(TFT) Re: D20 TFT battle report (and followup)

[<srydzews@ix.netcom.com>]

Some comments on Ty's D20 update, and some comments on Rick's comments.

Ty Beard wrote:
> I did a statistical analysis and discovered that a -1 DX 
> modifier reduces the chance of success an average of about
> 9.1%....This would imply that each -1 DX in Advanced Melee 
> should be a -2 DX in d20 Melee. 

I agree with this, largely for the reason Rick stated, that most people
'optimize' their adjDX on the bell curve, which means a -1 penalty usually
meant a penalty closer to -10% than -5%.  I'm also in agreement with his
asessment (I think) that all your penalties should be multiples of two.  That
I would say anything in support of streamlining anything no doubt shocks our
long-time readers, but there it is in black and white.  There are definitely
games where 'finer-grained' bonuses and penalties are appropriate (said the
fan of Phoenix Command), but I don't think TFT is one of them.  Here, I think
it's a bit overkill.  But it's more a matter of taste than anything.

> Running a statistical analysis on the effects of adding a die to
> the difficulty of a task indicates that adding 1 die of difficulty
> reduces the odds of success an average of 28%; adding 2 dice of 
> difficulty reduces the odds of success an average of 46%....So perhaps
> 4d rolls should be treated as -5 to the roll; 5d rolls as -10.

Well the big limit to a d20 approach here is a big penalty like that will drop
a low-dx person to a zero-percent chance of success (or 5%, I guess, since a 1
corresponds to a roll of 3-5 IIRC).  Jackson's add-a-die system cut the chance
of success dramatically, but more gradually.

Some possibilities:

For a task that would be a 4d roll in TFT, you could multiply the person's
basic DX by 2/3. For a 5d roll, cut it in half.  Then apply the DX mods.
("Well who wants to multiply by 2/3 during the game!?" they all say--true,
true. But since we're talking someone's basic DX here, you pre-calculate it
once before the game.)

A similar result could be obtained by saying: for the equivalent of a 4d roll,
all d20 results evenly divisible by three are automatic failures. It's a huge
penalty, but not unduly oppresive to those with low DX.  I think I like this
better than the first idea.  For the equivalent of a 5d roll, any
even-numbered result other than 20 is a failure.

It might also be possible to do something along the lines of 'roll 2d20 and
take the highest result', but that breaks the one-die purity of the whole
idea.  

> Marc Miller in the last version of Traveller, used 
> increments of 1/2 d6 trying to reduce the coarseness.

Comic Book Guy: Worst. System. Ever.  Okay, maybe not, but T4's hideouly
kludged skill system, IMO, really shows how much you can hurt yourself by
bending-over-backwards to avoid acknowledging that d10's exist.  It's crazy,
bad crazy.


and then Rick wrote:
> But there was one advantage to the TFT system.  Certain kinds of 
> difficult tasks had different kinds of penalties.

Well, that's another possible advantage of my approaches given above.  They
keep the d20 version of a 4d/5d roll as something other than a straight DX
penalty.

> However, I did like the fact that after a while you hit diminishing 
> returns for putting up attributes.  The d20 is a flatter curve, but
> it is also a less interesting curve.

Well hey, there's always 2d10. Its curve fits nicely in between the two.
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