tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post4342077415659943026..comments2024-03-07T16:20:50.007+00:00Comments on Librarians & Leviathans: Monitors: a tangent on traits and difficultiesShimmin Beghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-47632960429471484382014-03-22T09:26:26.134+00:002014-03-22T09:26:26.134+00:00Okay, I think I got that, and I take your points. ...Okay, I think I got that, and I take your points. I do tend to agree on very large and very small modifiers, although I think it's worth noting that small modifiers that crop up frequently will end up having an effect, in the same way that a slight change in stats is significant.<br /><br />I think where we diverge is on things that are Quite Hard or Quite Easy. One of the things that grates on me about Call of Cthulhu sometimes is that all tasks with a given skill are equally difficult. This means that in many cases you only ever have a long shot, no matter how difficult the task ought to be.<br /><br />Tangent: 3.5D&D's skill section is pretty humungous, but it does at least give the sense that things do vary in difficulty, and that taking sensible options or precautions is useful. It also has the (for me) attractive feature that you actually get better at stuff as you succeed, with things that used to be a challenge becoming easy. In contrast I dislike the 4E skill system because so many tasks scale in difficulty with level.<br /><br /><i>If what I'm doing is so easy I get a +10 to my roll, why bother rolling at all? </i><br /><br />I can see what you mean (at least, in d20), but then if you have a lousy skill of 1 in the first place, that is still a very big failure gap. This argument doesn't seem to hold up well to variability in skill. This is important in the system I'm proposing, because you might be an amazing pilot, but when you're trying to impress people at parties with your exploits, you're still rolling on Pilot + lousy social attributes. If this were not the case, then a character would succeed at anything by finding a way to make it about their training, and this seems likely to skew the playstyle massively.<br /><br />A thing that I think difficulty modifiers do well is handle low and high skills without trivialising the differences. Bonuses mean there are some tasks a low-skill character can usefully attempt. Penalties create challenges for high-skill characters, but also offer them an opportunity to be particularly awesome by doing things out of the reach of lesser experts.<br /><br /><i>As a GM I would often find myself getting frustrated when players failed despite large positive modifiers or succeeded despite large negative ones, so I've taken to just making it automatic.</i><br /><br />Conversely, when PCs succeed at something despite the odds, that can be hugely enjoyable. That's not less true when the odds are from penalties than when they're from 1% skills. I think here it partly depends where the odds are coming from - if you've put in effort to create a substantial bonus than it can be frustrating to fail anyway. This operates kind of like a skill challenge where the objective is to avoid the original roll. In contrast, if you're just taking a punt on something then I think it's less annoying.Shimmin Beghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10350037986748679919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-533573536330092840.post-47751966901903090752014-03-22T00:09:32.951+00:002014-03-22T00:09:32.951+00:00I can only half remember what I said myself (and I...I can only half remember what I said myself (and I'm also feeling pretty grotty).<br /><br />Roughly speaking, my argument against variable difficulty (or, more specifically, against variable difficulty represented by modifiers in a roll-under system)is that I think modifiers can be lumped broadly into two categories:<br /><br />1) Large modifiers. Things like the +60 you can theoretically get for a Trivial task in Deathwatch.<br /><br />2) Small modifiers. Things like a +2 bonus in D&D.<br /><br />I basically have objections to both types of modifier, for slightly divergent reasons.<br /><br />Large modifiers bug me because adding a large modifier to a roll (particularly a large positive modifier, that is, one designed to make things easier) creates an expectation that things will go the way the modifier predicts, and if they don't it can be jarring or anticlimactic. If what I'm doing is so easy I get a +10 to my roll, why bother rolling at all? And conversely if what I'm doing is so hard I'm getting a -10, perhaps it doesn't make sense for me to succeed at all. I think often GMs use large modifiers as figleaves because they can't quite bring themselves to just say "yup, that works" or "nope, that doesn't work" and as a GM I would often find myself getting frustrated when players failed despite large positive modifiers or succeeded despite large negative ones, so I've taken to just making it automatic.<br /><br />Small modifiers, by contrast, just seem too fiddly to be worth it unless it's something long-term (like combat). On any given die roll a +2 modifier has a 90% chance of having precisely zero effect, and as such strikes me as not really worth implementing.<br /><br />Somewhat confusingly, I have less of a problem with variable difficulty, even through it winds up being mathematically identical. Think the difference is that in a variable difficulty system, your dice roll directly translates into a measure of how well your character performs, whereas in a roll-under system it doesn't necessarily. So difficulty becomes "your character would have to perform well to do this" while modifiers are "your character's chance of doing this is reduced", which is a different thing.Dan Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05711867728179306264noreply@blogger.com