Difficulty with parry skills over 100%

[TheEnclave]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:13 AM, Mugen said:

But still, when a character with skill 50 and another with skill 49 are matched, don't you think their chances of success should be roughly the same, with a slight advantage for the 50% skill ?

I don't have time to do the maths right now, but with CoC mechanism, the 50% skill has a far better chance to win the opposition than the 49%.

CoC resolution works in a 1 - 1/2 - 1/5 format with normal, hard, and extreme successes. A roll within your skill rating is a success, if it's half your skill it's a hard success, if it's a fifth of your skill it's an extreme success.

With 50% your success levels would be something like 10-25-50. With 49% they would be 9-24-49. They're roughly the same.

Edited July 4 by TheEnclave

[radmonger]

That describes the chance of rolling those numbers, not the chance of winning. Remember that equal success level means the higher skilled person wins. So the lower skilled person needs to roll a higher success level to avoid defeat. 

They will do so (0.49 - 0.24) * 0.5 + (0.24 - 0.09) *0.75 + .0.09 *0 .9 =  ~23% of the time.

 

 

[Mugen]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

That describes the chance of rolling those numbers, not the chance of winning. Remember that equal success level means the higher skilled person wins. So the lower skilled person needs to roll a higher success level to avoid defeat. 

They will do so (0.49 - 0.24) * 0.5 + (0.24 - 0.09) *0.75 + .0.09 *0 .9 =  ~23% of the time.

Which means the other has ~52% chance to win, as there's ~25% both will fail their roll, resulting in a tie.

[radmonger]

23 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Which means the other has ~52% chance to win, as there's ~25% both will fail their roll, resulting in a tie.

I guess so, depending on whether you interpret a failure as '0 degrees of success', making it beat a fumble.

[Atgxtg]

On 7/3/2024 at 1:13 AM, Mugen said:

But still, when a character with skill 50 and another with skill 49 are matched, don't you think their chances of success should be roughly the same, with a slight advantage for the 50% skill ?

That's how I'd view it. It's like a one on one game of basketball between someone who makes 49% of their shots and someone who makes 50%. It's pretty much a coin toss as to who would win.

If I were doing opposed rolls, I'd just use low roll at the same success level wins, and higher skill wins on tied die rolls. That should give 50% a slight advantage (something like 1.5% if my head math is right, which is probably a little beter than they deserve, but not crazy) 

On 7/3/2024 at 1:13 AM, Mugen said:

I don't have time to do the maths right now, but with CoC mechanism, the 50% skill has a far better chance to win the opposition than the 49%.

Yup and rolls vs. NPCs can be especially skewed. Now it was a conscious design choice for simplify, but I'd rather take a a little more complexity for fairer odds.

[Mugen]

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

If I were doing opposed rolls, I'd just use low roll at the same success level wins, and higher skill wins on tied die rolls. That should give 50% a slight advantage (something like 1.5% if my head math is right, which is probably a little beter than they deserve, but not crazy) 

I'm quite happy with black jack resolution, where the highest roll wins. Low rolls don't make enough difference between low and high skills to me.

I would also consider the highest roll wins when both rolls are failed, even if with less impact.

I could also use the good old Resistance Table : 50% + difference between skills. 🙂 Even if it means you don't have crits versus success, for instance.

 

Edited July 5 by Mugen

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I'm quite happy with black jack resolution, where the highest roll wins. Low rolls don't make enough difference between low and high skills to me.

It works. If I recall the math back when I did it, it might be a bit more skewed towards the higher skilled character. At least if you have success levels. 

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I would also consider the highest roll wins when both rolls are failed, even if with less impact.

That would help to offset some of the extra advantage high roll wins gives.

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

I could also use the good old Resistance Table : 50% + difference between skills. 🙂 Even if it means you don't have crits versus success, for instance.

Yeah, except only one person gets to roll. Which can be fine for PC vs NPC but not so good for PC vs PC. 

Oh, I did something for a solo adventure along these lines and figured out that if only the PC rolls (a good solo rule), and I assume the average PC has a 50% skill, I could eliminate the resistance table by treating the enemy skill as a modifier to the PC. The modifier was 50%-NPC Skill. So a Bandit with Axe 40% would be a +10% bonus to the PC skill, and a Master Swordsman with Sword 90% would be a -40%. And if I only rate the NPCs skill scores in increments of 5% or better yet 10%, it makes for some very simple math. 

 

 

On a related note, I have a house black jack system (more like a baccarat system) I'm working on where I use the one's die to determine success level and who wins. So 46 would beat 22 and 85, provided you skill was 46 or higher. Crititcals (and fumbles) happen on rolls that end with 9, specials happen on rolls than end in 8 (or 7 and 8, I'm still working on it). The rest is a normal success, unless I want to add in another success level at 4-6. On tied success levels the tens digit is used as  tiebreaker.

It should be very quick to use, doesn't require the layers to do math or consult a table to determine success levels, and doesn't have exceptions the way black jack does when you add success levels.. And it can handle up to ten success levels. More if you want to use something wonky like a D120 (D10+D12) or   D200 (D10+D20)

For skills over 100 you compare the tens die to the amount over 100 to see if you pick up some extra points. So someone with Shortsword 125% could get an extra point if they rolled 10-19, and two if they rolled a 20-25.  At 200% you would double the ones die, and so on. 

 

If you combine both the solo rule and the barracat system you get a solo game where the PC rolls and who wins the combat and the success level is determined with one roll. On a success the PC wins with a success level based on the ones die, and on a failure the NPC does with a success level based on the ones die. I was also using the ones die for damage (with  modifiers for weapons and such), to get one roll decides everything in the round.

 

Edited July 5 by Atgxtg