TOPIC: VTD going to switch to 1d20

I'm not saying 1% crits is the perfect ideal number - and there's no way (barring a huge research project that we can't actually implement now) to know what the "right" number of crits is.

I'm very comfortable with straight d20, but you'll have to accept the number of nat 1s being much higher than normal - which I think is fine in VTD.

And you can absolutely limit the number of crits in VTD - have a per-round limit, and ask the players who are specifically seeking 20s to roll first. Once you hit the limit, all other 20s are treated as 19s.

If I had to guess, I'd put the # of crits in a 3 round combat, about 21 slides, on an "easy" crit board by a new team to about 1. A hard board with good players going quickly, maybe 30 slides? Probably 2 on average.

Honestly d20 might be the best recreation, considering good bumps and bad bumps. The only real problem is the 1s, and if it's that big of a deal, you could add a line that re-rolls 1s as either a 1 or a 2.

Singsalot wrote: I'm not saying 1% crits is the perfect ideal number - and there's no way (barring a huge research project that we can't actually implement now) to know what the "right" number of crits is.

I'm very comfortable with straight d20, but you'll have to accept the number of nat 1s being much higher than normal - which I think is fine in VTD.

And you can absolutely limit the number of crits in VTD - have a per-round limit, and ask the players who are specifically seeking 20s to roll first. Once you hit the limit, all other 20s are treated as 19s.

Aren't all players seeking 20's? I don't understand that....lol. I think you mean for the players to determine a 20's priority order....lol. Which would depend on the monster. Well if it a Dragon then the one with Dragon killing spear goes first but if it is a X then Y goes first. I understand what you mean but I find it silly since multiple crits are possible, depending on the board is how possible.

Singsalot wrote: Honestly d20 might be the best recreation, considering good bumps and bad bumps. The only real problem is the 1s, and if it's that big of a deal, you could add a line that re-rolls 1s as either a 1 or a 2.

Agreed. A big improvement over 1d10+10 in any event. There's room to iterate for V3 if 1d20 is a real problem.

jedibcg Banjo 513 Lover wrote:

Singsalot wrote: I'm not saying 1% crits is the perfect ideal number - and there's no way (barring a huge research project that we can't actually implement now) to know what the "right" number of crits is.

I'm very comfortable with straight d20, but you'll have to accept the number of nat 1s being much higher than normal - which I think is fine in VTD.

And you can absolutely limit the number of crits in VTD - have a per-round limit, and ask the players who are specifically seeking 20s to roll first. Once you hit the limit, all other 20s are treated as 19s.

Aren't all players seeking 20's? I don't understand that....lol. I think you mean for the players to determine a 20's priority order....lol. Which would depend on the monster. Well if it a Dragon then the one with Dragon killing spear goes first but if it is a X then Y goes first. I understand what you mean but I find it silly since multiple crits are possible, depending on the board is how possible.

I mean, if a player is trying to seek to insta-kill, stun, etc. I guess all players could try for 20s and if a conflict arises, players could defer or roll-off for it.

Daniel White wrote:

Singsalot wrote: Honestly d20 might be the best recreation, considering good bumps and bad bumps. The only real problem is the 1s, and if it's that big of a deal, you could add a line that re-rolls 1s as either a 1 or a 2.

Agreed. A big improvement over 1d10+10 in any event. There's room to iterate for V3 if 1d20 is a real problem.

Why not attempt to get a better model before V2 instead of settling on something that might be a real problem though?

jedibcg Banjo 513 Lover wrote:

Daniel White wrote:

Singsalot wrote: Honestly d20 might be the best recreation, considering good bumps and bad bumps. The only real problem is the 1s, and if it's that big of a deal, you could add a line that re-rolls 1s as either a 1 or a 2.

Agreed. A big improvement over 1d10+10 in any event. There's room to iterate for V3 if 1d20 is a real problem.

Why not attempt to get a better model before V2 instead of settling on something that might be a real problem though?

I see the reasoning there, but am not convinced 1d20 "might be a real problem."

Edit: I actually thought AC was too low before so this may be my bias talking.

Maybe we should change our point of view:

From the players' perspective, what is the ideal number of random d20s, random 1s, and 19s, 18s, 11-17s, and 2-10s?

From there, what mathematical formula is the best? We could just do a d100 roll that has its results translated to fit, i.e. 3% 1s, 5% 2s-16s, 6% 17s-19s, 4% 20s?

Remember this one formula has to work for all players at all difficulties on all monsters; other changes would presumably only be AC, HP, and immunities.

Exbalz wrote:

Singsalot wrote:

Endgame wrote: I would think 2d10 would give an appropriate curve while also providing the appx 1% crit area as measured by Fiddy. That would be fewer Crits than I normally see on my runs, but at the same time it would be dramatically fewer instances of the puck going off the back or falling way short.

This was what I was going to suggest. It creates a hill at 10/11, while providing no 1s and few 20s, and gives a pretty good shot at the "meat" of the enemy, with the right bonus-to-AC balance.

Other things you could try are 5d4, or something that is like a d20 +5 but that rotates 21-25 back into, say, 10-15

If we're talking about simplifying the process to make it easier to implement in a short time frame and to (perhaps) accomodate for some sliding skill, what about 3D10 and drop the lowest value?

So I pulled the results of the 3D10-drop-1 system and this is what I got:

Rolls of 2-10: 21.5%
11-15: 45.8%
16-18: 24.8%
19: 5.1%
20: 2.8%

This puts nat 20's at a higher rate than 1% on a D20, which seems desireable, with a huge reduction from current VTD. I separate 19 out specifically for TPTB to determine if 7.9% for "Keen" rollers is a desired amount of crits (much better than 20% in current VTD), with a nice middle ground for +hit to be worthwhile for higher difficulty (AC 25 or higher).

With real sliding, I seem to remember being pretty consistent at sliding 15 or above on the tables at my last Gencon. I'm sure I must have missed occasionally or gotten a lower number, but I don't remember it happening as often as hitting 15 or more. Sliding better seems like it is something that is likely to happen as players gain experience.

What if there was a +1 per player experience level to hit added instead of the 1d10+10? Then it becomes 1d20+player level. Example: 3rd level player 1d20+3, 9th level player 1d20+9. It's less than 1d10+10 but it accounts for sliding experience over player time. So now it becomes possible for characters to roll in the 2-9 range and end up with weak attack rolls outside their equipment bonuses. But once we're back to the real tables slides all revert to skill alone.

I would also add a modifier to the above suggestion. Dice totals, no matter the size of the to hit bonus, cap at 20 the way 1d10 plus 10 does. So if you want to run Nightmare and hit monsters that have 25AC you still have to equip your to hit modifiers or roll a lot of natural 20's by luck. And rolling a natural 1 is still an automatic miss no matter what the level bonus.

This incorporates d20 and accounts for sliding skill over time, which makes sense since more experienced adventurers would become more skilled sliders.

And again, this is a virtual TD adjustment only.

Daniel White wrote:
I see the reasoning there, but am not convinced 1d20 "might be a real problem."

Edit: I actually thought AC was too low before so this may be my bias talking.

In PTD Jeff has multiple was to make a monster hard to hit with a slide. The board can be slick or it can be slow. It can have different speed zones on it in fact. The placement of the numbers can make it easy or difficult to hit certain numbers or easy to hit others. He can manipulate the AC of the monster. He can have affects that only odds or evens hits. That only 50% hit (incorpeal or blink).

The AC was same as what it usually is so I cannot blame him for the nightmare monsters being 'easy' to hit. Most of those other things are in aspect that currently cannot be handled in VTD and thus are handled by the app roller. The fault of being able to hit was the d10+1 imo. 10% chance of missing with 1 was all there was for most NM players I imagine in that model. I don't know about anyone else but I know my group missing more than 10% of the time. They don't land on 1 more than 10% of them time but if everyone is sliding (which almost never is the case) then 1 person is likely to miss in my group because they got bump or slide poor or whatever. However if you +hit is a 14, which is a decent number for nightmare then on a d20 model you will miss 50% of the time on a 25AC monster. That doesn't feel right to me on a slide. If this was DnD then sure, lower damage and lower hp fine. Obviously the higher your +hit is the less that is going to depend on the bounce of the die, but I didn't build my builds based on a random dice roll, nor did anyone else. Because slides are not random. There is intent. Granted there is chaos as multiple intents bump into each other, but sometimes that bumping is intent. Our cleric will never hit a NM monster unless they slide a 20, but they sure can bump someone else on or off a number.

jedibcg Banjo 513 Lover wrote: However if you +hit is a 14, which is a decent number for nightmare then on a d20 model you will miss 50% of the time on a 25AC monster.

I'm ok with that because it means there's more of a point to bardsong, prayer, drinking potions, etc.

I think that's why d10+10 was tried in the first place, to limit low rolls.

If weak players bumping is something you desperately wanted back, you could have a player roll an 18+ on the die roll to give a certain player a re-roll, or to keep bad bumps, you could make the d20 roll split evenly between everyone who's rolled to that point, with 1-10 a miss and 11-20 matching classes.

However, I think keeping VTD combat simple is more desirable than re-creating PTD combat.