From: Alex Ferguson (abf@yeats.ucc.ie)
Date: Mon 14 Jun 1999 - 14:18:40 EEST
Mikael observes:
> A lousy success is OTOH far better than a failure, since it means half the
> AP-loss (losing x1 instead of x2) if your opponent scores a better success.
Well, better than a poke in the eye with a pointed stick, but being
> If you're a mastery level above your opponent you don't win every time, but
bumped up from Failure to Success (Loser) is, in the aggregate, less
beneficial than other bump-up permutations.
> you definitely win more often than not, and when you lose you lose less.
> Which sounds eminently reasonable to me.
So far, so good, but those are kinda weak 'reasonableness' constraints.
> However, a rating of 10w against 10 is unlikely to lose an extended contest
True, but a _lot_ more likely than a 18w vs. an 18, by the same
You concede/reiterate my point about the statistical fishiness, plus
there's the Mild Oddness that such bumpups can make the 'normal' win
outcome (Success/Success) impossible...
> anyway
calculation with a binomial blowup thrown in for good measure.
And it could be the the party with the target number disadvantage
had a large AP advantage, in which case it might become a good deal
less marginal...
> So, i don't see the above as a problem to be fixed, especially not
> if a proposed fix would introduce more numbercrunching or
> complications.
Since I've already suggested several that are hardly unreasonable by
I admit I'm not greatly worried by the above; my concern would only
such a criterion, I shan't trouble to repeat them.
rise if it were likely that players would notice the above sort of
effects, to the extent of indroduce the dreaded 'game mechanical
attack' where they make choices influenced by/designed to influence
such factors... I'm not familiar enough with the system in play
to know if this is the case (and of course, in any event, YPMV...).
Cheers,
Alex.
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