.
Rolling 16 is six, three variants of 556 plus three variants of 664
Rolling 15 is ten: 555, plus six arrangements of 654, plus three of 663.
And this shit builds up bro.

> If you can hit the monster on a 9 to 12 you're going to be hitting much more often than on a D20
Yeeep.
>On that same token if you're having trouble hitting something, rolling to hit is going to be that much harder to do.
Yeeep.

Bell curve gives you consistency of average, with rarer flips out.

Whether you LIKE it, is only up to your judgement.

Anima is my favorite system, i still dont get how people can be so fucking stupid to missread the rules(in spanish) or not understand the third grade math.

Only D&D i had fun with was AD&D and 4ED.

Dredge is a fair mechanic and deck, only literal retards lose to dredge.

Fate is OK but not that fun for anything long, same for coc and crunch light systems.

Fantasy>40k.

Spacehulk controls like shit.

>>50780562
>(such as harming your DMPC?)
Haha oh wow this guy is a monster

>>50780353
That's a D&D-specific problem though. Blame Bounded Accuracy if you're looking at 5E in particular. In 4E characters got a much larger bonus to skill checks at level 1 (+5 vs. the +2 of 5E) but that number doesn't increase at later levels, it probably should. In 3E there were a lot of skill you couldn't even attempt without training, so while your skill points didn't offer a huge bonus numerically they were quite significant since they let you make the skill check in the first place.

>>50780562
>If something is to be made completely impossible (such as harming your DMPC?)
First, if you're inserting a DMPC into your game who is so powerful that the PCs can't possibly harm them, you screwed up big time. The player characters are the stars of the show, and when you overshadow them with an invincible DMPC you're shoving them out of the spotlight. Of course you could be referring to a DMPC as a plot-device they have to protect/escort and you just don't want to let your players hurt them. That situation is just as bad, because you're restricting your players' actions in a stupid way. If the fighter wants to take a swing at your GMPC, telling them they're not allowed to is terrible GMing. Instead, let them do it and consider what the consequences of such an action might be. It's easy to say no to players, it's much harder to say yes and weave their decisions into your story.

>Making the most ludicrous, yet technically possible thing happen 1% of the time is reasonable.
I disagree.
>It also reduces the odds that the fighter routinely outstealth the rogue just because he happens to be luckier.
Maybe the rogue was walking through a section of corridor and stepped on a tile that cracked, or they were moving ahead/behind of the others and was spotted by a guard. True skill should be represented by a big modifier, the problem with D&D is that its modifiers are too small at low levels in most editions. It's not a flaw of the d20, just how the d20 is used.

>>50786726
> First, if you're inserting a DMPC into your game who is so powerful that the PCs can't possibly harm them, you screwed up big time.
Heh, at least you made sense somewhere. Just sad all your efforts went to answering bait.

> I disagree.
Nice counterargument there.

So Steve, the extremely fat and inept cow ward picking his broken pitchfork attacks the physical form of Tiamat should definitely not hit 1% of the time, you want to quintuple that, yet it is completely ridiculous to aim a rock at the moon?

> Maybe the rogue was walking through a section of corridor and stepped on a tile that cracked, or they were moving ahead/behind of the others and was spotted by a guard.
I never said such a thing should be impossible, but that shouldn't routinely happen in any way shape or form. If the fighter with a +2 Dexterity bonus and a Scale Mail gets a total modifier of -2, and the rogue has +8 (+4 dex, skill rank 1 and class skill bonus), the rogue is an order of magnitude over the fighter.

When both roll a d20 for stealth 45/400 (slightly over 11% of the time), the fighter will outdo the rogue. On a roll of 2d10, that's 3.3%. Guess which one has a higher chance of a random lucky / unlucky string.

Also, I'll argue that using a d20 favors min-maxing, as the benefit of yet another +1 Strength bonus will almost always translate as a 5% increase in chances, while on a 2d10 roll, it gives a diminishing return (<5%) while your stats elsewhere probably give a tremendous edge (>5%).

Finally, other combat options like fighting defensively and power attacking makes more sense on a 2d10 roll. If I am a very powerful fighter and I hit a zombie on a 3 (97% of the time), taking a -2 penalty to hit for a +2 damage bonus reduce my odds to hit to 90% instead of from 90% down to 80%.

Such a sharp decline (10% drop) when your opponent is soooo underpowered makes no sense at all.

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>>50789269
>Nice counterargument there.
Hey, some things boil down to personal preference. I'm not gonna tell you you're having bad/wrong fun just because you like 3d6 instead of 1d20.

>So Steve, the extremely fat and inept cow ward picking his broken pitchfork attacks the physical form of Tiamat should definitely not hit 1% of the time, you want to quintuple that, yet it is completely ridiculous to aim a rock at the moon?
I don't believe that a natural 20 attack roll, or even a natural 18 on 3d6 for an attack roll, should ever be an automatic success. It can make a successful roll MORE successful - double the damage if you hit, or get some special extra benefit out of a skill check, that's fine.

What I draw the line at is when it makes the impossible possible. A blind cripple swinging a cane shouldn't be able to hit The Flash even 1% of the time. A normal human should have a 0% chance of hitting the moon with a rock they pick up off the ground. If you would roll a d20 with a +0 modifier against DC 21, you should fail automatically, no roll required. Likewise, if you would roll a d20 with a +20 modifier against DC 21, you simply succeed.

As for your specific example with the Fighter and the Rogue, I'm still not seeing what's inherently -wrong- with the d20. Having the Fighter beat the Rogue an extra 7.7% of the time isn't really a tremendous difference. I mean, if you want more curved results within the 1-20 spectrum you can use 3d20 take the middle; highs and lows taper off better than the sum of 3d6 in my opinion. You don't get a massive glut of bonuses in the +/-3 zone around the average. Compare them with AnyDice if you prefer.

>>50790222
Nice trips. Calms me down.

> Hey, some things boil down to personal preference.
Yeah, I agree, but making the argument that "some things aren't possible and shouldn't auto-succeed", yet that "as soon as there is a slimer of a chance, that chance should be at least 5%" is a little bit odd.

> I don't believe that a natural 20 attack roll, or even a natural 18 on 3d6 for an attack roll, should ever be an automatic success.
I completely agree with you there, let's remove that part of the discussion. It's like discussing of gender issues with someone constantly bringing the fact that "rape is bad". Everyone agree.

> It can make a successful roll MORE successful - double the damage if you hit, or get some special extra benefit out of a skill check, that's fine.
Margins of success/failures need to be a thing. Implemented it in some of my games, shit's awesome.

> What I draw the line at is when it makes the impossible possible. A blind cripple swinging a cane shouldn't be able to hit The Flash even 1% of the time.
Once again, yes, I know, rape is bad.

> Having the Fighter beat the Rogue an extra 7.7% of the time isn't really a tremendous difference.
I disagree. This is at the end of two bell curves on two characters that compete among themselves. Against a set DC / Perception check (say 14), Rogue succeeds (2d10) 90% / (1d20) 75% of the time while the fighter succeeds (2d10) 10% / (1d20) 20% of the time. You go from a difference of 80 to 55% of succeeding. This is a major difference in perceived competence of a character.

In short, I don't see how you can make consistent not allowing a roll in the first place because it's impossible, yet seeing the least possible thing to happen actually happen 5% of the time.

Smaller increments on something being possible at all makes more sense and using 2d10 makes every modifier a lot more important while discouraging min-maxing. This is the argument why using a d20 is objectively bad.

>>50790529
> "some things aren't possible and shouldn't auto-succeed"
I meant "some things aren't possible and should auto-fail". Sorry for the derp.

>>50790529
>I disagree. This is at the end of two bell curves on two characters that compete among themselves. Against a set DC / Perception check (say 14), Rogue succeeds (2d10) 90% / (1d20) 75% of the time while the fighter succeeds (2d10) 10% / (1d20) 20% of the time. You go from a difference of 80 to 55% of succeeding. This is a major difference in perceived competence of a character.
The fighter is actually succeeding 15% of the time with 2d10 and 25% of the time with 1d20 here. So in the first case, there's a 1.5% chance for the fighter to beat the rogue by succeeding where the rogue fails. In the 1d20 case there's a 6.25% chance. Where you prefer these numbers is pure opinion, but my opinion is that people are saltier when they miss a 90% sure thing than when they miss a 75% chance, and if the fighter sneaks by about 1 in a 100 times, then they either won't even try, or the rogue is gonna be downright incredulous, compared to the fighter sneaking by being slightly more likely than a crit.

Anyway, 5E would give the fighter disadvantage instead of a penalty to the roll, which is 20.25% chance to pass off the original +2 dex modifier, for a upset result occuring about at 5% of the time, less often if the rogue were better at stealth, since these are around level 1, certainly first tier, modifiers in 5E. I.E. baby-adventurer levels.

>Smaller increments on something being possible at all makes more sense
The smallest chance for something still possible in 5E is 0.25%, rolling 20 with disadvantage. I think that's small enough.
> and using 2d10 makes every modifier a lot more important while discouraging min-maxing. This is the argument why using a d20 is objectively bad.

The smaller increments at the higher and lower end of the scale discourage specialization too. There's nothing objective about your opinion.

>>50761099
3d6 completely fucks anything in D&D that's built around crits though. It's not a simple find and replace solution. You go from a 5% chance to a .5% chance. Even 2d10 is less of a problem than 3d6.

>>50792959
GURPS crits are 3/4 which ends up being 1/54 (2%)
Not really that different

>>50792771
> Correcting my maths.
Been a bit too quick in my calculations. Still, that is a whoppin' 10% chance difference, between die rolls, nothing small about it.

> 5th Edition
I agree, Advantage / Disadvantage mechanic ain't as bad by diminishing the retarded randomness a d20 brings. If anything, it reinforce the d20 being objectively bad, as a good mechanic actually one that lessen its randomness.

> The smallest chance for something still possible in 5E is 0.25%, rolling 20 with disadvantage. I think that's small enough.
Yeah, but then, you're basically giving the point that rolling 1d20 is retarded, while still keeping the single d20 for most of your rolls.

> The smaller increments at the higher and lower end of the scale discourage specialization too.
Nah, specialization is still worth it. DCs will have varying values, and taking that high DC from needing a 7 to needing a 6 is still something worth your time. Overspecialization (bringing that same relatively High DC from a 3 to a 4) however, is not.

And while I agree that 5th edition is an improvement over 3.5 / 3.PF, doesn't make it worthwhile to learn and to play.

>>50793424
All dice are random. You just prefer good to mean 90% instead of 80%, and bad to mean 10% instead of 20%. Maybe you also prefer out of their league to mean +11 rather than +16. You leave less space to play in and less chance for the unexpected.

>>50793424
And sorry, 10% is small. Half of 10% is quite small. One tenth of 10% is miniscule. Players aren't going to discern any difference within 10%.

>>50767887
>Only endless D&D.
Please help me. I am currently stuck in a loop of 'only 5e.' I tried Shadowrun once and we still can't figure out the rulebook, though I'll admit that's probably because we read it at about 12:30 with no recaff. I want to learn other systems, especially Dark Heresy And have people willing to play it, but that's beside the point!

>>50793154
But the suggestion was not 'use GURPS' it was 'roll 3d6 instead of 1d20.' Which doesn't really fix anything and actually fucks up D&D worse in many cases.

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>>50762654
>d% Roll Under
yeah because I want to spend the first half of my campaign being shittier than I would be with a d20, because I have less than 40 in most of my stats, and my DM didn't homebrew enough abilities/skills to compensate bonuses to make failure less likely even if I don't minmax- like in actual systems designed for roll under.

This is why Dark Heresy homebrew systems are shit and people have stopped making them.

>>50794063
Sure, but if 3d6 is the distribution you want you can modify the tails to get a different crit rate.

Making crits 16-18 is 4.6%, that should be close enough to 5%.

>>50794157
You being a retard who doesn't bother maxing out the shit that you're planning on using the most often isn't a fault of the system.

>>50794157
So you're complaining about d% handling of jack of all trades master of none?

>>50794157
There isn't a game on this planet where a jack of all trades is better than a specialist.

Hell, D&D was built on the principle of each class only being good at doing like one or two things, it's kinda why Fighters started to suck once everyone in the party became equally viable at surviving combat.

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>>50796469


Here you go. Play it, learn it, love it.

>>50798931
Cool, you brought up an exception to the rule.

Good for you.

>>50793683
> All dice are random.
Yes

> You just prefer good to mean 90% instead of 80%, and bad to mean 10% instead of 20%.
Nah, it's the concept of diminishing returns. Like point buy does in Pathfinder. From 10 to 11, it's one point. from 15 to 16 it's 3.

> You leave less space to play in and less chance for the unexpected.
Less chance for the unexpected, yes. Less room to play, no, as situational modifiers end up being much more worthwhile.

>>50793750
> Players aren't going to discern any difference within 10%.
My groups does. 10% is huge, there's a reason we wouldn't even thing of finding a way to flank or to thwart a flank. There's a reason we still cast that bless spell. Because, on a d20, the difference between needing a 19 to hit and a 18 to it is an increase of 50% of your odds. Likewise, from 3 to 2 is a reduction of 33% of your chances of failure.

I mean, below 5%, I understand if people think it's only for the principle, but 10%, is far from insignificant.

>>50767388
>>50767618
D20 for combat and saving throws. 3d6 for skills. Lets you have crit fail and success with skills without affecting crits in combat.

>>50799321
Going from 45% to 55% chance of success doesn't feel much, you're still hitting roughly half the time anyway. It's just not that significant bonus.

>>50793154
Just for the record, GURPS crit success/fail numbers change with effective skill level.

>>50760714
>when did you realize D&D was shit

The moment i took a look at the fucking rules

>>50760714
D&D is loathsome, 5e is just /barely/ tolerable but I wouldn't play it if I had a choice.

It is a skirmish wargame which has fake RPG elements bolted on, and it comes with extreme, annoying baggage: re. alignment and class/levels.

It's a trashcan system designed to accommodate the lowest common denominator, and it's a shame so many people never branch out from it, it's kind of like if everyone with a TV only ever saw American Idol or something, just depressing/scary to think how warped their view of entertainment is.

Okay, here's the thing: D&D may be garbage and I accept that but people have massive fucking blinders when it comes to just about every other fucking system out there. Most are as extremely imbalanced as D&D.

>>50804985
D&D's balance problems are not even its worst problems.

>>50805071
They are as far as I'm concerned. I like classes, levels, and murderhobos.

>>50805080
Play an MMO then.

>>50805100
D&D came first. You play an MMO.

>>50763555
>Muh nostalgia
Go home granddad

>>50805113
You're an incredibly boring person.

>>50805146
Wow rude.

>>50804769

"fake RPG elements"

I'm curious what you mean by that.

>>50785394
Are you me?

>>50799321
10% is the smallest bonus you can expect players to be able to notice when they're rolling dice. Players try to flank for +2 to hit, but does anyone give a shit that dwarves get +1 vs goblins?

>>50799230
>Less room to play, no, as situational modifiers end up being much more worthwhile.
Less room to play, yes, because the range of interesting bonus numbers is smaller. No one cares about a 1%, 3% or likely 6% chance to succeed or fail, so those numbers just get chopped off of where people play. 1d20 gives a useful range from 1 to 20, maybe 2 to 19. 2d10 gives a useful range from 4 to 18, maybe 5 to 17.

>>50805196
Not that anon, but a common criticism is that actual roleplaying is just an afterthought in D&D, with alignments serving to mash character drama down into a simplistic mold so it won't get in the way of the video game-style combat/dungeon-crawling.
Personally I think D&D is fine for what it is, but its no good for telling a legitimate story or truly roleplaying if that sort of thing is what you're looking for.

>>50805283
> Players try to flank for +2 to hit, but does anyone give a shit that dwarves get +1 vs goblins?
That's why masterwork weapons are sold right away even before they get their hands on a magic sword, right?

People forget the "+4 AC vs. Giants" too and multiple buff/debuff, and that shit's 20%. So maybe it's not only about the size of the bonus.

> Less room to play, yes, because the range of interesting bonus numbers is smaller. No one cares about a 1%, 3% or likely 6% chance to succeed or fail, so those numbers just get chopped off of where people play.
1. You did not actually counter the argument. By being less rewarding on optimization, when DCs are high, modifiers (which rely on a player's decision) have a greater impact, rewarding good decisions on the spot, rather than the most optimized build.

2) Furthermore, that 1 or 3% of chance a result is rolled still means that result will be rolled once in a while. With margins of success / failure, this is something one cannot completely brush off.

If it wasn't the case, you wouldn't mind someone succeeding at ANYTHING 1% of the time he tries, including hitting the moon with a rock, as this is akin to a statistical impossibility.

>>50805113
Playing a tabletop game just to be a murderhobo and gain levels is like buying a video game for the story.

There's nothing stopping you from playing it but you're throwing out so much of what makes the medium great that you gotta ask yourself why you're not taking your business elsewhere.

>>50760714
I like Pathfinder.

>>50805196
Every edition of D&D favors combat more than exploration or roleplay.

Compare to games like WoD or SR where the PHB contains details on the setting to give you an idea of what to expect, D&D relegates all settings info in either the DMG, splat books, or modules.

That and there isn't really anything to really get you into who the character is beyond their race/class/alignment and even when they make an effort, like backgrounds in 5e for example, it almost never serves a purpose because all anyone is there for is to kill monsters and get gold/EXP.

>>50805633
>1. You did not actually counter the argument. By being less rewarding on optimization, when DCs are high, modifiers (which rely on a player's decision) have a greater impact, rewarding good decisions on the spot, rather than the most optimized build.
None of this makes any sense. The modifiers make the most impact when DCs are moderate, and each +/-1 is a 10/9/8% difference, and the least impact when DCs are low or high, and each +/-1 is 1/2/3%.
>2) Furthermore, that 1 or 3% of chance a result is rolled still means that result will be rolled once in a while. With margins of success / failure, this is something one cannot completely brush off.
If you want to keep the 3% and 1% chance due to margin of success, that's just crits, which is just a matter of preference.

A player's choices aren't meaningful if it's normal to have a 15% or 21% or less chance to succeed. You can't play in the high end of the DC scale.

A DM is a dick if they're making the player roll for a 15%, 10% or lower chance to botch. You can't play in the low end of the DC scale.

The space between the highest DC and the lowest DC, the highest usable bonus and the lowest usable bonus, is smaller. Q.E.D. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of preference.

>>50805199
Yes.

>>50767061
/tg/ is just like every other specialized board on this site, elitist retards on related topics, and actual fun individuals on anything off-topic.

>>50806387
>>50805199
>>50785394

samefag

>>50805854
D&D are literally just guidebooks filled with pre-generated numbers and rules to pull from. If your DM is making everything combat focused, it's their own damn fault. There are plenty of D&D campaigns where you never have to make an attack roll against a living thing, and people who are able to risk doing things outside of the most optimal choices available to them more then often make those attempts.

D&D is literally whatever you make of it. As for the d20 system, that is a legit point, and boils down to personal preference.

>>50772250
>Completely misses the point

The problem isn't that 3d6 is not flat enough, the problem is that 1d20 is two regular. You can nearly flatten the bell curve out of 3d6 with simple algebra, but you can't neatly add a bell curve to 1d20.

Stop trying to pretend you understand statistics because you took a single easy math class for your gen Ed requirement. Fucking freshmen.

>>50806752
There's nothing inherently good about a bell curve for random results.

>>50806810
There's nothing inherently good about random results. Your argument is absurd.

People want a bell curve because it dies the things they want in a way that linear graphs don't, without a lot of tweaking. In other words, people want a bell curve not because it is inherently good, but functionally good.

>>50806810
There is if the game relies on probability to determine your success in a given action.

I can say, for example, that I'm likely to get a [7] on average w/ 2d6 since simply because it has the most outcomes with [1,6], [2,5], [3,4], [4.3], [5,2], and [6,1].

It's why Settlers of Catan can afford to put the robber's ability on a [7], while every other tile in the game gives their resource on a roll between 2-12. The game knows that a [7] is the most likely result but it happens just rarely enough to where people are likely to earn other resources to build roads and towns.

In a game that uses 1d20 however, I just as likely to get a [1] than I am to get a [20], which becomes difficult to balance around since the result is purely random and the outcome of the die can easily overrule whatever bonuses I'm stacking for my action.

I could roll to knock someone out only to end up killing them instead just because I got a crit when I didn't want to.

>>50806957
>In a game that uses 1d20 however, I just as likely to get a [1] than I am to get a [20], which becomes difficult to balance around since the result is purely random and the outcome of the die can easily overrule whatever bonuses I'm stacking for my action.
The outcome of the die always determines the result. That's why you're rolling the die. The only way to get away from that is to not roll dice.

>>50807010
What he's saying is that some die rolls are more consistent than others. If you disagree with this, I heartily recommend you roll for stats with 6d20 down the line the next time you play dnd.

>>50807010
Again, with a bell curve there's at least some degree of expectations with the results of the dice.

True randomization is terrible to base your game around because it means that your characters will never have consistency in the way that they achieve their goals.

I'm just as likely to cleave an ogre in half as I am to have it snap off at the hilt from cutting a goblin. I'm just as likely to leap over a chasm as I am to trip over a rock. I'm just as likely to know some obscure piece of trivia relating to an ancient death cult as I am not to know what school of magic "raise dead" comes from.

And because the results aren't consistent, it's hard to really take pride in my accomplishments as a player because I know that the only reason I succeeded was because I was lucky, not because I was smart, which makes it difficult to get into the game when the bulk of your character sheet doesn't actually matter.

>>50806638
>There are plenty of D&D campaigns where you never have to make an attack roll against a living thing
No there aren't, and the game isn't intended for that at all.

Progression and mechanics exclusively favor combat. Non-combat is handled by the clunky, completely uninteresting and unengaging skill system, and the vast majority of classes have no interaction with that system aside from simply increasing modifiers to the single d20 roll they make to resolve things outside of combat.

>>50806340
> The modifiers make the most impact when DCs are moderate, and each +/-1 is a 10/9/8% difference, and the least impact when DCs are low or high, and each +/-1 is 1/2/3%.
That's the point. When a person is outshined to the point he would hit only 1% of the time, situational bonuses, like flanking serves no purpose.

Assuming a Natural 20 would hit and a Natural 2 would miss, think recruits Bob and Steve vs Lord Soth. Would it make more sense that flanking bring their chance to hit from 5 to 15% or from 1 to 6%?

The same way, when Bob get insta-gibbed and Steve hides behind a column to shoot his crossbow, would increasing such a war veteran's, who killed hundreds of Bobs and Steves, chance to miss from 5% to 15% make more sense, or from 1 to 6%?

When you reach the end of the bell curve, it means someone is really not where he should be, and the lesser the odds, the stronger the message.

> Rolls requiring 5+ to hit on a d20 is a waste of time. Rolls requiring 18+ to succeed are cruel.
Then why bother with set DC at all?

Just ask yourself whether a thing is impossible, hard, normal, easy or far too easy for a character, the first one being impossible, the last one being an automatic success. Roll a D20 without modifiers and have a character succeed on a 14 / 10 / 6.

It keeps a modicum of realism, and is much more stream-lined. If you want to reward good thinking with small rewards, you can modify the number to hit by one or two points, requiring a 4 / 16 at most.

This way, no roll is a waste of time, no roll is outright a dick move, players retain a bit of agency, the game moves much more swiftly and it's way easier to improv.

>>50807105
>True randomization is terrible to base your game around because it means that your characters will never have consistency in the way that they achieve their goals.

Which is why you create characters sheets with classes and bonuses to do the things you want to do, Anon. Some of you act like throwing d20 at each other is literally what the entire game is comprised of.

> as a player because I know that the only reason I succeeded was because I was lucky, not because I was smart, which makes it difficult to get into the game when the bulk of your character sheet doesn't actually matter.

Then maybe you should have taken a few of those feats that didn't provide a +1 to hit/damage and specialize more into a few skills you want to be good at. If your DM is just making the entire game combat focused, that's on your DM.

>>50807111
I'm pretty sure they dedicate entire chapters and supplementary books designed around doing the very things you claim they don't Anon. I get D&D is the most popular system out there, but that doesn't mean you have to flippantly make shit up because you play a different game. Try growing up a bit.

>>50807071
If you like bell curves so much, I hope you roll all your stats as 3d6 down the line.

The lesson here is that if you didn't want it random, you wouldn't roll dice.
>>50807134
>Where properly representing NPCs fighting Lord Soth is an important consideration.

>>50807246
The d20 is where you're going to receive the biggest bonus potential. You could literally strip the game down to "Fighter can roll for attack, Mage can roll for spells, Rogue can roll to sneak/steal, and Cleric can roll to heal" and nothing would change except that now, the game is more honest in just how much luck determines your success.
>All these shit
Even if I did that, I'd just end up in the exact same situation, except now I'm wasting resources just to say that I'm technically real good at doing a thing, even though my success is still being determined by roll of the die.

In 5e, you can succeed at reaching most of the DC's simply because you rolled higher than average. The only DC's that you can't reach on a straight d20 roll are DC's that are practically impossible for your character to achieve anyways. So really, what does my +X to Y represent when I can skate by most checks just because I was lucky?

>>50807246
Not that Anon, but being in another conversation in same thread about same thing.

> Some of you act like throwing d20 at each other is literally what the entire game is comprised of.
It is. Rogue has +8 to stealth, Sorcerer has +2. Sorcerer will outstealth Rogue 91 times out of 400 possibilities, which may reflect on a character's perceived competence.

A bell curve limits that effect without eliminating randomness itself.

>>50807325
> If you like bell curves so much, I hope you roll all your stats as 3d6 down the line.
Point buy does the same trick of diminishing returns while maintaining player agency... But since you like wildly random results, would you roll 1d20 for each stat?

> Where properly representing NPCs fighting Lord Soth is an important consideration.
This is an example. PCs could raise militias, arm them with slings and wooden spears to stop the onslaught of a group of headless knights, and have the same difference between to-hit and AC. When a group of 10 headless knights charge a group of 50 raised militias, it makes a pretty huge difference if those spears hit 6 (3 hits, an annoyance) or 15% of the time (7 or 8 hits, a rather solid blow).

So yeah, realism at the end of the scales, and player agency when its not. What's not to like?

>>50807071
Consistency is fine when dealing with rolls that don't use modifiers at all, like rolling for stats. The problem is that people want consistency in rolls AND modifiers, so that they never fuck up anything they want to do. Which is bullshit and very un-game like.

Sorry, but being the best shot in the world doesn't change the fact that firearms have a chance to misfire or not fire at all, which is what the d20 represents. As others have said, you don't have to like the d20 system, but the entire point to the die roll is for inconsistency to breed outcome.

>>50807386
And with a 3d6 system, you can strip down everything to, "I will always succeed on everything on average, even things I normally shouldn't do.", which defeats the entire point of having multiple classes and options available to you. If the DC number is what is killing you with the d20 system, your DM needs to tweak his numbers, or you have to accept the fact that doing actions outside of your character's specialty has a higher than normal chance of failing.

>>50805792
Video games have yet to develop an AI that allows you the freedom a DM does.

>>50760714
I wasn't even playing tabletops and I've already knew D&D is shit and WFRP is superior. Perks of being Polish, I guess.
Then I've realised how bad WFRP is and if D&D is only worse, then holy shit...

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>>50807484
>"It's all about rolling the dice and not character building!"
>Literally provides the information proving that a character designed to do what they want to do, does it more often then those who don't

Shocking how a Rogue is more than 3/4th better at sneaking than the class with 1/4th his investment in that same skill.

>>50807493
The only way you'd succeed at everything on average is if the game designers failed to understand how probability with a 2d6 system works.

PbtA is a 2d6 system that balanced their game around this fairly well. 6 or less means you fucked up and something bad's going to happen, 7-10 means that you succeeded at a cost, and 10+ means that whatever you did went off without a hitch.

With bonuses, your character is more likely to reach 10+ than a character without any bonuses and it means that whenever you raise a stat, it translates to an actual consistent boon rather than a placebo that makes it seem as though your character is skilled.
>Completely_missing_the_point.jpg
The point I was making was not that the DC needs to necessarily be tweaked, it was that the d20 provides too big of a bonus while being too random to have any form of consistency.

Try rolling 1d20 down the line for stats vs. 3d6 down the line then post the results.

>>50805792
Nigga, we all played cops and robber, cowboys and indians, and mock sword fights as kids. The only difference is that even then, we knew we were simulating killing shit in the process. Tabletop role playing games aren't any different, only now you have ground rules to work with whenever Timmy decides to be a lying piece of shit and claim he shot you first when you caught him in the back.

>>50807493
> like rolling for stats.
Ugh, I just vomited a little. Agreed, I would rather roll 3d6 than 1d20, but this is not the kind of thing I want to roll in the first place.

We don't wanna be outshined in what is my character's Shtick. I don't want the cleric to spot traps or track foes because Wisdom Mod and lucky dice.

>>50807540
> Shocking how a Rogue is more than 3/4th better at sneaking than the class with 1/4th his investment in that same skill.
You mean absolutely no investment. Dex modifier applies to a lot of things that would make it worthwhile even without a bonus to stealth, like Initiative and Armor Class.

And thus, I'd argue 5.2% of the time would be much more reasonable, as one's skill is incidental.

>>50807613
>Try rolling 1d20 down the line for stats vs. 3d6 down the line then post the results.

I will, and the results will be a wildy degree of numbers vs homogenized outcomes. The good news is, the d20 system is random enough that literally making systems to allow rerolls on undesired outcomes is possible without completely breaking the system, which isn't possible on a 2d6 system without warping the numbers from homogenized to stacked.

The difference between you and me is that I realize both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'm not acting like one is inherently better at the other when the entire purpose of rolling dice is to BE random. If you don't want random, Skyrim is calling for you (see how easy it is to do it?)

>>50807325
>If you didn't want it random, you wouldn't roll dice

I want it to be a random distribution with certain properties. Such as a bell curve. Got anything besides retarded quips?

>>50807679
>Being able to choose 3d6 over a 1d20 is somehow a bad thing.

Good thing the d20 system lets you do exactly that, and even recommends it as one of the primary systems for creating a character.

>Stat modifiers play no part in skill investments

Grasp those straws any tighter and you might blow a vein, Anon.

>>50807613
>>50807700
> I rolled at home and got 20, 16, 19, 14, 19, 10. I swear!

> The difference between you and me is that I realize both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'm not acting like one is inherently better at the other when the entire purpose of rolling dice is to BE random. If you don't want random, Skyrim is calling for you (see how easy it is to do it?)
> Okay, so a human with no bonus or penalty has AC 51. You roll a d100 and add your +1 BaB.
> Yay, random is fun!

>arguing with trolls

Really? Still? It's almost been three days for this thread.

These guys won't ever stop being butthurt over D&D's popularity. No point in making them go through mental gymnastics just to make them even more butthurt.

>>50807792
We're not even talking about D&D anymore. We're talking about dice.

>>50807792
>Can't handle the well reasoned arguments about statistics, or the bantz
>Stops replying and pretends he wasn't involved in the argument.

>>50807700
>I will, and the results will be a wildy degree of numbers vs homogenized outcomes.
At least you realize the flaw in your own arguments now, even if you aren't consciously aware of it.
>The good news is, the d20 system is random enough that literally making systems to allow rerolls on undesired outcomes is possible without completely breaking the system,
How many rerolls are we allowed for example? Are we allowed to reroll if we fail to get a number higher than 6 or only if we roll a 1?

Also, what about the people that get nothing less than 16's? Should they reroll because everyone else rolled nothing above 10 or do they keep their rolls and steamroll everything?
>which isn't possible on a 2d6 system without warping the numbers from homogenized to stacked.
4d6, drop lowest value. You're retarded.
>All this butthurt
There are plenty of games where you're rewarded for rolling dice, it's just that most people don't play craps

Those double dubs are wasted on you.

>>50807774
> Okay, so a human with no bonus or penalty has AC 51. You roll a d100 and add your +1 BaB.

Sure thing, just make sure you also increase the BaB to parallel that of the d20 system.

Oh wait, we're making a retarded analogy. My bad. Keep doing you.

>>50807734
I want to know that +5 is 25% better than +0. Or that +1 is 1% better than +0 for this>>50807774 chucklefuck. You don't get that with a bell curve.

>>50807755
> Stat modifiers play no part in skill investments
> Grasp those straws any tighter and you might blow a vein, Anon.
When I have a refrigerator running, I technically produce heat in the room. I still wouldn't consider the electricity I spend on my refrigerator as part of my heating bill.

Another example. Ride is a skill based on Dex and with Armor check penalty to boot. Which means that your common rogue character, especially low level, is as good at it as your cavalier, which chose a class which has it as a class skill, spent a skill point, and has a class ability that increase that.

They have the same modifier, but do they have the same investment?

>>50796469
There's plenty of them - primarily classless games where you get diminishing returns for investing heavily in one skill.

>>50807853
>4d6, drop lowest value. You're retarded.
Great, now you've warped your stats from homogenized to stacked, which is fine if you are intentionally going for a high fantasy game, but not if you want to keep everything within the realm of balance.

As was mentioned before, the 2d6 system was balanced AROUND 2d6, so doubling your rolls and taking away the lowest is actually warping the system by blatantly cheating out a higher than average outcome. While is is technically true for the d20 system as well, the resulting outcome is less likely to be game breaking and more of a means to give a particular stat the chance to break even compared to his peers. And even then, it might not even bee necessary, since having a couple bad stats isn't the end of the world.

Rolling all 7's is a 2d6 system is far easier to do that rolling all 10's in a 1d20 system, so having that difference in results allows the use of rerolls to be more "fair" under the d20 system, since results are expected to swing any way rather than mostly average.

>>50807867
> I want to know that +5 is 25% better than +0. (...) You don't get that with a bell curve.
That's, in my book, so much less fun. To each his own, I guess.

>>50807891
Yes, because the Rogue invested into the DEX stat, while the Cavalier didn't. I don't see why this is a hard pill to swallow, and I can tell you're really trying to work hard at ignoring the point by comparing lvl1 characters to each other.

By that same logic, I guess we can conclude that Wizards are the worst class in 3.5.

>>50779177
That's not going to work for DnD or any other traditional RPG about one player setting challenges for the rest to overcome collaboratively. It might work for you and your friends writing stories together, but even for a diceless, story-focused RPG I'd want something with a more robust conflict resolution mechanic. Putting everything to the vote is just going to exacerbate any potential social tensions in your gaming group.

>>50807967
>Great, now you've warped your stats from homogenized to stacked, which is fine if you are intentionally going for a high fantasy game, but not if you want to keep everything within the realm of balance.
Elaborate, because there's so much wrong with this post, I need to know exactly how you reached this conclusion on your own.
>The rest of your post.
I said none of what you're implying. When you're ready to attack my argument instead of beating up strawmen, you'll know where to find me.

>>50807983
>That's, in my book, so much less fun.
It may be more fun to not know what you can do, but since the has to be run by people, I think it runs better when Someone knows what you can do.

>To each his own, I guess.
This is really all I've been trying to get across though. A bell curve is just different. Better at some things and worse at others.

>>50808012
> I don't see why this is a hard pill to swallow, and I can tell you're really trying to work hard at ignoring the point by comparing lvl1 characters to each other.
I go level one because smaller numbers are easier to compute than high numbers. Besides, the games we rely on as a basis for the argument gets so fucking broken at high level it's not even worth mentioning.

> By that same logic, I guess we can conclude that Wizards are the worst class in 3.5.
How the fuck can you arrive at that conclusion? They've got spells and can enchant items that increase stats to the point that another's "stat investment" becomes irrelevant.

> Your increased dex modifiers is one of my spell slots.

>>50807867
You can get that actually. On average with a 3d6, you are 27% better with a +5 than without.

For the maximum probability, you are 57% more likely to get at least at 13, and the same for at least a 14.

>>50808162
What started this off was a moron saying a bell curve was no different than a d20. If you are that moron, feel bad, then get educated, then feel better.

If you aren't that moron, keep in mind the context of discussions you jump into.

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>this thread

>>50808089
2d6 will result in 5-9 most of the time, with 7 being your most likely outcome. You literally have a greater chance in rolling these numbers than anything else available to you, and getting anything higher or lower is statistically improbable compared to the rest (by the nature of rolling a 2d6).

With a 1d20, you literally have an equal chance to get anywhere between a 1-20, and your chances of any single digit between them all is just as likely as any other. Your results will be truely random. Ergo, re-rolling dice on the d20 is a more level and fair by nature on how the math works than you could ever get from a 2d6 system, because the numbers in the 2d6 system are, by design, made to homogenize results. So rerolling stats in the 2d6 system will MORE LIKELY result in making a rerolled stat either average or great, with a small chance of rerolling a bad one.

To put into perspective, you have THE EXACT SAME chance of rolling a solid 7 in a 2d6 than you do adding your chances of a 2-4 COMBINED. Compare this to the d20 system, where rerolling a 2 means you have the exact same chances of getting that 2 again (or worse) as you do any other number possible.

>>50806638
>D&D is literally whatever you make of it.
I can't believe how many people still fall for this meme.
D&D is for a very specific type of play in a semi-specific type of setting. Its not a versatile toolkit like GURPS or Burning Wheel or something. It is genuinely crap for roleplaying,
There's nothing wrong with D&D being what it is. Don't try to pretend it's something else.

>>50807522
They're both perfectly good games. Not that there's no room for improvement but they do what they do quite well

...as long as you only play 3rd edition WFRP and 4th edition D&D

>>50808247
So give me some examples on what GURPS does that D&D can't. Being serious here. And don't give me blatant concepts it does, I mean give me an example of the math GURPS provides to make these things possible that isn't with D&D.

>>50808247
To be fair the dnd materials promote this. The 5e dmg still recommends that adventures be one third combat, one third exploration, and one third social encounters.

Anyone who has dmed it knows that the system runs best with anywhere from 60% to 100% combat.

>>50808162
> It may be more fun to not know what you can do, but since the has to be run by people, I think it runs better when Someone knows what you can do.
Modifiers still give a pretty good idea what you can and can't do. It being painfully obvious leaves room for guesstimates, which, in my opinion, is more fun.

> A bell curve is just different. Better at some things and worse at others.
Nah. It reassures you that your decision will have a significant impact, no matter what, and thus lessen the impact of a bad decision (and of a good decision). You willingly let go your agency in favor of the fickleness of the die.

The fact you use that increased level of randomness as a crutch doesn't make it "better at some things", but "better for some players".

Enjoy your thing.

>>50808313
> It being painfully obvious leaves no room for guesstimates, which, in my opinion, are more fun.
Fix'd it myself, sorry 'bout that.

>>50808233
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq-v1TTUyhM

>>50807867
>I want to know that +5 is 25% better than +0.

It isn't though. It's 25% more than the highest number you can roll on the die. The proportion by which having a +5 bonus will improve your odds of success varies according to the target number.

>>50808284
GURPS can do games where a firefight with random thugs can easily be lethal to the most experienced characters.

>>50808335
Nigga, just use any basic die rolling system, and it'l tell you a 2d6 WILL result in a 7 more times than anything else possible. Re rolling low stats with a 2d6 system only benefits the roller with almost no risk involved.

http://anydice.com/

Literally plug in 2d6 at the top and see for yourself.

>>50808343
He meant a 25% increased chance on the die, as in an extra share of possible success. Technically, going from hitting on a 20 to hitting of a 14 is a 600% increase in odds, but he's not wrong per se.

Like I said here>>50808313
> The fact you use that increased level of randomness as a crutch doesn't make it "better at some things", but "better for some players".

>>50808369
>Asks for a basic outline on the math the game provides instead of just listing blatant concepts
>Literally just posts a blatant concept the system does

>>50808372
You're telling me that you've been spouting retardation this past hour and you actually have the website that proves you wrong as a bookmark?

I get it, you're just in here for (you)'s, be less retarded next time and I'll actually treat you as an equal, good bye.

>>50808186
Let me use a more reasonable number and show you what you've missed. With +0, 3d6 exceeds 10 50% of the time. With +3, 3d6 exceeds 10 83.8% of the time. That's 33.8% better.

Now, with +0, 3d6 exceeds 12 25.93% of the time and with +3, 3d6 exceeds 12 62.5% of the time. That's 36.57% better.

How much is +3 worth on 3d6? It varies.

>>50808199
The root of this chain is a post from SUNDAY that says 3d6 is better than 1d20. Just that.

>>50808369
How does the character's experience translate in the die rolls? If I remove hit points gained per level, abilities, AC and to-hit bonuses, high-end spells and gear offer minimal protection / offense, goblins are a challenge to level 20 characters in DnD...

>>50808438
That's true, you could heavily house rule D&D so it provides a play experience more like GURPS or other "realistic" games. What's your point?

>>50808433
So average it. It break it up into difficulty categories and look at the appropriate numbers. This is easily done in 5e since skill DCs are constrained to 5, 10, etc, 30, and half of the DCs are irrelevant for general build planning 5, 10, and 30).

For AC, just take common ACS and you can get a good idea.

>>50808457
The comment I replied to was >>50808369.
> GURPS can do games where a firefight with random thugs can easily be lethal to the most experienced characters.

I wanted him to support that claim by explaining how it does such a thing, as I admit that I've got no clue how GURPS work. At all.

If an "experienced" character simply has no edge over common thugs, the dice rolled and mechanics have nothing to do with it.

>>50808301
I DM 5e every week, it works just fine for social encounters.

>>50808396
It's hard to tell what was meant by "don't give me blatant concepts it does" but I took it to mean that that poster was interested in play experiences that GURPS *mechanically* supports in contrast to D&D, and not answers like "GURPS does sci-fi"

I'm not interested in providing a mathematical breakdown of things that are blatantly obvious, like for example that high level D&D characters are supernaturally durable.

>>50808550
If by just fine, you mean not bad, but not necessarily good either, then I agree.

I dm 5e each week to, but had to resort to heavy modification to make it good.

>>50808426
Except my point remains unchanged? Rerolling a 4 in a 2d6 system will literally (and I mean literally) result in a higher outcome 83.33% of the time (and an 8.34% chance of rolling lower). You would have to be very unlucky to get a matching or lower outcome. Whereas rerolling an 8 in the d20 system (a somewhat comparable number) would result in a 60% chance of a higher outcome (and a 35% of a LOWER outcome). This is why rerolls in the d20 system aren't seen all that negatively in comparison.

This was literally my entire point, Anon.

>>50760714
Very brave

>>50808598
It can be good, it depends on how much effort the players and you put in to roleplaying. If you break every social encounter into rolling X skill checks then you get the thing, you're going to have a shitty time.

>>50808608
>Rerolling a 4 in a 2d6 system will literally (and I mean literally) result in a higher outcome 83.33% of the time (and an 8.34% chance of rolling lower)
Why is that?

>>50808598
Provides examples that other systems do that makes them better than 5e. People love to make these claims, but can never seem to get past the, "It's just better faggot" comment without vanishing in thin air.

>>50808655
Because, as I said numerous times before, the 2d6 system is designed to try and make outcomes homogenized. If this was supposed to be the brilliant counterpoint you were trying to make, I pointed this out almost an hour ago. Its by this nature that rerolls in the 2d6 system don't mesh with the system at all, because it is balance AROUND players rolling averages instead of truely random outcomes.

>>50808674
Burning wheel social combat.
Ffg Star wars narrative dice for nuanced results
World of darkness doors
4e skill challenges.

>>50808708
No, I'm not the guy you were arguing with, I was just asking

>>50808539
the difference is that there's no expectation of what a high points value GURPS character will look like, apart from the constraints imposed by the GM for this particular campaign. They could be a dragon or a superhero or just a guy who knows a fuckton of languages. If you desire a game about characters who are elite specialists but nonetheless basically human then you give the players a ton of points but impose stat caps and forbid supernatural advantages. By contrast, the assumption that D&D characters gain hit points as they grow more powerful is built into the system at a fairly fundamental level, and if you want to change that you're making it into a different game.

>>50808718
As the DM, you're still free to implement nuanced results if you don't like binary pass/fail for social encounters, sure your check failed, but if you give the guy a bribe, he might let you have the information.

>>50808746
> Still not answering the question.
What. is. the. die. roll.

DnD has d20+BaB+Stat+Mods vs target of 10+Stat+Mods. Then damage is completely unrelated value based on weapon/enchantment/stat and feat vs hit points.

Dream Pod 9 had Xd6+stat vs Xd6+stat. Then damage is weapon value * margin of success compared to light wound treshold, deep wound treshold and Instant-Kill treshold.

NWoD has (Skill+/-mod)d10 vs target number, successes is damage.

It's a simple question, isn't it?

>>50808718
While I won't deny you're right, I can also safely say that if you took any one of those systems, made a thread designed around trying to tear apart their flaws and compare those flaws to systems that did it right, we'd be in the same boat.

Case and point is, D&D has some good things going about it, and is a perfectly fine jack of all trades system. Anyone denying this is literally fucking retarded or a tabletop hipster.

>>50808868
Alright, it's 3d6 roll-under, with modifiers. Damage roll depends on the weapon, DnD style. I thought we were just talking about mechanics generally.

>>50808942
THANK YOU. Okay, some sub-questions then:

> How is the target number set?
Is it based out of the defender's competence or mostly circumstancial?

> What kind of modifiers are we speaking of?
An "experienced fighter" is one that has a -3 on his attack roll, or one that has -12?

> Damage roll depends on the weapon, DnD style.
I suppose there is a hit-point mechanic then. Is there such a thing as "level" with hit points increasing, is "hit points" something you invest experience in to become more resilient, or do you have to increase base stats to indirectly modify the amount you have?

I unironically want to run SenZar.

>>50809037
> Is there such a thing as "level" with hit points increasing, is "hit points" something you invest experience in to become more resilient, or do you have to increase base stats to indirectly modify the amount you have?
Another possibility is it being fixed for all characters, tougher characters just shrugging off blows more easily, or Wound Points vs. Stamina points...

>>50761533
Mein nigga.
Been playing Hero System for 22 years now, no regrets.

File: 01-0004 GURPS 4e Lite.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>50809037
TN is your skill. Modifiers apply to TN, not roll. No levels, totally point-buy. HP start equal to ST or HP, depending on your edition, and you can get advantages/disadvantages to increase/decrease it.

Here's the short system intro, it probably explains shit better than I can.

>>50809107
ST or HT, I should say. Strength and Health, respectively.

>>50809037
It's a long ass time since I played GURPS and I never liked it so I'm fuzzy on the details, but...

The target number for any roll is your own skill with a modifier for the difficulty. An experienced fighter is I guess someone with at least 15 or 16 weapon skill - they'll pretty much always hit unless they're trying something fancy.

Everyone can take damage equal to their strength stat, which falls in roughly the same range as in D&D, with 8-12 being "average human". There are any number of advantages you can take to become more durable I'm sure, but they won't all be appropriate to every campaign.

>>50809107
>>50809162
I see. For example, an heavily outnumbered veteran fighter in total darkness might roll 3d6 against a target number of 15 (his skill) -5 (darkness & outflanked), and therefore, a fight could turn lethal quickly due to circumstances.

It's a good concept.

>>50808873
DnD isn't fine for a jack of all trades system.

DnD is fine for a combat focused game set in a medieval fantasy universe. Once you go outside of that narrow genre, you get problems.

>>50809265
How hard is it to just say a repeating crossbow is a machine gun?

>>50809358
Depends on how realistic you want the machine gun to be.

>>50809390
Considering you are representing that machine gun as a pile of dice, I'd say unrealistic is fine.

>>50809473
Get me the rules for walking fire in DnD (and not some form of elemental creature), and I'll see.

>>50809358
Extremely because the mechanics don't map to each other at all.