Why is a 3d6 system objectively better than a d20 system?

>It really does not matter because he is looking to attack dnd
ftfy

...

What's a fantasy game that uses a 3d6 system? And I mean a game built to be fantasy, not GURPS.

Cause dice-pools got curves just how I like them.

>low results are minimised as much as possible.
Pussy ass faggot. D20 gives the most even spread. If you can't handle truly open probability and can't handle low rolls, you don't deserve to role play.

Low rolls don't even matter if you don't care about the actual result, unless you were looking for results less than 5%

>dice with a curve like (n>3)dx are better for roll over because they emphasize character skill over raw chance.
Sure, but you can't just make that change to a d20 system without expecting any hiccups. All the target numbers are calibrated based on your odds of hiring the numbers in the whole 1-20 range.

A curve also lets you more easily do degrees of success.

The benefits of a curve in roll-over binary systems could also be met by day, replacing your d20 with say, d8+6 or d10+5 or d12+4 or the like. Then you can emphasize your bonuses to meet dcs, without needing to mess with the probabilities of every individual dc you're capable of rolling.

Because most games want you to just meet or beat a target in some way, using 3d6 is like using a d10 while pretending that 12 and -1s will happen.

Why bother to add multiple times?

just feels better

Honestly 2d6 is all you need for most games. Decently number curve.

2d10 is pretty nice too.
slightly higher probabilty for the middle values but not too much to make things like stronger enemies semi-unbeatable

>Make a badass level 10 warrior
>Put him up against ten level 1 peasants

>Warrior has a 5% chance of stabbing his own jugular just because.
>Peasants has a 5% chance of stabbing warrior in the jugular just because

Shit system for shit players.

shit post for a shit thread

the best rock climber in existence can fall to his death because the stone crumbled, best pilot crashed because a wire frayed and jammed the elevators, etc. No matter how skilled you are, there's always something that can happen to mess you up. Otherwise there's no risk and no point in rolling. A nat 1 doesn't mean you impale yourself, you retard. Instead of slicing him open, you slip and barely miss.

besides, if you want to be great at scything through mooks, you take greater cleave and kill them all before they can act.

What's the point of having X levels if you're just going to end up being at the mercy of the critical?

The reason why rolling multiple dice is better is because it limits the number of times you'll get a really high roll or a really low roll, which makes those moments when you do roll a crit actually mean something.

I've been walking for over 20 years so far and I generally only trip over something once in a blue moon.

Your post is fucking retarded.

It's not. Bell curves are not inherently desirable at all, and only twats act like they are. Bell curves produce predictable results, and predictable is often boring.

yeah, but ordinary actions don't require skill checks, you dingdong.

>What's the point of having X levels if you're just going to end up being at the mercy of the critical?

What's the point of playing if you're not in constant danger?

>D20 or D% are better for roll under systems, for a roll over system like D&D 3d6 is better.

Why would roll under/over make any difference at all? It doesn't change the probability at all.

Honestly, the best dice system is narrative dice from FFG.

How that works?

Dear Diary,

OP was a retard again.

Anything you do technically requires a roll, it's just that no GM worth his salt is going to make you roll 1d20 every time your character takes a step.

Even so, I've also cooked, driven, played sports, climbed trees, lift heavy objects. etc. and not gotten injured or fucked up to the point where it would count as a critical fumble.

Having a 5% chance to fuck up only works if you're playing in a comedy campaign where everyone involved is the three stooges.

constant danger != critical fumbles.

If I'm a level 10 character going against a goblin, that goblin should be dead 99.99% of the time. I shouldn't have a 5% chance of knocking myself prone while throwing my sword across the battlefield while the goblin has a 5% chance of nailing me in an exposed slit in my armor.

Because let's face it, shit like orcs, dragons, and liches are already shit that's bad enough to fight without having to worry about them either criting you or you criting against yourself.

You build pools out of d8s, d12s, and d6s, with symbols instead of numbers. The symbols are things like success/failure, advantage/disadvantage, triumph/despair. Opposite symbols cancel each other out. The DM adds bad dice when something is particularly difficult, or circumstances are bad. You add good dice based on your character's skills and advantageous circumstances.

When you roll, you count up all the non canceled out symbols. 1 success remaining is enough to succeed, the rest all just add mechanical and flavorful gravy.

Notably, you can fail, but still gain an advantage, and succeed, but still gain a disadvantage.

For example, you might be trying to hack a computer to open a door. You fail, but have a non canceled out advantage symbol. You find data on the enemy patrol routes, so avoiding them will be easier, even if the door is closed.

Critical failures are not a default rule at all.

You've posted the picture already answering your question

>If I'm a level 10 character going against a goblin, that goblin should be dead 99.99% of the time

What is a level 10 character doing fighting against a singular goblin.
If you're just going to win automatically, there's no need to roll. At all. DM can just say "You win", and you can stop wasting time.

If there's no chance for failure, what's the point of rolling?

Also, you don't really know the system very well, because a level 10 character will win against a goblin 99% of the time. There's just a small chance that the goblin will not die immediately to the characters first attack or second attack (something like 1/400), and there's a small chance that they'll get a lucky strike that deals negligible damage, before the fighter then finishes them off.

>crit success, crit fails, pass, fail
>binary

are you high?

>dice with a curve like (n>3)dx

n>2 actually - remember that with dice you have three probability spreads: flat with one die, pyramidal or spiky with 2 dice, or a bell curve with any number of dice from 3 upwards.

You don't seem to have a clear comprehension of how probabilities work.

Flat lines and bell curves are cute ways to display the range of values a set of dice can produce, but in a system of binary checks (You either succeed or fail, there is no degree of success) they become largely meaningless. All that matters is the raw number of probability vs. the target number, which is easier to calculate with a single die roll.

In fact, a single roll of a die tends to just work better in these systems, because there's no need for adding together dice since all you need to do is read a single number.

You're also making the common mistake of assuming that the probability of the die result is what ultimately determines the reliability of systems with largely binary "success/failure" resolutions, rather than looking at the average value of the target numbers.

Games with higher/lower values are less swingy and produce more consistent results (regardless of whether the dice involved have a flat probability or curved), while systems with more median target values are more swingy.

Flat probability is ultimately just easier to use and calculate, and provide a wider degree of flexibility in regards to how swingy/consistent you want to make a particular game.

>Be Fighter
>Roll a 1
>Fall prone
>Goblin's turn
>Goblin hits me
>Next turn
>Try standing up
>AoO
>Hits
>Knocked down
>Goblin's turn
>Hits
>Repeat

>tfw you lose half you health to a goblin before the wizard Magic missiles it for you
>tfw the rest of the party shits on you to this day over it.
>tfw this was my first time playing D&D

Fuck fumbles man.

Dice pools are garbage, and anyone claiming their superiority have terrible taste.

>You either succeed or fail

or crit
or crit
orc rit
or crit
or crit
or crit

...

FFG's dice pool is hot garbage, and a perversion of AW mechanics.

>critical failure tables
Your GM sucks, end of story. Find a new game and find a new system.

Have you tried not perpetuating dead, unfunny memes only used by dumb faggots?

It's great as long as you don't have particularly munchkin inclined individuals.

Natural 1
A natural 1 (the d20 comes up 1) on an attack roll is always a miss.

Would you look at that. No prone shit, no loss of weapon, no effects from your attempt to make d20 look bad. Maybe if you knew the actual rules and not the shit that is passed off as rules by idiots on Veeky Forums you wouldn't be making a fool of yourself.

This rule is the same in literally every edition going back to at least 2e. Taken from the pfsrd.

You're forgetting that even if it's binary, the value of a +1 or a -1 will change on a curve, meaning you are more likely to look for situational modifiers, etc in some situations and less in others. It means that a target that's a little bit higher may be a lot less likely, or it may be much of a muchnes (on 2d10, the difference between a 19 and a 20 is like 2% but the difference between 10 and 11 is 10% for example). The success/fail might be binary, but if you're needing an 11+, spending something to make it a 10+ is a big deal. Turning that 5+ into a 4+ though might not be worth it, despite both being a +1 modifier to your roll.

I don't think you will ever realize how retarded your post is, which is a shame because, line by line, it gets exponentially more retarded, to the point where all I can really say is that all the problems lie within yourself, and you're going to carry that weight forever.

I'd pity you, but it would be a waste to pity on someone this stupid.

Multiple dice skew towards the average while with single dice, all values are equally possible

The core mechanics is literally AW translated to a dice pool with worse math. I'm not even scratching more than the most obvious flaw with those systems, but yes if you want to play a game set in the Staw Wars universe then using Age of Rebellion or Force and Destiny are really fun. Just don't try and pretend the game is any more elegant or well designed than other popular, fun, and fundamentally broken systems.

I enjoyed the year long campaign we had, but I will never touch that game system again.

>You're forgetting that even if it's binary, the value of a +1 or a -1 will change on a curve, meaning you are more likely to look for situational modifiers, etc in some situations and less in others.

That's actually a mark against curves, because rather than a flat bonus, the situational modifiers become dramatically more pronounced as they accrue, when the opposite should take place so that the diminishing return inhibits players from wasting too much time looking for stacking bonuses after they already have one or two.

Stay salty about your dying game.

Some GMs roll on a table and one of the results of said table is the player goes prone.

The GM was being a dick though but that goes without saying.

>dying

If pathfinder is dying, that means every game other than 5e is stone dead.

Is that what makes you so upset?
Why your heart is made of salt?

If you actually think that, it begets a fundamental misunderstanding of either FFG's or AW's system. Given you've said you played a year long FFG game, I'm leaning towards misunderstanding AW.

In AW, there are three possible outcomes to a player trying something:

Player succeeds
Player succeeds, but GM makes a move
Player fails, GM makes a move.

In FFG, there are 6 possible outcomes (technically more, but I'm grouping them up here)

Player succeeds, with a circumstantial advantage.
Player succeeds
Player succeeds with a circumstantial disadvantage
Player fails with a circumstantial advantage
Player fails
Player fails with a circumstantial disadvantage.

You could argue that GM moves in AW can be beneficial to the players, so that all the outcomes I just listed for FFG are possible. and I agree, sometimes they should be.

However, FFG's mechanics give the GM rules support for exactly how often the GM can have negative or beneficial moves. It produces richer outcomes in the even that the GM is new, or learning. It is an easier to play fairly system. The nice part is all the skills also have suggested outcomes for the circumstantial advantage/disadvantages, which makes improving easier as well.

>Pathfinder dying means that every other non-5e game is dying
>This is what 3aboos actually believe

And those rules are third party at best. They are not core, and they do not represent the rules of the system as it should be used in these "debates". This leads to you hating the system for something that isn't even in the system because you have confused houserules for actual rules.

D&D as a whole is built off of the backbone of supplements, 3rd party bullshit, and homebrews my nigga.

Hell, I'm pretty sure D&D as a whole started off as a homebrew itself back in the day Gygax and co. were playing/designing wargames and shit.

>the 2nd most popular game is "dying"

Your response was cute though. It helps illustrate how really dumb you are.
What's your favorite game? Should we talk about how it will never be as popular as 3rd edition, or do you play 5e?

There's a difference between being niche and dying user.

I mean, ShadowRun, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulhu, etc. were popular enough to get video game adaptations done at the very least so there's obviously an audience for them somewhere.

>There's a difference between being niche and dying user.

Cute. Stay salty about how much you care about a system being more popular than whatever horse you're backing is.

Really. Talking about "niche" when you can just go ahead and say "unpopular" and "dying" when you're talking about a game that still has more players than whatever game you love so much will ever have.

But, you're dumb, so go ahead with your next equally salty but likely even more idiotic reply.

it depends
3d6 roll under works really fucking well for GURPS because it first means that numbers can stay in a reasonable range (you'll rarely buy a skill rating higher than +10, since in most cases that gives you an effective skill of 20, and you'll never be reaching effective skills of 30 or more because there are next to no situations where that's practical) and second means that 'small' bonuses like +1 to +4 or penalties from -1 to -4 are actually really significant because they massively effect your success chances (a -2 penalty at skill 10 lowers your chances from like, 50% to nearly half that)
i'm not sure how well 3d6 roll over or d20 roll under works - i've never actually seen a system that uses either of those.

d20 roll over isn't too great, but it's good if you want really swingy results and an emphasis on boosting your bonuses really high. that said, it's going to be absolute hell for a DM to balance compared to 3d6 roll under - instead of going 'this hard task has a -4 penalty' which will easily apply to everyone and massively affect everyone from skill 10 to skill 16, determining the DC for a party for some tasks where skill modifiers can range from +2 to +20 is.. not as easy
you're either challenging one character and therefore making it literally impossible for everyone else, or challenging some of the characters and making it trivial for one.

uncomfirmed crits are cancer and i hate it, crit fumbles even moreso because they just aren't a thing in most d20 systems, and are just some incredibly dumb houserule people think is now a global truth
and ironically they work much better in 3d6 since the chances for hitting a 3 or 4, or 17 or 18 are so incredibly low

I'm pretty sure you've just proven you drank the Kool-Aid. Even the suggestions in the game are so lazy they might as well be binary, and the "conversation tree" for a check is not improved by the outcomes which the game has sacrificed potential successes for.

>Player does X
GM either let's them do it or caps for a roll.

>Player rolls
The result is one of:
- Success, and...
- Success
- Success, but...
- Failure, but...
- Failure
- Failure, and...

In AW it is:
- Success, and...
- Success, but...
- Success (GM takes note for later)
- Failure, but...
- Failure, and...

The only difference is FFG included Triumph and Dispair, of which you can have both or one of in a roll with a 8% chance. It's literally just AW with crits and fumbles, and they add little to the narative since crits and fumbles are meant to be at moments with narative weight.

It literally adds nothing, takes longer to resolve, and has worse may behind it. The entire system isn't terrible by any means, but there are huge gaping flaws.

Systems like ShadowRun or WoD or CoC aren't going to pull in record numbers like D&D is, but there are still people who prefer those systems and have likely been playing them long before 3aboos were even a thing, let alone a sizable population of the tabletop gaming community.

Dying would imply that it's losing support/fans.

Which is best used to describe 3rd edition since people are actively jumping from 3rd to 5th edition.

Unpopular would imply that it either has no fans or there is a sizable population that despise it.

Which, again, is best used to describe 3rd edition since a lot of people have lodged complaints against it, and have moved on to other systems.

I understand that you cannot accept 3.X is dying at we speak but realize, the only people who give a shit are people who played 3.X, it's existence doesn't affect people who have already moved on to other systems.

>Anything you do technically requires a roll
That sounds like a shit rule. Most games I've read through say to only roll when there is risk involved.

Statistically, everything you do has a degree of risk to it.

But, again, most GM's aren't going to make you roll to see if you trip over your own feet and crack your skull open on the ground.

The closest this is to being true is either the oldest edition of D&D or 3.5 which has rules for entirely too much. As much as people hate Forge games, the basic tenants have made it into most modern games.

You've clearly never GM'd AW if you're misunderstanding its system as badly as this, or you're deliberately falsely characterizing it.

All of the PC moves fall into the same pattern: Success, Conditional Success, Failure.

From a GM's perspective, FFG is more fun to GM for. If that means I've drank the kool-aid, that speaks more towards your tendency to set up unfalsifiable and fallacious positions than anything about me.

>proprietary dice

5d10 is the best system

You are really thick. The AW conditions are:

- Success
- Success with a cost
- Failure

From a player's perspective, this is what you see. The GM is given a toolbox to turn this into story components by making moves. Once you break those moves down into the narative response to a roll you get the expanded list I wrote.

FFG just makes all the GM stuff transparent which isn't a good thing for a fiction first or mostly story driven game, because the majority of conditions are more complicated than the plain and obvious categorization. Literally the only thing it adds to a GM's response is the intensifier of triumph and dispair, and those are very complicated to work with in most rolls. Add in the fact that high XP players need to roll against harder dice pools and you run into a lot of narative dead ends you are either going outside the rules to avoid or hand waving into something that makes more sense.

ITT: People who don't understand probability or the resolution mechanics used by various RPGs, but attempting to argue about both anyway.

>FFG just makes all the GM stuff transparent which isn't a good thing for a fiction first or mostly story driven game

I've already commented on this, and I prefer it this way, because it makes everything fair. I trust my players to not abuse it. Also, you can always make hidden rolls in whatever system.

GURPS has an entire book series that makes it built to be a fantasy, I believe you don't even need the basic set if you have them.

...

You're stupidity stopped being cute.
Basically, you're the kind of kid who doesn't realize that if pathfinder lost 97% of its players, it would still be more popular than every game outside the big eight.

Do you really comprehend that?
As far as "sizable population that despises it", you're basically talking out your ass, because it's still the 2nd most popular game. You and your few friends hardly represent the larger gaming community, who by virtue of choice in games, disagrees with you by enabling it to remain, as I remind you once again, the 2nd most popular game.

Just because you don't like that it's popular doesn't mean you can continue to make a fool of yourself like this.

>you're

If you're going to claim to be smarter than someone, at least make sure that you check your spelling/grammar mate.

But I digress.

>Basically, you're the kind of kid who doesn't realize that if pathfinder lost 97% of its players, it would still be more popular than every game outside the big eight.

A game calling itself D&D is popular, who would'a fucking thought?

Either way, I still don't see how Pathfinder bleeding players affects other tabletop gaming communities that have no relation to D&D as a whole.

>As far as "sizable population that despises it", you're basically talking out your ass, because it's still the 2nd most popular game.

You keep bringing this same argument up in every other thread that shits on 3.X mate, I've seen you multiple times before.

Popularity has nothing to do with its quality as a game, sometimes games become popular due to having great mechanics, other times games become popular due to having great marketing.

I'm not going to argue points that I've probably already argued before with you, Richard Petty, but I am going to say that whether you choose to ignore it or not, there are probably just as many people who shit on 3.X as there are people that love it.

Especially since most hardcore 3.X players who have knowledge on the system but aren't obsessive 3aboos will come out and say "listen, we know this game has some shitty problems but we still like playing it anyways."

>best pilot crashed because a wire frayed

this is why I never fly on planes, 1 in 20 chance to crash is absolutely insane.

a nat 1 doesn't actually mean anything unless you use really shitty houserules
stop being a faggot

>fixating on a typo

Classy.

Either way, it's funny how you're trying to say something about quality when we were discussing popularity, and how you're an absolute moron in all realms and regards.

>the 2nd most popular system is dying! It is! And I bet it's because of all my hard work in endless, constant shitposting!

Hate to burst your ego bubble, but 3rd edition is actually still extremely healthy for a game that's over a decade old. In fact, it's beyond healthy, since it still has more players than any game outside of 5e. And, even if it's losing players, that's the natural cycle of a system, so you shouldn't pat yourself on the back like you think that it's "dying" all thanks to how much you're committed to bitching about it.

I guess it just goes to show that, hey, you're a moron who just needs to bitch and moan about how much you don't like a game that's popular.

Seriously, stop making a fool of yourself like this. Or, at least put on a trip, so people can filter your endless salt, since you seem committed to bitching about a system that's likely going to continue to be popular for a decade or more, considering how well it's doing even after the release of not only 4e, but 5e.

God, how that must eat away at you. The idea that the game you hate so much will continue to be more popular than [that game you like] for years to come.

And all your shitposting will be unable to do anything about it.

Of course, this is probably going to spur you into making even more of a fool of yourself by continuing your idiotic shitposting, and the sad part is, you probably do more harm to your "crusade" by being such an idiot than you'll ever be able to comprehend with your tiny salt-encrusted brain.

This wacky slapstick approach to games would be fine if it was limited to wacky slapstick games and not to games that claim to be about heros fighting for the fate of the world.

Bell curve makes it less likely to crit fail/succeed and all rolls trend towards the average. Its not really better, its just more consistent. Some people like the randomness of a 1d20, some like the consistency of 3d6, both are valid.

>Its not really better, its just more consistent.

Not really, especially with binary "yes-no" results.
Even with non-binary resolutions mechanics, the bottom line is that the system is adapted to the dice, and the consistency has considerably less to do with the dice involved and more to do with the target numbers.

Even in the case of critical triggers, some 3d6 systems have crit triggers on 16 and above, which totals to 4.63% of rolls as opposed to the d20's 5% for a 20. If you wanted more crits, you could expand it to 15 and above, and similarly you could lower it, or even include secondary rolls to adjust the numbers more minutely.
Same goes with the d20, and the "confirm crit" rule actually reduces the amount of crits, while at the same time expanded crit ranges increase them.

Ultimately, consistency (ie, how often someone succeeds or fails, or the degree of their failure/success) is much more dependent on the system than it is on the dice involved, and arguing about which one is more or less random ultimately is so irrelevant that you might as well be arguing which color of sports car is fastest.

While 3d6 has a number of advantages (common dice that roll well, lack of transparency and difficulty in use dissuade players from overthinking the mathematical portion of the game, etc.), the "consistency" argument relies entirely on pretending that dice rolls exist in a vacuum.

>TTRPG sales are up
>Pathfinder sales are down
>Payer base has decreased in size
>Paizo's second edition is changing genres
All signs point to the game dying, while other games are doing the opposite. It'll be fun next year when FFG Star Wars finally overtakes Pathfinder.

>It'll be fun next year when FFG Star Wars finally overtakes Pathfinder.

Why? What makes that fun, assuming it happens?

Also, funnily enough, while Pathfinder went down last quarter, 3.5 went up, and 3rd edition in general actually grew, the exact opposite of what you'd expect when someone tries to use the word "dying."

But, is there any point in caring? Any point in obsessing about it?

>crit and botch
I was thinking skills, not combat. Fair enough.
Crit & botch aren't super important, but fair enough .
Though if you want as close as possible to 5% crit on 3d6 youll be critting on a 15+, IIRC.

And yeah , I meant n>=3. My bad. Was late.

critical failures are sometimes possible with skill checks, see locks "jamming" - note that in AD&D, the "skill" and general non-combat "proficiency" systems were percentile roll under.

Red ones are fastest. Everybody knows that. pfff.

>Pathfinder 2e
What? Source?

Because Hero System uses 3d6, and it's the best system.

This.
The only real difference is that there's a probability bell curve, as opposed to a straight progression.

I like my crits rare. I give a big middle finger to systems that have a critical failure rate above 5%.

Ah Richard Petty, in case you forgot, I don't particularly care about 3.X's popularity since I don't play 3.X and I've already moved on to another system.

My system of choice may have a smaller playerbase than 3.X but as long as I can find games, it doesn't really matter.

It isnt you have no idea how many balance issues that causes

>I don't care
>I just have a desperate need to constantly shitpost

The evidence you provide works against you.

I've moved to other systems years ago and I don't particularly give a shit about 3.X as a whole anymore.

The only thing I took offense to was your idea that a game being popular means that the game is automatically better than less popular games within the same genre and your insistence that because I disagreed with you, it automatically means that I'm a shitposter.

Then I realized who I was talking to and I pretty much filed it away under general 3aboo fanboy behavior.

>I don't care
>I just have a desperate need to constantly shitpost

The evidence you provide works against you.