Bell Curve? NO WAY

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Post originally by Robert Trifts at 2005-04-17 11:24:10
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I will not purchase a system which uses a bell curve determination as its main system mechanic no matter what you call it. D&D, Harry Potter the RPG or E.G.Gygax: The Final Testament.

The reason is simple: linear is more "heroic." Awesome results appear more frequently. I know its mot more "realistic." That's not the point.

Linear curves are why D&D and Rolemaster have always made more fun *games*. The linear mechanic is preferable for players.

Put a bell curve in the main system mechanic and I will not buy it. No way; no how. Period.

 

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Bell Curve:

Post originally by Ezekiel Black at 2005-04-17 18:06:58
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By the same token, I will not buy a system with linear resolution ever again, unless I like the setting (I can adapt).

I will go through two different reasons bell curve is superior to linear, even with heroics or superheroics, one of which you already (inadvertantly) mentioned:

1: With a linear system, you will FAIL more often. By the same token, you will critically fail more often. It's the opposite side of the coin which you mentioned the *heads* to. This will not lead to heroics, it will lead to graceful people tripping at inappropriate moments, and for great swordsmen critically failing and lopping a helpful NPC's leg off (if you're lucky).

For instance, with a bell curve system you are less likely to roll that "2" which will make your courtesan (who has spent over a decade of her life in court) forget her manners and do something horrific in ettiquette that will be percieved by all, even the lowly pages at court.

If you would like to mention disallowing Critical Failures, you are using a CYA rule to benefit where the base rule fails. That's not fair, as you will undoubtedly disallow CYA rules on my side to compesate for the "lack of the crit success"

2 Good people are good at what they are good at. This is part of the above, but it is pretty much the #1 reason people like bell curves. When you are most likely to roll 11 (or 10, etc) then the stat/skill/etc you have in question is more important. That way, you don't have the wizard winning the arm-wrestling competition problem that comes up all to often with linear mechanics.

The reason why Bell Curves will probably not work in DnD is because, as the system stands, people get better with everything when they level. Most games that have a bell curve drop this and have people get gradually better at what they use, not just the big splat of "I wonder what I should do with this last point? I guess Knowledge: Arcana"

As far as I see it, if they make a 4E worth it's salt it will distill class abilities down to Feats (and even make a CP system for Feats) and go classless, then it will go point-buy character generation, then it will unify combat and skill use (perish the thought!), derandomize damage, de-emphasize race, I could go on and on and on.

All I can say is that M&M is a step in the right direction, but not a big one.

Then again, perhaps it is DnD's goofiness and quirkiness that keeps all of it's followers. Perhaps it is played because of it's faults rather than in spite of them? I wonder...

YMMV, IMHO, yada yada. You get it.

 

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Post originally by Darrin Bright at 2005-04-18 05:58:38
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> The reason is simple: linear is more "heroic." Awesome results
> appear more frequently. I know its mot more "realistic."

Them's fightin' words, hombre.

You should never depend on the mechanics or a dice roll to define what's "heroic". The dice aren't heroes. The player characters are heroes, *THEY* get to define what is heroic. I'm particularly opposed to this mindset that just because you roll a bunch of natural 20s or you do over 50 points of damage a round, this makes your character heroic. Players who insist that this is what makes D&D more "heroic" just makes my jaw drop and fills me with the sharp desire bash them over the head with the collected works of Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung. But enough pissin'n'moanin over semantics.

Let me take umbrage with the more mechanical aspects of your declaration. Linear is not inherently more heroic because "awesome results" appear more frequently. There are several dice-pool and bell-curvish systems that produce "critical success" results MUCH more frequently than D&D.

The best example would be WEG's D6 system, which produces something interesting whenever the Wild Die rolls a 6, so about 16.6% of all rolls tend to do something interesting. That's more than triple D&D's 5% (20 = automatic hit).

Even with worst-case scenario, let's say GURPs vs. D&D, the chances of a critical success are actually about even. In GURPs, a critical success happens when you roll 3 or 4 on 3d6, which works out to 3%. In D&D, you've got the whole threat/confirm critical thing. But that only happens on attack rolls, and not every threat is a critical. Skill checks and saves don't get threats/criticals. If you assume that 50% of all threats are *not* criticals, then the actual rate of "awesome results" in D&D drops down in the neighborhood of 3%.

Linear systems do not inherently produce more "awesome results". There are plenty of examples where dice pool/bell curve systems *can* and *do* produce critical succeses at a much higher rate than D&D.

 

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RE: Bell Curve:

Post originally by Geo. W. Bush at 2005-04-18 06:27:23
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You might consider a skewed bell curve (e.g. 4d6 dropping the lowest die). You'll get the advantages of a bell shaped curve while increasing dramatic successes and decreasing dramatic failures.

Whipping up a quick spreadsheet, I calculated ...

d20: mean = 10.5, standard variation = 5.92
2d10: mean = 11, standard variation = 4.08
3d6: mean = 10.5, standard variation = 2.96
4d6 - lowest: mean = 12.24, standard variation = 2.85

 

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But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by Adam Dray at 2005-04-18 13:33:52
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Ability score generation is already on a bell curve because of the 4d6-best-3 roll. The article's D&D 4th Ed. just switches the bell curve from character generation to task resolution.

Still, you're correct that such a system will result in fewer high rolls and this can impact the heroic feel of the system.

My issue with 2d10 instead of d20 is the slight increase in "handling time" from adding two small numbers (plus all the regular modifiers).

 

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RE: But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by Ezekiel Black at 2005-04-19 22:25:00
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Adam Dray wrote:
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Ability score generation is already on a bell curve because of the 4d6-best-3 roll. The article's D&D 4th Ed. just switches the bell curve from character generation to task resolution.
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This is actually a seperate issue that is unrelated to our arguement. the random bell-curved Ability Score roll in Character Creation should probably be dropped in favor of a Point-Buy mode, because random ability generation unbalances PCs.

This is, however, all irrelevant as we were arguing about the base mechanic (the d20 of the d20 system) and not the Ability Score roll of Character Creation.

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Still, you're correct that such a system will result in fewer high rolls and this can impact the heroic feel of the system.
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Fewer high rolls, but the fact of the matter is that the roll is unwieldy, meaning that with a linear resolution it doesn't matter as much whether your character has a +3 Strength modifier or a -1 Strength modifier, it's really all about the roll. If all rolls were Bell Curved (or even pyramided as a 2d10 would do) to say 11, then the person with the +3 Strength would most likely have an outcome of (11+3) 14 and the person with the -1 Strength would most likely have an outcome of (11-1) 10.

Bell Curves simply make abilities and skills matter more. I could go into the entire explanation of why this is so and why the linear d20 doesn't do this, but I'll only do it if no one has already seen that arguement. It is an extreme word space hog.

But if you understand, you definately know why people such as me like Bell Curves. I almost laughed as Heroics really doesn't require a specific resolution system, and if you think Bell Curves aren't heroic, you just haven't played Feng Shui with it's d6-d6 resolution.

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My issue with 2d10 instead of d20 is the slight increase in "handling time" from adding two small numbers (plus all the regular modifiers).
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It adds at a maximum one more variable to the equation. You should have all your combat bonuses already added, so that would be at maximum adding 3 numbers together, more than likely 2 of them would be single digits. I don't see how this is harder than adding a 50% chance double digit number together with your extra modifers.

17+5
8+9+5

22 result both times, it takes me roughly the same amount of time to calculate. Then again, I have played the R&K system of L5R for years now, so I'm pretty fast with the countage.

It takes me about the same amount of time. I myself go for the 3d20 pick-the-middle bell curve, as you lose no variation of the d20 (3d6 only has 16 possible results, 2d10 has 19 but isn't technically a Bell-Curve, 3d20 PTM has 20)

Example of 3d20 PTM roll:
17 6 19 (+5 modifier to roll as above examles)

Bell-Curved 22 result!

 

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RE: But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by Charlie Dunwoody at 2005-04-21 04:11:44
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I like the bell curve idea as well although I understand that after over thirty years of rolling a d20 it could be hard for D&D gamers to change. Ironically, it wasn't until 3rd edition that rolling a 20 actually meant anything special (beyond an auto hit against an otherwise impossible to hit AC) in the standard rules. Only 5 years of being able to roll to confirm a threat has created a lot of believers in the linear D20!

However, the D20 does work okay. But to me, it does reduce the importance of high ability scores and skill ranks somewhat.

Charlie

 

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RE: But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by Darrin Bright at 2005-04-21 06:59:19
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Well, the "confirm a threat" is actually a bit of a bell curve in disguise. Because the second roll is generally much easier, usually just a "to hit" target number, those characters with a higher BAB are more likely to get criticals. So you could argue that it's an attempt (klunky-ish) to reward PCs with higher to-hit bonuses with more criticals.

 

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RE: But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by jay verkuilen at 2005-08-10 16:00:38
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Darrin Bright wrote:
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<<Well, the "confirm a threat" is actually a bit of a bell curve in disguise.>>

Yup.

<<Because the second roll is generally much easier, usually just a "to hit" target number, those characters with a higher BAB are more likely to get criticals. So you could argue that it's an attempt (klunky-ish) to reward PCs with higher to-hit bonuses with more criticals.>>

Characters get more attacks as they get tougher as well, which also matters a great deal. Your chance of getting a crit goes up quite a bit as you get more attacks simply because you roll a lot more.

Jay

 

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RE: But it's already a bell curve

Post originally by Charlie Dunwoody at 2005-08-26 04:21:02
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Good point. The extra attacks do make a more skilled fighter more likely to score a critical and therefore more dangerous.

Charlie