From: Lewis Jardine (jardine@rmcs.cranfield.ac.uk)
Date: Thu 12 Sep 1996 - 20:58:34 EEST
Hi All
I'm not sur whether this should be here, but it is in response
to other articles on this topic for G:tG
WRT masters producing better results than apprentices etc.
The problem people are running into is that in any system where a
critical is defined as rolling equal to a number (or set of numbers)
within your personal skill range there is no way of distinguishing
between the quality of criticals etc.
RQ is especially guilty of this. Is an 01 from a novice better than
an 04 from a master? They are both criticals...
Pendragon makes some attempt to cure this by the concept of the
The best mechanism to distinguish between skill level without resorting
higher number under your skill. However, it still suffers from the
flaw of a critical = a critical.
to seemingly arbitrary decisions is to use an additive dice rolling
system. Thus with a novice with 30% and a master with 90%, they both
try to complete a standard task. The novice suceeds 30% of the time
the master 90%. So far nothing's new. However, if you look at their
respective totals you will find that almost all of the time the master
has a higher total than the novice, indicating that the work was of a
higher quality. Now, however, you have lost that vital ingredient, the
fluke factor (its a thousand to one chance, but it just might work).
To restore it you need to expand the dice scale at the extremes.
Open-endded dice rolling is one solution.
Now you have a system that will systematically produce better results
for masters than novices, but allows for the occassional upset.
This is especially important in combat/action scenes where there is
no time for the master to spot his minor mistake and rectify it.
Cheers
Lewis
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