I started rolling dice this week to see where the results would fall. My original thought was to see what the results were for the new mechanic of grouping to ten vs. the old Target Number set up.
I opted to use 6 dice as most of my players seem to start at around 6k3 for their main attack and I thought that would be an accurate spot to gauge the new results.
I rolled 500 sets of results and grouped based on the following priority: most successes possible, leave the fewest dice unused.
on 6 dice I saw the following results:
71% of the results were 3 successes
14% of the results were 4 successes
12.5% of the results were 2 successes
1% of the results were 5 successes
1% of the results were 1 success
.5% of the results were 0 successes
The reroll of one die improved a roll about 9% of the time.
I tried some smaller sample groups with 5, 7 and 8 dice and it looks like you can rely on seeing 1 success for every 2 dice.
Now for the tricky part: if the players are or relatively equal strength and rolling the same pool, that is going to lead to a HUGE amount of ties in the initiative pool. Which may be something we need to find a work around for.
I applaud you for your work. I considered doing something like that, but realized it was going to take more time than I wanted to put into it. And I say that as a number wonk :-).
There was a program that was great for computing the odds on XkY, but I don't think I have it anymore. He still has a die-roll-probability program at http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Troll/ that I haven't played with yet.
Morgan Wolfe
aka Capt. Doña Sir Kestrel of Avalon http://silver-gateway.com/7sea/
There's a user-generated rule on the web version for an L5R 3k2 roll, but when I change it to 7k4 it hangs up. I'm still playing with parameters, but this could be a good tool for people who want to compare probability curves for different types of rolls. Ther are also Savage Worlds and Fudge rules to start with.
Edit: Dropping the "Iteration bound" way down to 1 or 2 for high values of rolled dice seems to help, but it also cuts the curve off before it really tapers off. Still, for a free tool it's pretty powerful.
Morgan Wolfe
aka Capt. Doña Sir Kestrel of Avalon http://silver-gateway.com/7sea/
I just had a very slow day at work and some dice in my pocket.
But I always figured actually rolling beats an algorithm any day. Plus, rolling dice... catharsis.
There are plenty of dice rollers out there (I have a preference for anydice.com), the problem is that this dice system really highlights why humans are awesome and computers are not yet our overlords. The efficient grouping of dice is something we can do with just a little thought but it gets very complicated very fast for a computer to model. Anyway, I did some rudimentary number crunching for this post but the rank bonuses and the like make the numbers very hard to nail down. This is one of the reasons I am pretty sure JWP did not crunch the hell out of the numbers either. Basically the dice are VERY predictable, so much so that the elemet of rolling dice itself is almost pointless. There would be only slightly less variance if the outcome was determined by a coinflip between X/2 and (X/2)-1 for X numer of dice.
[Edit note: Looking at it, a coinflip might actually have more variance.]
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
Thanks for the reminder about Anydice. I love being able to see the curve like that. Then again, I'm a number geek married to a system geek, so there's that :-).
Morgan Wolfe
aka Capt. Doña Sir Kestrel of Avalon http://silver-gateway.com/7sea/
TAJ-07: Technopriest And Justicar Of 7thSea2e
Does anyone have an updated ruleset for the "Cards instead of Dice" option?
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
Here are the rules I was working from: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f2gw22r3oqysj7k/sorte%20cards%2020160222a.pdf?dl=0
My suggestion though is to use one card as a replacement for the 'good narration' dice you would normally give. Too may court cards slows down play, and you want them to feel special and linked to the narrative, so restricting them but linking them works nicely.
Thanks, where did that come from?
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwickpresents/7th-sea-second-edition/posts/1499163
Thanks, totally missed that. I'm going to numbers-crunch but I think the deck might give more interesting results, especially if you meddle with the reshuffle rules.
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
This thread is probably the one of the best examples of why RPGs are better nowadays than when Gary Gaigax first made DnD. The community is helping crunch the numbers and show the curvatures on the rules whereas the lack of internet made early modeling dificult and made balance far trickier since it would requie a lot more work to see how things ended up really scaling.
Also, instant feedback is a double edged sword that allows for quick community level numberrr crunch and attampts at breaking the system, but also results in a desire to try and please everyone and ending up with no one pleased.
Never change internet. You are beautiful.
The Problem with the Card Option
I had some suspicions about the card option but I didn't want to post until the numbers were crunched. Now that I have crunched them, it turns out my concerns were warranted. The problem is the Minor Arcana (Face Cards). For a hand of a given size, here are the odds of drawing all numbers, which would give a result equivalent to dice.
#Cards Odds of All Numbers(%)
1 71.42857142857143
2 50.64935064935065
3 35.64213564213565
4 17.226170056358736
6 11.821881411226585
The math gets very, very wonky after that. I am still trying to figure it out exactly: any number nerds, feel free to ping me. The bottom line is that the larger your pool, the more likely you are to essentially take a penalty and it looks like that for a six card hand you're likely to have at least 2 face cards, meaning the penalty in terms of raw numbers is substantial (about 1 Raise vs Dice).
The Face Cards are problematic because they both provide no numerical benefit within the hand and require the expenditure of a Hero Point in order to retain the card. While there is absolutely no way to calculate accurate odds of whether a given face card will be useful for the Risk in which it is drawn, it is not unlikely that a player using the cards will pay a Hero Point and suffer a penalty (some benefit) or pay no Hero Points and suffer a penalty (no benefit). I am working out the odds of getting X number of Face Cards in a hand of Y cards. More to come.
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
Major Arcana should be set to the side and used for other things. Anyway, I think you could solve it with a simple tweek like "a face card, if not used for it's intended special effect, can be paired with any numerical card to make a Raise." which might make the deck mathematically more appealing as there is a slightly higher chance of getting Raises and with the option for special effects.
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
Also, the "can't draw 5 tens" issue is not very big for me, as the odds of rolling 5 tens are less than 0.001 percent. On the other hand, in a 5 card draw, the odds of drawing 5 face cards is 0.1143510577472842%
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
I tried the card drawing option during the quickstart, but I thought the face cards would make things a little too complicated so I just left them out. I thought they worked out fine, but I admit I never modeled them to check their odds versus dice.
Somebody mentioned leaving face cards in as a seperate deck for flair draws, which I thought might be a good way to keep them feeling special without having to worry about them ruining your roll.
And then of course you leave the major arcana for the larger effects they described in the rules.
“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.”
- H.L. Mencken
TAJ-07: Technopriest And Justicar Of 7thSea2e