Would classic RPGs be viable without the random factor?

[Norfleet]

An RPG without the randomness is called an Adventure Game. Is it viable? Well, it is a legitimate genre. Is it an RPG anymore? Ehhh....

 

[Norfleet]

I offered an idea on the Beamdog forums about AI in NWN and got the same inflexible responses. "We want total party control" blah blah. Same shit that's already been done in many other games. Why not try to enjoy a different experience or something new?

Both things have been done before. The downside of a lack of party control is that there has yet to be made a partymember AI that isn't STUPID. The downside of simply substituting for the problem with total party control is that the player can make characters do things they probably wouldn't do. I would argue that both of these cases are undesirable extremes, with the drawbacks of the former being generally worse than the occasional abuse a player may come up with, since having your game earn infamy for its Stupid Party AI is probably worse than the occasional moment in which a player marches a partymember to its death or robs them. You could, of course, try to catch these cases, by having a balance, where partymembers obey the player when their morale is high and go off the rails when not.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The point is that with RNG, you aren't making the same playthrough more than once.

umm, i was thinkingh that for a different playthrough i need to actually take different decision in dialogue or with different world interaction and make different choise.

but no apparently if i roll 5 instead of 13 i have a different playthrough.

Yes, actually, a fight going completely different is way way more interesting than a click to fire a different scripted sequence.

Also, yet another newfag retard who can't understand the difference between shit RNG and good RNG.

 

[anvi]

There doesn't need to be random anything. It would actually make the games easier to design because it would be simpler to plan than when a weapon can hit for anything between 0 damage and 100 or whatever. If every hit was 50, it would be easy to design everything. Lots of games already work like this, like FPSs.

So you want RPGs to be like extremely boring FPSes? Mage ducks behind a piller, pokes head out, get s a sword in the face, headshot, death?

That was just an answer to the hypothetical question of this thread. Although... I do like the idea of it. There is also no reason that getting rid of RNG would have to make it more boring or dumb like an FPS. If anything it could make games more challenging because they could fine tune battles to the exact HP. In RNG games like Baldur's Gate or whatever, there are times when a group of Kobalds run at you and your tank lands a big crit on his first hit and splats a Kobald dead in 1 shot. If the damage you do in every hit, is dictated exactly by your gear and your level and your weapon skills or whatever, then devs can make enemies you will can't kill, even with a lucky string of crits, until you level up a bit, and enemies you can kill now but you have to make no mistakes, etc.

Also some FPS are sweet. System Shock! I think that actually has dice rolls, but maybe not. But either way, a zombie takes a few blasts to kill so when you go around a corner and suddenly one is in your face, you have to run and panic and shoot to survive. And don't miss. And your weapon and ammo matters. Lots of weapons do barely any damage to a robot, but armor piercing will rip it to bits. And vice versa with squishy fleshy enemies. Games can be good without RNG.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

There doesn't need to be random anything. It would actually make the games easier to design because it would be simpler to plan than when a weapon can hit for anything between 0 damage and 100 or whatever. If every hit was 50, it would be easy to design everything. Lots of games already work like this, like FPSs.

So you want RPGs to be like extremely boring FPSes? Mage ducks behind a piller, pokes head out, get s a sword in the face, headshot, death?

Games can be good without RNG.

But can RPGs?

 

[ProphetSword]

I'll never understand what Gary was thinking when he made each combat round last a minute.

Because it is also a level of abstraction...

One minute rounds are devised to offer the maximum of choice with a minimum of complication. This allows the DM and the players the best of both worlds. The system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition, there are numerous attacks which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. During a one-minute melee round many attacks are made, but some are mere feints, while some are blocked or parried. One, or possibly several, have the chance to actually score damage. For such chances, the dice are rolled, and if the "to-hit" number is equaled or exceeded, the attack was successful, but otherwise it too was avoided, blocked, parried or whatever.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Dungeon Master's Guide, 1st Edition, page 61

 

[ProphetSword]

An RPG without RNG in combat is terribly boring. I played one recently (can't remember the name of it, it was so bad) on a tablet for about fifteen minutes that didn't have any RNG.

With to the sword my character had, I knew he would do 5 points of damage every hit. His dwarf companion would do 6, unless he used his special power that would make it 10. Players and enemies didn't miss, so hitting was a forgone conclusion. Players always went first too, it seemed.

We were fighting a group of skeletons. The skeletons hit us for 4 each time and had 10 health. The only RNG involved was when the monsters decided who to attack.

The battles became predictable, repetitive and boring. Against three skeletons, it went like this:

Round 1: My character tags a skeleton for 5. The dwarf hits for 6, finishing off one skeleton. Skeleton hits one of us for 4. Other one hits one of us for 4 (both characters had 30+ health, so there was no danger there).

Round 2: My character tags a skeleton for 5. The dwarf hits for 6, finishing off a second. Skeleton hits one of us for 4.

Round 3: My character tags a skeleton for 5. The dwarft hits for 6, finishing the combat.

After a couple of minutes of this, it became really easy to predict if you would win a battle, and how soon you would win it. When a new enemy entered the fray that you hadn't encountered, once you tracked how much health they had and how hard they hit, it was easy to decipher the best strategy for ending the combat in about 3 rounds.

Is this really what you would want?

 

[Shinji]

Exactly.
The effect randomness has on the player is of making him experience uncertainty.

But could not such a uncertainty introduced in another manner? For example, if, instead of having a RNG, why instead not relying on hidden informations from the player?
Obviously, there HAS to be a tiny bit of RNG at some point during a game, otherwise the result would be predetermined. But look at chess, for example; from a starting board, you cannot predict how the game will play, because nobody has yet done the first move. From there you can make assumptions, and from a certain point on, you can actually say what will happen; but at the very beginning this isn't possible.
The same could be achieved with a game that first creates, using RNG, the enemies you'll encounter, the equipment and so on, but whose mechanics are deterministic. Basically, a 'roguelike' with a deterministic system. Or by one where the decision of a AI are random-ish, but the system is deterministic; basically, a rts-like game, except it's not an rts, but a rpg.

Sure it can.
Like you said, the simple fact of hiding information is enough to make the player feel uncertain (e.g. the first time you encounter a new enemy in Dark Souls, or when playing any sort of competitive game online against an opponent).

What RNG can help with, is abstracting away details of a complex system.

For example, let's assume there's an archer and he has to hit an enemy from a long distance. What will affect the chances of him hitting the target? Things like the wind, the weight of the arrow, what the arrow is made of, its shape and size, the type of bow, how strong the archer is, if the archer is distracted, sleepy, sick, if he can see well from a distance, if he's injured, his psychological and emotional condition, his experience with a bow, how much the enemy knows about the archer, and many other things.

Without RNG, there are a ton of details that have to be taken into account just for a small action. In the real world, what we call "random" is actually the current state of the world that we're not perceiving, because there are way too many things to take into account at the same time.

So instead of managing something so complex, we just roll a dice, calculate the chances of something happening and call it a day.
Sure, computers can do calculations like crazy, but it's still something complex to manage nonetheless.

You can use RNG like you pointed out as well, to create different layouts for dungeons or present differents sets of enemies.
But RNG shouldn't be used for everything, as there are things that should always remain constant, such as game rules, for example. If at one point you fire a gun and it damages the enemy, but at some other point you fire a gun and it heals the enemy without a specific and clear reason, the player will get frustrated and confused.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

RNG is a must for cRPGs

My favorite DnD cRPG is undoubtedly Dark Sun Shattered Lands.

It is a digital adaption of the PnP RPG ADnD, specifically the Dark Sun setting.

The PnP system uses dice rolls; hence cRPG systems also must use dice rolls. Why is this so hard to understand?

Any hypothetical "adaptation" of ADnD Dark Sun that removes the dice rolls that simulate character skill and replaces it with player skills (mostly twitch reflex) , it will no longer be a cRPG, it will be popamole trash. And anyone advocating for such popamole trash can go play Mass Effect Andromeda or whatever.

 

[JarlFrank]

Let's just imagine, for a moment, Wizardry or Might and Magic without dice rolls.

Combat would be 100% deterministic, wouldn't it? It's just maths, no more tactics, just maths, since you hit all the time and get hit all the time. A chance to miss would be randomness.

Just your party and enemies whacking each other with a fixed damage output and guaranteed hits. Yawn. Boring, since every encounter is pretty much certain whether it's a win or loss in round 1.

Now, even if you have a game that gives you more tactical options than the old blobbers did, you wouldn't want to cut out randomness. Let's take Baldur's Gate, or Temple of Elemental Evil. One is RtwP D&D based, the other turn based D&D based. You can walk your characters across the field, maneuver them, outflank the enemy, use AoE spells, etc etc etc. So it wouldn't just be two parties whacking each other until one dies. But it would still be retarded and unbalanced as fuck.

No randomness = no to hit chance = automatic hits = every attack hits = fixed damage because no randomness = mages who have low HP essentially die in a single round to archers.
Also, no randomness = no spells with a chance to be resisted = overpowered spells that usually take a will, fortitude, or reflex saving throw just auto-hit = overpowered spells are uncounterable.

Wow, fun.

Also, keep in mind that a lot of stuff that many RPGs have, from the classic blobber to the isometric RPG to the Diablo clone to the first person action RPG, relies on randomness being a factor. Critical hit chance. Chance to dodge or evade. Spell resist chance. Spell failure chance. Chance to interrupt a spell. Chance to get an attack of opportunity. In Diablo-clones especially, there tend to be a lot of items that give you a chance to cast a spell when you hit enemies with them, or that give you a chance to cast a spell when enemies hit you.

All of that would be gone.

Entire character builds, item sets, playstyles wouldn't be possible without at least minor elements of randomness in the game.

Remove randomness entirely from RPGs, and they're no longer RPGs.

 

[VanDerVaals]

RNG is a must for cRPGs
Any hypothetical "adaptation" of ADnD Dark Sun that removes the dice rolls that simulate character skill and replaces it with player skills (mostly twitch reflex) , it will no longer be a cRPG, it will be popamole trash. And anyone advocating for such popamole trash can go play Mass Effect Andromeda or whatever.

<sighs>
You don't have to necessary implement a manual input in it, you know? You can always make the mechanics without dice more complex, so the challenge remains. One must be willing to make such, of course.

Let's just imagine, for a moment, Wizardry or Might and Magic without dice rolls.
Now, even if you have a game that gives you more tactical options than the old blobbers did, you wouldn't want to cut out randomness. Let's take Baldur's Gate, or Temple of Elemental Evil. One is RtwP D&D based, the other turn based D&D based. You can walk your characters across the field, maneuver them, outflank the enemy, use AoE spells, etc etc etc. So it wouldn't just be two parties whacking each other until one dies. But it would still be retarded and unbalanced as fuck.
.

Why? Replacing RNG with more strategy and tactics sounds good for me.

 

[JarlFrank]

If you read the entirety of my post you will see why having zero randomness at all, completely removing it as a game mechanic, reduces strategy and tactics in an RPG as far as character builds and items go.

 

[hilfazer]

Let's just imagine, for a moment, Wizardry or Might and Magic without dice rolls.

Combat would be 100% deterministic, wouldn't it? It's just maths, no more tactics, just maths, since you hit all the time and get hit all the time. A chance to miss would be randomness.
No randomness = no to hit chance = automatic hits = every attack hits = fixed damage because no randomness = mages who have low HP essentially die in a single round to archers.
Also, no randomness = no spells with a chance to be resisted = overpowered spells that usually take a will, fortitude, or reflex saving throw just auto-hit = overpowered spells are uncounterable.

It does not need to be the case. Combat in Hard West is deterministic and not all attacks hit.

 

[Gulnar]

Let's just imagine, for a moment, Wizardry or Might and Magic without dice rolls.

Combat would be 100% deterministic, wouldn't it? It's just maths, no more tactics, just maths, since you hit all the time and get hit all the time. A chance to miss would be randomness.

Just your party and enemies whacking each other with a fixed damage output and guaranteed hits. Yawn. Boring, since every encounter is pretty much certain whether it's a win or loss in round 1.

Now, even if you have a game that gives you more tactical options than the old blobbers did, you wouldn't want to cut out randomness. Let's take Baldur's Gate, or Temple of Elemental Evil. One is RtwP D&D based, the other turn based D&D based. You can walk your characters across the field, maneuver them, outflank the enemy, use AoE spells, etc etc etc. So it wouldn't just be two parties whacking each other until one dies. But it would still be retarded and unbalanced as fuck.

No randomness = no to hit chance = automatic hits = every attack hits = fixed damage because no randomness = mages who have low HP essentially die in a single round to archers.
Also, no randomness = no spells with a chance to be resisted = overpowered spells that usually take a will, fortitude, or reflex saving throw just auto-hit = overpowered spells are uncounterable.

Wow, fun.

Also, keep in mind that a lot of stuff that many RPGs have, from the classic blobber to the isometric RPG to the Diablo clone to the first person action RPG, relies on randomness being a factor. Critical hit chance. Chance to dodge or evade. Spell resist chance. Spell failure chance. Chance to interrupt a spell. Chance to get an attack of opportunity. In Diablo-clones especially, there tend to be a lot of items that give you a chance to cast a spell when you hit enemies with them, or that give you a chance to cast a spell when enemies hit you.

All of that would be gone.

Entire character builds, item sets, playstyles wouldn't be possible without at least minor elements of randomness in the game.

Remove randomness entirely from RPGs, and they're no longer RPGs.

But this is disingenuous. Removing randomness (and by virtue of it, hit/miss/evade/crit chance) would certainly reduce the complexity of combat, but only because you've removed a factor from it; exactly like removing strength bonus to damage, or bonus spell slots from a high intelligence.
Imagine it this way: now, instead of giving a hit chance, the to-hit bonus act as a percentage multiplier. So basically, if before the change you hit only on a 20, you now deal 5% damage per hit. Instead, if you before hit on 18+, now you deal 15% damage, and so on. This would, incidentally, also fix the uselessness of DR in D&D. Crits, instead, could be simulated by acting on a per-hit basis: a 20 crit could be simulated by having the 20-th hit deal crit damage, a 18-20 by having every seventh hit deal crit damage, and so on. This would make weapons such as scythes or other high-crit, low-crit-chance weapons actually reliable.
Obviously, these are simple solutions that may have problems. For example, the crit-per-hit solution would lead to 'stacking' hits against weak enemies, only to then crit the strong one. But in the same way, there could be solutions to the same problem, like having the crit 'stacks' be lost as soon as you change target if the old one is still alive.

A different solution could be implemented for spells. Imagine, for example, that instead of saving throws, each creature has a will, reflex and fortitude 'resistance'. Every time a creature is hit by a spell that target that specific save, it gets a stack of 'virtual damage' against that save equal to the (old) spell save. Now, when the total 'virtual damage' against a save exceed the specific resistance, the spell has effect, and the resistance is reset. Now, once again, even this method has problems: you could target a enemy with a plethora of low-level, save-affecting spells, and then hit him with the specific effect you want him to be affected by when his virtual damage stack is nearly full.

But those are examples of how you could implement a deterministic mechanic in a rpg.
Obviously, such a rpg wouldn't be a 'classic' as defined by Mondblut, but it nonetheless would be a rpg. You still would have character statistics, you would still need buffs to do reliable damage, you would still have spells and use them most effectively on the targets that have low resistances.

Also, the two examples that you made aren't exactly as right as they could be. If everything, the RNG of attacks make those examples two examples of unreliability. Low hp mages die, often, because they're targeted by a enemy and killed by a lucky hit or crit. Spells ARE overpowered because when you hit, you win the encounter on the spot. But this isn't a problem that is made or broken by the lack of RNG. This is a problem of D&D, since spells ARE overpowered, and monster damage has to be as high as possible because often they have 1-2 rounds of attack before a spell/crit hits them and instakills them.

Basically, what i mean to say is that removing RNG from a game wouldn't make it more boring. It would make it more predictable.

 

[JarlFrank]

The strength of the randomness is exactly the unpredicatability. The greatest fun moments in D&D are when you are in a hard fight and everything's falling apart because of bad luck, and then you manage to salvage the situation anyway through sheer tactical genius and inventiveness.

I fondly remember a pen and paper session when we tried to have our rogue sneak into the middle of an orc camp to kill the orc shaman. He missed his sneak attack because the shaman had a buff on him that caused a 50% chance to miss.
Fuck.
Well, we also had our wizard chick prepare a spell that would switch positions of two living beings. We captured a small lizard to use the spell on and switch our rogue's position with the lizard's, getting the rogue out of danger.
Then, we had the lizard roll his will save. The little creature only had a saving throw of 1, there was no way it was going to...
Haha shit our DM just rolled a 20. The lizard resisted the spell.
And all that was left was for me to go YOLO and charge in with sword drawn to save our rogue before he got buttraped by orcs.

That fight was intense. That fight was fun. And it was so great precisely because random chance fucked up our plans and we had to adapt on the fly.

 

[ProphetSword]

Imagine it this way: now, instead of giving a hit chance, the to-hit bonus act as a percentage multiplier. So basically, if before the change you hit only on a 20, you now deal 5% damage per hit. Instead, if you before hit on 18+, now you deal 15% damage, and so on. This would, incidentally, also fix the uselessness of DR in D&D. Crits, instead, could be simulated by acting on a per-hit basis: a 20 crit could be simulated by having the 20-th hit deal crit damage, a 18-20 by having every seventh hit deal crit damage, and so on. This would make weapons such as scythes or other high-crit, low-crit-chance weapons actually reliable.

Except that critical hits represent a lucky blow, and having them come at non-random intervals removes the element of luck completely. For all the bitching people are doing about systems being unrealistic, exactly how realistic is it that every seventh blow does extra damage? (Hint: It's not).

A different solution could be implemented for spells. Imagine, for example, that instead of saving throws, each creature has a will, reflex and fortitude 'resistance'. Every time a creature is hit by a spell that target that specific save, it gets a stack of 'virtual damage' against that save equal to the (old) spell save. Now, when the total 'virtual damage' against a save exceed the specific resistance, the spell has effect, and the resistance is reset. Now, once again, even this method has problems: you could target a enemy with a plethora of low-level, save-affecting spells, and then hit him with the specific effect you want him to be affected by when his virtual damage stack is nearly full.

So, you don't do any damage until you bypass the threshold of their resistance?

You know what players don't find fun in RPGs? Wasting spells. It's not fun. It's a fun killer. Doing nothing with your spell is a wasted turn. And sure, you can say that you've helped by adding to the "virtual damage" (whatever the hell that is), but in the end, you didn't do shit that was important.

Obviously, such a rpg wouldn't be a 'classic' as defined by Mondblut, but it nonetheless would be a rpg.

From the sounds of it, it would be an RPG that would suck so bad it wouldn't even be worthy bundle fodder.

Also, the two examples that you made aren't exactly as right as they could be. If everything, the RNG of attacks make those examples two examples of unreliability. Low hp mages die, often, because they're targeted by a enemy and killed by a lucky hit or crit. Spells ARE overpowered because when you hit, you win the encounter on the spot. But this isn't a problem that is made or broken by the lack of RNG. This is a problem of D&D, since spells ARE overpowered, and monster damage has to be as high as possible because often they have 1-2 rounds of attack before a spell/crit hits them and instakills them.

The only problem with D&D is that they don't make enough video games out of the system.

 

[VanDerVaals]

The strength of the randomness is exactly the unpredicatability. The greatest fun moments in D&D are when you are in a hard fight and everything's falling apart because of bad luck, and then you manage to salvage the situation anyway through sheer tactical genius and inventiveness.

*through sheer bit of luck

OK, so you tried your best but everything was falling apart, when out of a sudden you got a crucial and successfull roll, right? With RNG you could as well play like a dumm dumm, but thankfully you managed to get that bit of a luck to win this time. Even the best strategy and tactics can't save you from the bad roll, you know.

 

[JarlFrank]

The strength of the randomness is exactly the unpredicatability. The greatest fun moments in D&D are when you are in a hard fight and everything's falling apart because of bad luck, and then you manage to salvage the situation anyway through sheer tactical genius and inventiveness.

*through sheer bit of luck

OK, so you tried your best but everything was falling apart, when out of a sudden you got a crucial and successfull roll, right? With RNG you could as well play like a dumm dumm, but thankfully you managed to get that bit of a luck to win this time. Even the best strategy and tactics can't save you from the bad roll, you know.

Having a bunch of backup plans, buffs, me having a very good fighter character who can reliably hit mid-level enemies even with low rolls, and using proper tactics (like taking out priority targets first, using area effect spells on groups, etc) helped more than sheer luck.

 

[octavius]

Good luck is the result of good planning.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

And a bit of luck here and there is nothing if not surprising. It can go either way, when it goes well it's a pleasant surprise (oh, I killed that really tough berserker dude with a nasty critical. Nice!)

Of course, there's the "oh, that berserker chunked me. The bastard...", too, but it balances out (mathematically, it has to.) And good planning actually mitigates the "bad luck" quite a bit. In simple gameplay terms a Shield spell + Power potion + party being Blessed and so on is going to make you have way more good luck than bad.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

The strength of the randomness is exactly the unpredicatability. The greatest fun moments in D&D are when you are in a hard fight and everything's falling apart because of bad luck, and then you manage to salvage the situation anyway through sheer tactical genius and inventiveness.

*through sheer bit of luck

OK, so you tried your best but everything was falling apart, when out of a sudden you got a crucial and successfull roll, right? With RNG you could as well play like a dumm dumm, but thankfully you managed to get that bit of a luck to win this time. Even the best strategy and tactics can't save you from the bad roll, you know.

Having a bunch of backup plans, buffs, me having a very good fighter character who can reliably hit mid-level enemies even with low rolls, and using proper tactics (like taking out priority targets first, using area effect spells on groups, etc) helped more than sheer luck.

Yup, that's the awesome part. It leads to so many good stories and moments. "Emergent" stories of combat encounters where anything and everything could/did happen. Great stuff.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I think maybe they don't actually understand how computers or the combats systems work? I don't know. I don't get it. Combat in a game with no randomness is simply a puzzle with one solution. Its zork-- its an adventure game.

Zork actually had two RPG-esque combats (troll and thief) where randomness affected the results. Though I agree with you that determinism would turn combat into a puzzle-like system where the only uncertainty lies in which choices will be made by your opponent.

I recall fighting the troll, but I thought it was just a situation where if you had some certain weapon you won and if you did not you lost. But it has honestly been like 30 years since I played, I never played Zork for very long either, I was not that into it..

 

[ProphetSword]

*through sheer bit of luck

OK, so you tried your best but everything was falling apart, when out of a sudden you got a crucial and successfull roll, right? With RNG you could as well play like a dumm dumm, but thankfully you managed to get that bit of a luck to win this time. Even the best strategy and tactics can't save you from the bad roll, you know.

Do you people believe that the die rolls live in vacuum? The statistics of your character help to push things in the direction they need to go. The better you are at something, the more likely you are to succeed. The way you guys talk, it all comes down to the dice, but that's really not true at all. Someone in with a +25 to spot something is consistently going to spot things much better than someone with a +2. And just because there's the rare occasion where the +2 person spots something the +25 missed doesn't mean the system doesn't work. Same is true with hit chances and saving throws, etc.

You guys make it sound like it's all up to the whim of the dice and nothing you've done helps at all. Maybe you need to learn to build better characters.

 

[Alex]

Well, if by RPG we are also including table-top games, then a game without randomness could definitely work, since it has been done a few times. The one game I remember, and which is probably the most well known, is Amber. I don't know about any computer game that tried something similar, but I do believe it would be possible to make such a game, and that it could even be a lot of fun.

However, such a game wouldn't be a classic RPG by any good meaning of the word classic. Amber Diceless RPG is really different from other role playing games from its time frame; and I believe that any computer game trying to emulate it would also be very different. I suspect the game would look more like an adventure game, with a focus on unique interactions rather than the repeating actions of an RPG. For instance, in a classic RPG, attacking an enemy will give you outcomes that aren't usually specific to this or that enemy. An enemy might be somewhat unique becuase it is mostly immune to cutting damage, but usually attacking a skeleton with a sword won't create a unique situation where you can either keep it at bay by using the blade, but not causing much damage, or close in to try to smash it with the butt of the handle.

 

[VanDerVaals]

*through sheer bit of luck

OK, so you tried your best but everything was falling apart, when out of a sudden you got a crucial and successfull roll, right? With RNG you could as well play like a dumm dumm, but thankfully you managed to get that bit of a luck to win this time. Even the best strategy and tactics can't save you from the bad roll, you know.

Do you people believe that the die rolls live in vacuum? The statistics of your character help to push things in the direction they need to go. The better you are at something, the more likely you are to succeed. The way you guys talk, it all comes down to the dice, but that's really not true at all. Someone in with a +25 to spot something is consistently going to spot things much better than someone with a +2. And just because there's the rare occasion where the +2 person spots something the +25 missed doesn't mean the system doesn't work. Same is true with hit chances and saving throws, etc.
.

Imagine that you're fighting a guy with the same HP as yours, both of you do the same amount of damage. You have 95% chance to hit the other guy 5%. 10 hits kill one of you. Now you miss the whole time with your mighty 95% and the other guy hits every time with his pathetic 5% . That kind of situation, as far as maths work, can occur. And the whole of your character building and planning has gone to shiet in such a humiliating way. That's rubbish for me.