2008-07-03 No Absolutes

Sean K Reynolds joins Paizo and on the welcoming thread ¹ I founf a link to two pages written by Reynolds ² ³ where he argues that some immunities should instead be resistances (eg. a fire giant is not immune to fire but it gets fire resistance 60 in order to still take damage when the god of fire swallows him whole, paladins get +10 vs. fear effects in order to still fear “a great wyrm red dragon”), and that some skills should be open to all (untrained Disable Device adds +10 to the DC, untrained Spellcraft just adds +5 to the DC, untrained Use Magic Device is no problem).

=> ¹ | ² | ³

I sort of like it.

​#RPG ​#thoughts

Comments

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I would add something to that.

A natural 20 should, rather than be an automatic hit, grant a +10 (ie. counted as a natural 30). A natural 1 should, rather than an automatic miss, grant -10 (or a natural -9, or -10 for simplicity).

I mean, should a commoner really be able to stab a gargantuan red dragon 5% of the time?

– Marco 2008-07-03 14:57 UTC

I thought the same. I think it’s a historical issue.

– Sektat 2008-07-03 22:16 UTC

In a quaint way, though, I still like it.

– Alex Schroeder 2008-07-04 06:25 UTC

=> Alex Schroeder

Re: making 20 = 30, 1 = -10:

1. A PC with no ranks in a skill has a 5% chance of performing or surmounting DC ~30 (depending on ability score modifiers, armor, etc) challenge.

2. A PC rolling a 20 on Strength check gets a 30 instead, and suddenly all sorts of things can be broken, opened, etc.

3. It doesn’t really affect saving throws much – with this math, a 20 is still more or less an autosave, and a 1 is still more or less an autofail. However, there are the cases where a monster or PC might be effectively immune to a spell/effect, because a -10 + save modifier > save DC. Great wyrm dragons, major demons/devils, and ridiculous HD creatures like the tarrasque come to mind. Not sure if this is bad or good – should you be able to kill a 2,000 year old red dragon because it rolls a 1 on its Fort save vs. your finger of death<i>?

4. Some monsters and optimized PCs will never miss on an attack roll (for PCs, on their first iterative attack). I guess the math is already such that, for these situations, missing only occurs 5% of the time, but it offends my sensibilities that there could be no chance of failure in certain situations in combat. Failure should always be an option.

5. OTOH, PCs might actually be able to escape grapples from Huge+ creatures. That would be a nice change, IMO.

Perhaps these situations arise infrequently enough that they wouldn’t alter the game in a meaningful way. But there is something dramatic about a natural 20 = success, a natural 1 = failure.

– Adrian 2008-07-04 07:54 UTC

Good thoughts.

A PC rolling a 20 on Strength check gets a 30 instead Since strength (ability) and skill checks don’t have a “20 is a success” rule, we wouldn’t apply the 20 ⇒ 30 rule to those checks. Only saves and attack rolls.

– Sektat 2008-07-04 08:08 UTC

I’m still not convinced I want to change this. As it stands, rolling a 20 or a 1 are emotional moments where the table whoops and hollers. If we change that to include a little ± 10 calculation, we’re reducing the emotional moment. We might as well not have the ± 10 in the first place if we really care about eliminating extreme results.

But if we wanted to increase the emotional uproar at the table instead, we should get rid of crit confirmation! 😄

– Alex Schroeder 2008-07-04 14:49 UTC

=> Alex Schroeder

rolling a 20 or a 1 are emotional moments

Hmm, thats true. I want to keep that!

– Sektat 2008-07-04 16:39 UTC