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- Oct 21, 2002
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- 17,068
![I hold in my collection a rare and powerful treasure. Codex USB, 2014](/forums/smiles/campaign_tags/campaign_codexusb.png)
I say okay and not good because I think it too often feels arbitrary and fucking stupid to miss an attack. It's not good "game" and it's not good "simulation".Roguey has a good point, even if the wording is troll-bait. Any probability check is gonna cause save-scumming, and that's pretty poor design. I also think adding a mechanic to reduce this chance of failure by spending stat points is making it even worse.
I think chance of failure is okay (but not good) for combat. There's a chance you miss and that makes sense. Combat is long, a lot of things happen, you can easily make up for any mistakes. Chance usually go both ways here as well -- you can get lucky and land a crit, for instance. It can add excitement.
But dialogue?
PC: [Charm - 86%... FAIL] Hey baby, how 'bout GAH FUCK INTESTINES GRAPEJUICE SHIT
NPC: Why I never! [leaves party]
Player: duh, okay, I'll keep on playing.
... or what?
I prefer a system where stats determine options, and those options are pre-determined, even if the options are failures. I mean, I'll see from the text whether or not a lie sounds good or not. If it looks like shit I'll try another option. Or fight. Or whatever.
Mostly agree but why you do feel chance of failure is not good (but merely OK) for combat? I think a certain amount of randomness in combat is always needed, it makes it more unpredictable and exciting (as you youself said) and besides, (almost) no one's gonna save and reload because you character missed once (or even several times in a row as long as you're hanging in there) and/or opponent hit you unless it's fatal for your char (which is very rarely the case in any CRPG) so it's quite different to say dialogue checks in that regard (which I agree have just one required value to pass it, you either meet the requirements or you don't).
My point wasn't the choices, it was the fail-state caused by randomness.Franky, the dialogue in your sample is bad design no matter how the ruleset works. Why on earth a non combat situation should be resolved by a single test with a binary outcome?
The problem is the encounter design, not the ruleset. Players should have more options, more possible outcomes, more agency. A flat value wouldn't change anything in this scenario.
Encounter design is based on the ruleset.
If by flat value you mean "no percentage chance to succeed" then I think you're wrong. I also like plenty of options, but I want these based on my characters statistics. If I'm not a good charmer then my attempt to charm should be in a fail-state as I choose it, not based on a dice-roll (not necessarily leading to a worse outcome - that's something else).