Attribute Bonus House Rule

[Deadmanwalking]

Hmmm....very interesting. By default, that's gonna make success much more likely on Favored Skills, but if you raise target numbers, you sorta screw people on all non-Favored skills...that seems a difficult balance to strike.

I don't think it would be necessary to raise the TN of rolls. If you do not spend Hope, you just add a maximum of +3 to the final roll (you got 8 with the dices? your final score is 11), and we're just talking about Favoured skills. If you spend Hope, the final result is exactly the same as without the house rule.

True...but most rolls fail by relatively small numbers in TOR. A +3 turns a lot of failures into successes. And thus costs the party a lot less Hope on those rolls.

You do get a relatively small number of Favored Skills...but still.

Oh, and would this apply to Favored Weapon skills? Because that makes those notably better, which I'm not sure at all is a good thing...

[Michebugio]

Oh, and would this apply to Favored Weapon skills? Because that makes those notably better, which I'm not sure at all is a good thing...

Good point. I would say no by default, so I basically agree with you. Common skills are far less impacting on the game... most of the time.

[Bocephas]

Referring back to my original post:

Best I can tell, playing around with Anydice, a standard skill level 2 roll has about a 42% chance of succeeding against TN14. If you added +1 to the roll (for having a 5-6 attribute), your chance would increase to about 50%. If you added +2 to the roll (for having a 7-8 attribute), your chance would increase to about 58%. If you added +3 to the roll (for having a favored attribute of 9-10 and using a favored skill), your chance would increase to about 66%.

Meanwhile, a standard skill level 3 roll has a 69% chance of succeeding against TN14. So, a skill level 2 hero, with a really high favored attribute (9-10), using a favored skill, is still slightly behind a skill level 3 hero, with an average attribute, using a non-favored skill. Thus, the maximum benefit you could ever get from attributes (without spending hope) is still less valuable than gaining another skill level (not to mention the possibility of getting another "6" due to the extra success die).

To put it another way, a hero with skill level 3 is still superior to the most naturally talented hero with skill level 2.

I know it is extra bookkeeping, but if you want to make attributes apply to every roll, this seems to work.

[zedturtle]

My simplest question is why? The system already reward generalization by not rewarding advancement past skill 4; why flatten it any more?

[Bocephas]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Zed. What do you mean by "flatten"? Yes, I agree, there's not much point in going past skill level 4. The attribute bonus gives variation within each skill level. A hero with skill 2/attribute 7 will have a little better chance (8%) than a hero with skill 2/attribute 5. But neither one will be as good as hero with skill 3/attribute 2. I'm not sure I understand what this has to do with "generalization".

[Glorelendil]

He means you get the most bang for the buck spreading AP around all your skills, rather than focus on a few.

[Glorelendil]

By the way, one thing your probability numbers don't account for is that on really important rolls you can always spend Hope, and often you can spend bonus dice. So an "X% chance" is too simple of a model.

[zedturtle]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Zed. What do you mean by "flatten"? Yes, I agree, there's not much point in going past skill level 4. The attribute bonus gives variation within each skill level. A hero with skill 2/attribute 7 will have a little better chance (8%) than a hero with skill 2/attribute 5. But neither one will be as good as hero with skill 3/attribute 2. I'm not sure I understand what this has to do with "generalization".

Glorelendil comes at my point in a different direction in his comment. Let's look at a +2 variance, for ease of math... this is equivalent to moving the TN down one step. Here's the table from the last thread on this topic:

Code: Select all

DICE       TN 10    TN 12    TN 14    TN 16    TN 18    TN 20
0          16.66%   08.32%   08.31%   08.32%   08.33%   08.32% 
1          45.81%   29.17%   16.65%   09.72%   08.34%   08.31% 
2          74.11%   58.29%   41.89%   27.31%   16.44%   10.64% 
3          92.02%   82.61%   69.47%   54.15%   38.85%   25.7% 
4          98.38%   95.05%   88.57%   78.38%   65.17%   50.44% 
5          99.77%   99.01%   96.93%   92.54%   85.03%   74.32% 
6          99.97%   99.85%   99.39%   98.09%   95.16%   89.79% 

Let's look at the deltas for TN 14. Going from zero skill dice to one skill die gives a +8.33% benefit, one to two is a +25.24%, two to three is +27.58%, three to four is +19.10%, four to five is +8.36%, and five to six is +2.46%. As you can see, three of those are fairly significant. Also, remember GE's point about bonus dice (and hope, but BD can be factored in using this table).

The deltas for TN 12 are different: +20.85%,+29.12%,+24.32%,+12.44%,+3.96%,+0.84%. They might not seem so different (just shifted, right?) But here's the thing: most heroes will start with at least two dice in the skills they wish to be successful with. This means steps up from zero to one and from one to two are unlikely to happen. That means we get one major step up (+24.32%) and then rapidly diminishing returns. Bearing in mind that even starting heroes might throw four dice on occasion (with bonus dice factored in), we've gotten ourselves into a situation where we've removed a lot of the tension. I'm not sure what we gained... the point of game design is to have the players make interesting choices, not obvious ones.

That's what I mean by flattening. To borrow one of Glorelendil's scripts, it's not me saying it; it's the math saying it.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, mathematically, a +2 bonus that wasn't there previously on pretty much all actions, without a similar change in Target Number, is the equivalent of giving a +5 to a wide swath of rolls in D&D.

So you're doing the equivalent of suggesting that a D&D 3.x character receive a +5 bonus on something like one third to one half their skills with no other systemic changes...you can do it, but it's a profound sea-change in how likely a character is to succeed at just about everything it applies to.

[Bocephas]

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, I am not sure I understand the definition of flattening. I agree that you would try to get your important skills to level 3 before pushing one to level 4, if that's what you mean. I still don't see the connection with +1-3 attribute bonuses providing variation in success chances within a certain skill level. The percentile chart posted shows that a +2 (or dropping TN from 14 to 12) is not near as good as going up a whole skill level. This chart shows that this applies throughout the skill levels. Thus, there is no point where your +3 for having a favored attribute of 10 and using a favored skill is better than going up another skill level.

I see your point about using hope and extra success dice (preliminary rolls). But to me, spending hope is basically the same as an automatic success, and really has no bearing on discussions about percentage chance of success on everyday skill rolls. The extra die is a different story, but that's usually a once per encounter bonus.

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I am not sure I understand the counter argument on this. If these attribute bonuses were so good that they were equal to a whole skill level in benefit, I could see how that would be a problem.

I agree that a +3 in my example above (skill level 2) would be +24% which would be like a +5 in D20 which is huge in D20. But going from skill 2 to 3 is a +28% bonus which is almost +6 in D20, not to mention the extra chance of another "6". So when you look at it in relation to the changes in skill level, it appears proportional.

Again, I am not trying to be difficult here, but I am having a hard time following the argument.