Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Koumei]

probably a fully enlightened NWO Agent whose mind control is simply better than yours.

This will never not be funny to me. The current owners of the IP should just make it canon or scrub all mention of the NWO.

[tussock]

Hiding in plain sight, google bombing, no one suspects the clowns, etc.

[Mechalich]

This will never not be funny to me. The current owners of the IP should just make it canon or scrub all mention of the NWO.

It would totally make canonical sense as a joke played by a particularly media-savvy Virtual Adept, so I completely agree.

[Mask_De_H]

This will never not be funny to me. The current owners of the IP should just make it canon or scrub all mention of the NWO.

It would totally make canonical sense as a joke played by a particularly media-savvy Virtual Adept, so I completely agree.

I know if I ever run a Mage game, I'm using Agents Bolea, Hall and Nash as recurring characters.

[RedstoneOrc]

I was thinking of using Mutants and Masterminds to do a campaign. I'm trying to get the 1980's side scroll-er/ fighter feel. I'm wondering if M&M is a good system for this and if the den knows of any sheets of henchmen and monsters?

Also I need someone to explain how the power level caps work cuz the pdf I have is crap.

[Prak]

Ok, so I'll do this in order of difficulty for me- power level caps are just maximums you can have in something based on what the campaign post level is. It's like how D&D characters aren't allowed to have more ranks in a single skill than level+3. If you can read what those caps are, I believe there is a wiki a la d20pfsrd called something like D20 Superheroes.

For a side-scroller, I'm not sure M&M is a good fit. It feels too involved. Something with Storyteller-esque hitboxes feels more right, but I think you want static defenses rather than soak rolls. Side-scroller enemies kind of tend suffer critical existenceconsciousness failure after a certain number of hits. Bosses get more hitboxes, you should probably not use ST wound penalties.

[Grek]

Side scrollers want to include moves that effect the viability of future moves for both the user and their opponents and simultaneous action resolution. You can't have the basic Block/Kick/Punch kind of RPS in a game that has initiative declared in a fixed order.

[OgreBattle]

I was thinking of using Mutants and Masterminds to do a campaign. I'm trying to get the 1980's side scroll-er/ fighter feel.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by feel?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

As a rules-medium, M&M(d20herosrd.com) might be a less than ideal fit for River City Ransom, the RPG. That said, certain aspects are in keeping with the genre, such as many fights largely reducing to a gradual chipping away of an opponent's Toughness, punctuated with occasional effects-driven specials and a bit of goon sweeping. For NPC sheets check out Roninarmy, which is the new version of AtomicThinkTank. A handful of the posters there are obsessive about statting things up.

PL represents the following caps:
Dodge+Toughness≤2PL
Parry+Toughness≤2PL
Fortitude+Will≤2PL
An attack's bonus to hit+effect rank≤2PL
A skill's total modifer≤PL+10

The last two warrant further comment.

If an attack doesn't have to make an attack roll, e.g. Perception ranged attacks, then its effect rank is limited to PL. An effect's PL cap may be exceeded via circumstance bonuses, extra effort, or maneuvers like Power Attack.

Since almost all abilities(base stats) have associated skills that may be used untrained, there are de facto limits to abilities of PL+10, with two exceptions. Stamina is limited to PL+10± what degree of trade-off a given game allows. Intellect has no untrained skills, so for it to be of use it's effectively limited to PL+9. Abilities in M&M are largely just a crappy shorthand of what can more effectively shown elsewhere on a character sheet. Their only real purpose is to delineate the portion of abilities that are permanent and thus not subject to effects like Nullify from the portion granted from an effect, which can be thus be used in a Power Stunt.
(EDIT: There was a proxy/phpBB hiccup I didn't notice until I was on a different device. I apologize for any confusion.)

[RedstoneOrc]

Ok, so I'll do this in order of difficulty for me- power level caps are just maximums you can have in something based on what the campaign post level is. It's like how D&D characters aren't allowed to have more ranks in a single skill than level+3. If you can read what those caps are, I believe there is a wiki a la d20pfsrd called something like D20 Superheroes.

But the sample characters have abilities and shit higher than the power level. What's up with dat?

Could you elaborate on what you mean by feel?

Well by feel I mean; Reasonably fast combat, mooks that go down in one or to rounds, when players go down they either can't die/ get back up (extra life), and single boss's that can threaten all players at the same time but won't tpk the group.

PL represents the following caps:
Dodge+Toughness≤2PL
Parry+Toughness≤2PL
Fortitude+Will≤2PL
An attack's bonus to hit+effect rank ≤2PL
A skill's total modifer ≤PL+10

What the actual fuck?

[Grek]

Well by feel I mean; Reasonably fast combat, mooks that go down in one or to rounds, when players go down they either can't die/ get back up (extra life), and single boss's that can threaten all players at the same time but won't tpk the group.

M&M works fine for that. Use the Minion rules for mooks (Minions cannot crit and always take suffer the maximum effect when attacked) and the hero rules for bosses. Bosses can use abilities modified with Multiattack or Area to attack the whole group and still be balanced.

What the actual fuck?

I have no idea why Nebuchadnezzar's fonts did that, but it should read:

Dodge + Toughness ≤ 2 * Power Level
Parry + Toughness ≤ 2 * Power Level
Fortitude + Will ≤ 2 * Power Level
Attack Bonus + Effect Rank ≤ 2 * Power Level (For non-Perception range attacks)
Effect Rank ≤ Power Level (For Perception range attacks)
Skill Modifier ≤ Power Level + 10

As an example, a PL 10 guy could have 10 Fortitude/10 Will, or 7 Fortitude/13 Will, or even 20 Fortitude/0 Will. Most DMs will ask that you not do that last one, but if your DM says its fine, you can do it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

One of the rotating GMs in my Pathfinder group wants to replace D20s. He's asking about whether we should go to 3d6, 2d10, or 1d12+1d8. It sounds kind of stupid to me, but I took a survey statistics class ten years ago and barely scraped out a C, so if someone who is good at math wants to explain how I'm either right or wrong, I'm all ears.

[Wulfbanes]

Basically, the more dice you throw, the less likely it is to get a high or low result. Instead you'll roll 'average' more often. It makes things like high AC much better, since lucky crits from mooks happen a whole less often, etc.

[Prak]

Ok, so I'll do this in order of difficulty for me- power level caps are just maximums you can have in something based on what the campaign post level is. It's like how D&D characters aren't allowed to have more ranks in a single skill than level+3. If you can read what those caps are, I believe there is a wiki a la d20pfsrd called something like D20 Superheroes.

But the sample characters have abilities and shit higher than the power level. What's up with dat?

It's probably trade offs. I'm not super up on 3e, but in 2nd Edition M&M you actually basically had a slider between Attack & Save DC Mod, and Defense & Toughness. So, the Batman expy in 2nd is PL10, and has a +12 Attack bonus, which means his abilities can only add 8 to the Save, which means his max DC for his abilities is 18, but because Damage is a save effect that's presented weirdly, they can't just say it that way.

[Jason]

One of the rotating GMs in my Pathfinder group wants to replace D20s. He's asking about whether we should go to 3d6, 2d10, or 1d12+1d8. It sounds kind of stupid to me, but I took a survey statistics class ten years ago and barely scraped out a C, so if someone who is good at math wants to explain how I'm either right or wrong, I'm all ears.

In that case, I would go 4d6. (matter of fact, I am going 4d6 on my own system).

It gives you 21 resolution states, with an average of 14 and a standard distribution of 3. You can realistically expect results in the 8 through 20 range (about 95% of the time), with the majority of rolls in the 11 through 17 range (about 69% of the time).

Your dm should be wary of the fact, however what that means for skill modifiers, as they become increasingly more powerful.

[RobbyPants]

One of the rotating GMs in my Pathfinder group wants to replace D20s. He's asking about whether we should go to 3d6, 2d10, or 1d12+1d8. It sounds kind of stupid to me, but I took a survey statistics class ten years ago and barely scraped out a C, so if someone who is good at math wants to explain how I'm either right or wrong, I'm all ears.

The advantage of 3d6 (as opposed to 2d10 or 1d12+1d8) is that there are already rules for it written by WotC.

As mentioned, the basic idea is it is much more likely to produce average results than it is to produce high or low results. Most of your natural roles will fall between 8 and 13. 3d6 is nice because it has the same average as 1d20 (10.5), although it only generates 16 unique results compared to 20 of a straight roll.

Because of the way the distributions are split, you get weird things like a natural 20 crit firing off on a natural 16-18, and a 15-20 crit firing off on a 13-18 (there's a table in that link I provided). While you'll roll a natural 20 5% of the time, you're only rolling a natural 18 on 3d6 about 0.46% of the time.

The effects of bonuses and penalties are a bit harder to calculate. You have to know where you sit on the RNG to know what the effect is. On a d20, you know that a +2 bonus works out to a 10% point increase in your chance (assuming you're not at the edge of the RNG). A +2 bonus on 3d6 is much stronger if you normally need a natural 12 to hit than if you need a natural 8 to hit.

As already mentioned, anything that gets you near the edges of the RNG is much stronger in this system. Because of this, the rules say you should reduce the CR of monsters by 1 any time they are encountered in groups of four or more.

If you want your combats to be less swingy and "chaotic", then a bell curve system will help accomplish that.

[Mord]

One of the rotating GMs in my Pathfinder group wants to replace D20s. He's asking about whether we should go to 3d6, 2d10, or 1d12+1d8. It sounds kind of stupid to me, but I took a survey statistics class ten years ago and barely scraped out a C, so if someone who is good at math wants to explain how I'm either right or wrong, I'm all ears.

This is a tremendously poor idea. Any time you replace a single die with adding the face values of multiple dice, you move from a uniform distribution to a curved distribution. This has HUEG effects on the mathematical underpinnings of your game, for the reasons other posters have stated and others. Take a look at this, just for starters. This blogpost on RPG statistics is also extremely informative and written at a very comprehensible level.

I think you would basically have to rebuild the game from the ground up to make a curved RNG work in 3.X/PF D&D.

[Prak]

You also add resolution time. Which... I've gamed with a lot of very intelligent people. But adding dice up takes them a while for some reason. So if you replace 1d20+mods with, say, 4d6+mods, you're asking the people at your table to add up four numbers before adding their mods, and for some reason, even when they're small numbers, that takes a lot of people a bit of time.

[Schleiermacher]

Alternative suggestion: Knock 5 off all DCs and go to 1d10. Smaller range, modifiers matter more, but still linear. DCs of 5 or lower will need some adjudication, but that shouldn't be a problem -just set them at 1-3. (TN 3 on 1d10 is identical to 5 on 1d20 odds-wise, disregarding modifiers.)

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Because of the way the distributions are split, you get weird things like a natural 20 crit firing off on a natural 16-18, and a 15-20 crit firing off on a 13-18 (there's a table in that link I provided). While you'll roll a natural 20 5% of the time, you're only rolling a natural 18 on 3d6 about 0.46% of the time.

Yeah, one of the reasons he's doing that is to make it so there are fewer critical hits, a nat 20 crit would only be an 18, a 19-20 would be 17-18, etc.

[RobbyPants]

Alternative suggestion: Knock 5 off all DCs and go to 1d10. Smaller range, modifiers matter more, but still linear. DCs of 5 or lower will need some adjudication, but that shouldn't be a problem -just set them at 1-3. (TN 3 on 1d10 is identical to 5 on 1d20 odds-wise, disregarding modifiers.)

Doing that shrinks the RNG and makes all of 3Es prolific bonuses throw you off very quickly. Those modifiers you're disregarding are one of the core issues with the d20 system, and will be huge in a d10 slapped-on system.

Yeah, one of the reasons he's doing that is to make it so there are fewer critical hits, a nat 20 crit would only be an 18, a 19-20 would be 17-18, etc.

Yeah, that will lessen them, but it also fucks the crit math pretty badly.

In the normal d20 system an 18-20/x2 crit is "the same" as a 20/x4 crit, in that one does +100% damage 15% of the time and the other does +300% damage 5% of the time. Sure, in practice it works out to weak crits three times often vs huge crits a third of the time, but the average expected damage over 400 rolls is the same.

Under his system, 18-20/x2 crits are way better, and 20/x4 are a sucker's game. Your chance of rolling a natural 17 are three times better than rolling a natural 18, and your chances of a natural 16 are six times higher than an 18. This means your chance of getting a natural 16-18 is 10 times higher than your chance of just getting an 18... all for a mere triple damage on the 20/x4 weapons.

If you manage to double your threat range (getting your scimitars or whatever to 13-18), you'll be critting way more than twice as often as you would without "doubling" your threat range.

[Eikre]

You also add resolution time.

Funny you should mention that...

So, with 2d10, you have a pyramid-shaped distribution where 11 gets rolled ten times out of 100, 10 and 12 get rolled nine times, 9 and 13 eight times, all the way out to 2 and 20 coming up only once each out of every 100 rolls. A 1 obviously never happens.

This distribution has an interesting quality. You can duplicate it exactly by using a technique that discards one of the results prior to summation:

-Give every active ability (attacks, saves, skill checks, etc) a flat +11 bonus. Or subtract 11 from defensive values. Whatever.
-On every roll that is usually against a static value, both active and defending parties roll a d10.
-The party which rolls the lower value adds it to their modifier. Discard ties.

The results for 2d10 straight up versus 1d10 opposed-drop-highest are as such:

Keep in mind with the right-side graph that the +11 is already incorporated into the values on your character sheet, so you're not actually adding numbers that large or that frequently. I'm just showing you that the effective results are equivalent.

Compared to just rolling 2d10, this technique discards one arithmetic step, which humans are bad at, for a check-greater step, which humans can perform instantly at a glance. Furthermore, the results of the rolls skew hard towards smaller values, which means the addition itself is also easier.

For example, take the instance of a first-level fighter with 16 STR and weapon focus, swinging in against an AC of 15:

2d10 Nominal: Your attack mod is +5. You roll an average value, 3 and 8. Add these three values. Go ahead, I'll wait. Yes, it came out to sixteen. You hit.

Opposed/Drop: Your attack mod is +16. You roll a 2 and your opponent rolls an 8. Yours is lower so you stop right there because 16 is already higher than 15 and you obviously hit.

I feel like THAC0 was trying for a similar kind of thing, but the way that system incorporated negative number just induced a way larger cognitive drag than they ever could have eliminated with greater-than checks.

EDIT: I should also say that, realistically, it's probably better for the arbitrary constant to be 10 instead of 11 (because the average value of the d20 is 10.5, so the choices are 10 and 11 and former is both prettier and, considering how the active party wins on ties, sensibly fair) and for you to subtract it from the defender's values instead of adding it to the active party's (because pretty much every DC is 10+N, so you can just drop the constant and get ACs of armor+dex or spell DCs of level+stat)

This occasionally means dealing with a negative value, but that's an uncommon instance so you probably don't care very much.

[deaddmwalking]

Opposed/Drop: Your attack mod is +16. You roll a 2 and your opponent rolls an 8. Yours is lower so you stop right there because 16 is already higher than 15 and you obviously hit.

Run me through the reversal. My attack mod is +16. I roll an 8 and my opponent rolls a 2.

[Eikre]

Your opponent, having rolled lower, takes the 2 and adds it to his 15 AC. His result is 17, so your 16 is a miss.

[deaddmwalking]

One thing about your proposal that is counter-intuitive; low rolls are both good and bad.

Using your edit, my opponent has an AC of 5. My attack bonus is +5. If I roll lower, I will add it to my attack modifier so I'll win; if he rolls lower it will be added to his value and he'll win (ie, I'll miss). So in this case, I definitely want to roll lower than my opponent - it doesn't matter what a 1 or better will win.

If my opponent's AC is 10 and my attack bonus is only 5, I need to roll lower but I also need that roll to be 5+. If I roll a 1-4 (even if lower than my opponent) it isn't enough to get me to my target value. I'm hoping he rolls a 10 (so I can be sure of rolling under it) and hoping I roll a 5 or better...

Since I think it is easier to grasp 'roll low' or 'roll high', having a die roll that is mixed is inherently problematic for explaining. 'Roll lower than your opponent but you need a 7 or better on a d10' isn't going to make intuitive sense to new players.