In message <47acebb2$0$89168$157c6196@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Peter Knutsen <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Simon Smith wrote:
> > Peter Knutsen <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >>It seems to me that the real problem is how very *coarsegrained* the
> >>system is, for those situations where plusses don't matter. You end up
> >>having only five or six values, from 1d6 to 5d6, and maybe up to 6d6.
> >>
> >>AFAIK the actual WEG system is 3 times as finegrained, with the scale
> >>going 1d6, 1d6+1, 1d6+2, 2d6, 2d6+1, 2d6+2, 3d6...
> >
> > Yes, but you're always guaranteed at least 1D6 on each side, or you'd
have
> > nothing to roll, so there's always going to be a die to cancel out.
Hence I
> > omitted mention of the pluses to try to make the explanations a bit
shorter.
>
> I thought you had made deliberate decision to treat 2d6+1 and 2d6+2 the
> same as 2d6, for the purpose of damage and armour penetration?
No, I'd just chosen cases where everybody happened to have whole
numbers of die codes. Pardon me for the misunderstanding. Like strength
and
damage, armour can have +1s or +2s as well, but it gets messy for very
little perceptible gain so it's not usually recommended. In practice the
incoming damage is usually far larger than the armour, so there's almost
always some damage leakage. But 1D6 of armour could block 1D6+2 of
incoming
damage, +2 armour could block 1D6+1 of damage and +1 could block 1D6, in
each case by reducing it to the point at which there's nothing left to
roll.
This does save time comparing a couple of points of damage against a
strength roll that will usually be at least 2D6, and avoids having to make
another damage comparision that has a high likelihood of a no effect
result
anyway.
> > Funny that the system's considered coarse when a lot of other games
never
> > went beyond using 3-18 stat stat ranges rolled on 3D6.
>
> It isn't the roll mechanic that is coarsegrained, in the sense of the
> outcome range, but rather the trait scale; the scale that is used to
> describe and define characters and non-living game world objects.
>
> d20 offers 16 different trait values (actually more, since values higher
> than 18 are very possible), whereas 1d6 to 5d6 offers only 5 different
> trait values (although you get 13 if you use the intermediate values
> 1d6+1, 1d6+2 and so forth up to 4d6+2).
>
> I'm not convinced that we need as many 16 different trait values, but I
> sincerely believe that we need more than 5, in order to cover all of
> human variety.
Well, human range is 1D6 to 4D6, so that's ten granularity steps. I do
think
that's reasonable for a broad-brush system like Star Wars.
--
Simon Smith
When emailing me, please use my preferred email address, which is on my
web
site at http://www.simon-smith.org
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