and have essentially made it your argument that close calls completely trump any other considerations regardless of how frequently they occur and without providing any proof that they are significantly more likely in a d100 than a d10

You're demonstrably wrong as recorded on the previous page of this thread in great detail, including but not limited to the mathematics of 1% variances being closer to the target in probability than 10% variances.

My bad on that, I misspoke. I intended to put "any proof that they are significantly stronger in a d100 than a d10." You have not given any backing to this, other than your own opinion. I understand that it seems intuitive, but I've frequently asked you to produce a study showing that having a greater range of results presents significantly stronger effects when you are close to the target number. I'd do it myself, but you're the one who knows the correct terms to look up, and the one making the assertion.

Your posts now are just frivolous claims that you've 'addressed everything', with still no demonstration of proof for your contention that a low probability of occurrence indicates it should be removed from the game.

Will you be railing against the chance of weapon jams and perils of the warp next?

Again, your contentions are all and entirely opinion .

Including the demonstrably incorrect opinion that I claimed a 'close calls' effect 'trumps everything', when in fact the details of my second post in this thread list it as merely one more potential thing in favor for a d100.

I made the assertion that the rare occurrence of the usefulness of the one's digit implies that it's probably not useful to keep around. You brought up that the one's digit allows for a greater close call effect. I asked you multiple times if you think that is an important enough effect to make up for it being so rare, and you have not answered. I can only take your silence on the matter to mean that you think it is the major point in favor of the d100. You also haven't answered why you wouldn't use a d1000 instead, or whether it's significantly better than a d10. Surely the relevant literature has some guidance on this? You are fond of telling everyone how much better you know it than them, so why not educate us poor plebes on the exacts? And I actually do think the weapon jam system needs reworking, and it's already been said that the perils of the warp is not using the d100 in the same way that task resolution is.

So yes, ignoring demonstrable effects like human psychology on RPGs is, in fact, willful ignorance .

And you seem to be doing it for the sole purpose of an egotistical defense for your claim of mathematical infrequency being entirely equivalent to gameplay irrelevance.

So again, my posts have largely been to direct you to the facets of that clearly relevant field which may be of some relevance here:

Because without a statement of why exactly the infrequent event contributes negatively to player enjoyment of the game in the completeness of the system, and why the new proposition contributes more positively, that contention shall likely forever remain an irrelevant opinion .

I haven't ignored any of the facts presented to me. I've brought up reasonable criticisms to what you've said that you've chosen to ignore and follow up by calling me willfully ignorant. This is confusing to me, but maybe I just haven't consulted the relevant literature. And I have not said that mathematical infrequency is equivalent to gameplay relevance. I have honestly addressed every possible benefit of the one's digit that I could think of and that has been brought up in the thread and found that they don't really provide a decent argument in favor of the one's digit being used for task resolution. You seem really fond of the close call effect, and I've asked you, as the self-acting expert, to clarify the concept a bit, which you have consistently shied away from doing it. Maybe if you bothered to explain your point, it would be convincing, rather than just coming off like a pompous ass.

And this hasn't been an egotistical defense. I've been harsh in words to you because of the condescending tone of your posts, and I've frequently called for you to present some cogent argument that would call into question whether the mathematical infrequency is outweighed by possible benefit. I'm open to some actual information on the close call effect if you would bother to present it. It's not that hard to summarize relevant research. I really don't think it would be such a chore for you to get off your high horse and bother actually explaining something.

Why does the d100 contribute negatively? It's an incredibly swingy dice mechanic that is unable to properly balance player competence, scaling in a game where humans face giant alien monsters, and not being bogged down in a bunch of modifiers. I've written up a post about the d100 in this very forum discussing all of those concerns. Besides that, I haven't found the possible benefits of the one's digit to be all that appealing. What they add appears to be negligible, and you haven't shown me that the close call effect is significantly better for the d100 or even bothered to explain why it is so great for an rpg in the first place.

So I'll perhaps leave you with this:

Camyll spits blood and gets his hands to his torso, where a huge chunk of metal is buried deep in his flesh. He looks at Reginald, who is covered in dust and ashes, and smiles lightly.

"Oh, amigo . Sure you look worse than me" -Swallows-. "But I might be dying".

[Toughness roll: 28. I fail by ONE. Spend fate point to reroll: 22 [yay!]. Two fate points left. No blood loss, tho.]

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/94770-seeds-of-heresy-play-by-post-inplay/page-18#entry936755

A bit of a demonstration for the notability of close misses. You can't miss by one percent in d10. Would there be any such memorability in that sort of system?

Now of course that's not the only effect, as my posts in this thread have perhaps detailed. But it is an effect. And you'd likely require proof to accurately claim that it wasn't positive and humorous.

I read that and saw it as the player just being frustrated over missing his roll by one. I am not an expert in the close call effect, but that seems to me to be more frustrating than rewarding, particularly in a system which has failure result in the most boring thing possible: nothing. I've seen the same effect happen with a d20, and I imagine it would translate to 2d10, which I'd prefer for the bell curve probability. I don't really see this as being an exemplar of why the close call effect is particularly notable for a roleplaying game.

So what you're saying is it'll play identically to DH as it is now, but with superfluous numbers cut off? Okay, cool, that's what I want.

I don't get this obsession with statlines having to be drastically different to one another. I'm fine with most humans being in the 3-4 range for most characteristics. Characteristics are a dreadfully dull way to differentiate characters anyway.

Just play that game. You seem to think it's going to be better. So try it.

It's perhaps not like you need much differentiation between characters to play.

By RAW, the only mechanic that appears to both quantitatively and qualitatively affect a character due to DoF is the Shock Table. In all other instances, DoF only measures the quality of a failure.

Well, and perhaps every Opposed test. An opponent's failure is your success on those, and many may have specifically listed and/or implied results.

It's pretty much always the group's prerogative whether they want to disregard mechanics: just be advised that DoF can be used to indicate something for the story.

If it's a standard ballistics skill test, you may not lose much at all, if you perhaps might have been specifically calculating DoF for those in the first place.

It's an incredibly swingy dice mechanic

Succinctly: Phrases like this are effectively meaningless.

You either have a set of potentially researchable metrics which indicate an increase in player enjoyment likelihood when moving from d100 to d10 or you don't.

I am not an expert in the close call effect, but that seems to me to be more frustrating than rewarding,

Yes, that is of course your opinion. I suppose it applies to successes as well? No matter.

I don't suppose you'll be providing data to indicate that player involvement is detrimented by such occurrences, though.

You have literally not answered questions I've asked you over and over again. Simple, simple questions. I'm done arguing with you.

I personally find the assumption that RPG design needs to be totally informed by formal psychological studies to be ******* absurd and ridiculous. I say this as someone who's currently training to be a psychologist.

You have literally not answered questions I've asked you over and over again. Simple, simple questions. I'm done arguing with you.

why not educate us poor plebes on the exacts?

Perhaps because those tend to be your style of questions.

You somehow expect that demanding others jump through hoops toward some undefined standard is a replacement for providing data to indicate the exact gameplay betterment of d10 versus d100, as you seem to claim exists.

There's little to say to such but that you'll probably forever wonder why such companies don't leap to do your bidding, and perhaps never understand the non-mathematical elements of their RPGs.

I personally find the assumption that RPG design needs to be totally informed by formal psychological studies to be ******* absurd and ridiculous. I say this as someone who's currently training to be a psychologist.

Oh, of course demanding specific peer reviewed studies on RPGs would likely somewhat pointless in most cases.

But the realization that the RPG is built upon more than simple mathematics, and does utilize psychological effects, is likely required.

And so an examination of those effects may have some utility, perhaps especially for recommending 'design decisions'.

As we're discussing all things DoS/DoF, an alternative method for determining degrees of success for d100 could be found in the "blackjack" method that Eclipse Phase use's, where the margin of success is simply what the player rolled on a successful test. This is really the best way I see to simplify calculating out DoS with d100, and DoF doesn't even matter (I cannot, off the top of my head, even think of a mechanic in DH2E that relies on DoF).

Enlighten me.

This sounds frightfully close to the "EasyDoS" rule I plug whenever the opportunity presents itself. Like now, for instance

Your DoS is equal to the 10s digit on your test-roll. The probabilities are almost exactly the same, but now there is no math involved.

Ohm...that smells like...sarcasm...I hope ;D

But I get the point.

There is a reason calculators exist. If 5% of humankind cannot do this simple math, they still may participate with the omnissiahs blessed instrument at hand !

No, no, not being sarcastic. Some people may really need a calculator. I use calculators myself all the time, even for the simplest calculations. They're quite handy.

I am saddened that a literal eugenicist is contaminating the player-base. Take your awful fascist ideas elsewhere, dude.

P.S. As someone actually qualified to administer and interpret IQ tests, I will let you know that basing breeding off of them is incredibly stupid both from a practical standpoint and from the standpoint of the slightest understanding of how evolution works.

Boo-hoo, the evil "fascist" is allowed to partake in civil discourse regarding shared hobbies, oh no. That being said, the fact that you administer IQ-tests without understanding it's effects over generations is saddening, nothing else. But if you want to start a protracted argument based on an off-hand comment regarding people's inability to do simple math, I suggest you take it elsewhere.

Edit: Nevermind, I misread. You said "qualified" to administer and interpret IQ tests, not that you actually worked with it. Pre-psych ed. students are qualified to administer and interpret IQ tests. It's not rocket science. It's not even science.

As we're discussing all things DoS/DoF, an alternative method for determining degrees of success for d100 could be found in the "blackjack" method that Eclipse Phase use's, where the margin of success is simply what the player rolled on a successful test. This is really the best way I see to simplify calculating out DoS with d100, and DoF doesn't even matter (I cannot, off the top of my head, even think of a mechanic in DH2E that relies on DoF).

[...]

Breaking this out of the conversation, I actually consider this a huge problem. Degrees of Failure is (should be) as important as Degrees of Success when determining how an action turns out.

Being afraid of triggering non-optimal situations and penalizing players in a believable fashion waters down the value of success. Failure is a part of life and roleplaying, and has the potential to offer equal amounts of interesting situations.

A system shouldn't be built around success alone, and leads to an uninteresting, linear progression of accumulated advantage.

Enlighten me.

This sounds frightfully close to the "EasyDoS" rule I plug whenever the opportunity presents itself. Like now, for instance

Your DoS is equal to the 10s digit on your test-roll. The probabilities are almost exactly the same, but now there is no math involved.

So it completely removes your Characteristics and your Skill Bonuses from the equation?

I don't mean to offend, but that sounds absolutely terrible to me. o_o

So it completely removes your Characteristics and your Skill Bonuses from the equation?

I don't quite get what you're saying, but wouldn't it mean that rolling just under the target number is desirable, as the tens digit would be higher? That seems strange under a system where rolling low is good.

So it completely removes your Characteristics and your Skill Bonuses from the equation?

Er...it does the opposite, actually. Under Eclipse Phase's d100 system, your degrees of success on a test is equal to your roll, which, as Darth Smeg points out, can very easily be translated in DH terms as the tens digit of your successful roll is your DoS. If your characteristics and skill bonuses are higher, then you have a greater range of potential success.

For example, under this mechanic, someone with a total of 50 in a Dodge can, at most, score five degrees of success (for a margin of success of 50 under the EP d100), while someone with a 70 Dodge can score at most seven degrees of success. It's like blackjack except you can constantly raise the ceiling where failure can occur.

Ah, I'm sorry, I completely misunderstood it. For a moment, I got it into my head that you rolled a 2d10, and then the tens digit on the roll alone decided the DoS; which sounded daft as all hell.

That being said, I like it, it sounds elegant and easy, but I wonder how it would mingle with all the other preset mechanics of the system - and how would DoF's be calculated within this mechanic? Are there even DoF's in Eclipse Phase?

And like Cps wrote, if I'm understanding this correctly, wouldn't that be counter-intuitive in a system that favours low rolls? And if we invert the system... isn't that what we've always had?

It is strange, but I'm merely trying to present an alternative way to deal with DoS in a d100 system that deals with as little math as possible. By moving to a blackjack style system for determining the quality of success, DoS is determined by simply reading the dice on a successful test.

Under this suggestion, rolling low is no longer optimal. It would be better to roll as close to the target number as possible.

That being said, I like it, it sounds elegant and easy, but I wonder how it would mingle with all the other preset mechanics of the system - and how would DoF's be calculated within this mechanic? Are there even DoF's in Eclipse Phase?

There is DoF, but unfortunately you have to determine the difference between the target number and your failed roll, so math is still involved. That being said, in my experience with the system, I have very rarely had to use degrees of failure.

As for how well it would work with the other mechanics in DH, I have no idea. The arguments in this thread have drifted from talking about what FFG may actually change to a purely academic discussion (which I am thoroughly enjoying). I just wanted to throw out an idea that another d100 system that was developed by a not-FFG was using.

**Edited to avoid double posting

So it completely removes your Characteristics and your Skill Bonuses from the equation?

I don't mean to offend, but that sounds absolutely terrible to me. o_o

Not at all. Your skill and modifiers affect the Target number. The higher this number is, the higher you probability of passing the test, and the higher you can roll on the dice and still pass the test.

The probabilities are the same, but instead of "aiming" for 01 (as far as you can "aim" a random roll), you'll be aiming to roll as high as possible while still remaining under your target number.

If your BS is 35 and you have a +20 modifier from actions and gear, then your target number is 55. With DH v1 RAW, you could at most score 5 DoS, by rolling less than 5. With the EasyDos, you'd score 5 DoS if you rolled between 50 and 55.

Ëdit; Argh, completely missed that there was another page of answers, and that this had already been explained. Ah, well. Cheers

As for how well it would work with the other mechanics in DH, I have no idea.

We've been using the EasyDoS rule for years, with no problem whatsoever. When BC came along, and removed the concept of Success with 0 Degrees, we had to amend it somewhat and state that DoS = 10s digit +1.

While that makes it a little less elegant, it still beats all the other options presented in this thread for speed and simplicity

DoF is still worked out as in the RAW, those very few times it matters.

Some to think of it, is there *any* reason the system strives for lower numbers being better *aside* from determining Degrees of Success and Failure?

Because on hand, I can't think of any other reason (aside from always succeeding on a 1, which need not change, because it's a specific case easily rectified by adding rules for Critical Success & Failure, such as a "1" always resulting in the maximum degrees of success*2 or something) aside from determining Degrees of Success.

Which to me means that if this was incorporated, it would actually work elegantly and require less math. It would be a system-wide change in a basic assumption ("Lower is always better"), but going from that to "As close as possible to target value" is in reality a very small change, and tying the maximum Degrees of Success to a very easily identifiable value (the Characteristics Bonus) helps with overview when designing game mechanics.

I'm still not entirely convinced, but it sounds objectively better than what the Beta has right now.

Anyone want to take a stab at writing rules text using this system, clarifying how DoF's and DoS' would work, so it might be more easily reviewed and judged?

I think I first heard of this rule from one of the designers in WFRP v2, but Chris Pramas turned him down because of the "lower is better" design paradigm.

I don't really see the point to this, and think that the speed and simplicity of the EasyDoS should beat some half-arsed design-principle claiming to be "more intuitive"

Purely back of the envelope math here, but the results should have an identical distribution or nearly so.

Some to think of it, is there *any* reason the system strives for lower numbers being better *aside* from determining Degrees of Success and Failure?

So basically, you may wish to view this in terms of "margins of success":

When a human perceives a number that is close to required for a target, the default consideration is that the resources applied were very nearly a miss.

So for the goal of "I need 55 or less", getting a "54" often provokes the response of "I nearly made it".

In Eclipse Phase, this seems to be reversed, using a 'close to humanly perfect' system. But in real life (and thus player perception), 'close to perfect' tends to be accompanied by wide margins of remaining resources.

Thus perhaps part of why successful systems tend to place success and failure at the ends of the probabilistic distribution.

Yes, but you might explain it like thus:

ANYONE could have made that test with a 01, but only an extremely skilled person could have pulled off the situation with a 54.

The dice determine the challenge, the problems that occur as you attempt some task. A 01 means smooth sailing, no problems arising, ideal circumstance. The higher the roll, the more **** hits the fan.

Purely back of the envelope math here, but the results should have an identical distribution or nearly so.

Almost, yeah. You get a 1% higher chance of rolling max DoS, and only a 9% chance of rolling a basic success (01-09).

In the example I gave previously, you would roll 5 DoS by Raw between 01-04 (4%), but the EasyDoS gives 5 DoS from 50-55 (5%).

You can amend this slightly by letting 00 be a success, but either way we're talking a 1% deviancy here.

I like the original system, it made sense to me. I have difficulty understanding the purpose of the change.

I've seen other systems where you want to roll low, but rolling at or just below your target number produces the most desirable outcome (Infinity works this way IIRC). I think the only problem with applying it here would be with the ranges for weapon jams and the like.

I've seen other systems where you want to roll low, but rolling at or just below your target number produces the most desirable outcome (Infinity works this way IIRC). I think the only problem with applying it here would be with the ranges for weapon jams and the like.

Infinity does work that way, and I prefer that system of determining "degrees of success" over the DH version because it is much easier to use. Very little math is required, and as explained above this method produces an almost negligible change from a purely statistical standpoint.

With that said, it is psychologcally less satisfying than the current system, especially where bonuses from gear/Fate points are concerned. If I spend a Fate point for a +10 bonus on a check and roll a 05, I would feel like the Fate point was "wasted" since it didn't affect the number of DoS scored.