NP Comic for Thursday, Feb 2, 2023

[Darth Fluffy 302]

NP Comic for Thursday, Feb 2, 2023

"Wisdom? Meh, that's a dump stat."

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

So while the rest of the team is playing a D&D knock off, Larry is  playing CSI-Middle Earth?

 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

So while the rest of the team is playing a D&D knock off, Larry is  playing CSI-Middle Earth?

At least he appears to be enjoying himself.

Huh. Actually, CSI-Middle Earth would be a good setting, no?

[mlooney 3,417]

Just for the record, a Nat 20 on a skill check is just a high number, at least in the current version of 5e.  There was a drop of "One D&D" that made it an auto success , but that was dropped in the later 2 releases. If I recall correctly it's not an auto success in earlier versions as well, and if AD&D you want to roll low for that sort of thing.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

A mechanism for infrequent 'you succeed in spite of lack of skill' and 'you fail in spite of great skill' adds an element of interest to the game. It has to happen rarely to not devalue skills, but it means that anything risky has actual risk.

On the other hand, each skill level should make some things automatic, with no skill check. It would suck to have to roll for every breath you take.

Some things, like if ammo jams or if arrows break, might be better based on the quality of the object, rather than just skill.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

It has to happen rarely to not devalue skills, but it means that anything risky has actual risk.

Problem with that is that 1:20 isn't all that rare.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

15 hours ago, mlooney said:

Problem with that is that 1:20 isn't all that rare.

I agree. I've seen 'If you roll a 20, roll again. If you get a second 20, you automatically succeed.' -that is 1:400, a much more reasonable number. Requiring a third 20 would be 1:8000. If you were shooting for 1% of 1%, that's in the ballpark.

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

Reminds me of an old Price Is Right.  The kid spinning the wheel was in college, a math major.  Bob asked him the odds of hitting the dollar and he said 1 in 20 (or maybe 5 percent).

I was left thinking "you don't need a math major to calculate that".

 

[mlooney 3,417]

4 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I agree. I've seen 'If you roll a 20, roll again. If you get a second 20, you automatically succeed.' -that is 1:400, a much more reasonable number. Requiring a third 20 would be 1:8000. If you were shooting for 1% of 1%, that's in the ballpark.

 

That was the old 3.x system of critical hits.  You roll over a set number (which varied by weapon/feat combos) the rolled again.  If the 2nd roll was  hit you did critical damage, which was at least 2X, possibly as high as 4X for some weapon/feat combos.  Some prestige classes, feat, and weapon combos really broke this system.  While the 5e system is much cleaner it does make crits happen a lot more than they did in 3.x.  At least they are only double damage and it's roll twice as many dice, not just doubling the number rolled, which means the laws of big numbers and averages kick in so you have a lesser chance of massive damage.   Now a class that can add dice to a hit (paladin, rouge) can make a crit hurt, plus a crit by some spells is really gonna hurt. 

[Darth Fluffy 302]

13 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Reminds me of an old Price Is Right.  The kid spinning the wheel was in college, a math major.  Bob asked him the odds of hitting the dollar and he said 1 in 20 (or maybe 5 percent).

I was left thinking "you don't need a math major to calculate that".

Perhaps not, but I am currently rereading 'Innumeracy', and am reminded that even basic math is a mystery to many folks.

On the other hand, having a degree in math doesn't necessarily help. Read the history of  'The Monty Hall Problem'; Marilyn Vos Savant got major grief for publishing the answer in her column, much of it from folks with PhDs in math. This is a problem in which you can enumerate every case on a single sheet of paper, yet folks are baffled by it. (It involves conditional probability, which is often a stumbling block.)

I'd be curious if Bob Barker knew the answer to his question.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 2/2/2023 at 5:50 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

A mechanism for infrequent 'you succeed in spite of lack of skill' and 'you fail in spite of great skill' adds an element of interest to the game. It has to happen rarely to not devalue skills, but it means that anything risky has actual risk.

I remember a game where we were more or less doing "CSI: Forgotten Realms" in one scenario. We were investigating some mysterious thefts and a possible murder. At one point my character, a guard sergeant, got asked if it was OK if they took the corpse away. The player group wanted to see if we could learn more from the corpse; due to me having the highest Healing skill I got picked to do the honours.

I looked at the corpse -- a hapless beggar from the slums -- and crit failed. I said aloud, "Clearly dead from a drug overdose. Not of interest to our case. Go ahead and take the corpse away."

My DM actually gave me bonus XP for creatively screwing myself over.