# d20 vs. 3d6 "dice heresy" by Chris Sims



## ggroy (Apr 21, 2010)

At the risk of opening the can of worms even further from recent threads (ie. status effects annoying players, "ego-gamers", why must numbers go up, etc ....), here's an article by Chris Sims which proposes replacing the d20 with 3d6 in the basic rolls of 4E D&D, as a way of  increasing the probability to hit.

Loremaster - Dice Heresy by Chris Sims

Wonder what to make of this, in light of recent discussions.


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## Piratecat (Apr 21, 2010)

Burn him! Burn the witch!

*ahem*

Clearly, I have an unnatural love for my d20. Is that so bad?


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## Dausuul (Apr 21, 2010)

I used to be a fan of bell-curve mechanics like the 3d6 roll. Nowadays, I think the regular d20 is a better choice. It's easier to calculate probabilities when designing monsters and skill challenges, the effects of bonuses and penalties on the roll are more consistent, and it lets us play with our pretty icosahedrons.

Most importantly, it reduces the amount of number-crunching in the game; two numbers to add together instead of four, on every single attack roll. I am not opposed to number-crunching in a good cause, but I do think D&D has way too many numbers to keep track of; they add up to a severe drag on the flow of combat. Any proposal which increases the amount of number manipulation is going to get a wary reception from me.

I certainly agree with the point that PC chances to hit are generally a bit low - it's a contributing factor in grind, especially when facing soldier-type monsters - but why not apply a flat bonus and adjust monster stats accordingly? Or, for that matter, adjust monster stats and leave the PCs alone? (Cranking down monster defenses has the same effect as cranking up PC attack rolls and doesn't require any "house rule headspace" for the players.)


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## Vyvyan Basterd (Apr 21, 2010)

ggroy said:


> Wonder what to make of this, in light of recent discussions.




Based on recent discussions within my own group? Players have become whiney little babies! 



			
				One of Vyv's Players in response to ditching the Wish List for an Old School style campaign said:
			
		

> Why should the characters have to deal with finding crap they don't use?






			
				Vyvyan Basterd said:
			
		

> Excuse me? I think you just defined modern day player entitlement with this single question.


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## Stalker0 (Apr 21, 2010)

The 3d6 model also had some traction in 3e, with similar thoughts.

Without looking at the aesthetic or "feel good" nature of d20 vs 3d6, mechanically there are some major differences to note.

1) As noted in the article, using the standard math of 4e players using 3d6 will tend to hit more often than those that don't.

2) The biggest difference is the effect of +1 attack/defense bonuses. In the range of standard 4e math, +1 to attack can have a larger impact than the normal 5% that it provides on the 20.

That also means that higher level monsters are more of a challenge, and lower level monsters less of a challenge than under the standard system.


I think there are some good merits to 3d6, my favorite being the granular crit system, but its a question of taste of mechanical desire.


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## Sammael (Apr 21, 2010)

If I understand the article correctly, to hit probabilities are too low, characters can't get enough DPR, and have to wait too long between turns to do damage. The paradigm which we should strive for is "to hit chance should be in excess of 90%." Because that's how it works in WoW.

To say that I disagree with that paradigm would be the understatement of the year.

I don't have a problem with the d20 > 3d6 switch per se, but the reasoning is... not my cup of tea.


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## D'karr (Apr 21, 2010)

Sammael said:


> If I understand the article correctly, to hit probabilities are too low, characters can't get enough DPR, and have to wait too long between turns to do damage. The paradigm which we should strive for is "to hit chance should be in excess of 90%." Because that's how it works in WoW.
> 
> To say that I disagree with that paradigm would be the understatement of the year.
> 
> I don't have a problem with the d20 > 3d6 switch per se, but the reasoning is... not my cup of tea.




Incorrect paradigm.  Read the context of his post, not the reference to WoW.  I'll quote the relevant reference:



> In such *video games*, exemplified well by World of Warcraft, your character’s *turn-to-turn wait time is also remarkably short*. That means *if you do miss* (or are successfully blocked, parried, dodged, or whatever), *your disappointment lasts less time than it might take for the miss notification to disappear. The character on the screen is doing something else almost immediately*, occupying your attention. Even if that weren’t so, the onscreen action is often enough of a distraction. I can honestly say, while playing World of Warcraft, I rarely had to or bothered to recognize misses other attacks that failed to connect.
> 
> *Not so in a D&D game. Every miss is not only noticeable, but barring some unusual circumstances, it also has the bitter sting known as waiting for another turn.* Turns in a D&D game are as quick to come as those in video games. Even an exciting encounter can become a frustrating bore if misses start to pile up.




In any case, Chris has started looking at the math more carefully (negative modifiers, etc.) and has changed his opinion.  A negative modifier has a much more significant impact in the 3d6 method than in the straight d20 method.

You should read the entire thread, it is rather interesting.


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## CleverNickName (Apr 21, 2010)

This is neither here nor there, but...

A few months ago, I ended up running a D&D game at a friend's house with absolutely nothing but a PHB, the online SRD, and a handful of Yahtzee dice.  It's a long story; we were all hanging out, got bored, someone suggested we play.  So I hammered out a quick dungeon crawl while they scribbled up some character sheets on notebook paper, and rolled up some fourth-level characters.  But when it came time to play, we realized that we only had six-siders for dice.

I was loving the spontaneity of the situation, and I didn't want to kill the spark by drowning it in math.  So to keep the flow, I quickly ruled that 3d6 would be used instead of d20s, and off we went.  Other rules were improvised as needed...d4s were replaced with d3s, d% were replaced with red and black poker cards, and so forth.

Turns out, replacing d20s with 3d6s didn't break the game.  At all.  In fact, it had the opposite effect...it gave the game a much more balanced feel.  Without critical hits, automatic success/fail, or the upper and lower extremes of the d20 scale, combat was a lot less "swingy," attack rolls were a lot more reliable, save throws were a lot less sensitive, and that's pretty much all.  Dice mechanics aside, the characters were still adventurers, exploring the haunted ruins of Castle Wherever.  It was a blast.

I'm not saying that I am ready to ditch my d20.  I too have an unnatural affection for that polyhedric ball of triangles, and I will use it at every opportunity.  But that Saturday afternoon of improv gaming really changed my perspective on the 'd20 vs. 3d6' debate.  It was one of the most entertaining games I have ever played, hands-down.

I concede that not everyone would have enjoyed it.  Some folks really like the symmetry of balanced math, where one has an equal chance of rolling a 3 as they do a 12, and that's cool.  And not everyone likes to deviate from the rules-as-written either, for any reason, and that's cool too.  I'm not trying to change the way anyone plays the game.

But don't sweat it if you accidentally leave your dice at home.  It ain't no thang.


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## billd91 (Apr 21, 2010)

I know people who feel that the 3d6 roll better represents reality - the assumption being that most of our attempts at anything will cluster around our average results. That may be, but I don't like it much in my games. Once you get to a certain point of ability, the dice roll becomes almost a formality, the chances of missing becoming so low. This might work OK in a point-buy system like GURPS or Champions where the cost of getting the ability so high can be made particularly expensive, but I can't say I like it in my D&D.


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## Doug McCrae (Apr 21, 2010)

It's the HERO-isation of D&D! Hong was right!!


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## Celebrim (Apr 21, 2010)

ggroy said:


> At the risk of opening the can of worms even further from recent threads (ie. status effects annoying players, "ego-gamers", why must numbers go up, etc ....), here's an article by Chris Sims which proposes replacing the d20 with 3d6 in the basic rolls of 4E D&D, as a way of  increasing the probability to hit.
> 
> Loremaster - Dice Heresy by Chris Sims
> 
> Wonder what to make of this, in light of recent discussions.




Well, in the light of recent discussions, I would say that Chris is part of the band-wagon of players who are taking inspiration from video games and leaping to the wrong conclusions.  PnP games aren't video games, and while they share many important features, design decisions that lead to good video games don't necessarily benefit PnP games.

I would also say that Chris has saved me alot of trouble in my side argument where I predict that 4e players will tend toward wanting to 'ban' misses on attack rolls.


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## slwoyach (Apr 21, 2010)

I much prefer 3d6 to d20 and I'm certainly not on that little bandwagon.  Burn 4e, burn!

*Admin here. Your comment works perfectly well without the attempt at starting an edition war! We're happy if you love 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, or Pathfinder. Doesn't matter to us at all. Just don't try to start arguments about it. That goes for everyone, of course.

Thanks. PM me with any questions. ~ Piratecat*


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 21, 2010)

I resolved my love-hate affair with the bell curve in the late 80s.

*I hate it. *Given a choice between a linear curve and a bell curve, I'll take linear. Every. Single. Time.

Why? Because a linear curve is more heroic, that's why. It allows an equal chance for spectacular hits and bad misses far more often at the table than a bell curve does.  It's more unpredicatble, allows for more unlikely  -- and therefore more heroic results -- and is, therefore, more *fun*.

An 18 on 3d6 is going to happen less than one chance in 200. A 20 happens one roll in 20. It's not a small difference, it's a difference by more than a factor of ten. 20s happen all the time. An 18 on 3d6? That's a .46% chance. That translates during a session to  "hardly ever".

The Bell curve is the primary reason why I hated GURPS and preferred Rolemaster, back in the day. That settled preference has not changed -- and will not ever change.

The day somebody changes D&D to move to a pure bell curve mechanic for it's "to hit" mechanics, is a day I stop playing that version of D&D, forever. As in: *Power Word Kill, No Save.
*
I _*insist*_ that my RPG be heroic and be one where random luck can save the day.  I want that opportunity to roll a 20 to happen _relatively often_ during a session - not once or, more likely, "almost never". 

If I had a wet fish in my hand - I'd give this guy and whoever supports such heresy a slap in the face with it.

**Boo hiss*. Down with the Oppression of the Bell; Long Live the Heroic Linear!*


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## Ourph (Apr 21, 2010)

I wouldn't use 3d6 in my 4e game. Although it might make equal level opponents (particularly Brutes) easier to hit, it would make higher level opponents (particularly Soldiers and Skirmishers) much more difficult to hit. Since I tend to use a mix of higher and lower level creatures in each fight, I suspect the bell curve would induce grind unless I were to change my encounter design strategies.

For non-4e D&D I could go either way.


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## RodneyThompson (Apr 21, 2010)

Speaking purely from a game design standpoint, non-dice pool systems (like d20, or any other system where you roll a single die) make it easier to predict the statistical impact of other game elements, like numerical bonuses and penalties. In d20, I can be assured that a +1 is always a 5% increase in chance of success, and -5 is always a 25% increase in the chance of failure, for example. 

Bell curve systems (and, really, other dice pool systems) don't have the same level of ease of prediction. A +1 means different things based on how the dice fall. Plus, let's face it, the math is just harder when you start adding in multiple dice. Sure, you can do it, and game designers get paid for that kind of thing. But for casual designers (i.e. DMs wanting to homebrew) it slows down the process for most people. It's my personal opinion that a single-die system (d20 or otherwise) is easier to homebrew, and that's a good thing since it makes it easier for DMs/GMs to take ownership of their own game through house rules and homebrewed monsters, treasure, etc.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 21, 2010)

Moridin said:


> Speaking purely from a game design standpoint, non-dice pool systems (like d20, or any other system where you roll a single die) make it easier to predict the statistical impact of other game elements, like numerical bonuses and penalties. In d20, I can be assured that a +1 is always a 5% increase in chance of success, and -5 is always a 25% increase in the chance of failure, for example.
> 
> Bell curve systems (and, really, other dice pool systems) don't have the same level of ease of prediction. A +1 means different things based on how the dice fall. Plus, let's face it, the math is just harder when you start adding in multiple dice. Sure, you can do it, and game designers get paid for that kind of thing. But for casual designers (i.e. DMs wanting to homebrew) it slows down the process for most people. It's my personal opinion that a single-die system (d20 or otherwise) is easier to homebrew, and that's a good thing since it makes it easier for DMs/GMs to take ownership of their own game through house rules and homebrewed monsters, treasure, etc.




This. All of it.

BTW Rodney - I got my copy of _Unknown Regions_ on Monday and I love it. KotOR aside, I think it's my favorite book in the whole _Star Wars: Saga Edition_ expansion series. A great end to the best _Star Wars_ RPG ever written. My sincere thanks for all your hard work and efforts. I'll be running Saga for my players for *years* to come.

Thanks again and best of luck with Dark Sun 4E.


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## Ariosto (Apr 21, 2010)

The really useful range of numbers does seem to be smaller in 4e than formerly, partly because _everything_ is scaling by levels. Your chance of hitting is probably not far from the inverse (50-50%, 55-45%, 60-40%, etc.) of your chance of _getting_ hit. Whoever has the advantage there probably also has it in hit points and damage, except for differences between monsters and PCs and among roles.

The 9-13 range, which on d20 is from 60% down to 40%, would be closer to 75% down to 25% on 3d6.

A 10+ would go from 55% to 62.5%. An 11+ would still be 50%. So, that 1-point difference would go from a ratio of 1.1x to 1.25x. That's not a lot if damage is similar. For instance, it would be a 6-point difference between 44 and 50 points of damage.

On the other hand, you would need double the numbers at 1:3 to match 2:3.


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## francisca (Apr 21, 2010)

I think I'd like to play a couple sessions like this before passing judgment.


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## Nifft (Apr 21, 2010)

Ariosto said:


> The really useful range of numbers does seem to be smaller in 4e than formerly, partly because _everything_ is scaling by levels. Your chance of hitting is probably not far from the inverse (50-50%, 55-45%, 60-40%, etc.) of your chance of _getting_ hit. Whoever has the advantage there probably also has it in hit points and damage, except for differences between monsters and PCs and among roles.



 Yep, for better and for worse, 4e is a much tighter game than its predecessors.

Some prefer tightness; others prefer fast & loose.

"_Insert Your Mom Joke Here_", -- N


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## S'mon (Apr 21, 2010)

I think the solution is to often use monsters a level or two below the PCs.  In numbers they can still threaten, but they can usually be hit and IME the players really enjoy blowing through them.


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## delericho (Apr 21, 2010)

Given that 4e already has problems with combat grind, brought about as a consequence of reducing the swing in combat, I would have thought that the last thing you would want to do would be to reduce that swing even further.


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## WayneLigon (Apr 21, 2010)

I wouldn't mind if D&D went to using the d6 for every single thing. The bell curve provides a vastly better means of managing expectations.


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## Ourph (Apr 21, 2010)

WayneLigon said:


> I wouldn't mind if D&D went to using the d6 for every single thing. The bell curve provides a vastly better means of managing expectations.



I think using the 3d6 for skill checks might be a good idea. I'm just not sure it's going to work out well for to-hit rolls.


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## ggroy (Apr 21, 2010)

Wonder if anyone ever tried replacing the d20 with 2d10 for to-hit and skill check rolls in D&D.


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## JRRNeiklot (Apr 21, 2010)

WayneLigon said:


> I wouldn't mind if D&D went to using the d6 for every single thing. The bell curve provides a vastly better means of managing expectations.




I'd hate it, and for the exact reason you mention here.


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## Steel_Wind (Apr 22, 2010)

Ourph said:


> I think using the 3d6 for skill checks might be a good idea. I'm just not sure it's going to work out well for to-hit rolls.




Why not just take ten?

That's what you are going to roll anyway.  Seriously - it average competency is "good enough" - the game supports that as a default selection out-of-the-box, as it were.


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## Wik (Apr 22, 2010)

Ourph said:


> I think using the 3d6 for skill checks might be a good idea. I'm just not sure it's going to work out well for to-hit rolls.




as a side note, Rel used a d6 method for skill checks in his 4e campaign, and it seemed to work rather well.


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## Wik (Apr 22, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> I resolved my love-hate affair with the bell curve in the late 80s.
> 
> *I hate it. *Given a choice between a linear curve and a bell curve, I'll take linear. Every. Single. Time.
> 
> Why? Because a linear curve is more heroic, that's why. It allows an equal chance for spectacular hits and bad misses far more often at the table than a bell curve does.  It's more unpredicatble, allows for more unlikely  -- and therefore more heroic results -- and is, therefore, more *fun*.




While I agree with you regarding the d20 preference, I disagree with your basic premise.  The d20 does not make the game more heroic; it makes it more gritty.  Using a linear curve, your players CAN be super heroic - but they have just as much chance at flubbing rolls in important situations.

Personally, I like that - it's a feature of the game I enjoy - but it is not 'heroism'.  Using the d20 system as written, it is perfectly possible for Hercules to fail a strength check to pop open a door, only to watch gape-mouthed as Woody Allen pops it open with a little bit of elbow grease.  

A 3d6 system is, really, MORE heroic - especially if you read the article, which suggest criticals happen on a roll of 16+.  In such a system, characters will fail much less often using what they're good at.  In 4e terms, this means dailies will seldom miss.  It means your warrior will usually pass strength checks in your skill challenge.  And it means that any roll you need a 9 or higher on to succeed, you probably WILL succeed - which, to me, is much more "heroic" than failing 40% of the time.


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## Umbran (Apr 22, 2010)

ggroy said:


> Wonder if anyone ever tried replacing the d20 with 2d10 for to-hit and skill check rolls in D&D.




Dude, people have been experimenting with system modifications since the 1970s.  You can be pretty darned sure that most of the easily thought-up possibilities have been tried, several times by various folks.  2d10?  Sure.  3d6 is painfully obvious.  I've seen d% variants aplenty.

Honestly, the suggestion that this is somehow heresy is to me either a comment on the intolerance of gamers, a variant definition that means "something that's been tried by any number of people, but never caught on as a core mechanic", or a sign the author might not have as complete an experience with house rules as they might think.


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## Wik (Apr 22, 2010)

Umbran said:


> Dude, people have been experimenting with system modifications since the 1970s.  You can be pretty darned sure that most of the easily thought-up possibilities have been tried, several times by various folks.  2d10?  Sure.  3d6 is painfully obvious.  I've seen d% variants aplenty.
> 
> Honestly, the suggestion that this is somehow heresy is to me either a comment on the intolerance of gamers, a variant definition that means "something that's been tried by any number of people, but never caught on as a core mechanic", or a sign the author might not have as complete an experience with house rules as they might think.




Bah.  You want hardcore?  5d4, drop lowest, +4.  BRING IT ON!


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## Ariosto (Apr 22, 2010)

Wik said:
			
		

> A 3d6 system is, really, MORE heroic - especially if you read the article, which suggest criticals happen on a roll of 16+.




That's about 4.63% -- not much different, to my mind, from 5%. It means another critical hit or two per hundred rolls.

Presumably, that "swing" still applies to non-heroic types as well, just as in d20 4e? Ditto a miss on 3-5 for the big shots?

The latter, though, go up from 70% to about 95% for a roll of 6+, while the outclassed fellows go down from 30% to about 9% for 15+.


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## Hereticus (Apr 22, 2010)

ggroy said:


> At the risk of opening the can of worms even further from recent threads (ie. status effects annoying players, "ego-gamers", why must numbers go up, etc ....), here's an article by Chris Sims which proposes replacing the d20 with 3d6 in the basic rolls of 4E D&D, as a way of  increasing the probability to hit.




No more natural 20s or 1s.

This will help you hit if you have less than a 50% chance, and hurt if you have more than a 50% chance.

If you really want a steep bell curve, roll 5d4-2.


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## thecasualoblivion (Apr 22, 2010)

The only issue I have with this is the impact of attack roll bonus/penalties. -1/-2 probably aren't serious, but there are a lot of effects that can add or subtract between 4 and 9 from die rolls, and I don't see that meshing well with 3d6. 

It isn't exactly plug and play, and I don't feel the need to rewrite the system to accommodate this.


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## Ariosto (Apr 22, 2010)

thecasualoblivion said:
			
		

> there are a lot of effects that can add or subtract between 4 and 9 from die rolls, and I don't see that meshing well with 3d6.



Goodness no! From 95% (6+) through 5% (16+), there are only 11 points, as opposed to 19 with d20. I suppose one could halve such factors.


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## thewok (Apr 22, 2010)

I'm not sure the WoW comparison holds up under scrutiny.

In WoW, you can get enough hit rating to ensure that you *never* miss an attack or spell (ignoring expertise).  However, in raiding (where reaching the "hit cap" is a requirement), you're going up against mobs that have millions of hit points, while your character has maybe 20-30,000.  They can stand up to repeated hits without missing because their health pools are so large.

Monsters in D&D don't conform to that.  Their hit points are roughly similar to the PCs' health pools.  In such a case, I don't really think that a 60-65% hit chance is all that bad.

Let's turn it around.  In WoW, most non-tanks don't have a decent enough avoidance to really make a difference in the amount of damage they take from mobs.  For the most part, if a mob throws a punch, you get hit.  Solo mobs are weaker than Elites, and Bosses are even tougher.  Most bosses can one-shot player characters who stand in the wrong place.

Back in D&D land, monsters have roughly the same chances of hitting as a PC, about 60-65%.  The rules apply both ways.  Do players want to be hit every round, possibly by multiple monsters?  I know I don't.  I like that tension when the GM rolls the die, and I try to pierce the veil of his poker face to see what the result was.  I like being down to 1 hit point and having the monster miss, only to be downed the next round.

It comes down to predictability.  I don't really want combat itself to be predictable, at least not to the extent that such a high hit rate would bring about.  And, seriously, at that point, why bother with dice at all?  Why bother with the combat at all?  What becomes the point of it?


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## Nifft (Apr 22, 2010)

thecasualoblivion said:


> The only issue I have with this is the impact of attack roll bonus/penalties. -1/-2 probably aren't serious, but there are a lot of effects that can add or subtract between 4 and 9 from die rolls, and I don't see that meshing well with 3d6.
> 
> It isn't exactly plug and play, and I don't feel the need to rewrite the system to accommodate this.



 Even the +1/+2 are of vital importance if they push you over the midpoint of the curve. The difference between hitting on a 9 and hitting on an 11 are huge.

It'd be rather depressing if one's optimal action -- *all combat long* -- were to Aid Another, so at least one PC had a decent chance of hitting.

Cheers, -- N


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## Anselyn (Apr 22, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Why? Because a linear curve is more heroic, that's why. It allows an equal chance for spectacular hits and bad misses far more often at the table than a bell curve does. It's more unpredicatble, allows for more unlikely -- and therefore more heroic results -- and is, therefore, more *fun*.
> [...]
> I _*insist*_ that my RPG be heroic and be one where random luck can save the day. I want that opportunity to roll a 20 to happen _relatively often_ during a session - not once or, more likely, "almost never".




This is not a defintion of "heroic" that I recognise. Did you mean slapstick? 
Do heroes in myths, or films often have spectacular bad misses?  

I think that the narrative flow (editing ..?) of all-action films may make you feel that the hero is repeatedly suceeding at things for which he has a small chance  - but actually, really he never fails.


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## Votan (Apr 22, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Even the +1/+2 are of vital importance if they push you over the midpoint of the curve. The difference between hitting on a 9 and hitting on an 11 are huge.
> 
> It'd be rather depressing if one's optimal action -- *all combat long* -- were to Aid Another, so at least one PC had a decent chance of hitting.
> 
> Cheers, -- N




We tried 3d6 in 3.5E D&D.  I never really liked it.  I found that it tended to accelerate the advantage of bonuses (if you hit on a 6+ then you nearly always hit, if you hit on a 15+ you almost never hit).  Some spells got amazingly good (Assay Spell Resistance) and problems with unbreachable defenses became common.  

It also accelerated the differences between a midly and fully optimized character.  On the margins, +1/+2 can have huge impacts on probabilities and so it accelerated the worst optimization arms race features of the system.  

I'd be surprised if it did not do the same in 4E and make feats that grantt o hit bonuses even more of a requirement.


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## billd91 (Apr 22, 2010)

Anselyn said:


> This is not a defintion of "heroic" that I recognise. Did you mean slapstick?
> Do heroes in myths, or films often have spectacular bad misses?




Watch the early scenes of the 1973 version of *The Three Musketeers* with Michael York and Oliver Reed. While not about spectacular misses as in combat, there are some good comedic skill failures.

If you take the sort of Greek heroic ideal, then it's not always about exceeding expectations in a positive way. It's about being excessive in general in both bad and good ways. Usually the bad comes from personal behavior, but it's easy enough to read some incidents as poor will saves and, more often, abyssmal diplomacy and sense motive checks.


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## CleverNickName (Apr 22, 2010)

Hereticus said:


> No more natural 20s or 1s.



It took a long time for my table to accept the rules for critical hits, auto-success, auto-fail, and other "dice lottery" mechanics.  For the first year or two of playing 3E, we treated natural 1s and 20s like they were just numbers...not instant win/lose coupons.

We eventually got on board with crits and nat-20s when 3.5E came out, but we aren't particularly fond of them.  I know that most folks prefer the Hollywood Action Movie style of gaming, and that's cool...we just like our games to be a little more subtle.


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## Quantum (Apr 22, 2010)

What he really wants to play is Gurps.

Or even Fantasy Hero.


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## Ourph (Apr 22, 2010)

Steel_Wind said:


> Why not just take ten?



I like the take 10 mechanic, but the OP didn't include that as an option. I can only work with what I'm given.


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## ProfessorCirno (Apr 23, 2010)

His entire premise is flawed from the start.

D&D is not - and should never become - WoW.  Aside from the emotional arguments that can be made, the games are just too drastically different.  In fact, I'll even skip the number crunching, and instead say this:

You want to reduce grind in your game...so you're copying from an MMO?

_Really?_

There are two types of fights in WoW - trash mobs you steamroll, and non-trash mobs you get the wheel ready for.  In a standard instance boss fight, it's typically a long ordeal that requires you to carefully whittle down the enemy's HP while doing whatever the particular gimmick of that fight is.  Some fights have you running around a lot, some have you moving or attacking in patterns, others have classes do something special for it, etc, etc.  But the main goal of the fight is the same - there's the boss, he has a *giant* amount of health, slowly bring him down.

That's not what D&D is - nor is it what D&D should be.

The heresy isn't the method of rolling.  The heresy is the incredibly flawed - and, quite frankly, _stupid_ - belief that D&D is supposed to be analogous to WoW. in the first place.


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## awesomeocalypse (Apr 23, 2010)

The 60% to hit chance that he cites as the 4e standard seems a little low to me. I mean, maybe when the game was first made and if you weren't using a ton of synergy. These days though, its easy to optimize characters for a 70%+ base hit chance, and it is also easy to get massive synergy bonuses with even a modicum of thought. Plus, 4e characters often have a huge number of ways to make sure their most important attacks hit, e.g. action suge, lead the attack, elven accuracy, dark one's own luck. Point is, if the DM is designing fair encounters and the players are missing on their most important powers with any sort of consistency, there's a good chance they're either playing fairly suboptimal builds, or not using a lot of teamwork. 

For my part, I'd say my characters hit about 75% of the time on ordinary attacks (higher if i'm playing a striker or going out of my way to optimize) and closer to 90% on really important attacks. To me that's basically ideal


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## blargney the second (Apr 23, 2010)

ggroy said:


> Wonder if anyone ever tried replacing the d20 with 2d10 for to-hit and skill check rolls in D&D.



Yeah, I ran with that one for a few months.  We ended up dropping it for several reasons, not least of which that it restricted the range of monsters that I could use.  Easy monsters were easier and hard monsters were harder.


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## Votan (Apr 23, 2010)

awesomeocalypse said:


> The 60% to hit chance that he cites as the 4e standard seems a little low to me. I mean, maybe when the game was first made and if you weren't using a ton of synergy. These days though, its easy to optimize characters for a 70%+ base hit chance, and it is also easy to get massive synergy bonuses with even a modicum of thought. Plus, 4e characters often have a huge number of ways to make sure their most important attacks hit, e.g. action suge, lead the attack, elven accuracy, dark one's own luck. Point is, if the DM is designing fair encounters and the players are missing on their most important powers with any sort of consistency, there's a good chance they're either playing fairly suboptimal builds, or not using a lot of teamwork.
> 
> For my part, I'd say my characters hit about 75% of the time on ordinary attacks (higher if i'm playing a striker or going out of my way to optimize) and closer to 90% on really important attacks. To me that's basically ideal




If you think that this is the central issue, wouldn't an easier fix be to subtract 3 from all monster defenses?  It's easy to remember and it doesn't alter the general impact of bonuses on results.  

In the same sense, if grind is a massive issue, dividing everyone's hit points by 2 seems to work surprisingly well (at least conceptually -- this has not been heavily playtested and some of the odd number rounding could create some unpleasant side effects).


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 23, 2010)

ProfessorCirno said:


> His entire premise is flawed from the start.
> 
> D&D is not - and should never become - WoW.  Aside from the emotional arguments that can be made, the games are just too drastically different.  In fact, I'll even skip the number crunching, and instead say this:
> 
> ...



Way to miss the forest for the trees.  The meat of the argument is about the feel of misses and their relative importance.  He could have chosen any number of examples, but chose WoW because it's a very stark difference from D&D in action economy.  It is also a modern example that everyone is likely to have some familiarity with.

That has nothing to do with "making D&D into WoW."  Making that claim about his argument is a strawman, at best.

If you want to critique the actual argument, do that, but fixating on the window-dressing isn't helpful.


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## ProfessorCirno (Apr 23, 2010)

Canis said:


> Way to miss the forest for the trees.  The meat of the argument is about the feel of misses and their relative importance.  He could have chosen any number of examples, but chose WoW because it's a very stark difference from D&D in action economy.  It is also a modern example that everyone is likely to have some familiarity with.
> 
> That has nothing to do with "making D&D into WoW."  Making that claim about his argument is a strawman, at best.
> 
> If you want to critique the actual argument, do that, but fixating on the window-dressing isn't helpful.




Except his entire argument is built on "This isn't fun - take WoW for example."

He wants to kill swinginess even more.  Fine.  I think it's the stupidest thing he could do, changing the dice rolling, but _fine_.  His call.  The issue is when his reasons for it are basically "Look at WoW, where you never miss.  That's fun."  How about later, when he says "Look at WoW, where you do static damage.  That's fun."

You can't compare the two, and that _is_ his argument.  "Missing isn't fun, _unlike WoW_."  You can't ignore that second part when he spends just as much time talking about WoW as he does D&D - especially when his prime reason for making this change was "this isn't fun - look at WoW"

What he's advocating is more or less greatly altering the way the game works in order to make sure the player almost always hits and almost always does good damage, and his entire purpose of doing so is because "It's not fun, like a video game."  Even if you strip out the WoW part, his whole argument is still built on this statement: "Video games that  use die-roll-like mechanics have high hit rates."

Again, that's the heresy.  The idea that you need to eliminate chance, make things static, and, want to directly copy the design philosophies of video games.  I don't care if someone takes a few hints from video games, but when you want to take the _design philosophies_ from it, there can be an issue - and there _is _an issue when those philosophies run counter to tabletop game philosophies, such as trying to eliminate chance.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 23, 2010)

ProfessorCirno said:


> Except his entire argument is built on "This isn't fun - take WoW for example."



That's not what he was saying.  You are blowing "take this example from WoW" completely out of proportion.

He was saying that the time cost for missing is disproportionately high given how long it takes before you get to act again.  Which can be farking _forever_ in 3.x and 4e.  This contrasts perfectly with WoW, where you get to act every 1.5 seconds or less.

Both are ludicrous extremes.

In WoW, you act every 1.5 seconds, but they've set the game up so that nearly every action (and your passive damage!!) have a positive consequence.  This is extreme.  It's actually not defensible as a reward system for average people, but is catered to a high end optimizer in the raid game.

4e is built expecting a 60% hit rate, give or take.  And missing means you have had minimal or no impact for... what?  10-20 minutes, depending on nature of the combat and the table.  You get to spend 40% of that time as a failure.  Good on ya.  There is a fair case to be made that that is not fun, that has nothing to do with WoW.

He mentioned WoW because it is a familiar example to people, but he still comes down on a system that is far closer to baseline D&D.  There are about 50 iterative steps between where 4e is on these lines and where WoW is.  He takes maybe 1 step, and if you read his actual argument, it is informed by statistics, not WoW.

He made one aspect of his game 1% more like WoW.  The blasphemer.  That's not even enough to call it convergent evolution, much less "inspired by WoW."

There is a difference between "using as a contrasting illustration" and "inspired by."


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## amerigoV (Apr 23, 2010)

On the 3d6 action - I was looking over DragonAge RPG, which uses that mechanic. They did some cool things with the multiple dice. For example, if you rolled doubles, then you could pull some special maneuvers. How many maneuvers as based on the result of one of the 3 dice (the dragon die). As PCs leveled, each class got their own special maneuvers.

I think the hard side would be balancing the opposition. I have played as much for 4e, but for 3.5 you need some swing to hit some critters. As others have said, you are pushing results to the norm, so lower defense critters are almost always hit and hit ones are not.


"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"


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## thewok (Apr 23, 2010)

Canis said:


> You get to spend 40% of that time as a failure.  Good on ya.  There is a fair case to be made that that is not fun, that has nothing to do with WoW.



I don't subscribe to this viewpoint.  In purely mechanical terms, perhaps it could be viewed as "failure," but I do not play D&D for a purely mechanical game.  Those defenses aren't just arbitrary numbers--they represent a target's conscious effort to defend itself.  If you arbitrarily increase the chance to hit, you have also decreased the chance for the target to defend.  It increases predictability, and predictability breeds boredom.



> He made one aspect of his game 1% more like WoW.  The blasphemer.  That's not even enough to call it convergent evolution, much less "inspired by WoW."



If it's good for his group, that's great.  I hope they continue to enjoy it.  I find his reasoning in opposition to my own experience, though, where the "failure" of the group can lead to some of the most memorable moments in our games.


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## Grydan (Apr 24, 2010)

I must admit to finding his article confusing.

I thought I was following along just fine... then out of nowhere comes "These elements  taken together led me to using a bell-curve determiner for D&D  attack rolls".  

Let me see if I have his position correct. Maybe I've misinterpreted somewhere. 

He feels that the existing to-hit probability in D&D is too low for his group. This is partly due to the time players have to wait between turns. So he wants to adjust the probabilities so that his players hit more often.

Okay, that all seems perfectly reasonable.

Where is the leap to the bell curve coming from, though?

He says that a linear determiner is too swingy, but he's clearly fine with the existing probabilities of critical hits and misses, as he engineered his replacement system to keep the odds as close as he could to the existing ones. He also doesn't care for the random damage roll, but his change doesn't address this in any way.

It's the hit rate that he wants to change... but modifying the hit rate, predictably, is one of the simplest things one can do in a system with a linear determiner.

If you want your players to hit 75% of the time, rather than 65% of the time... lower all monster defences by 2. Everything else in the system works the same. 

The only mechanical (rather than personal preference) thing his system actually gains over this, as far as I can tell, is the granularity he added to critical hits and misses, which wasn't his goal in the first place, and could have been added to the existing system in other ways.


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## Goken100 (Apr 24, 2010)

ggroy said:


> Wonder if anyone ever tried replacing the d20 with 2d10 for to-hit and skill check rolls in D&D.




I did in 3.5, and I recommend it.  IMHO, the advantage of having a compromise between the extremes of d20 and 3d6 outweighs the minor annoyance of a 0.5 shift in average result.

I don't use the house rule for 4E, however.  Not because it wouldn't work just as well, I just prefer to run 4E as written because I like it so much better than 3.5.


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## thecasualoblivion (Apr 24, 2010)

The funny thing is, it isn't hit rate that really changes the dynamic of 4E's combat, its damage. There are few things that consistently boost attack rolls, and the 60% hit rate can be messed with, but only to a small extent. On the other hand, there are vast amounts of things you can do to pimp damage rolls, and you can get crazy with this. I have a four person group of level 21 characters that can consistently kill Elites in one round of focus fire, and a Sorcerer who can take off 3/4 of a Standard monster's HP total with an At-Will crit(the Sorcerer has severely boosted crits and a feat that lets them attack again as a free action when he crits with an At-Will).


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## Goken100 (Apr 24, 2010)

Moridin said:


> Speaking purely from a game design standpoint, non-dice pool systems (like d20, or any other system where you roll a single die) make it easier to predict the statistical impact of other game elements, like numerical bonuses and penalties. In d20, I can be assured that a +1 is always a 5% increase in chance of success, and -5 is always a 25% increase in the chance of failure, for example.
> 
> Bell curve systems (and, really, other dice pool systems) don't have the same level of ease of prediction. A +1 means different things based on how the dice fall. Plus, let's face it, the math is just harder when you start adding in multiple dice. Sure, you can do it, and game designers get paid for that kind of thing. But for casual designers (i.e. DMs wanting to homebrew) it slows down the process for most people. It's my personal opinion that a single-die system (d20 or otherwise) is easier to homebrew, and that's a good thing since it makes it easier for DMs/GMs to take ownership of their own game through house rules and homebrewed monsters, treasure, etc.




Rodney is a nice man who will hopefully continue to make wonderful toys for all of us.  Its just that he's wrong right now, and here's why.

Point 1:  I must quibble with 3d6 being lumped in with wilder dice games.  A 3d6 system is not a dice pool system.  Dice pool games are games where the pool of dice varies, thus creating an ever changing averages and variances.  As a trained statistician, I too find such games abhorrent.  But a system that uses a static number of dice, but it 1 die or 3, has a completely knowable statistical behavior.

Point 2: What Rodney might have been getting at is that the DM or game designer does not know the exact bonuses and targets of a given roll when awarding a shiny new +1 sword.  A skilled character might already be hitting most of the time (be in the tail of the bell curve), so the +1 does not significantly increase the skilled player's success.  But an unskilled player who hits only half the time (is in the middle of the bell curve) will be greatly affected by a +1.  This disparity of probability affect is not seen in a linear distribution.

In conclusion, I do not think that Rodney's argument holds much water.  Yes, probability changes depend on the relative position on the bell curve, but the random element is static.  The game will hold up just fine.  A +1 will always shift the difficulty of tasks that are reasonable to accomplish up by 1, no matter where you start.  The value does not change based on "how the dice fall", as Rodney claims.

Cheers!


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 24, 2010)

thewok said:


> I don't subscribe to this viewpoint.



No one said you had to.  I just said that it's a defensible point.  Fair discussions and arguments can be had on the point without needless hyperbole or accusations of badwrongMMOfun.  



> If it's good for his group, that's great.  I hope they continue to enjoy it.  I find his reasoning in opposition to my own experience, though, where the "failure" of the group can lead to some of the most memorable moments in our games.



That can certainly be true, depending on the table and the game.  But there is tons of room for variance there while still well within the space of the hobby.


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## Skallgrim (Apr 25, 2010)

I think that it is entertaining (though admittedly I didn't read the whole thread over there, just over here) how few people have actually had (or actually discussed having) experience with GURPS, which has been around for YEARS and has used 3d6 for combat and skill checks (since all combat is based on combat skills) for forever.

The long and short of it. A single +1 or -1 is going to radically shift the center of the bell curve. It has very little effect on the far reaches. Obviously, as it is a bell curve.  However, what that means, in practice, is that a +1 (for a higher stat) or a +2 (for say, combat advantage) is a HUGE factor if your original chance of success was about 50%. 

Given that PCs seem to be intended to have "success rolls" that are in the 50-65% range, this means that the PC who goes with an 18 rather than a 16 in a prime attribute is going to, on average, be MUCH better off in a 3d6 system than a d20 system. +3 Proficiency Weapons will be MUCH better in such a system. Any source of bonuses to hit will be MUCH more desirable in such a system, and will have a LOT more of an impact.

I suspect that if you adopted such a system, you would see a real decimation of race/class combos where the primary stat was not boosted by race, as well as a wholesale abandonment of +2 proficiency weapons. Weapon expertise would become MORE desirable than it is now (and now it is often considered practically mandatory). 

The attractiveness of such a system in GURPS is because of three factors, none of which applies to D&D:

First, the system has lots of bonuses AND penalties, so it is possible to boost your chances to hit (say by using a telegraphed attack) and trade that off for a desirable outcome with a penalty (telegraphing that axe swing to the neck). 

Second, the system depends on opposed rolls, so (except for criticals), it sometimes doesn't matter that you have an effective skill of 27 or less on 3d6. Your opponent has a dodge of 14 on 3d6, and so dodges 87% (or whatever) of your attacks anyway.

Third, the system (as it is point based) makes it MORE expensive to obtain higher skill levels. While D&D has this to a minor extent with the point buy system for attributes, after creation, it is no more expensive to increase an 11 to a 12 than it is to increase a 18 to a 19. In GURPS, the second increase costs substantially more than the first. 

Go ahead and try it. You will get improved accuracy, but you'll see every problem with ruthless optimization made a lot worse, and you'll see the entire system become less tolerant of sub-optimal builds, I predict.


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## Celebrim (Apr 25, 2010)

Skallgrim said:


> Go ahead and try it. You will get improved accuracy, but you'll see every problem with ruthless optimization made a lot worse, and you'll see the entire system become less tolerant of sub-optimal builds, I predict.




In the early to mid-90's I'd gotten sick of 1e AD&D for what I percieved to be a lack of 'realism', flexibility, balance and depth.   I had basically all the common snears and slurs at 1e AD&D down.  I adopted GURPS.

It took me only a couple years of actually playing (or trying to play it) to get sick of GURPs, and I eventually dropped it as a 'toy' system which read much better than it played and existed primarily to give rules tinkers something to tinker with.  The list of problems I had with it was extensive, but the above criticism was one of the most salient (because it is an example of something that can't be fixed the way many of my other complaints were by 4e).  In practice, the point buy system did not in fact lead to the broader, more versital, more 'realistic' characters that I hoped except by social convention (that is, everyone at the table prefered such characters and created them by choice).  In practice, I found that it (and other point buy systems like WW's WoD games which I was also playing at the time) led to extreme hyper-specialization because that is exactly what the system rewarded.

Playing GURPS taught me alot about the effect of rules choices, design, alternate ways of looking at the world through the rules and it improved my ability to tinker with rules sets to achieve my actual desired goal.  My current d20 rules are informed in several ways by my experience with GURPS.  But I wouldn't actually recommend it as a game nor have I any desire to run it.


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## RodneyThompson (Apr 25, 2010)

Goken100 said:


> Point 1:  I must quibble with 3d6 being lumped in with wilder dice games.  A 3d6 system is not a dice pool system.




I do know there is a difference between bell curve and dice pool systems. I simply lumped them together because my point is that any system that uses multiple dice to determine outcome is inherently more complicated (for the purposes of determining statistics and probable outcomes) than a single-die system. I wasn't trying to argue that they cannot be used or are somehow bad for gaming, just that they are not as easy to understand the underlying probabilities in.



Goken100 said:


> The game will hold up just fine.




I never said otherwise, nor meant to imply it.



Goken100 said:


> A +1 will always shift the difficulty of tasks that are reasonable to accomplish up by 1, no matter where you start.  The value does not change based on "how the dice fall", as Rodney claims




If I roll 3d6+1, the benefit of the +1 changes based on what I roll. If I roll a 9 and the +1 makes it a 10, that's a very small benefit from the +1, since I already had a 50% chance of getting a 10 anyways. If I roll a 16 instead and that makes it a 17, that's a huge difference, since the chances of getting a 17 are 215:1 against, and the odds of the 16 were 53:1 against. A d20 always produces a 5% increase in chance of success per +1, no matter what you roll. 

Not that that's a bad or a gamebreaking thing. It's just more difficult for most DMs to figure out. That's all I'm saying.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 25, 2010)

That's a little misleading.  Admittedly, I'm close to reductio ad absurdum here, but if you are inflating specific points on the curve to make your point, I can just as easily say "If I needed a 17 and I roll a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, or 18 that +1 is meaningless."  After all, that +1 only has a _visible_ effect when it makes or breaks the roll, which only happens when you're one short.

The shift of the curve as a whole is what's actually relevant to game experience over time.  +1 will shift the mean by, well... 1.  That's very predictable.  You combine the switch in dice with knocking a couple points off the defenses of very high defense foes and the average player or GM probably won't notice there was any difference.

Exception granted for the numbers gurus around these parts.


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## clearstream (Apr 25, 2010)

[Edited] Among the responses to his blog Chris eventually says...

_My major beef with the d20 is that, taken unmodified, its swing in results doesn’t resemble real life at all. It resembles arbitrary randomness. Skilled folks aren’t so subject that much to luck. The modifiers built into the game offset the d20’s swing for sure, though._ 

...and I guess he had that in the back of his mind when he made the design move that he did. Switching from a line to a curve was never a great solution to his initial problem (low hit chances), but could it be a reasonable solution to that completely different problem (emulating real-life)?

*I agree with Chris that real-life doesn't feel linear. *Most attempts to model real-life use curves of one sort or another. Setting aside the obvious question of how much you care about emulating real-life in your game, there is another objection to be made, and that is that D&D already uses multiple dice rolls to resolve actions.

*To resolve a fight, you will roll many dice. *You will roll a d20 followed by (most commonly) d8s or d6s; and then if the fight isn't over, you'll roll more dice. Your overall probability of winning will plot neatly onto a curve that will be bellish looking. Still, what about single rolls for skills? 4ed introduced skill challenges: and, of course, they use multiple rolls.

Hmm... but this leads around in a circle. Was Chris' issue _really _just missing too often?

-vk
_
*Side note: *I do have a mild dislike of using multiple dice for  core determination, entirely related to the issue that +1 means  different things depending on where you started from. That discomforts  me when I consider buffs and debuffs, such as aid another, fighting  defensively, combat advantage, and magic: I believe it results in a  narrowing of mechanically good options for play._


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## Pseudopsyche (Apr 26, 2010)

Canis said:


> That's a little misleading.  Admittedly, I'm close to reductio ad absurdum here, but if you are inflating specific points on the curve to make your point, I can just as easily say "If I needed a 17 and I roll a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, or 18 that +1 is meaningless."  After all, that +1 only has a _visible_ effect when it makes or breaks the roll, which only happens when you're one short.



Yes, but when you use more than one die, the probability of being one short depends on the DC.



Canis said:


> The shift of the curve as a whole is what's actually relevant to game experience over time.  +1 will shift the mean by, well... 1.  That's very predictable.



Consider this fact: in a d20 system, a +1 bonus to the attack roll increases the expected damage by a constant, 0.05*E[W], where E[W] is the expected damage on a hit.  If you are using 3d6, the increase in expected damage due to a +1 bonus depends on the target number.  In particular, it depends on the probability of being one short.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 26, 2010)

Right, but that's irrelevant to actual play except in specific cases.  Sure, you can pull out corner cases, but the distribution of results over time is what really matters, and a 3d6 is a normal distribution.

Maybe this is the biologist in me talking, but a normal distribution is great.  It's true to many aspects of life *and* awesomely predictable over time without giving up outliers for variety's sake.

When I find something in real life that is a nice, straightforward normal distribution, I'm thrilled.

Hand me the graph of the distribution and the relevant modifiers and I'll set you a DC that will give you exactly the percentage of positive and negative outcomes you want.

I'll concede that the average gamer might have a harder time doing that than with a d20 roll, but the system does that for them to a large extent.  All of that is further under the hood than I've ever seen anyone not on an internet forum actually go.


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## clearstream (Apr 26, 2010)

Canis said:


> Right, but that's irrelevant to actual play except in specific cases.  Sure, you can pull out corner cases, but the distribution of results over time is what really matters, and a 3d6 is a normal distribution.
> 
> Maybe this is the biologist in me talking, but a normal distribution is great.  It's true to many aspects of life *and* awesomely predictable over time without giving up outliers for variety's sake.




The outcome of a given encounter is typically a normal distribution. Most encounters are not resolved with a single dice roll: at the least two are rolled (the attack, and the damage). Ignoring that and trying to inject your distribution in a new place is kind of silly tbph. It's like worrying about the distribution on each of those d6, taken alone.



Canis said:


> Hand me the graph of the distribution and the relevant modifiers and I'll set you a DC that will give you exactly the percentage of positive and negative outcomes you want.
> 
> I'll concede that the average gamer might have a harder time doing that than with a d20 roll, but the system does that for them to a large extent.  All of that is further under the hood than I've ever seen anyone not on an internet forum actually go.




The issue is not the difficulty in figuring the odds, the issue is that because any modifier means different things at different points in the range the game can get more swingy and player options can narrow (even down to always using Aid Another, because that makes more difference than having your own attack). Others have made this point repeatedly, pointing out for example that in setting up your character choices between a weapon that does more damage or a weapon that has a mod to hit can easily become non-choices.

The problem isn't just not knowing what +1 means, it is that +1 means different things to every participant. Sometimes a Bless is mandated, othertimes it is pointless. Foes a few levels up the spectrum will be unfightable, a few levels down trivial, narrowing the range for player interaction and reducing fun. The + or - 5 guideline certainly won't hold: so players had better like fighting level + or - 1 for the rest of the campaign!

I had thought the 'it's more like r-l' point might be defensible: but it just doesn't pass. One could no doubt architect a system where 3d6 works well, but to spatchcock it on to 4ed is plain bad design.

-vk


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## Bluenose (Apr 26, 2010)

vonklaude said:


> [Edited] Among the responses to his blog Chris eventually says...
> 
> _My major beef with the d20 is that, taken unmodified, its swing in results doesn’t resemble real life at all. It resembles arbitrary randomness. Skilled folks aren’t so subject that much to luck. The modifiers built into the game offset the d20’s swing for sure, though._
> 
> ...




On the subject of linearity, I wonder if rolling 3d20 and disregarding the highest and lowest would get a result closer to a bell curve? I'd think it should, but I lack the time to model it.


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## Nymrohd (Apr 26, 2010)

vonklaude said:


> The outcome of a given encounter is typically a normal distribution. Most encounters are not resolved with a single dice roll: at the least two are rolled (the attack, and the damage). Ignoring that and trying to inject your distribution in a new place is kind of silly tbph. It's like worrying about the distribution on each of those d6, taken alone.




There is a leap of logic here. Just because there are several dice being rolled in a single fight, this does not mean that it will end up aproximating a normal distribution. It would if the sample truly was large enough, but I am not certain that the central limit theorem is applicable for the number of dice rolls in your average encounter.


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## clearstream (Apr 26, 2010)

Nymrohd said:


> There is a leap of logic here. Just because there  are several dice being rolled in a single fight, this does not mean  that it will end up aproximating a normal distribution. It would if the  sample truly was large enough, but I am not certain that the central  limit theorem is applicable for the number of dice rolls in your average  encounter.




I believe you are correct in characterising my reasoning as a leap,  but I feel that does not invalidate it.

Imagine a foe with 27hp,  whom you hit on a 9+ dealing 1-8 damage. This foe hits you back on 16+  dealing 1-6 damage. You have 18hp.

Run this fight several dozen  times. The graph of fight outcomes, including specifics from who won, to  number of turns it took, to end hp of victor, will plot onto a bellish  curve. The middle will fall on you winning after about ten turns with  about 10hp left. At either end are fights where you win without taking a  point, and where you lose without landing a point. The distribution  will be lopsided due to the biased setup I have provided.

Now add  three other characters and four more foes. That's a lot of dice.  Enough dice that expected outcomes become strongly favoured.  Still, those outliers are always there.

To feel that the linear  nature of the 1d20 you roll to attack means that D&D combat is not  like life for reasons of distribution alone (i.e. something that can be solved by using multiple dice for that one roll) would only be true if that  single roll also ended the combat. That would make it more like a 3ed SoD/SoL spell where a  single saving throw determined the outcome. Even then, you would have  to be facing just one foe, and won initiative... another  roll.



-vk

*EDIT* _On that, we have to remember that one doesn't really know the value of a +1 unless we also know other details of the encounter. I need to rethink my conclusions (in earlier posts) in that regard.
_


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## questing gm (Apr 26, 2010)

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIaIdv79Xz4&feature=related]YouTube - The Gamers (Part 4 of 5)[/ame]

I understand where Chris seems to be coming from and I do agree about the 'swingyness' of the d20 (e.g, the iron bars scene in the video above) that sometimes just seems to award pure chance than proper character building.

I think it's fair to use d20 for combat but 3d6 for skill checks.


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 26, 2010)

vonklaude said:


> One could no doubt architect a system where 3d6 works well, but to spatchcock it on to 4ed is plain bad design.
> 
> -vk



While I'm not certain I can agree to most of what you said, this last has some merit.  I'm not enough of a 4e wonk to know how many monsters are going to create some problems here.

But the math itself suggests that the average user is only going to notice those issues at the top end of their performance (i.e. fighting the very toughest defenses).  You can mitigate most of that by lopping off the biggest, baddest defenses at the knees to get them within the upper range of expected dice outcomes.

No, that won't be perfect, but it would take a series of corner cases to make it look really different over time.  But if you're throwing corner case after corner case at your players, you're probably not within the expected design space, anyway.


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## Votan (Apr 27, 2010)

Canis said:


> While I'm not certain I can agree to most of what you said, this last has some merit.  I'm not enough of a 4e wonk to know how many monsters are going to create some problems here.
> 
> But the math itself suggests that the average user is only going to notice those issues at the top end of their performance (i.e. fighting the very toughest defenses).  You can mitigate most of that by lopping off the biggest, baddest defenses at the knees to get them within the upper range of expected dice outcomes.
> 
> No, that won't be perfect, but it would take a series of corner cases to make it look really different over time.  But if you're throwing corner case after corner case at your players, you're probably not within the expected design space, anyway.




True, but I think that the issue also involves synergy.  For example, there are powers that involve infliciting a penalty to hit (Psions, for example) that are low level and easy to use.  In the d20 version of the game, a -4 penalty is harsh but still leaves a functional opponent (say if it was hitting on 11+, moving to 15+ is a serious hit but still leaves it as a threat).  In 3d6, the same numbers might very well create a helpless opponent.  

With 3d6 you are shrinking the variance of every action as well as the whiole fight.  All fights will show a normal distribution due to the number of separate rolls that are made (at least so long as you believe in the Central Limit Theorem).  Further reducing variance moves the game away from one of chance (as odds of an upset became miniscule) and towards rock, paper, scissors (do you have the right power versus the right weak spot to guarentee victory).  

A 3d6 approach works much better in games like GURPS where a fight could be settled by a single hit (due to the penalties, equal to damage IIRC, that the victim takes the next round).  So there you want to make sure that luck doesn't dominate because fights are over fast.  In a modern world version of GURPS, I recall a rifle that does 7d6 damage (hit points are an ability score with a normal person having 10 and exceptional peopel having 18) that could be used for called shots to the head -- if a character with a gun skill got to aim and fire in any sort of clear setting the opponent was simply dead with a single shot.  Here you want to reduce variability because so much depends on one roll.

In 4E, by contrast, there are a lot of rolls.  And a lot of penalties.  All of which were calibrated on a d20 scale.  

In 3E the real killer was saving throws -- high saves turned into immunity (you could never miss them) and low saves turned into hopeless situations.  Even worse, spell DC boosts became exceptionally deadly as did targeting a low save.  

I think that the 3d6 approach does a lot of damage to the assumptions of the system . . .


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 27, 2010)

Votan said:


> True, but I think that the issue also involves synergy.  For example, there are powers that involve infliciting a penalty to hit (Psions, for example) that are low level and easy to use.  In the d20 version of the game, a -4 penalty is harsh but still leaves a functional opponent (say if it was hitting on 11+, moving to 15+ is a serious hit but still leaves it as a threat).  In 3d6, the same numbers might very well create a helpless opponent.



Or at least one with a very, very low chance to hit.  Aye.  I can see that.

OK, so there are probably more things to adjust than top end defenses.


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## MortonStromgal (Apr 27, 2010)

The problem with the d20 and misses is that the d20 counts for too much. If you used a single d10 and scaled the difficulties for a d10 your stats would matter much more. Likewise if you raised the stats to count for more the d20 wouldn't alter the success level as much. If a first level character has +10 to +20 then the roll on the d20 just isn't as significant. I personally like my curves and die pools but I understand where they are slow. Systems like Desolation that use Xd2 dice pools are still a tad slower to calculate than a d20+bonus (though dice pools can be faster if you don't have that bonus pre-calculated for your d20 game)


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## ST (Apr 27, 2010)

Votan said:


> A 3d6 approach works much better in games like GURPS where a fight could be settled by a single hit (due to the penalties, equal to damage IIRC, that the victim takes the next round).  So there you want to make sure that luck doesn't dominate because fights are over fast.  In a modern world version of GURPS, I recall a rifle that does 7d6 damage (hit points are an ability score with a normal person having 10 and exceptional peopel having 18) that could be used for called shots to the head -- if a character with a gun skill got to aim and fire in any sort of clear setting the opponent was simply dead with a single shot.  Here you want to reduce variability because so much depends on one roll.
> .




I think that's a good point, but it's particular to GURPS. The HERO system also uses 3d6 roll under target number, but depending on the genre you can have fights that last quite a while. (Champions super-level fistfights between bricks, for example.) I do agree that a bell curve system does push more of the "What happened" part of resolution to the damage roll. Killing Attacks in HERO in particular are extremely swingy. 

Most of my teenage gaming was done in either HERO or GURPS, so I don't get personally worried about modifiers swinging the rolls off either side of the bell curve; typically those systems had lower modifiers as a result. That the traditional breakpoints (8-, 11-, 14-) roughly correspond to 20%, 50%, and 80% probability makes it pretty easy to eyeball, too. 

Heh, I guess I'm saying I don't necessarily disagree with you, even though I thought I did.  It's totally true that keeping large modifiers a la 3e/4e would have some funky results on a 3d6 curve.


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## carmachu (Apr 27, 2010)

> I have another way to put it. The die-roll result is too important and too unpredictable. Chance plays too big a role in the game.




The author then comletely misses the point of the game then. No one ever talks about "hey I'm not hitting enough" or " I'm not hitting consistantly". But in every game I played or folks talked about, for years after, that critical hit or critical fumble that came at the right(or wrong) time....


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## Jeremy Ackerman-Yost (Apr 27, 2010)

Now I'm getting curious, because I had considered in the past running a D&D lite for the nephews at some point, but I'm likely to have nothing buy d6s available if I do.

High defenses are clearly an issue, but I might be lowballing those for the tots anyway.

Powers that alter to hit by more than, say.... +2?  Likely to be a problem area.

What else springs to mind?


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## clearstream (Apr 27, 2010)

MortonStromgal said:


> The problem with the d20 and misses is that the d20 counts for too much. If you used a single d10 and scaled the difficulties for a d10 your stats would matter much more. Likewise if you raised the stats to count for more the d20 wouldn't alter the success level as much. If a first level character has +10 to +20 then the roll on the d20 just isn't as significant.




Just as a related observation, when choosing numbers for power+chance mechanical arrangements (where power is strength or skill or whatever: the fixed value; something you might call constant+variable) you often find that the chance needs to be at least roughly equal to the constant to yield a satisfying result, where higher power does not make contests unwinnable/uninteresting.

In D&D power obviously increases, but I think one would find that anything less than a 1-20 range for the chance component would feel unsatisfying in the paragon and epic tiers. The design move you could make would be to use different dice at each tier: say d10 at heroic, d20 at paragon, and something else at epic. I think you would find that undesirable, partly because it's more rules and explaining for little gain, and partly because it might harm SOD (suspension of disbelief) for reasons associated with those that trouble some players related to overly smooth mechanical scaling.

In any case, and as many have mentioned, it requires a large amount of work for possibly negligible gain to switch to an Xd base roll. The point, I suppose, being that CS' initial and later reasons for making a change all turn out to be badly thought through. Battle outcomes do fall on curves, due to the many rolls involved; and if you just want to hit more often, give all players a permanent buff. Better yet, make it an item with charges that does it so that when you change your mind you can switch back with no disruption.

-vk


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## Nymrohd (Apr 27, 2010)

Personally I think the problem with hitting is not so much the lack of  success on a miss but rather the very binary nature of attacks in 4E.  3.5 and before, at least for spellcasters, provided several interesting  combat option other than attacks. In 4E almost everything is adjucidated  with an attack roll in combat and the results are largely binary (with  the exception of daily powers, and still only from PHB2 and after). What  I like about computer RPGs (and I guess MMOs like WoW) is the emphasis  on mitigation of attacks rather than avoidance. Attacks hit very often  but rarely do they land for the full ammount.
In short, in 4E attacks are exciting (damage, criticals, ongoing damage,  energy damage, butloads of afflictions, aftereffects), while defenses  are boring (binary target numbers or saves, rarely resistances). And the  thing is that the very logical, programmer code of the 4E power system  could have handled system complexity (in providing with more defenses)  rather well without slowing down the game. The system still feels swingy  not so because the d20 creates linearity but because binary defenses do  not allow for degrees of failure.


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## adaen (May 27, 2010)

ggroy said:


> At the risk of opening the can of worms even further from recent threads (ie. status effects annoying players, "ego-gamers", why must numbers go up, etc ....), here's an article by Chris Sims which proposes replacing the d20 with 3d6 in the basic rolls of 4E D&D, as a way of  increasing the probability to hit.
> 
> Loremaster - Dice Heresy by Chris Sims
> 
> Wonder what to make of this, in light of recent discussions.





Wow, I'm still working my way through all the responses here, but wanted to offer some comments of my own. The steeper the bell curve, the more predictability a mechanic has. The more predictable it is, the easier it is to assure PC survival (or mortality if the DM is a bastard). Intermediate to the flat d20 and the 3d6 is the mid20 (that is roll 3 d20's and take the middle result). It also removes the "extra addition" 3d6 has.

I've written about the mid20 and its TriDie parent on my blog. There's lots of other interesting things that can be done with the high and low results as well.

Search Results mid20 « High Adventure Games


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## pawsplay (May 27, 2010)

As far as the original article itself,... a 90% hit rate is a good thing, how?

People say "bell curve" like it's magic. First of all, bell curves come in all sorts of steepness. Second of all, the bell curve lives within d20. 

Using a 3d6 instead of a d20 does NOT institute a bell curve. Whatever the number if you need to hit, you either make it, or you don't. Whether you use a 3d6 or a d20, your chance of success is a single fraction. All systems involving target numbers are equivalent to a percentage chance of success. 

What 3d6 does, however, is to steepen the curve. If you have a +10 to hit and you need a total of 20, both are roughly equivalent. If you suffer a -2 penalty to hit, with a d20 you lose 10% of your chance to hit. With the 3d6, you lose more. Those small variations, close to the averate go hit bonus, are the most common variations in 4e. In other words, using 3d6 may overall make characters more accurage, simply because the target number now rests under the bell curve, but it actually accentuates differences in to-hit between PCs, in a certain sense, restoring the fighter-wizard disparity found in 3e. Instead of martial-magic disparity, however, you see optimized-unoptimized disparity, and single-attribute vs. MAD disparity.


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## Nifft (May 27, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> Second of all, the bell curve lives within d20.



 How so?

, -- N


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## blargney the second (May 27, 2010)

It's a very flat bell.  A gong, maybe?


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## malraux (May 27, 2010)

One can map a bell curve onto a flat random number generator.


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## TikkchikFenTikktikk (May 27, 2010)

(_It's alive! It's moving! It's alive! The thread is alive!_)

One aspect totally missing from this discussion is the whole "soft" side of the d20.

Rolling a d20 feels great. (Literally, I love the feel and sound of rolling a well-crafted d20. Rolling dice pools feels unwieldy and sounds worse.)

Rolling a d20 feels special, feels like D&D. It is only used heavily in D&D and in D&D-derived games. 

The image of a twenty-sided die has almost become **the** symbol of D&D, along with the fire-breathing dragon ampersand.

The golden rule of D&D since v3, and especially, explicitly so in 4E is "When your character tries to do something that might fail, roll a d20." Rolling a d20 to hit goes back decades.

"Rolling 20s" is part of the gaming lexicon, and it's linked to D&D. To a lesser extent, so is rolling 1s. These happen often enough to be a communal experience and create a bond amongst D&Ders.

The d20 is part of D&D's brand equity. 


Replacing the d20, or even just diminishing its role, with anything else could only be justified if the improvement to gameplay were **massive** or the replacement came with some ginormous amount of goodwill. I think six pages of debate have shown the improvement in gameplay by using 3d6 instead of d20 is arguable, not massive. And anything that makes D&D feel less special and more like Yahtzee or Farkle is a massive failure.

Replacing the d20 with a dice pool in D&D would be like the modern Christian church replacing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost with just God.


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## Cadfan (May 28, 2010)

The only thing I like about a bell curve distribution is that it makes each +1 to hit after the mid point less valuable than the one before, and each +1 to hit before the mid point more valuable than the one before.  This gives players an incentive to go at least to the mid point, then a little beyond, but probably not to the top of the curve.  By contrast in a flat distribution system each +1 to hit adds the same amount to expected damage up until you're only missing on a defined failure.


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## Nifft (May 28, 2010)

Cadfan said:


> The only thing I like about a bell curve distribution is that it makes each +1 to hit after the mid point less valuable than the one before, and each +1 to hit before the mid point more valuable than the one before.  This gives players an incentive to go at least to the mid point, then a little beyond, but probably not to the top of the curve.  By contrast in a flat distribution system each +1 to hit adds the same amount to expected damage up until you're only missing on a defined failure.



 Right, and that's great if they're starting right in the middle, but IMHO it's generally bad for these reasons:

1/ Too much constraint placed on the DM (or module designer) to make sure everyone is always starting right in the middle.

2/ Too much pain if you're penalized to -1 or -2 below the middle.

3/ Too much reward for metagaming and in-fight math optimization. IMHO this is the true killer. I recall the bad old days of 3.0e Power Attack spreadsheets, and I don't want to put that much emphasis on "tactical engineering".

Cheers, -- N


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## Votan (May 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> 2/ Too much pain if you're penalized to -1 or -2 below the middle.




In you are not careful, this can do the opposite of the stated intention of the use of 3d6 by making hitting functionally impossible.  It's not that hard actually -- a few penalties applied to players and an enemy with a high AC can be only hit on a 16+ (annoying in d20, pretty much a game ender in 3d6).  

I also noted that it really makes things like the psion's powers awful formidable (as a CHA penalty to hit can become devastating under this system).


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## Argyle King (May 29, 2010)

hmm...


I'm not sure what to think yet.  I'm still reading over the thread.


I have been experimenting with using 2d10 instead of a d20 for similar reasons.


While I'm familiar with 3d6 due to being familiar with GURPS, I had not considered trying to use 3d6 with D&D before.


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## pawsplay (May 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> How so?
> 
> , -- N




While each of the 20 rolls is a an even distribution, the actual die roll is not meaningful. There are actually only two results, hit or miss, and they are not the same probability in every scenario. The idea of normalizing attack bonuses and defenses in 4e is actually a way of creating a more bell-like distribution. 

The bell curve was not invented to model 3d6 or a dice pool or whatever. It's what happens when you sample multiple times from a random distribution. Even though many things in nature, like the d20, begin as a completely random distribution, as the results are aggregated, the bell curve magically appears. 

As I said before, the d20 and 3d6 are functionally identical in the amount of "randomness" they posses. Both are ultimately ways of deciding what fractional probability you will have to succeed. Using a 3d6 does not create a "bell curve." Rather, it just changes the graduations of probablity from bite-sized, 5% chunks of the entire distribution to chunks that vary in size. The result is not a change in the bell-curved of the distribution, but a transformation of the _modifiers_ and target numbers from a proportion of the variance to a curve, with the highest slope near the normal target numbers and the lowest slope at the extremes. Thus, even small differences become large ones, but very large differences are only slightly more meanginful than large differences. The 3d6 is more predictable but also more stratified, with the extreme values being fatter strata. 

Even though 3d6 is more mathematically predictable, the high shifts in probably that come from situational modifiers are not predictable. As long as there are no modifiers to the rolls, the 3d6 is a lot more predictable. But if the situation is such that you may get +1, +2, or no bonus from round to round, the probability will actually swing wider. Further, you will want to compare the usual range of skill or attack modifiers to the usual range of DCs, and compare the shift in % between d20 and 3d6 within those values to see if perhaps you are making high, but fairly common DCs out of reach.


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## Dark Mistress (May 29, 2010)

My group has been using 2d10 on skill checks and most other things other than combat stuff.


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## Nifft (May 29, 2010)

pawsplay said:


> While each of the 20 rolls is a an even distribution, the actual die roll is not meaningful. There are actually only two results, hit or miss, and they are not the same probability in every scenario. The idea of normalizing attack bonuses and defenses in 4e is actually a way of creating a more bell-like distribution.



 No, it's not. It's shifting a point on a uniform distribution. There is no bell.



pawsplay said:


> The bell curve was not invented to model 3d6 or a dice pool or whatever. It's what happens when you sample multiple times from a random distribution. Even though many things in nature, like the d20, begin as a completely random distribution, as the results are aggregated, the bell curve magically appears.



 No. If you plot a lot of d20 rolls, you get a flat line, because you are sampling a uniform distribution. Each result from 1 to 20 is equally likely, so each result's bucket will hold about the same number of samples, given a large enough number of samples.



pawsplay said:


> Using a 3d6 does not create a "bell curve."



 Adding multiple independent uniform probability density functions creates a more normal probability density function (where "more normal" is jargon that means "more bell-shaped").

So... yeah, it does.

I hope I'm reading you correctly.

Cheers, -- N


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## malraux (May 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> No, it's not. It's shifting a point on a uniform distribution. There is no bell.
> 
> No. If you plot a lot of d20 rolls, you get a flat line, because you are sampling a uniform distribution. Each result from 1 to 20 is equally likely, so each result's bucket will hold about the same number of samples, given a large enough number of samples.
> 
> ...




But because the 3d6 really converts to a yes/no result (ie you either hit or miss) you really only ever have 2 buckets.  That's not a bell curve once you actually resolve the result.


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## Nifft (May 29, 2010)

malraux said:


> But because the 3d6 really converts to a yes/no result (ie you either hit or miss) you really only ever have 2 buckets.  That's not a bell curve once you actually resolve the result.



 Is this a joke, or do you honestly not see the difference between 3d6 and tossing a coin?

Cheers, -- N


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## malraux (May 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Is this a joke, or do you honestly not see the difference between 3d6 and tossing a coin?
> 
> Cheers, -- N



It's not a joke.  But because the resolution is either success or failure, to a large extent the curve that generates the resolution isn't very important and can be mapped to a flat distribution.  that is, if you are using a 3d6 method and hitting requires a 13 or greater, that's identical to the situation of using a d20 and needing a 15 or greater or rolling % and needing a 75 or greater.


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## Nifft (May 29, 2010)

malraux said:


> It's not a joke.  But because the resolution is either success or failure, to a large extent the curve that generates the resolution isn't very important and can be mapped to a flat distribution.  that is, if you are using a 3d6 method and hitting requires a 13 or greater, that's identical to the situation of using a d20 and needing a 15 or greater or rolling % and needing a 75 or greater.



 Uh-huh. Any curve of which you only sample two points is identical to a straight line, right?

Wrong, because when the points move along the curve, they don't move at all like they would on a straight line. Since we've been talking about the effects of small bonuses (+1 or +2) on the expected result, it's useless to confine ourselves to just two fixed points.

When we don't confine ourselves to just those two points, the shape of the PDF becomes important, and the "two bucket" outlook becomes less than useful.

Cheers, -- N


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## malraux (May 29, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Uh-huh. Any curve of which you only sample two points is identical to a straight line, right?
> 
> Wrong, because when the points move along the curve, they don't move at all like they would on a straight line. Since we've been talking about the effects of small bonuses (+1 or +2) on the expected result, it's useless to confine ourselves to just two fixed points.
> 
> ...




Right, the affect is different, but because we are only ever looking for a success or failure, there's never going to be a case that you can't model with a flat distribution.

If this were a system where degree of success mattered, then the bell curve matters; that is, if exceeding the target AC by 5 did extra damage, then your actual result is affected by using a d20 or 3d6.  But DnD isn't one of those systems.  Your result is never 16, your result is hit or miss.


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## pawsplay (May 30, 2010)

malraux said:


> Right, the affect is different, but because we are only ever looking for a success or failure, there's never going to be a case that you can't model with a flat distribution.
> 
> If this were a system where degree of success mattered, then the bell curve matters; that is, if exceeding the target AC by 5 did extra damage, then your actual result is affected by using a d20 or 3d6.  But DnD isn't one of those systems.  Your result is never 16, your result is hit or miss.




Exactly. 3d6 is d20 is d%. You never get a "bell curve" for a given set of bonus vs. target. Changing to 3d6 only affects the significance of things that change the bonus vs. target relationship.


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## pawsplay (May 30, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Is this a joke, or do you honestly not see the difference between 3d6 and tossing a coin?
> 
> Cheers, -- N




There is no difference. We are essentially talking about two coins... one is fairly true, the other favors heads (or tails) at whatever frequency.


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## Cadfan (May 30, 2010)

The difference is in the marginal value of +1 at various points along the probability curve. In one case its flat, in the other +1 is more valuable closer to the center.  You may be able to approximate any particular roll on a bell curve distribution by rounding to the nearest 5% and using a d20, but you can't model the relation between the points on the curve.  At least not without creating a bell curve and doing a lot of work on any given in-game or character creation decision relating to your chances to hit.


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## Aloïsius (May 30, 2010)

What about 2D10 ? It's curvier than 1D20 but allow more "20" than 3d6 gives "18". (and even more 18-19-20, of course).


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## Votan (May 30, 2010)

Cadfan said:


> The difference is in the marginal value of +1 at various points along the probability curve. In one case its flat, in the other +1 is more valuable closer to the center.  You may be able to approximate any particular roll on a bell curve distribution by rounding to the nearest 5% and using a d20, but you can't model the relation between the points on the curve.  At least not without creating a bell curve and doing a lot of work on any given in-game or character creation decision relating to your chances to hit.




It also has distorting edge effects.  If you need an 18 to hit an opponent you can do so with 0.5% chance with 3d6 and 15% chance with d20.  Even assumptions like a natural 20 always hits (and thus a natural 18 always hits on 3d6) make extremely high AC radically more valuable (as, if you can get out of the normally rooled range, hits are far elss common).  

This takes mechanics that are already dangerous (stacking bonuses to make extremely high AC or, conversely, extremely high to hits) even more distorting and thus accelerates the benefits of hyper-optimization.

This is often an undesirable side effect


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## Ariosto (Jun 1, 2010)

Nifft said:


> Is this a joke, or do you honestly not see the difference between 3d6 and tossing a coin?
> 
> Cheers, -- N




There is no difference if you're looking for 11+ or 10- on the sum of 3d6. There is no difference between those cases and looking for 11+ or 10- on 1d20, either.

Even odds is even odds is even odds.

There is also no difference among 10+ on 2d6, 11+ on 1d12 and 6 on 1d6.

The difference between 13+ on 3d6 and 16+ on 1d20 is about .0093.



> When the points move along the curve, they don't move at all like they would on a straight line.



That is correct. Also, 6 and 11 and 10 and 84 are different numbers. What (if anything) the difference means is up to the game designer.


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## Silverblade The Ench (Jun 1, 2010)

*It should be reasonably difficult to hit an opponent of similar skill or risk!!*

Tough! Too bad!
the problem though can of course be with special solos (like the 1st MM BBEGs who's stats were broken), but otherwise, it's mostly the result of poor playing and/or DMing.

there are abilities to increase attack chance/damage for good reason, so use 'em instead of _always _the "big bad damage dealer" ones. Warlords, anyone?
You know? 

besides, I luv my d20s!! hehe


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