{"id":788,"date":"2004-03-10T15:27:59","date_gmt":"2004-03-10T15:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/random-average.com\/?p=788"},"modified":"2004-03-10T15:27:59","modified_gmt":"2004-03-10T15:27:59","slug":"d20-vs-the-dice-pool-or-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/2004\/03\/d20-vs-the-dice-pool-or-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"d20 vs. the Dice Pool&#8230; or is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Overheard on <a title=\"The Forge :: View topic - d20 vs. 3d6 in HeroQuest?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.indie-rpgs.com\/viewtopic.php?t=10177&#038;highlight=\">The Forge :: d20 vs. 3d6<\/a>, regarding &#8220;linear curves&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>D20 combat is really a die pool system (rolling multiple dice and counting sucessess) in disguise. You roll so many to-hits on single d20s in any given combat that, over the course of a battle, you get a reasonable normal distribution of expected results. <b>Where d20 breaks down is when it shifts to non combat where the entire task is handled with a single roll, and you don&#8217;t get this faux pool effect.<\/b> This is why Take 10 and Take 20 were invented [and, Doyce would add, rolling to Assist&#8230;] to patch the weakness of using linear single-rolls for everything other than combat [&#8230;] increasing the likelihood of getting the expected result.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And&#8230; they&#8217;re right.  One of the things I&#8217;ve realized that I really like about the games that I&#8217;m currently looking over is that they&#8217;re ALL either (a) dice pool mechanics or (b) single-dice mechanics with a means of earning re-rolls or (c) both.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve always liked dice pools &#8212; ever since Shadowrun 1 came out.   (Roll and add: not so much.)  Really negates the chance of Being Good and Sucking Anyway &#8212; if you&#8217;re good at something, you&#8217;re adding not only to your skill, but actually affecting the odds of rolling good numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overheard on The Forge :: d20 vs. 3d6, regarding &#8220;linear curves&#8221;. D20 combat is really a die pool system (rolling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d20"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}