Re: (TFT) Re: H3 System Revisited: Skewing the Bell Curve

[ErolB1@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/10/2007 12:54:34 AM Central Standard Time, 
rsmith@lightspeed.ca writes:


> Hi Dan,
>   Sorry it took so long to comment on this, things 
> have been really busy and I just have not had the 
> time / energy to study these rules before now.
> 
>   I like the smooth increase in difficulty as you
> go down the columns in your table.
> 
>   I was never much bothered by the always succeed /
> fail 4.5 % of the time.  I agree it is illogical
> that it does not change at all.  However, I tend to
> think that real combat is much more chaotic and
> random that TFT shows so the rules that weird things
> happen 4.5 % of the time are good enough for me.
> 
>   The auto-failure / auto - hit tables for four and
> more dice were always a big pain in the butt.  I 
> eventually just memorized them but they are a knock
> against the speed and damn few table look ups that
> I've always liked about TFT.
> 
>   Very good work.
> 
>   Warm regards, Rick.

A different preference here: I prefer to just dump auto-failure/auto-hit 
chances (and critical hits & fumbles). For one thing I'm going for cinematic 
combat rather than realistic, and for another my characters make a fair number of 
rolls outside of combat where things are realisticly *not* so chaotic. 

If I did keep them, though, and wanted to get away from the fixed 4.5%, I'd 
use a roll-to-confirm. E.g. if a character had adjDx 16+ a roll of 16+ that was 
still less than or equal to adjDx would require a second roll at -10 to 
confirm the success. Likewise if the character had adjDx below 5, a roll of 5 or 
lower that was above adjDx would require a second roll at +10 to confirm the 
success. Yes this does require the occasional extra roll, but only 4.5% of the 
time for characters with extreme stats. 95%+ of the time, the player would only 
need to make the ordinary, simple roll. 

Likewise, if I went back to using criticals and fumbles, I'd put in rolls to 
confirm there, too. That way the number of criticals would be a fixed fraction 
of *successful* attacks rather than a fixed fraction of *all* attacks 
(including those that missed). And similarly, the number of fumbles would be a fixed 
fraction of *failed* attacks rather than of *all* attacks. 

Just my 2 cents

Erol K. Bayburt
Evil Genius for a Better Tomorrow
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