Dice rolls are bugging me...

[Jason of the North 203]

Dice rolls with text based roleplay is sort of a no brainer. To check for certain things outside of the mechanics of a game it'd make sense that to some degree chance would be involved if an action were successful or not. As a lover of dnd and other tabletop games the thrill of making and playnig characters has helped drawn me into playing lotc. That said I've found whilst speaking about various aspects of the game the notion of the dice rolls quite perplexing.. The notion that only certain actions have any chance of raising or lowering the chance of the dice roll passing based solely on equipment seems a tad strange and annoying to me.

 

I can think of certain instances where this is extremely annoying and draining to rp if not breaking away the immersion to the rp and game in general:

Ex-1: An Olog (standing 12' tall and over 1000 lbs) attempts to kick in a door, and is given a flat roll to the exact same extent as a halfling or goblin (1/3rd to 1/4th the size) doing the same action.

Ex-2: A villain character whom has spent a good amount of time learning in character to pick locks, and becomes an experienced thief not only in backstory but in time played in game. The only benefit the character has to picking locks is the lockpick,  and being a villain outcast from society, it is too difficult to gain money (outside of voting or highway robbery which wouldn't suit the character properly ), and hence making it much more difficult and frustrating to play the character, whilst again similar to Ex-1, any random character with lockpick in hand (or worse if they dont even have hands) would have the same exact chance to perform and succeed the action even if they've never lock picked before.

Ex-3 (and probably my more concerned one of all) : A Long standing veteran character in the game, whom has been playing as a millitary focused character (warlord, veteran soldier, or what have you) is fighting a non veteran militia character (draftee whom got caught up in larger scale politics) and the aggressor wishes for mechanical combat (being in the better in game qeuipment) whilst the defender wishes more roleplay combat (most likely to give them some hope of surviving the ordeal or any chance to run away using emotes). Being that the draftee is the defender so he gets to decide, and chooses emote based combat. (my understanding of the speicifs of emote based combat is unclear at present so... ) After a very unfortunate series of events based around dice rolling and questionable power gaming for some reason the heavily armored knight is dead and the barely supplied unarmored draftee is victorious.. Due to the fact that both in the caase of any combat roles have little to no influence in millitary training, backrounds, character equipment etc. but rather a random number generator.

 

Understandably I don't expect staff to have the time of day to rush out to handle every little aspect of dice rolls for every little thing. But to at least have a few criteria established in this manor to have combat and other roleplay aspects seem more fair and balanced for well flushed out and detailed characters would be that much better for players whom actually wish to not regularly either flat out avoid contact with certain individuals, avoid rp in the event of it leading to b.s. outcomes, or any other amount of headache for the players at times.

 

So, the question arises if the community have similar thoughts on the matter if something like this (either through mechanics or an honor system) could be implimented, and more importantly, if it should. Do let me know.

[overlord2305 202]

While I'd like to see equipment, personality, strengths etc modify dice rolls somehow I don't think it would work.

Now this doesn't include all situations, rolls to see if a interaction with say a object or mental challenge where there is no one oposition are fine (like a olog lifting a rock to look under it). The trouble however starts when you are rolling against someone, because there is (unfortunately) the chance that you and he / she will get into a argument about wether or not a charachter is or is not as strong / fast / dexterous etc as they are claimed to be. Even if this argument is solved you're likely to run into the same argument again but for the other charachter(s) involved.

To summarize : partial implementation is fine for "opositionless" actions but I would reccomend keeping it to that to avoid OOC arguments.

[Jason of the North 203]

1 minute ago, overlord2305 said:

While I'd like to see equipment, personality, strengths etc modify dice rolls somehow I don't think it would work.

Now this doesn't include all situations, rolls to see if a interaction with say a object or mental challenge where there is no one oposition are fine (like a olog lifting a rock to look under it). The trouble however starts when you are rolling against someone, because there is (unfortunately) the chance that you and he / she will get into a argument about wether or not a charachter is or is not as strong / fast / dexterous etc as they are claimed to be. Even if this argument is solved you're likely to run into the same argument again but for the other charachter(s) involved.

To summarize : partial implementation is fine for "opositionless" actions but I would reccomend keeping it to that to avoid OOC arguments.

0

 

I can understand where you're coming from and that i can agree can get tedious and become a constant wall of concern, but i do really ask these questions more for both the in and out of combat actions. Mainly refering to examples 1 and 2, character race and things like that should have more influence in the dice roll, whilst combat should go more off the honor system and possibly involve more on millitant training adding minor additions to dice rolls ( a +1 or 2 here and there, nothing major, but something to every so gently tip the scales to seem more realistic).

[Lark 2227]

To add modifiers and stats to LotC characters would be far too arduous and time consuming with our community. Sure we can come up with a system that people must follow but people will cheat it or misunderstand it, get yelled at, becomes inefficient, and ends up being a remove nexus sort of deal if it becomes ingrained within the server. 

 

Would it be realistic? Yes. Would it make sense? Oh **** yes. Will it work? With over 100 people active daily, you're essentially running a tabletop game with over 100 people who may or may not actually want something to do with each other. In theory it works, in practice I'm not so sure.

[argonian 14254]

You don't have to worry about your equipment etc. affecting your rolls, you can just add that into the response emote. For example: Person A slashes at Person B chest and Person B tries to dodge. If Person A wins the roll it means that Person B fails to dodge, but it doesn't instantly mean that Person B got cut deeply he's dead or whatever. If Person B is wearing no armour, he can emote a deep cut, but if he's wearing good armour he can emotes that it was only a shallow cut or the armour deflected the blow. You don't need any roll modifiers or overcomplicated systems to do that.

 

And another example people always say is the Halfling vs the Orc fisttfight, claiming that oh the Halfling has a 50% chance of beating the Orc in rolling. That's just not true. The Orc can miss dozens of times to the agile Halfling, but if he hits once then the Halfling is dead. Whereas the Halfling can evade and strike the Orc all he likes but it'd take many, many blows for him to do any real damage. So the Orc is actually almost guaranteed to win, just like it should be. You don't need any roll modifiers, just respond realistically when you lose the roll. As a Halfling, an Orc punching you full-force in the face is going to knock you out straight. As an Orc, a Halfling hitting you full-force in the face will hurt your nose at best.

[gandalfo 1452]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.