[Exalted 1st Ed] Consequences of altering dice rolling

[Mirrorblade]

After furter discussion with the rest of the group and the ST... they don't roll much and don't care, it's more about narration, so that's no big deal to them and the rule stays in place (also one of them has astounding luck with dices, and the ST has a perchant for critical successes on NPC's and enemies, without cheating).


   On my part I've to admit, I do get frustrated when every action in a session results in a botch due to the very houserule I'm criticizing, fortunately botches are not severe, but costantly failing rolls gets old quickly and bogs down things in combat, in particular...


Considering that I've noticed recurring bad dices in any RPG I played, it starts to seem a Sidereal persecution :?


The story it's interesting altough a bit dull, as the "savant" character of the ex_WoD_Storyteller_of_Doom talks his way trough everything, leaving the rest of the cast to play cheerleaders

 

[cyl]

Thank you for the past and coming maths  

how many were binary successes (i.e. they got at least one success), how many were non-botching failures and how many botched.

If I understand this correctly, the binary success chance does mean that a roll can still be a failed action (compared to the difficulty of the task).


I mean you can have a 88% chance to have a binary success on a dicepool of 8, the difficulty increasing, the chances for successful rolls decrease...


But you still get a 10% to chance to botch whatever the difficulty with this OWoD rule in the exalted system...


Chances of getting a successful roll on a high difficulty should logically increase, but chances for botches will stay quite the same (but I'm willing to wait for larger dicepool tests for confirmation ).

#
# Under canon, chance of both failure and botching clearly approach a limit of zero.

Now THAT's epic  :lol:

 

[Persell]

I think the complaint about the rule (not about the rolling bad stuff)makes some sense here. This is not OWoD... this is exalted we are talking about !

Meh I already provided an explanation about why the storyteller might have gone for that particular rule.


About the rest of your post... you are not really THAT self centered, are you?

 

[cyl]

you are not really THAT self centered, are you?

Naaaah, course not... did I seem so ?
I just think it's a shame to see such a great game being "less enjoyable" because of a crappy rule, and I was using ST experience to support this thought... wait a minute, you ARE cranky

 

[Persell]

you are not really THAT self centered, are you?

Naaaah, course not... did I seem so ?
I just think it's a shame to see such a great game being "less enjoyable" because of a crappy rule, and I was using ST experience to support this thought... wait a minute, you ARE cranky

Using one of your anecdotes, and nothing else was what you posted, to promote what you are seeing as the right way to play exalted as the one true way to play exalted in the group of another storyteller while you only have the word of one player about how the group is made up -style wise- sure seems self centered to me.


To make it clear, you are not right, because this is not a question of being right or wrong. It is about mood and genre emulation and without knowing what the other storyteller was gunning for you have no chance whatsoever to make any meaningful comment about the situation at his table and you didn't even try to get behind his mindset.


So, I might be cranky, but at least I am not some kind of exalted nazi who dictates others what they should find fun and what not (at least not anymore ^^).

 

[cyl]

@ MB:  I am glad you could have a discussion with your group, and that the frustration about the bad luck and botches stuff has been slightly lessened.


@ Safim : I don't know any true righteous and pure way of playing exalted, just mine, and what other STs tell me about.


The question being "does the rule compromise the game"... I think it does,  but it's true I don't know the intent of MB's ST.


Still, this rule sucks, and I wish I had the math skills to prove it, but I don't ^^'

 

[Coyotekin]

Ah, so much fun when arguing about opinions which are subjective experiences. That's all this thread was based on, a "what do you think?" question. Whether it is true or not cannot be fully determined because you are talking about something that is made-up, with rules that even the creators say to throw out or alter as you see fit, with a world that they have put forth, but never mandated you abide by it. After all, the game was created based a collective delusion that was agreed upon. So saying that a rule is right or wrong, assuming we are not going purely canon, is like saying who the "ruler of Nexus truly is (As I forgot the name of said entity at the moment and too lazy to hunt the info down in Scavenger Lands).


And as for Cyl being supposedly self-centered, who cares? I do not believe it to be true or even close to being true, but that again is a subjective experience and opinion.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Exalted is about scale.


Most WW games have been about limits of the wonder, how the world has closed in on wonder and magic, and even Vampires and Werewolves are bound and constrained. Even Magi--who break the rules all the time, but pay the price for it if they get too ambitious.


Even Aberrant which threw out a lot of odd mechanics in favor of BIG powerz, still had constraints with your characters getting teh crazy from too much, too fast.


Exalted isn't supposed to be gritty. Ars Magica might suit better, if that's what he's looking for. Dark Ages Mage, perhaps. Something other than a game where you can conceivably bitch slap the Moon, and throw demons to crash through the sky.  


You want a "gritty" Exalted game?  Play as Heroic Mortals. That will be hard enough, but the Exalted are about scale. Mortals. Heroic Mortals. Dragon Blooded. Alchemicals. Lunars. Sidereals. Abyssals. Solars. They are each a magnitude of power, and with their own internally built constraints, but you are talking the prototypes for Gilgamesh and Hercules.


Maybe your ST really needs to read a lot more myth to get a feel for the scope here. Conceivably, your Solars can, by themselves, and with judicious Stunting, run into a unit of DB Warstriders, armed with their usual kit bag of Artifacts, and come out on top. Cowpunch dinosaurs. Toss horses. Rip gates off their hinges. Tear down the Temples with their bare hands, ala Samson, and still have enough heroing in them, to catch little girls out to the air that the bastardy villains throw from balconies.


We're talking the fate of nations, even wrasslin' River Spirits to change the course of said river, to provide water for the lowlands.


Scale in Exalted is everything. You're not saving a village at a time, you're looking to save Creation. All of it. Gods, Spirits, Elementals, and Mortals alike. And face off with the Primordials--though, admittedly, they've seen better days...

 

[Flagg]

After furter discussion with the rest of the group and the ST... they don't roll much and don't care, it's more about narration, so that's no big deal to them and the rule stays in place (also one of them has astounding luck with dices, and the ST has a perchant for critical successes on NPC's and enemies, without cheating).

I'm a bit confused. If the group is generally one that wishes to negotiate their way through problems, avoids combat, and generally doesn't roll dice, then why the fuck is your ST nerfing the game mechanics? Why is he throwing "random encounter" monsters at you?

 

[cyl]

Yeah... why is he narrating a 2 meters jaw chewing his way through your group ?  :lol:

 

[wordman]

If I understand this correctly, the binary success chance does mean that a roll can still be a failed action (compared to the difficulty of the task).

Correct. The numbers I mentioned treat a "success" as a roll that would succeed on a difficulty 1 action.

 

[Persell]

cyl:


"This houserule sucks"


"he doesn't seem to grasp the richness of exalted"


"(...)was very angry at the time to see how repressed they were (...)"


Yes, you surely do not know any true and righteous way to play exalted, there is none, but you surely make your posts look like that your way it the only true way.


Let's look at the situation without bias for a moment.


The storyteller wants the characters to be more fallible and houserules the system in a way that increases the botch chance by 10%, the failure chance remains unaffected (largely).


The majority of the players have no problem with this, they even side with the storyteller when the houserule gets critiziced.


Somehow the presented evidence leads me to believe, that the problem at hand is not the one of the group, but the problem of one player who doesn't get along with the premise (fallible heroes) of the storyteller's game.

 

[cyl]

If I understand this correctly, the binary success chance does mean that a roll can still be a failed action (compared to the difficulty of the task).

Correct. The numbers I mentioned treat a "success" as a roll that would succeed on a difficulty 1 action.

Is it possible then with a program to get the percentage of successful rolls compared to 1-3-5 difficulty with both canon and the crappy OWoD rule ?


Because I find it very hard to believe that with a 8 dicepool in the OWoD  rule, even without a difficulty level, you have a 0% chance of failure, I experienced it largely and the probability of failure exists.


While the percentage of a diff 1 roll may be 88%, I guess that with 1's detracting successes, the probability of matching the difficulty is lower than with the canon, and I am really wondering if it will be just 10% less.

 

[Moonsilver]

We seemed to have moved this on to a discussion about theme. You can play Exalted any way you want, but “grittyâ€

 

[wordman]

Is it possible then with a program to get the percentage of successful rolls compared to 1-3-5 difficulty with both canon and the crappy OWoD rule ?

Yes, it is possible. Feel free to modify the code to do so.

Because I find it very hard to believe that with a 8 dicepool in the OWoD  rule, even without a difficulty level, you have a 0% chance of failure

Table says you have a near 0% chance of non-botching failure (actual number is ~0.39%). You can roll 8 dice 100,000,000 ways. Under the oWoD system, over 88 million succeed, around 0.4 million fail and over 10 million botch.

 

[cyl]

You can play Exalted any way you want, but “grittyâ€

 

[cyl]

Yes, it is possible. Feel free to modify the code to do so.

Well that is something I am truly incapable of...   ops:

 

[Persell]

You can play Exalted any way you want, but “grittyâ€

 

[wordman]

The failure chances should be much higher with the difficulty increasing, and I'm quite sure that with the OWoD rule the chances to get a 5 successes roll are way low compared to the canon, when 1's are detracting successes.

The chances of failure increase, but the chance of a bocth do not, at least the way canon defines the botch rule. As an example, say you have four dice to make a difficulty three roll and get (1,2,7,8). This is a failure (under either system), but it isn't a botch (under either system), because you got at least some successes.


As a result, some of the rolls in "success" column of the table I posted would move to the "failure" column as the difficulty increases, but none would move to the "botch" column.

 

[cyl]

The chances of failure increase, but the chance of a bocth do not, at least the way canon defines the botch rule.

Yes, I got that, the failure chance increase, the botch chance stays at 10%.
Means that you have less chances with the OWoD rule to get a successful roll on a average and high difficulty than you have in the canon.


Less success, more botches...

 

[Unforgiven]

I've been "lurking" around from time to time looking for answers, now I start to ask questions on what I couldn't solve myself.
Our storyteller, for his own reasons , decided to alter the dice system of our starting Solar-Alchemical 1st ed campaign, by making each "1" rolled "cancel" one success from the overall roll.


This rule applies to opponents as well, but considering that 6 siaka nearly killed 75% of our party (of 3) in our first fight, resulting effectively more dangerous than the second circle demon we had to "remove"... I've doubts on the fairness/effectiveness of this solution.


I get concerned as it seems, this way,  that a large dice pools incurs higher risks of rolling "worse" or directly botch even on simple tasks, rather than accomplishing better results.


From direct experience: we had very few "epic" rolls and a lot of crappy results or full fledged botches...


So, what I'd like to know is if this houserule compromises playability althogether, simply "resizes" our characters "exaltedness" a bit too much, or messes up the system.

I would have to say no, doesn't really break the game. The chances of a botch aren't any higher, just the chances of failure increases, and the overall number of successes will be lower, so as Wordman has already said, the game will become a bit more grittier, but definately not game-breaking.


Our campaign has lasted for over 6 years, with exactly the same rule, and we've only experienced it as being a bit more interesting, since our opponents also last a bit longer, giving it a bit more drama when you actually kill somebody..


I mean, if you just kill someone with one blow, there's no way you'll ever wound somebody to the point he just falls unconscious, and you have to decide whether to finish him off or not.. when using the rules provided in the book, it will happen a lot more that you scratch your opponent with your first attack, and completely obliterate him with your second or third attack, which will probably be a combo or something..


So I don't think it's a bad rule at all, just don't switch over to 2nd edition, because the combat system there works with static defense values, so you'll need your exploding rolls to actually hit the opponent there..


as a side note, when you're confronted with 6 siaka (I assume in their natural environment, since they're sharks) I think your ST made a poor judgement in what you're capable of handling.. they have like Str 12 and hit like a truck, and seeing all the dice penalties you get for fighting in the water, you're bound to get ganked upon..


(Btw, how did u get 75% of your pt killed, when there's only 3 ? very interesting, or did someone lose limbs ? :-D )

 

[wordman]

More data, going to ten dice, in more readable format:

Result counts for canon
Dice               success            failure                 botch           total   
 1               4/ 40.00%          5/ 50.00%            1/ 10.00%              10
 2              64/ 64.00%         25/ 25.00%           11/ 11.00%             100
 3             784/ 78.40%        125/ 12.50%           91/  9.10%           1,000
 4           8,704/ 87.04%        625/  6.25%          671/  6.71%          10,000
 5          92,224/ 92.22%      3,125/  3.12%        4,651/  4.65%         100,000
 6         953,344/ 95.33%     15,625/  1.56%       31,031/  3.10%       1,000,000
 7       9,720,064/ 97.20%     78,125/  0.78%      201,811/  2.02%      10,000,000
 8      98,320,384/ 98.32%    390,625/  0.39%    1,288,991/  1.29%     100,000,000
 9     989,922,304/ 98.99%  1,953,125/  0.20%    8,124,571/  0.81%   1,000,000,000
 10  9,939,533,824/ 99.40%  9,765,625/  0.10%   50,700,551/  0.51%  10,000,000,000

Result counts for wod
Dice               success            failure                botch            total
 1               4/ 40.00%          5/ 50.00%            1/ 10.00%              10
 2              58/ 58.00%         25/ 25.00%           17/ 17.00%             100
 3             682/ 68.20%        125/ 12.50%          193/ 19.30%           1,000
 4           7,494/ 74.94%        625/  6.25%        1,881/ 18.81%          10,000
 5          79,804/ 79.80%      3,125/  3.12%       17,071/ 17.07%         100,000
 6         834,940/ 83.49%     15,625/  1.56%      149,435/ 14.94%       1,000,000
 7       8,637,920/ 86.38%     78,125/  0.78%    1,283,955/ 12.84%      10,000,000
 8      88,680,246/ 88.68%    390,625/  0.39%   10,929,129/ 10.93%     100,000,000
 9     905,411,392/ 90.54%  1,953,125/  0.20%   92,635,483/  9.26%   1,000,000,000
 10  9,206,169,018/ 92.06%  9,765,625/  0.10%  784,065,357/  7.84%  10,000,000,000

Shoots my 10% botch limit theory out of the water.


By the way, any Python gurus reading, I'd appreciate PMs about how to improve the performance of my code. It shouldn't take this machine hours to essentially count to a billion.

 

[Coyotekin]

You can play Exalted any way you want, but “grittyâ€

 

[Mirrorblade]

@Unforgiven: 75% of party nearly killed: the noncombat savant got bitten to his -4 health level (with no ox bodyes and similar) and practically incapacitated, he was the one with the "nice" idea of using blood in the water to attract the demon...  my character got bitten for 5 or 6 letal after soak, but being autochtonian she got some more -2 healt levels due to high essence... the dawn remained unscratched and overkilled the demon with a couple of hits.


Of the original 6 siakas, one was sucked dry by the demon, two swimmed for their life  after the 3rd or 4th attempt of the dawn at his caste anima ability, the others were diced and coocked between the two of us... anyway those beasts had absurd damage capability and health levels, and botching any dodge or parry would have resulted in a total pg overkill...


@wordman: could you explain the consequences of your last table of results please? :shock:


@everyone: thanks for all your feedback, criticism, data and so on! I'd never imagine there would be so much response to my question, thanks!

 

[Flagg]

two swimmed for their life  after the 3rd or 4th attempt of the dawn at his caste anima ability

Que?


How does one "attempt" an automatic scene long effect, much less do it 3 or 4 times?