Long Overdue Response

Oedipussy Rex's picture
Submitted by Oedipussy Rex on Tue, 12/08/2015 - 10:13

"If you were to compare starting SCHWA characters to AD&D1e characters, what level would they transfer to? 3rd? 2nd?"

Short answer: I wouldn't compare them to AD&D characters. Mostly because of the math.

In any iteration of D&D, even those games that are only nominally D&D, only a single die is used to determine success or failure, the d20. Bonuses and penalties are added to the result of the roll and the range of possible results is only 20 wide. It may be 1-20 or 17-36, but always only 20 wide.

With Ə, one of 11 dice are used to determine success or failure, with an infinite range of results. The likelihood of rolling over 1000 is incredibly small but it is in the realm of possibility. (You'd have to roll a 30 at least 34 times on an exploding d30, which is has a probability of less than 1 in every 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 attempts. It gets worse with the smaller dice.)

A bigger difference is in how bonuses affect the probabilities. For AD&D, every point of bonus changes the probability of success by a flat 5%. A Fighter with a 25% chance to hit getting a +1 bonus now has a 30% chance. Increase the bonus to +3 and the probability increases to 40%. In Ə, a +1 bonus increases the chance of success an amount that varies on the Warrior die. One fighter with a 25% chance to hit using a d4 (roll a 4), receiving a +1 bonus, now has to roll a 4 or better on a d6, meaning he now has a 50% chance of success. Another fighter with a d12 for Warrior with a 25% chance of success (10+) receiving a +1 bonus has his chance of success increased to only 43.75%. Still a significant improvement, but not the same. Improving the bonus to +3 increases the probabilities to 70% and 62.5% for each fighter, respectively.

Then there's the whole Points of Success thing, a mechanic not used in AD&D. When a character can strike for only 2 damage one turn and over 20 the next, you cannot really compare him to one that will do only 1-8. Even AD&D Magic-users with Fireball will do fairly consistent damage of 3.5 times character level. In fact, there's the difference between Ə and AD&D in a nutshell: consistency. AD&D has it; Ə does not, nor was it designed to.

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Comments

Kersus's picture

Kersus

Tue, 12/29/2015 - 15:34

Soooo, 2nd level? ;)

Oedipussy Rex's picture

Oedipussy Rex

Sat, 01/02/2016 - 03:20

Thereabouts

Sorcerer Character Has Warrior Adventure

Disappointing Mom since 2010.

Kersus's picture

Kersus

Sun, 02/14/2016 - 05:22

Perhaps a standardized list of % success improvements from d2-d30+5 would help in converting from d20 style games?

Because all d20 is easily converted to percentile, being able to convert from percentile to SCHWA would hit both types of systems. Exactness is not needed however getting in the right range helps for tweaking.

Kersus's picture

Kersus

Sun, 08/14/2016 - 04:44

Have you ran SCHWA with any published adventures? Let's say the HM4E B1. How would you convert opponents or would you build new ones from scratch?

I have trouble sometimes matching an appropriate difficulty level for an encounter.

Another instance I ran into was a player who wanted to be a tough Barbarian sort and put all his points in Warrior, but the adventure had a few instances that could cause Sorcerer Rank reductions.... one ding and he would have been toast. he was dinged several times and I just ignored it for the sake of not upsetting him. He had died quite quickly in the earlier Traveller 1e adventure that day.

I guess my point is that at initial generation, a more balanced approach appears best.

Oedipussy Rex's picture

Oedipussy Rex

Tue, 08/16/2016 - 20:19

Published adventures? No. But trouble matching difficulty to an encounter, all the time. The problem is, one time I'd run an encounter and the players breeze right through and the next time I run the exact same encounter with a different group, I'd have to adjust it partway through to prevent a tpk. It all seems to stem from character generation.

The last time I demoed using The Lost Tomb, only one person showed up. No big deal. Happens often. He created an Orc and cranked-up Defense to 5, leaving only 15 Character Points for everything else. His justification: by making the character difficult to hit, he'll survive longer. The problem is that with exploding dice and Degree of Success, when he was hit for those big hits, he didn't have much cushion; when he needed to roll an Adventure, he didn't much chance of success; and he had a high chance of failure when needing to Resist on that lousy Adventure die.

Game Design story: I came up with the initial 40 CP with the thought that starting characters would have a d12, d8, and d4 for the Aspects, 2 Defense, and 5 purchases of Health with 2 CP left over for additional use or mulligans during play. In the range of beginning characters players have come up with over the years, I have never seen anyone come up with that configuration. I did see one guy spend no CP on Defense, leaving it at 0.

Sorcerer Character Has Warrior Adventure

Disappointing Mom since 2010.

Oedipussy Rex's picture

Oedipussy Rex

Tue, 08/16/2016 - 20:48

Sorcerer Character Has Warrior Adventure

Disappointing Mom since 2010.