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Jan 22, 2013 -- 12:27PM, Saelorn wrote:

Jan 22, 2013 -- 12:15PM, Rastapopoulos wrote:

Well, see? I'm sure there's plenty of bodybuilders out there who are 10x stronger than him and can't even begin to hope accomplishing that.
Cause that guy's just really good at doing what you said... ;P
So he can do what for most is impossible.

That's just physical strength, though. Granted, it's an entirely different sort of physical strength than bodybuilders have, but that's a system limitation where you only have three stats to represent the entire spectrum of physical capabilities. I really don't want to play a system where you can have different strength scores for your fingers relative to your wrists, legs, or back.

it's a feat of strength. 

I'm not sure I've made myself too clear.
I'm not saying your system is bad or your math wrong. I'm just saying that if you take away the possibility of a player investing in one skill to reach those harder DCs you take away quite a bit of flavour-building in character creation.
It becomes more rigid: "If you want to ever even have the possibility to do that, then you need to have a high base ability score."

Yep I think we just have a difference of opinion on what being skilled means that might be hard to compromise on.

Lets say underwaterbasketweaving is a very hard skill for even for a person with a 20 attribute. I would rather have the DC set around 22 so even an untrained person with a 20 attribute can still sometimes succeed by sheer luck at weaving a basket whilst underwater. For me, a trained individual succeeds at his underwater basketweaving more often and is less reliant on the luck of the die.

What it sounds like you want is underwater basketweaving to be set at DC 26. This way an untrained person should never even attempt to weave a basket underwater because they will always fail. Such a task is reserved only for those highly trained individuals. That is a perfectly valid view on what skills should be like, and I respect that.

It doesn't work for me though. I don't want to have to separate the "haves" and "have nots". I think it is better when every member of the group has the opportunity to participate (if they wish). I don't like that past editions made skills reach a point where one PC needed a 17+ while another needed a 3+. I also don't like that setting DCs artificially high lowers the chance of success too much. In general I like for D&D to be about heroes overcoming obstacles, not being stopped by them.

Jan 22, 2013 -- 3:32PM, Lawolf wrote:

What it sounds like you want is underwater basketweaving to be set at DC 26. This way an untrained person should never even attempt to weave a basket underwater because they will always fail. Such a task is reserved only for those highly trained individuals. That is a perfectly valid view on what skills should be like, and I respect that.

Actually it is the current system in the current 5ed packet that goes to 26 and higher DCs. (up to 30, is it not?)
I actually proposed that to use your system the DCs for "epic" checks (such as underwater basketweaving, lol) be lowered so that the many d20 rolls would be meaniful to represent a skilled character achieving such, and the skilled character wouldn't depend so much in level/base abilities to be able to even try those.

On a side note... I had too much wine today... I may not be sounding all too clear.
;P

 For me, a trained individual succeeds at his underwater basketweaving more often and is less reliant on the luck of the die.

I do agree with that. I was pointing out that with the current DCs going well above 20 for such tasks such as underwater basketweaving (again, lol) the extra d20 could fail to represent a character's skills when it came to such tasks, and only his level and base abilities could ever lead him to that (once the skill die is removed).
If we change the DCs, as I said, then things change as a whole.

Perhaps the better way to represent that skill would be the good old fixed "+X on skill check."
It would be, as you said, less reliant on luck and would guarantee the skilled character better checks, while also allowing him to reach higher DCs.

Maybe we just need to reduce the gap between the "very very skilled" and the average roller.
Say, if skill training instead of a die that went up to d12, gave you a fixed bonus that went up to +8 or +10 tops at high levels.
That would give the very very skilled on a max +50% better chance of succeeding at any related task... meaningful, but not so much that the untrained can't ever compete.
And even the untrained if he had a good base ability should be able to mitigate that margin when compared to the skilled who doesn't have so high an ability.

Then we shouldn't have those extremes like one needing 3+ and the other 17+.

Unless you're talking about a very very skilled one with high ability, and an untrained one with a very low ability.
But then I guess it's reasonable. The "weak" player made a choice of forfeiting that aspect of his character entirely.

Jan 22, 2013 -- 1:11PM, Lawolf wrote:

Take darts for example. Let's say we have 3 individuals playing darts in a bar all with equal hand eye coordination. One just started playing, one is a bar regular who plays once a week, and the other plays darts everyday. Let's say they all hit bullseyes with a roll of 17+ or a specific number (lets say 20s) on 9+
 
With my method we have untrained guy hitting bullseyes 20% of the time, trained guy hitting bulls 36% of the time, and master guy hitting bulls 49% of the time. For the specific number we have untrained guy at 60%, trained guy at 84%, and master at 94%

If we had training grant a flat +3/+5 bonus instead, trained guy hits bulls 35% and master 45% The variance for this is really wild. Instead of clustering darts around the target, the masters throws are all over the place, just like the brand new dart throwes. For hitting the 20, the trained guy hits it 75% and the master only 85%. You can really see how skill doesn't narrow the variance with only a flat bonus.

The extra d20s thus seems more realistic to me. A trained individual is more likely to repeat good results, while an untrained one can get good results but is unable to reliably repeat them.

Firstly, I think the example is unreasonable, in that D&D does not generally attempt to model such situations, simply because (with some exceptions) it does not measure degrees of success on tasks.  D20 rolls are generally boolean; you either succeed or fail.  If I need a 6 to succeed for example, there is no difference to me if I roll a 6 or a 16.  In that sense you could more reasonably think of a d20 as simply having the faces labelled with "S" for success and "F" for failure on d20 checks, and you simply select the die with the correct number of each for any particular roll.  Thus, I see no particular justification for saying that the trained darts player is "all over the place," as the system is not attempting to measure that; it only determines if the player hit the desired target or not.

For the same reason, I find your claim that a 3rd d20 is "only worth about a +2 bonus" to be dubious.  Firstly, simply saying that the difference in the mean roll between 2d20 and 3d20 is about +2 does not capture the notion of boolean results, since the mean value of the die is not the relevant quality.  Indeed, across much of the spectrum the 3rd d20 decreases the probability of failure more than a +2 bonus.  Secondly, you are evaluating that +2 bonus in a particular context.  That is, if the system gives a +2 bonus for flanking, it does so whether you have a 10% chance to hit or a 90% chance to hit; considering the real impact of that +2 bonus depends on the situation.  Were we to consider the 3rd d20 roughly equivalent to a +2 bonus, you are doing so in the context of having already substantially increased your probability of success, and that changes things significantly.

Further, saying that already using a d20 pool reduces the impact of adding an extra die (such as through advantage) is not immediately justifiable, as the 2nd die has exactly the same effect as the 10th die in terms of a proportional decrease in the probability of failure, which is arguably at least as significant a metric for determining the value of a bonus as anything else.

Jan 22, 2013 -- 3:32PM, Lawolf wrote:

It doesn't work for me though. I don't want to have to separate the "haves" and "have nots". I think it is better when every member of the group has the opportunity to participate (if they wish). I don't like that past editions made skills reach a point where one PC needed a 17+ while another needed a 3+. I also don't like that setting DCs artificially high lowers the chance of success too much. In general I like for D&D to be about heroes overcoming obstacles, not being stopped by them.

I don't want to have to separate "haves" and "have nots" either, but I don't see any particular reason that what you're proposing accomplishes this better than the skill die. 

It is difficult to make a direct comparison, but it seems reasonable to think of your 2nd d20 as occupying approximately the same space as the skill die in the playtest (representing a limited character investment in terms of selecting a skill).  The 3rd d20 is a bit trickier as you're talking about greater character investment, and if there is a problem in the playtest here then it may have more to do with the rogue's skill mastery or the feats than the skill die mechanic.  This is further complicated by the fact you are talking about two distinct issues; one way to mirror your first suggestion within the context of skill dice is to have everyone add skill dice to all rolls all the time, and allow investment in skills in some other fashion.

However, there is no particular reason to compare the 2nd d20 to the effect of a d12 skill die, since that only occurs at the highest levels.  It is at least as relevant to compare the 2nd d20 to a d4 skill die, and in that sense you are actually creating a greater distinction between haves and have-nots under many circumstances. 

You could cherry-pick required rolls of 20 and higher to say the skill die is better, but why?  Only under extraordinary circumstances do such rolls become routine; even with d20 + highest of 2d12 you still fail more often than not when you need to roll 20 or higher, and placing characters in front of challenges in which they fail more often than not is hardly the norm.  The skill die system allows you to give characters tasks in which they require rolls higher than 20, but it doesn't restrict you from keeping DCs in a place where all characters have some chance of success if you wish, and the game tends to focus on those anyway.  The 2nd d20 is roughly equivalent to a d9 in terms of a boolean evaluation of success/failure across much of that spectrum, and so in that context you are not lessening the disparity between characters throughout the lower levels; you are increasing it.

So, as I said at the beginning of the post, I don't see how the system you're proposing really accomplishes what you are suggesting it does better than what we have now.