|
Post by aldarron on Jul 22, 2010 15:18:58 GMT -6
I think it would serve better to work your ideas into a document; rather than reposting them elsewhere in such a long series and without the responses. Just my 2 cents. I think it's possible you guys might actually be running some of your numbers a bit wrong in combat. There is actually no need for reducing fractions or other divisions. For example a hero with a magic sword attacking a 3HH dragon would roll 5d6/6 and count every other 6 as a hit (2:1 AF vs. HH) if he rolled 1,3, 6, 6, 6. Then he scored 1 hit (reducing the dragon from 3 "hit die" to 2 "hit die". Next round he rolls again 1, 3, 3, 4, 6 and either you interpret the combined 6's over both rounds or you treat each round seperately. You don't have to have to divide 5d6 by 2 to get the number of attacks in a round. Is there any disagreement with what I am saying with that? I think it'd be great if you've found a method around the fraction problem; if you go ahead and roll the FC - 4+1 in your example- but then only count the number of hits indicated (as dice to throw in Fins table) you are rolling a lot more dice than you need to and thus altering your odds of getting hits I think. Secondly, I believe you are erroneously reading that 2nd level humans get 2d6 attacks and 5th level armored humans would get 5d6 and I don't believe the rules say that at all. I'd say there's no right or wrong about how one choosses to play the game provided one is consistent. We've discussed a little bit about some of your ideas regarding the attack strenght of characters per level on the other thread and I'd say that to convince us that your ideas regarding levels is “proper” for lack of a better word then you will have to explain how we have misinterpreted the meaning of the Fighting Capability tables in OD&D and what they are for if not to be used as the man ratings for CHAINMAIL combat. As it stands the published tables are a stumbling block for your dice for level theories to be seen as anything more than your preference. Best evidenced by the attack matrices in d&d as opposed to the smoothed out attack matrix of monsters. I think you need to elaborate on this in a lot more detail. I'm still skeptical of your use of the d20 attack tables to interpret CHAINMAIL. I'd refer you this recent post by Rob Kuntz : odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=gygax&action=display&thread=4176&page=2
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Jul 22, 2010 15:35:15 GMT -6
I think it would serve better to work your ideas into a document; rather than reposting them elsewhere in such a long series and without the responses. Just my 2 cents. Agreed. Cooper, you have some neat ideas but sometimes they take a while to digest. If you put them into a word doc or PDF it would be really cool!
|
|
|
Post by cooper on Jul 22, 2010 15:38:14 GMT -6
A) 0- level fighter w/plate: thac0 20 AC 2 vs. same B) 1 armored foot 1d6/6 vs. same C) 4th level hero Thac0: 17 (exceptional str bonus +3/+3) vs. 0- level fighter. D) 1 hero 4d6/6 vs. 1 armored foot
In fight A both sides have about a 15% chance of scoring a killing blow assuming average hit points and average damage. In fight B both sides have a 16% chance of scoring a killing blow.
In fight C our hero has a 45% +-10% chance of out right killing the 0- level fighter (before you ask about str. bonus how many no-name npc fighters get stats in anyones game? none as far as I know, only heroes aka PC's and every hero from conan to fafhrd would have exceptional str.). In fight D the hero has about 55% chance to out right kill 1 unit. In both C and D the hero can take out up to 4 units/0-level foot soldiers.
My point is not to say they are the same. My point is to say they are analogs and close enough in practice to be interchangable, which is why I believe gygax said you can use CHAINMAIL with d&d. I think I've already shown that monsters in d&d are literal translations from the former to the latter. I've shown giants, trolls, dragons as examples and they literally come out the same on the other end.
The only difference is that d&d provides a range of outcomes outside the average. If one sees a "hit" in CHAINMAIL as doing 3.5 dmg and 1 unit creature having 3.5 hit points it makes perfect sense. D&D simply allowed the ranges to broaden to 1-6 and then even further with variable dice. Armored foot was no longer a fixed amount, but a range of numbers (say AC 0-3) further adding variability.
Now My CHAINMAIL 3rd edition says it was written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Can someone educate me on what happened to Mr. Perren and why he wasn't included in the d&d game?
I'll try and put it into a pdf, though I'm not particularly savvy with that stuff.
|
|
|
Post by Finarvyn on Jul 22, 2010 19:44:32 GMT -6
I'll try and put it into a pdf, though I'm not particularly savvy with that stuff. Hey, Cooper! If you put it into a Word doc and organize it the way you like I can do a final layout and make it into a PDF for you.
|
|
|
Post by aldarron on Jul 22, 2010 19:49:02 GMT -6
To the first point, I think your ideas deserve a lot closer look than I can give now, and I agree that there is some level of correspondence between the relative combat strengths of D&D & CHAINMAIL, but.... well, what needs to be done is compare across a greater range of creatures and look at unrelated combat systems as a control. Already I see problems with your dragon example, but I' leave that for another post and as I've stated before, I don't think Exceptional Strength was ever meant to be or in fact ever was typical for Player Characters. Anyway, its not so much the Pre D&D creature stats, as your idea that character levels and the d20 combat system are purposely designed to be statistically interchangeable with the CHAINMAIL combat systems that I'd like to see explored further along with what your alternate explanation for Fighting Capacity is. We spent a lot of time hashing about ideas in the Blackmoor combat threads and the lesson I took from that is not to be quick to be convinced of ideas, no matter how much sense they seem to have at first blush. EDIT: It just occured to me Cooper, that Swords and Spells should prove very useful to your research. Although some changes/additions were made to CHAINMAIL for 3rd edition, to bring it more in line with D&D, Swords and Spells was Gary's real attempt to harmonize the two into a miniatures battle system. Jeff Perren - There are other posts on this board that talk about the history of CHAINMAIL, but Jeff Perren was, and I believe still is, the owner of a game/hobby store. Ther are some pictures of him and Gygax and Gygax and Rob Kuntz playing CHAINMAIL at a convention five or six years ago floating around on the web. He wrote the Mass Combat/troop type rules. Gygax polished and published them in the Domesday Book newsletter in 1970. Gygax then added the other sections and published the whole as a booklet called CHAINMAIL in 1971. He was not credited for D&D because he had nothing to do with it.
|
|