Magic Numbers

[codeGlaze]

Focusing on rule sets that focus on fight over flight (DnD, Champions, etc...) in your opinions what are the various percentages most people require to stay interested?

1 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for PCs?

2 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for NPCs?

3a : How difficult should it ACTUALLY be to resist/save vs something?
3b : Should NPCs be more prone to failing?

...there were a few more points I wanted to list, now I've forgotten them.

[shadzar]

there is no one number to govern any of these things. one of the more interesting parts is the story the numbers do not provide, be it simple quest arcs, epic plot, or just wandering around and finding the right dungeon.

to keep interested in the fighting, it has to be interesting itself, that will depend on what people want out of the combat system as seen by the ever changing D&D as they trying to find the one thing common people want.

[codeGlaze]

there is no one number to govern any of these things. one of the more interesting parts is the story the numbers do not provide, be it simple quest arcs, epic plot, or just wandering around and finding the right dungeon.

to keep interested in the fighting, it has to be interesting itself, that will depend on what people want out of the combat system as seen by the ever changing D&D as they trying to find the one thing common people want.

I understand combat isn't consistent and is, in fact, ever changing. But that doesn't mean there can't be/shouldn't be/isn't a basic threshold that can apply most of the time.

No body likes missing every swing. A lot of people don't even seem to like missing ANY swing.

So, therefore, I am looking for people's opinions on what they think are enjoyable percentages for various interactions.

[Mask_De_H]

We've run numbers on this sort of stuff before; look through TNE threads, Four Stat System, basically any of the games we've developed.

Generally, it's 50-80% hit chance in general depending on what you want your system to model, with NPCs maybe having a slightly lower hit chance. Saves depend on how the save model works and what the status effect is.

For once, shadzar isn't completely spouting nonsense; people are going to have different ideas on what's enjoyable and the kind of combat you want to engender will dictate the hit and save numbers.

[codeGlaze]

We've run numbers on this sort of stuff before; look through TNE threads, Four Stat System, basically any of the games we've developed.

Generally, it's 50-80% hit chance in general depending on what you want your system to model, with NPCs maybe having a slightly lower hit chance. Saves depend on how the save model works and what the status effect is.

For once, shadzar isn't completely spouting nonsense; people are going to have different ideas on what's enjoyable and the kind of combat you want to engender will dictate the hit and save numbers.

I realize a lot of this has been discussed. Which is why I ask.

I could spend days looking through search results trying to sift through and find what I'm looking for.

Thanks

[hogarth]

Focusing on rule sets that focus on fight over flight (DnD, Champions, etc...) in your opinions what are the various percentages most people require to stay interested?

1 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for PCs?

2 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for NPCs?

Champions is a poor example for these, since it's perfectly genre-appropriate to have a fragile dude who's almost impossible to hit (so you have to throw a bus at him instead of punching him, say) or a nigh-invulnerable dude who's easy to hit (so you have to shock him with a downed power line instead of punching him, say).

3a : How difficult should it ACTUALLY be to resist/save vs something?
3b : Should NPCs be more prone to failing?

Champions doesn't have saving throws, but it has relatively cheap defenses.

I would vote along the lines of "all attacks should have a fairly cheap defense". I dislike the D&D approach, where only certain character types have access to important defenses like Death Ward or Mind Blank.

[Koumei]

Sure, opinions:

1 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for PCs?

Around 70-80% of PC attacks should hit.

2 : What should the hit/miss ratio be for NPCs?

Around 60-70%

3a : How difficult should it ACTUALLY be to resist/save vs something?

Totally depends. I would be okay with minor conditions or "save vs falling over" working 80% of the time (so 20% chance to save), maybe with PCs passing their saves a bit more. But for "You die", weaker enemies should fail most of the time, actual challenging enemies and PCs should pass the save like 80% of the time.

For "you lose but don't actually die" and other serious afflictions, go for the 40-50% rate of the effect happening.

[Foxwarrior]

If you want the percentages to matter, there should of course be some variability in them.

I think your question is kind of missing the point: players want to achieve things with the resources they spend, and one of those resources is playing time. If it takes 10 minutes to decide on a course of action and resolve it, only to find that it fizzled and did absolutely nothing, that's bad, although fizzling in an interesting way can be fun. If it takes 5 seconds to decide on and resolve, it's not a big deal.

The hit/miss ratio for NPCs is less important because the DM usually spends less time planning each individual NPC's action.

The difficulty to save against something depends on how much it does, like Koumei said.

[shadzar]

there is no one number to govern any of these things. one of the more interesting parts is the story the numbers do not provide, be it simple quest arcs, epic plot, or just wandering around and finding the right dungeon.

to keep interested in the fighting, it has to be interesting itself, that will depend on what people want out of the combat system as seen by the ever changing D&D as they trying to find the one thing common people want.

I understand combat isn't consistent and is, in fact, ever changing. But that doesn't mean there can't be/shouldn't be/isn't a basic threshold that can apply most of the time.

No body likes missing every swing. A lot of people don't even seem to like missing ANY swing.

So, therefore, I am looking for people's opinions on what they think are enjoyable percentages for various interactions.

that is the point and problem however, that WotC is facing with their system design. they are seeking this number, but after a while of consistent results, you feel that your input has little to no meaning.

if you hit 80% of the time for 4% damage to an enemy, you will just be playing a game of lumberjack in a redwood forest with a pocket knife.

lower can be more exciting when coupled with higher output, ergo the daily powers of 4th for example. it makes the power seem interesting, when it actually isnt.

the consistent thing would be chaos needed to make the game interesting. the highs and lulls of the roller coaster ride.

[John Magnum]

How can something seem interesting but actually be boring? I literally do not understand how that is possible.

[tussock]

Depends on your fight lengths, checks per round, and so on, as it's a complex cumulative probability issue.

You don't want to end most fights in a timeout state, so if you have to save vs long timeouts once and short timeouts about 3 times per fight you need to save maybe 80%+. OTOH, if there's only 1-in-20 fights have timeouts at all they need to simply ensure it's highly unlikely to get the whole party in one go, which depends on party size, and most folk can just fail.

Individuals don't want to miss for the whole fight at all, 95%+, so that depends if you get three attacks or 25 in a fight (85% or 30% hits respectively). With more attacks you also become more dependable, and less able to have a "good" or "bad" fight, so you might want to add variety in those cases. If you're a "one-shot" character it needs very high odds to support that. You also want to achieve something noticeably more than you achieve nothing, probably 70% per round.

You want noticeable random variation between characters each fight, so that rolling all these dice to get our fully reliable outcomes feels real. Every fight one or two characters should be having a clearly good or bad run. This means the variation for the party needs to be much lower than the variation for the characters, which only really works if some character types tend to be more reliable, and some less so, to suit players who enjoy better either way.

[Grek]

Some relations that are true no matter what sort of feel you're going for:

L=DHT; where L is mean total of enemy hit points, T is the mean number of attacks made in a combat, D is the mean net damage per hit and H is the mean hit rate for attempted attacks.

Likewise, SoDs have the following relation if you want them to be balanced vs. direct damage:

AHF=T; where A is the mean percent of enemy combat effectiveness that the SoD negates, H is the rate at which the SoD hits, L is mean total of enemy hit points, F is the fraction of the combat that the SoD will be in effect and T is the mean number of attacks per combat.

E: I am fucking retarded and cannot do basic algebra.

[Username17]

Some relations that are true no matter what sort of feel you're going for:

LT=DH; where L is mean total of enemy hit points, T is the mean number of attacks made in a combat, D is the mean net damage per hit and H is the mean hit rate for attempted attacks.

I think I know what you're trying to say, but this is completely wrong. Imagine the simple case where you have 2 enemy hit points, your attacks hit half the time, and do one point of damage each. Your equation is then:

2 (L) * 4 (T) = 1 (D) * 1/2 (H)

Obviously 8 is 16 times larger than 1/2. The equation you're looking for is:

L = DHT

Or if you'd prefer:

L/D = HT

Or something like that. But I guess you're really looking to solve for T, so your equation should probably be:

T = L/(HD)

-Username17

[Grek]

And this, ladies and gentleman, is why I should not be allowed to post things after midnight.

[ishy]

Focusing on rule sets that focus on fight over flight (DnD, Champions, etc...) in your opinions what are the various percentages most people require to stay interested?

1: I'd say between 25 - 85% hit chance.
2: From not being able to hit unless they use aid another and things like that in certain encounters, to certain hits if they have some serious (invertible) advantages.

3a: 25 - 85%
b: Depends if that is what you want as a designer.

I tend to notice that if your success chances are different from those, it no longer feels worthwhile to roll the dice any more.
But in real systems, these numbers of course may differ. If you for example have power attack in your system, you'd want people to have higher to hit numbers than if you have an accurate attack option.

[hogarth]

How can something seem interesting but actually be boring? I literally do not understand how that is possible.

[threadjack] I can think of lots of things that seem interesting to me but that are actually boring. Like ice skating or roasting hot dogs over an open fire.

[Caedrus]

You don't necessarily even need a miss chance. Plenty of games forego random failure entirely (Or make the chances very small, and often a result of enemy features rather than just a default chance to miss). Others still allow you to accomplish things in the event of randomized failures (such as having secondary effects if a fort save succeeds), or even just forcing an enemy to use up a resource to negate your action.

Regardless, you may want to consider the notion that if you're waiting several minutes for your turn, you probably want players to feel that they did something to contribute to the state of the battlefield.

More randomization means you need to react to and account for more unpredictable situations, while less randomization means you are more concretely and consistently rewarded for making better tactical choices.

[Aryxbez]

Far as D20 goes, I've heard 60%? or average success on a 8 or better, tending to be good, all the better when fighting higher level threats, it becomes more like 50/50 10 or so or better.

[Caedrus]

What's the context, here? A 60% miss chance for a given action means something completely different when you're talking about having one action vs having five, or whether you're talking about all or nothing actions or ones that have secondary effects even if you miss, or whether or not the miss chance involves enemies expending resources or not, and so on and so forth. You can't just pull out some "magic" number outside of any meaningful context.

The thing is, the "hit/miss ratio" the OP brought up isn't a terribly important concept on its own. For example, if you fire 12 shots in a turn and expect half to miss, that's very different from if you fire one shot in a turn and have a 50% chance of doing nothing and a 50% chance of doing full damage. In the latter case, a player can reasonably expect to go multiple turns without accomplishing anything whatsoever on a rather frequent basis and the gameplay is more swingy.

In short, I think the OP is asking the wrong question.

[fectin]

And this, ladies and gentleman, is why I should not be allowed to post things after midnight.

Gets me every time too. You are not alone.

[Username17]

What's the context, here? A 60% miss chance for a given action means something completely different when you're talking about having one action vs having five, or whether you're talking about all or nothing actions or ones that have secondary effects even if you miss, or whether or not the miss chance involves enemies expending resources or not, and so on and so forth. You can't just pull out some "magic" number outside of any meaningful context.

The thing is, the "hit/miss ratio" the OP brought up isn't a terribly important concept on its own. For example, if you fire 12 shots in a turn and expect half to miss, that's very different from if you fire one shot in a turn and have a 50% chance of doing nothing and a 50% chance of doing full damage. In the latter case, a player can reasonably expect to go multiple turns without accomplishing anything whatsoever on a rather frequent basis and the gameplay is more swingy.

In short, I think the OP is asking the wrong question.

This. Also recall that the to-hit rolls of the enemies are actually the activation rolls of the player's defenses. If a player's defenses fail to reduce or negate the effects of incoming attacks for several rounds in a row, the player is as apt to ask what the point of having the defenses is as when their attacks fail to accomplish anything for several rounds and they justifiably ask what the point of taking actions is.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

A somewhat related question: How far optimization should change these numbers?

If it's "ideal" that PCs hit 60-80% of the times, then a PC that specs on "hitting" should have which % chance?

The converse: A PC that's speccing on something else and sacrificing to-hit should have which % chance?

Finally, for a D&D like game, which variables actually comprise the "combat equation"? For basic weapon combat I think it's the to hit number, the "armor", the average damage, a possible soak value, the hit points and the number of actions. Once you start factoring even the simplest maneuvers (reach weapons, AoOs, trip, disarm, sundering) things go nuts. This is even before adding things like spells effects and saves.

[Caedrus]

What's the context, here? A 60% miss chance for a given action means something completely different when you're talking about having one action vs having five, or whether you're talking about all or nothing actions or ones that have secondary effects even if you miss, or whether or not the miss chance involves enemies expending resources or not, and so on and so forth. You can't just pull out some "magic" number outside of any meaningful context.

The thing is, the "hit/miss ratio" the OP brought up isn't a terribly important concept on its own. For example, if you fire 12 shots in a turn and expect half to miss, that's very different from if you fire one shot in a turn and have a 50% chance of doing nothing and a 50% chance of doing full damage. In the latter case, a player can reasonably expect to go multiple turns without accomplishing anything whatsoever on a rather frequent basis and the gameplay is more swingy.

In short, I think the OP is asking the wrong question.

This. Also recall that the to-hit rolls of the enemies are actually the activation rolls of the player's defenses. If a player's defenses fail to reduce or negate the effects of incoming attacks for several rounds in a row, the player is as apt to ask what the point of having the defenses is as when their attacks fail to accomplish anything for several rounds and they justifiably ask what the point of taking actions is.

-Username17

Yeah, this is basically what I was referring to when I mentioned enemy resources being expended. For example, it's okay that the Engineer's shield in Hero Academy effectively adds a 100% miss chance... because it takes an action and only affects one attack (of potentially many between turns). And simply removing the shield still counts as accomplishing something with a given attack.

[Stubbazubba]

A somewhat related question: How far optimization should change these numbers?

If it's "ideal" that PCs hit 60-80% of the times, then a PC that specs on "hitting" should have which % chance?

The converse: A PC that's speccing on something else and sacrificing to-hit should have which % chance?

And does that ideal difference remain relatively static throughout the game, or does it diverge as the party levels up?

What is the maximum divergence in any given area a party can stand? For stealth? For combat? For climb? For UMD? For diplomacy?

[MGuy]

I believe baseline attacks/defenses should work about 50% of the time against equal opposition. Now when I say equal opposition I mean for every PC that has their base attack set to "high" then they have a 50% chance to hit an enemy who's defense is also set to "high". From there I think abilities that boost attack/lower defenses, along with environment/situation specific buffs and similar stuff should do the rest.

That being said NPCs just should not have stats as good as the PCs and NPCs should not often times be able to set their attacks or defenses to "high". I do like the idea of their being mook, elite, and boss NPCs where Mooks get hit 80-100% of the time Elites get hit 60=80%, and bosses get hit about 40 - 60% of the time (depending on what defense is targeted).

Basically I want Mooks to go down like paper, elites to go down pretty quick but Bosses should have staying power. This is all while PCs always have staying power (where-in their largest defenses are hardly ever overcome except by Bosses and maybe sometimes Elites). This only goes as far as regular, all sides are equal, combat though. Other parts of the game or even unique environments, ambushes, and other special circumstances will of course change the numbers. This also would require you to make distinctions between the numbers on different NPCs in some sane way.