Hamakto wrote:*grins* Yes I can type that. I think that I am having a problem explaining all of the permutations that I see. You are just the 7.5% the spell check roll.
I see all the permutations you see. I just don't care about them. I am not worried about "balance" because I have no baseline to work from. You have been working on this for months and consider the "current" version as having some meaning that it really doesn't have. There is no "right" when it comes to how magic should work in DCCRPG except whatever ends up in the book in November.
If you also modify the DC # (1st 13, 5th DC 17) you also adjust the % chance of spell success.
Of course. It changes from "what it might have been" to "what it IS". For 99.99% of all DCCRPG players the "what might have been method" never exists.
PS - I have not seen that a d11 (or d9) will not be utilized. A zocci die may not exist for it, but that does not mean it will not exist [Side note: Maybe that is the reason Joseph only wanted 5 levels... the dice did not go to 10 -- LOL]
We can't really discuss this meaningfully if we don't agree on the dice used at 7th level and up. Throughout these boards I've assume the dice "exist": d10, d12, d14, d16, instead of the theoretical d9, d10, d11, d12. I kind like the idea that above 6th level the character gain a bit of kickass since 10th level is absolute ceiling of power.
Now you look at the ranges you are going to hit on average at 9th level:
OLD: 11-30
NEW(d14): 3-35
NEW(d11): 3-32
and yet the 9th level spellcaster casting a 5th level spell, has results from 20-40+, but only my method comes the closest to reaching those heights.
So in a way two dice do prevent larger swings of results. It will result in a caster failing a larger number of spells than they would under the old system. Even a first level spell is no longer a gimme with a 5% chance of failure. You are now looking at a 20% chance of failure for a 1st level (apprentice-style) spell. You are no longer going to average in the 20's, but now in the teens for effects.
This only applies if you change the current DCs. I think you leave them as is. The first level (+1 Int) wizard's first spell has 55% chance of success but only a 33% of retention. So the added chance of success is more than compensated by the retention. At high levels, the chance should never slip below 47.5 (with a +1 Int) for the wizard's most difficult spells.
The average for a caster with +1 bonus is 45/55 (fail/success). That seemed to be Joseph's target number so keeping that inline so it scales to all spell levels is what I am trying to statistically accomplish.
Why? There is no requirement that magic have uniform distribution of probabilities across all spell and caster levels. Rule of Cool should trump statistical analysis when the RoC version is within a few percentages of the boring rigid math system.
I will leave you with one more thought on using the combination of class die for spell checks and retaining spells. I have not done the full statistical analysis on this... but from rough calculations... if you roll low on the class die, you are most likely to fail. If you roll high on the class die, you have a much higher chance of successfully casting a spell. So by using the same die for both results, you are more often than not... rewarding spell casters that successfully cast spells and not those that fail.
I don't think this happens as often (at low level) as you might think. A d3 has little impact on a d20. Statistically, the d3+d20 will roll a 12.5. But people will still jump for joy when they roll d3=1,d20=15 and they get a slightly better magic missile smash into the bad guy but lose the spell. And they will still sigh when they get a d3=3,d20=5 and the spell fails but still can access the spell next round. At very high level using the d10 or higher, the swing becomes bigger but we all know there will not be any playtesting up in that stratosphere of play anyway so why worry about it.
I'm wondering if this conversation should not also have been moved out of this thread. I'm going to repost my powerlevel chart in a new thread because I'd like to be discussing that, too.