A rant against so-called heroes

[Elennsar]

Frank's math breakdown is a bit more useful in terms of giving a better overall picture, but the fact that on average you'll have a single survivor is still very significant.

Not nearly as significant as the fact you have a 68~% chance of survivors (or to put it another way, a 32~% chance of no survivors).

No one said 50-50 odds (broken down in whatever manner) were acceptable odds except vs. someone who is supposed to have an equal chance vs. you.

For a campaign overall, encounters like this would probably not be a good thing.

For an encounter that is supposed to be a very close call? That's a very good thing.

[virgil]

Let's say you have a 99% chance by the math in posts above of making it to the end of a campaign.

You screw up horribly in encounter #1 and die.

Short campaign.

Sure. There's a chance you can get horribly unlucky, but the probability of that is extremely low. If you've got a 99% chance of making it through 400 encounters without a single PC death, and you have 4 PCs, the odds of being the one PC who does die in the first battle will be very low.

Just as an aside, my first reading of this I mistook it for saying that each encounter had a 99% chance of survival. If you actually expect to run a 400 encounter campaign, you've actually only got a ~1% chance of your character surviving to see the end of it.

On a second reading, I realized it was a 99% survival rate over the span of 400 encounters, which 'slightly' changes things.

Of course, 400 encounter campaigns are freakin' rare. Most real campaigns I know of only last for half a year (or perhaps even half that), and each session equates to maybe half a dozen encounters, meaning most campaigns last about 150 encounters. Even better; that 99% survival rate for each encounter, in this 'typical' campaign, means you have about a 20% chance of surviving the entire campaign.

[Elennsar]

In this case, the math is that you have a 99% chance of surviving a full campaign.

Encounter #1 had some "sure, if things go wildly improbably." possibility (We're talking something like rolling a natural 1, missing by ten then another natural 1, giving your opponent an attack of AOO, and then he gets 3 natural 20s in a row.) - which killed the unfortunate PC.

[Psychic Robot]

At this point, I am very confused by everything. Not the actual math, mind you, but what Elennsar and others are arguing. Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

This makes sense:

All Four: .39%
Three: 4.7%
Two: 21.09%
One: 42.19%
None: 31.64%

This does not:

Not really at all no.

If you fail on roll 1, you cannot succeed on both rolls one and two.

If you fail encounter 1, you cannot succeed on both encounter one and two.

If you survive 1, but lose, you can win 2 just fine (depending on your condition when entering 2 and what difficulty it is to begin with and so on etc.)

But if you don't survive 1, you could have a 100% chance of surviving #2 (taken on its own merits), but since you're dead, that doesn't matter.

I don't get what your point is. I mean, I sort of get it, and what you're saying makes sense, but I'm left with a big "So what?" in my head.

I am against the idea that if I drink 20 drinks out of 400 and 5% of the 400 drinks are poisoned that I inevitably get 1 poisoned drink.

Who is saying that?

[RandomCasualty2]

Not nearly as significant as the fact you have a 68~% chance of survivors (or to put it another way, a 32~% chance of no survivors).

You're not just trying to avoid TPK, you're trying to allow PCs to keep recurring characters. Really the most significant percentage is probably the chance that one or more PCs will die that encounter.

That's one or more characters whose stories just end. And these aren't nameless red shirts, they're main characters.

And if you're killing PCs so often most of your game sessions are just going to be Character generation.

No one said 50-50 odds (broken down in whatever manner) were acceptable odds except vs. someone who is supposed to have an equal chance vs. you.

For a campaign overall, encounters like this would probably not be a good thing.

For an encounter that is supposed to be a very close call? That's a very good thing.

Honestly you should never put in a 50/50 encounter in your campaign, except as a finale where you expect that not everyone will make it out. But otherwise, it's highly likely that you're losing PCs from your campaign.

[Elennsar]

That's one or more characters whose stories just end. And these aren't nameless red shirts, they're main characters.

And if you're killing PCs so often most of your game sessions are just going to be Character generation.

And in an evenly matched fight, even main characters should be hard pressed.

Honestly you should never put in a 50/50 encounter in your campaign, except as a finale where you expect that not everyone will make it out. But otherwise, it's highly likely that you're losing PCs from your campaign.

Which is not the most dreadful thing in the world unless you want to ensure (not make probable, make certain) that characters will survive.

[RandomCasualty2]

And in an evenly matched fight, even main characters should be hard pressed.

Hard pressed doesn't have to mean bloodbath. How many times has it seemed in a movie or book that the hero is hard pressed, yet he doesn't die?

Honestly you should never put in a 50/50 encounter in your campaign, except as a finale where you expect that not everyone will make it out. But otherwise, it's highly likely that you're losing PCs from your campaign.

Which is not the most dreadful thing in the world unless you want to ensure (not make probable, make certain) that characters will survive.

I want it to be highly probable that I can have recurring characters. If a PC loses his character permanently, then I care about that, because that character had a connection between the player and the world. The new character loses all those connections and is just some random guy off the street.

[Elennsar]

Hard pressed doesn't have to mean bloodbath. How many times has it seemed in a movie or book that the hero is hard pressed, yet he doesn't die?

Nor does it have to avoid death as if it was the worst possible thing that could happen, short of Lucas writting the dialogue.

I want it to be highly probable that I can have recurring characters. If a PC loses his character permanently, then I care about that, because that character had a connection between the player and the world. The new character loses all those connections and is just some random guy off the street.

And I want it to be highly probable that at least some of the time when you appear to be in danger of dying that you can actually die instead of it just being Yet Another Illusion.

Having it be highly probable that the characters will survive by making it impossible for them to die the overwhelming majority of the time means that the overwhelming majority of the time the heroes are not at risk of death - which does not always make sense.

If you're fighting a competent opponent, you should be worried that he -could- get a killing blow - it might take circumstances you can prevent him from achieving (CAN for instance), but that's different then the "Always misses." for Imperial Stormtroopers.

[Leress]

No one is saying "impossible to die"

[Elennsar]

No one is giving any indication of being okay with it ever actually happening in play, either.

Sure, its okay if a PC can die if played with extreme stupidity or deliberately sacrificing his life, but its not okay for an orc or an ogre or a giant to ever be able to kill him as a matter of being a sufficiently skillful opponent to really threaten that.

[Leress]

No one is giving any indication of being okay with it ever actually happening in play, either.

Yes they are, I said that, Random has said that. The problem was the rate of the occurrence.

Sure, its okay if a PC can die if played with extreme stupidity or deliberately sacrificing his life, but its not okay for an orc or an ogre or a giant to ever be able to kill him as a matter of being a sufficiently skillful opponent to really threaten that.

Who said it was not okay for people to die to skillful opponents?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

"The idea that probability -is- telling us with certainty what will happen when we actually flip. "

HAHAHAHAHA.

On average, how many well-rested PCs should survive the following encounters:
1 - An encounter of equal CR.
2 - An encounter of CR-2.
3 - An encounter of CR+2.
4 - Four encounters of equal CR.
5 - Four encounters of CR-2.
6 - Four encounters of CR+2.

For me:
1 - All of them (possibly one PC comes close, at -6 hp or so)
2 - All of them (this is a henchmen fight)
3 - Three of them (the others should be pretty wounded)
4 - Three of them (a 'lucky' kill took one to -20 instead of -6)
5 - All of them (maybe some henchmen die)
6 - None of them

What about you?

[Elennsar]

Yes they are, I said that, Random has said that. The problem was the rate of the occurrence.


Who said it was not okay for people to die to skillful opponents?

Show me where and when either of you said it is okay for a NPC to actually kill a PC other than in the finale.

Because its submerged under wanting to ensure recurring characters.

[Leress]

I have made suggestion of Shadowrun which as a very high lethality rate and I've played that for many years, and in that game anyone can kill you.

[Elennsar]

Fair enough. Now, what about for games where characters don't actively avoid combat (defined as both sides exchanging gunfire or whatever)?

That's the problem.

Personally, I stand by the fact that 50-50 is pretty good for something meant to be a very close call judging by how the survival chances break down.

Wouldn't want that as a normal fight - but wouldn't want to eliminate it, either.

[cthulhu]

Runescape.

[Elennsar]

In the words of frustrated individuals presented with incomplete information since the dawn of time:

Details! What about it?


Well, the censored version of their words at any rate.

[cthulhu]

Its a high leathality combat system, that encourages, but doesn;t eliminate avoiding fights.

You seriously need to think about what the difficulty of each 'challenge' in a story arc is.

Plot out what you think a sample arc is in terms of challenge/lethality if a party 'plays smart' in each encouter.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

50-50 versus very encounter?
50-50 no matter the number of enemies?
50-50 per assailant?
50-50 if tactics are bad? Good? Even?

You know, playing this game isn't very fun if you don't play too.

[Elennsar]

Its a high leathality combat system, that encourages, but doesn;t eliminate avoiding fights.

What about a system where you're -expected- to fight? Not one where you try to keep the number of combat encounters as low as possible. I'm not sure if your answer is clear here on what it is doing.

You seriously need to think about what the difficulty of each 'challenge' in a story arc is.

Plot out what you think a sample arc is in terms of challenge/lethality if a party 'plays smart' in each encouter.

Depends on what you -do- in the story arc. Seriously, a story arc which you spend rallying and organizing and otherwise is low combat is a bad example, as is one with a string of multiple battles within the span of a week or two.

STW: Who is that to?

[cthulhu]

This is your game, so you need to provide your vision of what a story arc looks like.

Once you've produced a vision, we can help with tactical details, but that vision needs to come from the owner of the concept (i.e. you)

So its not depending on what I do - it depends on what you want to do - you need to articulate that to us.

Runescape is like WFRP in that fighting is expected, but is very though going so most people look to circumvent rather than fight a bloodletter because if they do people are going to die.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

We've been down this road in the Artorius thread. Elennsar finally gave an average number of combats per campaign and a breakdown of the number of easy/equal/hard opponents. I did some rough calculations and figured that the percentage chance of the party going the whole campaign without a loss was infinitessimally small. Elennsar got all defensive and started arguing that you can't figure probability over multiple trials, that the numbers are irrelevant because you might not have exactly 40 combats in his campaign, etc.

I fully expect the same thing to happen in this thread. Do you really think Elennsar's repeated failure to understand probability is a result of low intelligence? I'm convinced at this point that it's just him metaphorically sticking his fingers in his ears and singing "LALALA" every time math and/or logic give results he doesn't like. In fact, he all but said so in the Artorious thread.

[cthulhu]

Most doctors answer questions about probability incorrectly if phrased

1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. 80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammographies. 9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammographies. A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?

The problem:

Next, suppose I told you that most doctors get the same wrong answer on this problem - usually, only around 15% of doctors get it right. ("Really? 15%? Is that a real number, or an urban legend based on an Internet poll?" It's a real number. See Casscells, Schoenberger, and Grayboys 1978; Eddy 1982; Gigerenzer and Hoffrage 1995; and many other studies. It's a surprising result which is easy to replicate, so it's been extensively replicated.)

However, if you phrase it like this

100 out of 10,000 women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. 80 of every 100 women with breast cancer will get a positive mammography. 950 out of 9,900 women without breast cancer will also get a positive mammography. If 10,000 women in this age group undergo a routine screening, about what fraction of women with positive mammographies will actually have breast cancer?

Doctors get it right 46% of the time.

Basically Elennsar is unable to reason correctly, but the majority of people are unable to reason correctly, so he's not alone in this.

Probability - especially conditional probability is hard. The fact that Elennsar doesn't get just means that he's one of the vast majority of people that don;t get it.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Cthulu, your hypothetical problem is really a test of how well you can pick out the relevant information from a bunch of red herrings. It's an exercise in word-problem comprehension rather than probability.

The answer is 1%, the percentage of women who undergo routine screening who have breast cancer

Elennsar has not only failed at complex word problems. He's also denied the relevance of repetitive probability to the kinds of situations it was designed for and spammed several known fallacies (though he's later denied this). All this, in spite of several people going to great lengths to find ways to explain it to him. What percentage of doctors answer probability questions incorrectly after attending a lecture on probability?

[cthulhu]

Umm, the question is "A woman in this age group had a positive mammography in a routine screening. What is the probability that she actually has breast cancer?" and the answer isn't 1%.