Monday, December 14, 2009

Roll against html tabels! or How I spent the weekend

Disclaimer: today's post contains a lot of numbers and math, even some %. Read on your own responsibility or skip to the end.


I will continue my musings on the problem of saving throws in S&W. I've decided to at least try to transform the single saving throw into a triple saving throw system like in 3.x e.

But first let's look at the original saving throw of S&W. There are two advancement tables, the first one is used by fighters and dwarfs, the second - clerics and magic users:

Level Save#1 Save#2
114 15
2 13 14
3 12 13
4 11 12
5 10 11
6 910
7 8 9
87 8
9 6 7
10 5 6
11+ 4 5



In order to be saved from doom you have to roll a d20 and get a number even to, or higher than the save score. It means that at first level the chances of successful save check are respectively 35% and 30 %. On level 11, the chances are: 85% and 80%.

Now. What I want to do:

divide it in to three save categories called Endurance, Reflex and Will,

each based on an advancement table similar to the above, but additionally modified by the abilities - Con, Dex and Wis respectively.

Yes, so basically it was already done in 3 e. I know. Move on.

So, let's suppose that I count ability modifiers like this:

3-4 -2
5-8 -1
9-12 0
13-15+1
16-18+2



And let's suppose that I use the S&W save progression #2 for Will saves of a character whose Wis is 18. Here's how that character's chances of making a successful save would look like:

Level Old Chance New Chance
130% 40%
2 35% 45%
3 40% 50%
4 45% 55%
5 50% 60%
6 55%65%
7 60% 70%
865% 75%
9 70% 80%
10 75% 85%
11+ 80% 90%



Ok. I wrote that shit down, because I'm a mathematical retard and this whole table clears things up.

As we can see, my idea is overpowering the players (duh) significantly. And as much as I like to awesome up players, making them invincible is a short path to boredom.

All this boring stuff leads us to one conclusion: in order to make this thing work, I to make need new save advancement tables...

The real question behind this conclusion is, is there any point?

Ok that was really boring!!!!!!!

This anecdote comes from fishlemons blog ( the other one):

" (...) so we ended up going to this lame party where some of our amusing friends were. yay. we smoked the joint walking up to the main door of the building and rang the door-communication-bell-thing, i take a drag as someone answers and squidman suddenly jumps up to it and says
- "Police!"
-*silence* *click*
i stare at him and he rings again quickly
-"no! its just me! Chri-!"
-*Click*



we look at each other, shrug and i give our friend who is at this party a call to tell her to let us in. (its freezing cold out there) This entire exchange has taken less than a minute... at the inner door we are met by some guy, who might have been the host or not, whatever. and only then does he realize that it really is only us. We walk into the middle of an eerily quiet party, because people are apparently HIDING. people managed to flush a substantial amount of weed down the toilet in that tiny amount of time.

god people are stupid.

turns out the entire party is a total of about 12 people, all but 4 of which are playing poker. with poker chips and a green felt table thingy and for money. .... seriously?
we found our friends (the 4 people not playing poker) in a room deeper in the apartment that was full of instruments like Mongolian violins, miniature banjos, lots of African drum things and guitars. Adam is cradling the banjo and plucking randomly to the beat of whatever strange electronic music is coming from the computer speakers.
there were some amusing moments when we lost 2 of our group to poker and just 4 of us played silly songs from J's ipod and we danced like strange, retarded, stoned and tipsy prehistoric birds. or something. (...)"

3 comments:

  1. Sounds like the dancer's at the end of time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ", I to make need new save" -- You

    ', I [need] to make [] new save'

    ReplyDelete
  3. i know, i left it on purpose. it reflects the state of my mind after fighting with html tables!

    ReplyDelete