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[Username17]

Frank I don't see how you cannot grasp this its not hard.

No. I can totally "grasp" your argument. It's just factually and demonstrably wrong.

THIS IS NOT A TRADE. If you are sitting right on the break even point then weapons there are indistinguishable. If you have a sniper rifle whose damage+accuracy = the equivlance point, it is indistinguishable from a machine gun whose damage + accuracy also equals the equivalnce point.

Even at the breakeven point, it's still totally distinguishable. Equvalent average does not mean eqivalent results. Depending on what else is going on, a more reliable yet smaller payout may be better or worse than a less reliable but larger pay out. It really depends on what the marginal cost is for getting nothing or less than the larger payout happens to be.

But also remember that they respond to modifiers differently. More reliable and less damage is penalized more by a damage penalty and penalized less by a to-hit penalty. If the enemy is at the breakeven point and they move farther away (thus adding an additional penalty to the attack roll), the more accurate and less damaging attack is now superior. If the enemy at the breakeven point puts on a bullet proof vest (thus adding an additional penalty to damage), the higher damage, lower accuracy weapon is better.

Seriously, you're wrong. Factually, mathematically, demonstrably wrong.

-Username17

[MGuy]

@souran: Frank is right. The math for it is pretty obvious. Going with the previously given example +3 Damage with +0 accuracy and +1 damage with +1 accuracy. I'm going to use this in terms of DnD since I am most comfortable with d20s. the equation would basically go like this:

You have A the Damage
you have B the chance to hit.
To get B you have to have a target number/AC/Defense/whatever (C), the accuracy (D) and the dice max (E) and percentile chance for numbers in between (F)

So B = F(E+D-C)

You can now calculate average damage (Z)

Z=A * (F(E+D-C))

I've had my math wrong before but it should look something like this. So if we plug in some numbers here we can get an idea of how things should be. Lets say I want C to be 10, with a d20 E is 20 and F is .05. Lets set Z (the damage we want) to 3. Lets have D be the independent Variable and A as the dependent. We Just need to have some target number for Z. Lets allow it to be 3.
So 3=A*(.05(20+D-10)) --> A= 3/ (.5+.05D)


So the table would go something like:
D A
0 6
1 5.45
2 5
3 4.62
4 4.29
5 4
6 3.75
7 3.53
8 3.33...
9 3.16
10 3

A clear set of numbers that show you the relation between accuracy and damage when trying to get the target damage number. I'm sure there are other things you're supposed to plug in for the damage past 10 when you start doing accuracy damage or something but someone else can tidy up this mess I' sure.

[souran]

Even at the breakeven point, it's still totally distinguishable. Equvalent average does not mean eqivalent results.

But in the systems described they generate equivalent results as well! If you look at any particular attack they are going to be indistuginishable if the weapon is at the balance point.

Depending on what else is going on, a more reliable yet smaller payout may be better or worse than a less reliable but larger pay out.

It has nothing to do with what else is going on unless they are penalized differently. Assuming identical situations, one of these two cases will generate superior results.

But also remember that they respond to modifiers differently. More reliable and less damage is penalized more by a damage penalty and penalized less by a to-hit penalty.

Again, this is only relevant as we approach the hit/miss border. Otherwise, the penatlies are identical, or generate identical results at the stage of rolling damage.

If the enemy is at the breakeven point and they move farther away (thus adding an additional penalty to the attack roll), the more accurate and less damaging attack is now superior.

No, how so. They both take the same range penalty. You have no more possibility for higher damage now than you did before. Unless by moving away he gets to the point where there is a good chance you will miss outright, the accuracy is still nothing but possible damage.

If the enemy at the breakeven point puts on a bullet proof vest (thus adding an additional penalty to damage), the higher damage, lower accuracy weapon is better.

They are again actually penalized the same. It only appears to penalize the low damage weapon more because in order to bring damage to this stage they already had to roll dice. The base damage is like a point of accuracy that [/i]is always a success so long as you had at least one success.

[MGuy]

Adding in accuracy damage just changes the numbers up, it doesn't eliminate the relation ship between damage and accuracy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

On the other hand, if Hit Points are moving around, the relative difference of two levels between 6 and 8 are going to likely be very different from the difference between 10 and 12. No matter what algebraic equation you throw at it, hit points are going to be growing slower at high levels than at lower levels in the way that actually matters. You can have the number of hit points you gain every level rise, but unless you pull out actual exponents the relative increase is always falling.

I suppose that with some calculus you could calculate a hit point equation that will give results like this, but I strongly believe that anyone who does is probably going to fuck it up.

I could see it being design intent for, all other things being equal, it being harder a level 15th character to defeat a 17th level character than a 3rd level character beating a 6th level character but I have yet to see it pulled off in a satisfactory way.

[IGTN]

Making the difficulty constant is easy; you just need to multiply hit points by the same thing every level.

Making levels more valuable at higher levels is likewise simple; you just make the rates of increase (HP and damage exponentials, to-hit bonuses increases, and so on) scale faster at high levels. If you really want to do that. Exponential is already plenty fast, though. Remember that the D&D power scale has only ten doublings in it.

[souran]

@souran: Frank is right. The math for it is pretty obvious. Going with the previously given example +3 Damage with +0 accuracy and +1 damage with +1 accuracy. I'm going to use this in terms of DnD since I am most comfortable with d20s. the equation would basically go like this:

You have A the Damage
you have B the chance to hit.
To get B you have to have a target number/AC/Defense/whatever (C), the accuracy (D) and the dice max (E) and percentile chance for numbers in between (F)

So B = F(E+D-C)

You can now calculate average damage (Z)

Z=A * (F(E+D-C))

I've had my math wrong before but it should look something like this. So if we plug in some numbers here we can get an idea of how things should be. Lets say I want C to be 10, with a d20 E is 20 and F is .05. Lets set Z (the damage we want) to 3. Lets have D be the independent Variable and A as the dependent. We Just need to have some target number for Z. Lets allow it to be 3.
So 3=A*(.05(20+D-10)) --> A= 3/ (.5+.05D)


So the table would go something like:
D A
0 6
1 5.45
2 5
3 4.62
4 4.29
5 4
6 3.75
7 3.53
8 3.33...
9 3.16
10 3

A clear set of numbers that show you the relation between accuracy and damage when trying to get the target damage number. I'm sure there are other things you're supposed to plug in for the damage past 10 when you start doing accuracy damage or something but someone else can tidy up this mess I' sure.

I don't think this is the math you want for multiple indepant chances that constitute the whole like WOD. Your fomula for B would be very very different in that game.

Additinoally, if you added the margin of success to the the damage roll in D&D the value for A would include a factor of (if (D-C+random(1-20)) >=0, A=A+(D-C+random(1-20)), A=A)

And again, a weapon with a high accuracy would be hard to distinguish from one that rolled a d20 to damage.

[MGuy]

I admit that I do not know the math I'd need to perform to add in accuracy damage on top of everything but adding it in would only increase the damage result. The relationship between damage and accuracy would still be there but the numbers would be different. That is assuming that a miss is still a miss and doesn't just modify damage like I think your formula implies.

[souran]

I admit that I do not know the math I'd need to perform to add in accuracy damage on top of everything but adding it in would only increase the damage result. The relationship between damage and accuracy would still be there but the numbers would be different. That is assuming that a miss is still a miss and doesn't just modify damage like I think your formula implies.

Yeah, a miss is still actually a miss. Thats why you need a conditional statement because a miss does not also REDUCE your average damage/Heal your foe for an amount that you missed by.

However, when you finally determine damage HALD and LAHD are indeterminate.

Now the thing is D&D actually deals with the case where the accuracy determines if you hit or miss. Unlike WOD where your dice pool should generate at least one hit or you shouldn't be making the roll.

This means that you are dealing with what is really a special case alot of the time. In that case having extra accuracy is almost certiantly going to be better because it quickly gets hard for any amount of extra damage to keep up with hitting constantly.

Also for D&D if you put the margin of success on an attack roll as extra damage you would probably remove strength mod from the damage roll. This would seem to favor the high damage weapon as you no longer get to "double dip" in order to generate your base damage.

[Username17]

I could see it being design intent for, all other things being equal, it being harder a level 15th character to defeat a 17th level character than a 3rd level character beating a 6th level character but I have yet to see it pulled off in a satisfactory way.

That's stupid hard to do with scaling hit points, because essentially what you're asking for is for the relative change between X and X+1 to grow larger as X increases. If X is being divided by its competition (as hit points are), then the X -> X+1 change is an exponent. Having the exponent rise as X rises, while possible, is going to generate insanely titanic numbers long before you get to X = 20.

And again, a weapon with a high accuracy would be hard to distinguish from one that rolled a d20 to damage.

God damnit Souran, no it would not.

Average damage per attack is [Chance to Hit] * [Average Damage per Hit].
When rollover from the attack roll adds to damage, then adding accuracy increases the chance to hit and it also adds to average damage per hit. But everything else you've said on this subject, and I seriously mean every single thing, is bullshit.

Because you don't do average damage on like any attack. Ever. Every attack does zero damage on a miss, and some actual amount of damage on a hit. Seriously man, roll some fucking dice and stop being so thick.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Didn't an early 3rd edition product try to claim that rolling a d20 yields a range of 3-18 for ability scores with a bell shaped curve distribution?

Maybe that is where some people mess up figuring out what rolls of dice do....?

[souran]

:

God damnit Souran, no it would not.

Frank, they are. If you have one guy who is rolling the d20 to damage weapon and getting just right around what he needs to hit and you have a guy who is rolling the dagger of uber that adds +10 to hit when you look at how much damage they do to the baddies at the end of the round its going to be in the same range. Why wouldn't it be. They both roll the same thing to hit.

Average damage per attack is [Chance to Hit] * [Average Damage per Hit].
When rollover from the attack roll adds to damage, then adding accuracy increases the chance to hit and it also adds to average damage per hit. But everything else you've said on this subject, and I seriously mean every single thing, is bullshit.

Yeah, it increases the avarage damage on the attack because it turns accuracy into additional damage That means they are really the SAME quantity and you CANNOT make a tradeoff of them. You are not getting RID of anything. You are not swapping anything. Look at OWOD, you are just moving dice from phase A to phase B of the attack resolution mechanic. Which one is better to do is not a matter of preference, they are not equally valid. One solution is mathematiccally superior to the other until you hit the limit.

[souran]

Didn't an early 3rd edition product try to claim that rolling a d20 yields a range of 3-18 for ability scores with a bell shaped curve distribution?

Maybe that is where some people mess up figuring out what rolls of dice do....?

Thats in 3.5 unearthed arcana. They basically admit that they stole the idea for d20 by playing gurps. Whatever.

[Username17]

Souran, you're wrong. And insane. And really close to getting on my ignored list.

Look, I will use small fucking words and really simple examples.

You roll a d20 to-hit. You need to score a number, let's say 11+ in order to hit. And you inflict 10 damage plus the amount you exceed the to-hit number if you hit at all.

Now, we offer two options: one is +1 to-hit, and the other is +2 damage on each hit.

So the first option involves 11 hits per 20 attacks, inflicting 10 to 20 damage.
The second option involves 10 hits per 20 attacks, inflicting 12 to 21 damage.

Now, assuming an even distribution of d20 rolls, that's 165 points of damage for both of them in 20 rounds. But one of them did it with 11 hits and 9 misses (good if your opponents have 10 hit points), and the other did it with 10 hits, 10 misses - but no attacks that inflicted less than 12 points (good if your opponents have 12 hit points).

But most explicitly and tremendously importantly, the first option loses less if it suffers a -1 to-hit than the second option does (because the 20 point hit is removed from the die, dropping the damage to 145 as opposed to removing the 21 point hit dropping the total damage to 144). The second option loses less if it suffers a -2 to its damage (because it loses 2 points from 10 distinct hits, losing 20 damage total dropping to 145 instead of losing 2 points from 11 separate hits, dropping total damage to 143).

NOT. THE. SAME.

And if you keep flagrantly flailing around with your fucking math failure, I will put you on ignore. I will accept a lot of things, but I will not accept people refusing to accept fucking addition. Arithmetic is not negotiable. If you continue to try to negotiate it we are no longer on speaking terms.

-Username17

[mean_liar]

Frank keeps beating me to the responses on this, but yes, souran, you are completely dumb wrong. I assure you that you are very poor at math and need to drop this idea you're fixated on, accept you are wrong, and hopefully use this as a springboard to try and motivate yourself to learn math in your own personal time.

[Psychic Robot]

Is souran seriously arguing that there is no difference between a +0 accuracy/+3 damage weapon and a +1 accuracy/+1 damage weapon? Even if there weren't--and there is--the different math on those two plays an important role in that it gives the illusion of difference. Now, you might say that this doesn't matter, but I feel that it does, just for the same reason that I feel that it is important for magic and melee to use a different system.

Consider, for instance, a videogame where everyone wields a longsword. There are no choices. You get a longsword and that's it.

Now, consider a game where everyone can wield different weapons. Mathematically, they are all identical, but I can wield a glaive, you can wield a greataxe, and someone else can wield a scythe. Again, these are all functionally identical, but they appear different.

Do you know which game is going to be better (all other things remaining equal)? The game where you have different choices even if they're all the same.

[souran]

You roll a d20 to-hit. You need to score a number, let's say 11+ in order to hit. And you inflict 10 damage plus the amount you exceed the to-hit number if you hit at all.

Exactly. The a boundry case exists where one weapon can score a hit and the other cannot. In that situation you cannot make a trade of accuracy for damage, you MUST have accuracy or you have NO damage.

Lets look at your example.

Now, we offer two options: one is +1 to-hit, and the other is +2 damage on each hit.

So the first option involves 11 hits per 20 attacks, inflicting 10 to 20 damage.
The second option involves 10 hits per 20 attacks, inflicting 12 to 21 damage.

Now, assuming an even distribution of d20 rolls, that's 165 points of damage for both of them in 20 rounds. But one of them did it with 11 hits and 9 misses (good if your opponents have 10 hit points), and the other did it with 10 hits, 10 misses - but no attacks that inflicted less than 12 points (good if your opponents have 12 hit points).

Exactly and I would say that this proves my point.

A) By your own admission, both weapons do 165 points of damage in the 20 rounds. As you also point out, one of them did it by having extra damage and the other by hitting an extra time.

So where was the trade Frank? Any DAMAGE that was supposedly lost by taking accuracy was made up by having accuracy. The end result of two identical characters fighting with these weapons was the same. Thats what I am getting at, its a false trade.

Also

B) On a round by round microcosm the players with the weapons in your example with not see a real effectiveness differance.

In fact, out of the 21 hits that are scored, there are only 3 damage values where its possible to determine who the attacker was. If you told two players that there characters each had a dagger, and gave one of them weapon A and the other weapon B, at the end of the night, do you think they would have thought that there weapons had different stats?

But most explicitly and tremendously importantly, the first option loses less if it suffers a -1 to-hit than the second option does (because the 20 point hit is removed from the die, dropping the damage to 145 as opposed to removing the 21 point hit dropping the total damage to 144). The second option loses less if it suffers a -2 to its damage (because it loses 2 points from 10 distinct hits, losing 20 damage total dropping to 145 instead of losing 2 points from 11 separate hits, dropping total damage to 143).

I find this baffeling. Its 1-2 points over 10-11 hits. Thats a small amount even over this sample size. Infact, the only way this could be "tremedously important" is if one of these 2 penalities were present basically constantly. Which would amount to a hidden tax on one of the two weapons. However, if both penalties apply with equal frequency then we are back to having any damage lost by accuracy be returned by having accuracy meaning we still have not made a meaningful trade.

Finally lets go back to the combat formulation that started this:

Final Damage = Base Damage - Toughness + Net Successes

I is really good for illustrating my point because its should be clear prima facia. If the "quality of the success" (net success, etc) is added to the final damage total, an even trade of accuracy for damage is moot, valueless, because a high quality success replenishes the missing damage. Therefore, all trades between accuracy and damage must be uneven to "net" you anything. However, if the trade is uneven we can KNOW if the weapon made a good or a bad trade.

Is souran seriously arguing that there is no difference between a +0 accuracy/+3 damage weapon and a +1 accuracy/+1 damage weapon? Even if there weren't--and there is--the different math on those two plays an important role in that it gives the illusion of difference. Now, you might say that this doesn't matter, but I feel that it does, just for the same reason that I feel that it is important for magic and melee to use a different system.

Except that the math doesn't do anything different. They both just becomes parts of determining damage. You have exactly what you said "the illusion of difference" instead of actual difference.

Now, consider a game where everyone can wield different weapons. Mathematically, they are all identical, but I can wield a glaive, you can wield a greataxe, and someone else can wield a scythe. Again, these are all functionally identical, but they appear different.

Yeah, but woudln't it be even better if there was a reason to use a glaive instead of a longsword other than "I like the look of glaives" or I like the way the word "glaive" sounds.

Lets take one more look at Franks weapons.

Lets call weapon A) the "Walther PPK" and lets call Weapon B) the .44 Magnum

Now, you are playing a game and your model character is Dirty Harry. You want to run around with the hand canon. So you pick weapon B. One of your teammates is a James Bond spy knockoff. He obviously chooses weapon a.

Now when you get to the first fight you begin to notice something. Even though bondboy has a pea shooter, he always hits right between the eyes so he does basically the same damage you do. Wouldn't that make you a little depressed? Wouldn't it make you wonder why there was just not one entry for "hand gun"

[Lago PARANOIA]

A) By your own admission, both weapons do 165 points of damage in the 20 rounds. As you also point out, one of them did it by having extra damage and the other by hitting an extra time.

So where was the trade Frank? Any DAMAGE that was supposedly lost by taking accuracy was made up by having accuracy. The end result of two identical characters fighting with these weapons was the same. Thats what I am getting at, its a false trade.

souran, as people have explained to you repeatedly, the trade comes from the fact that the weapon that does more damage sometimes drops people in one hit while the weapon that had more accuracy never drops someone in one hit.

It's a gamble. You can either take no attacks or take attack on top of what you're already going to get. When does this come into play? Well, if you're fighting some bruiser monster like a ghoul or a closet troll where you can't take any hits then the high-damage weapon is your best bet, because the high accuracy weapon won't pull you through even if all of the hits land. Your chances of succeeding with the high-damage weapon are low, but you still have a chance of pulling through.

Similarly, if you are fighting hordes of enemies, if the high-damage weapon takes less hits to kill enemies then you want that. If the high-damage weapon randomly lets you take out enemies faster, which means that you suffer less hits.

Here's a scenario for you. Fighter A uses a greataxe, a low-accuracy/high-damage weapon. Fighter B uses a rapier, a high-accuracy/low-damage weapon. They all fight goblins, which have 8 hit points.

Fighter A does 10 damage with his greataxe, which is enough to drop a goblin. However, every third attack he misses. Fighter B does 7 damage with his rapier, which is not enough damage to drop a goblin. But he never misses.

They each fight 7 goblins. They fight goblins until they're all dead. The fighters go first. Let's look at their DPR:

Fighter A:
Round 1: 10 damage. Total attacks suffered: 6
Round 2: 10 damage. TAS: 11
Round 3: 0 damage. TAS: 16
Round 4: 10 damage. TAS: 24
Round 5: 10 damage. TAS: 27
Round 6: 0 damage. TAS: 30
Round 7: 10 damage. TAS: 32
round 8: 10 damage. TAS: 33
Round 9: 0 damage. TAS: 34
Round 10: 10 damage. TAS: 34

Average DPR: 7

Fighter B
Round 1: 7 damage. Total Attacks Suffered: 7 (7 goblins remaining)
Round 2: 7 damage. TAS: 13 (6 goblins remaining)
Round 3: 7 damage. TAS: 19 (6)
Round 4: 7 damage. TAS: 24 (5 goblins remaining)
Round 5: 7 damage. TAS: 29 (5)
Round 6: 7 damage. TAS: 33 (4 goblins remaining)
Round 7: 7 damage. TAS: 37 (4)
Round 8: 7 damage. TAS: 40 (3 goblins remaining)
Round 9: 7 damage. TAS: 43 (3)
Round 10: 7 damage. TAS: 45 (2 goblins remaining)

Average DPR: 7

Do you get that? Even though both weapons do the same amount of damage over time, the Greataxe fighter suffered fewer hits.

It's also not hard to construct a scenario where the Rapier fighter was superior. Just give the goblins 7 or fewer hit points, and THEY will suffer fewer attacks.

Souran, if after all that bullshit you can't see the utility of a trade like this then I think you're going to deserve that +ignore.

[Username17]

Fuck that. Souran, you're on the ignored list.

If you're going to continue to insist that a trade between benefiting more from potential future situation A or from potential future situation B is not a trade at all, you can't be reasoned with. Full stop.

GTFO.

-Username17

[souran]

souran, as people have explained to you repeatedly, the trade comes from the fact that the weapon that does more damage sometimes drops people in one hit while the weapon that had more accuracy never drops someone in one hit.

Except that when we add in the contributing factor that higher success on a hit now contributes to damage we have defiantly blurred this line.

If you add in extra damage from "how good" your success was you are going to make it harder to tell the differance between an "average hit" by a strong weapon and an "average success" for accurate weapon.

It's a gamble. You can either take no attacks or take attack on top of what you're already going to get. When does this come into play? Well, if you're fighting some bruiser monster like a ghoul or a closet troll where you can't take any hits then the high-damage weapon is your best bet, because the high accuracy weapon won't pull you through even if all of the hits land. Your chances of succeeding with the high-damage weapon are low, but you still have a chance of pulling through.

Yes, this is true. However, we have modified this remember. Our weapons always had an inverse relationship. The more accurate weapons supposedly did less damage (to make sure we are not talking about a super weapon). However, now when we hit we add that accuracy
back into the damage. So if we had one weapon that did 1 damage +1 accuracy, and one weapon that did 2 damage those weapons have the same damage potential against the same target.

Here's a scenario for you. Fighter A uses a greataxe, a low-accuracy/high-damage weapon. Fighter B uses a rapier, a high-accuracy/low-damage weapon. They all fight goblins, which have 8 hit points.

Ok, we actually need to know a little more about this situation to analyze it.

First, we are assuming identical wielders. The axe has a 1/3 chance to miss. The rapier has an effecitvely 0% chance to miss. Assuming they get the same roll that would seem to imply that the 7 damage is actually the base damage of the rapier. However, the rapier COULD score a hit that is 1/3 again better than the greataxe. 1/3 of 7 is 2 1/3. So, your example should proceed with the first rapier hit doing 9, the second doing about 8, the third doing 7.

It bumps the average damage of the rapier up to 8.1 damage and results in the hits taken table looking identical.Thats because these two weapons are not set at an equivalnce point.


Again, lets go back to what started all of this. If you have accuracy and damage, but all accuracy above and beyond the minimum needed to hit is added to your damage, then any trade of accuracy for damage must take into account that accuracy can become damage.


You just cannot trade two things appearing on the same side of an equals sign and get a different outcome on the other side. That trade is all in your head.

[MGuy]

I think Souran's discrepancy has something to do with the premise of having accuracy add to damage which Lago mentioned earlier. Both Frank's and Lago's models don't account for additional damage due to over shooting the target defense via accuracy. I'm not saying he's right because, as I said earlier, even with that dynamic set the numbers merely change but the relationship is still there.

@Souran: Just because higher accuracy/low damage weapons have the potential to do greater damage on a higher roll their minimum and quite possibly their maximum damage would still be behind a low accuracy/high damage weapon.

Lets say that hero 1 with great sword 2d6+6/+0 accuracy (13 average on hit without accuracy damage) and hero 2 with rapier 1d6+4/+3 accuracy (7 damage on average) both made the same rolls a few times against same target. The only advantage Hero 2 would have after making the same rolls is 3 extra damage. Hero 2 also has a greater chance to hit (though by how much depends on how attacks are rolled). Hero 1 on the other hand has greater minimum (always going to do at least 8 on any given hit compared to the 5 hero 2 would do) and maximum (18 vs 10) damage than hero 2. If they both rolled a 20 against a target with an AC of 13 Hero 1 would deal 20 damage on average while hero 2 would deal 17. So while the more accurate weapon hits more it has less damage potential (which is what you've been told over and over) and even if you add accuracy onto damage the dynamic is still their.

Weapon 1
13 (damage) times 50%(chance to hit) means he's doing 6.5 damage/turn + your roll result - target's defense.

Weapon 2
7 (damage) times 65% (chance to hit) means he's doing 4.55 damage/turn + your roll result +3 - the target's defense.

High accuracy weapons may do a bit more damage because accuracy is added there but so do low accuracy weapons for the same reason. The numbers change, the dynamic doesn't. I don't know how to make it any clearer.

[Murtak]

souran, as people have explained to you repeatedly, the trade comes from the fact that the weapon that does more damage sometimes drops people in one hit while the weapon that had more accuracy never drops someone in one hit.

Except that when we add in the contributing factor that higher success on a hit now contributes to damage we have defiantly blurred this line.

So. Fucking. What? Even with the rapier getting extra damage on the same roll that let's the axe barely hit the axe can still do more damage on the same roll.

If you add in extra damage from "how good" your success was you are going to make it harder to tell the differance between an "average hit" by a strong weapon and an "average success" for accurate weapon.

So. Fucking. What? You know this in advance. You can still make the damage gap as large as you like, even with the rapier getting extra damage quite often. You can very well have a rapier with +3 precision and a battleaxe with +30 damage and no one is going to mistake getting hit by the axe with getting hit by the rapier.

So if we had one weapon that did 1 damage +1 accuracy, and one weapon that did 2 damage those weapons have the same damage potential against the same target.

As has been pointed out numerous times, NO ONE IS ARGUING FOR STRAIGHT 1-TO-1 TRADEOFF. No one except you that is. And no one is arguing it, because a 1-to-1 tradeoff is idiotic. How much higher the tradeoff has to be is debatable, but you do need to get more than 1 damage in exchange for 1 precision.

[Username17]

I think Souran's discrepancy has something to do with the premise of having accuracy add to damage which Lago mentioned earlier. Both Frank's and Lago's models don't account for additional damage due to over shooting the target defense via accuracy. I'm not saying he's right because, as I said earlier, even with that dynamic set the numbers merely change but the relationship is still there.

Actually no. If you note, my run was simply that the character inflicted 10 damage plus 1 for every point they exceeded the target's defense. That's why the maximum damage for the two groups differed by only 1 instead of 2. Souran's just being a dick, and that's why he is on Ignore.

The two setups do even damage over time, making the trade "balanced." However, they do not respond to additional modifiers the same way, making them different. Souran is saying that there is no difference between Fire Damage and Cold Damage because enemies having different resistances will balance out in the long run and therefore there is no choice being offered in selecting one or the other.

It's a completely insane stance. We've gone over it with small numbers and explicit point by point refutations. The extra accuracy damage attack is demonstrably superior when the enemy has 10 or less hit points, and demonstrably better if the enemy has between 12 and 21 hit points. This is a mathematically obvious, and thoroughly demonstrated fucking fact.

Now like I said earlier: I will put up with many things. I will continue to argue about economic policy and religion and whatever. And people who have views that I find actually abhorrent can continue to argue those points or hold discussions on other topics and I will continue engaging with those points. Look at some of the bare knuckle discussions I've had with tzor - holy crap. I still regard him as a friend even. But there's a line. The line is when someone demonstrates something with actual perfect 100% mathematical certainty and you continue to be a douche about it - you go on ignore. The world has room for lots of opinions on lots of things. But if we don't all accept arithmetic we can't have discussions at all.

-Username17

[souran]

@Souran: Just because higher accuracy/low damage weapons have the potential to do greater damage on a higher roll their minimum and quite possibly their maximum damage would still be behind a low accuracy/high damage weapon.

This is were system complexity begins to build up. If the weapons do not have the same damage potential, then you have finally actually traded something. You have traded potential damage for hit probability.

Now you can also basically figure out if a trade is worthwhile. Looking at your weapons, its going to be fairly hard on a d20 to make up 7 points of average damage with only a +3 to the roll. If the rapier added 10 to the to hit roll great swords would be a thing of the past.

High accuracy weapons may do a bit more damage because accuracy is added there but so do low accuracy weapons for the same reason. The numbers change, the dynamic doesn't. I don't know how to make it any clearer.

I think your totally wrong if you think it does not change the dynamic. It completly changes how you look at weapons.

If you have a weapon in D&D right now that added say 5 to hit, but only did d3 damage, you would know some things about that weapon. The value of that weapon is that it scores hits. It scores a lot more hits than other weapons (up to 25% more, or greater should a weapon happen to have a penalty).

However, in the "success to damage system" this weapon looks a lot different. Especially if compared to say a weapon that does d8 or even d10 points of damage and adds 0 to hit. If you were used to wielding the d8/d10 weapon this weapon looks more like a DAMAGE upgrade than a focused hitting weapon. Yeah, it hits before where you would miss, but the big benefit is that now when you hit like you used to you do 5 GUARNTEED points of damage.

So what before might have been meant to be a wizard's dagger of not-suckery actually is a warriors dagger of stabiness. So yes it does change the dynamic.

[souran]

Actually no. If you note, my run was simply that the character inflicted 10 damage plus 1 for every point they exceeded the target's defense. That's why the maximum damage for the two groups differed by only 1 instead of 2. Souran's just being a dick, and that's why he is on Ignore.

The two setups do even damage over time, making the trade "balanced." However, they do not respond to additional modifiers the same way, making them different.

There response to modifiers, as frank himself showed, is miniscule at best. A couple of points of damage over 20 attacks.

Souran is saying that there is no difference between Fire Damage and Cold Damage because enemies having different resistances will balance out in the long run and therefore there is no choice being offered in selecting one or the other.

No what I am saying is that if you have the sword of fire and ice you cannot get more damage against the monster weak against acid by shifting points out of fire and into ice. Combine that with a health dose of "its not a choice to shift all the points out of fire when fighting the fire immune guy"