Would classic RPGs be viable without the random factor?

[Gulnar]

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).

I'm not exactly bitching that the system is unrealistic, while arguing that such a system would be more realistic. I'm arguing that such a system would be as functional as a RNG based one.

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.

Which is basically the same thing as the enemy rolling its save. And at least this system would lessen the impact of save or die/save or suck spells; instead of having the 50% chance to wipe out the whole encounter with a wail of the banshee/weird/mass hold/slow/glittering dust/sleep, now you have to hit a certain number of them before the enemy gets killed/starts sucking.

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

You mean, like the new batch of D&D based games?
Like Sword Coast Legend? Like the original nwn/nwn2?

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

To this, i will agree. There aren't enough D&D games. But this doesn't mean that a deterministic-based rpg wouldn't work.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

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.

Tying AI behaviors to the D&D character sheet so companions act autonomously has been done before? Where? I didn't think it had been.

Anyway, my idea isn't to just have stupid companions (although Intelligence can play a role, no doubt.) It's about having companions that act on their own interests and behalf. You can't just take your Evil Drow Cleric and say, "Hey, you're going to stand right there and cast a spell WHEN I TELL YOU. Got it?" You'd have to respect all the characters in your party. In other words, it's more of an adventure sim with "real" companions, rather than the player being the "omnipotent authority figure" as Jaheira so lovingly points out in Baldur's Gate.

The AI in my idea would also have Overarching Tactical Options that the player can still set. Tell the Drow Cleric to conserve her spells, she will (begrudgingly) listen. Probably. Of course most Good characters will want to do all they can to help. But maybe a Chaotic Evil Wizard in your Good-aligned party decides he wants to just stand back and watch in the next battle. But when he does participate, he's deadly and knows his way around a grimoire. Do you keep him around or send him off for his lack of trying? That would be more of a scripted, story personality, so each character can have different quirks like that. Combat AI would be separate, and it can be improved as well and based more on the character sheet.

Character sheet AI would mean that characters act and get bonuses according to their skills and stat scores. Some new things would have to be implemented from the 3.5 ruleset (Knowledge skills, etc.), and some tweaks would need to be made but those stat scores can reflect to a degree the AI of the companions you're with. So again in my example:

Evil Drow Cleric has a high score in Knowledge (Undead). When fighting an undead for the first time, she adapts quickly (good RNG roll), maybe even already knowing its weaknesses and acting accordingly. Maybe the undead creature can level drain you, so she casts a spell to prevent that before it even gets a chance to do it. Alternatively, if she doesn't have knowledge of undead, maybe she tries something else that is in the "less efficient" RNG pool of spells she can cast. If you want to take it even further, a separate Bestiary of knowledge can fill out the more you fight certain types of enemies (Lords of Xulima has this.) So even a low-Knowledge score can eventually, over time be overcome by fighting enough of the same creatures. But that would take time and would be less efficient. And higher Intelligence scores (wizards, etc.) can hasten that process, giving you a reason to maybe take a couple higher INT characters as well. Or even role a Fighter type with a few points of INT as an alternative build...

The main idea would be to have the companions have their set, mostly static personalities that they act accordingly by, with less input from the player. You would have to rely on your companions, for good and for bad. It's no different than RNG that's already in D&D CRPGs, except that it extends to your companions. It would add unpredictability, both good and bad, and more of a sense that you are just a cog in the grand scheme instead of again, the omnipotent, all-seeing, all-doing God character telling everyone what to do to a tee.

It would have to be done well and with a careful hand, but I'd love to see it. At the very least it would be a refreshing change of pace from the Total Control CRPGs we are used to. Just my 2. (Sorry for the thread derail, just saw this post.)

 

[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?

Games can be good without RNG.

But can RPGs?

Yup. I don't think the randomness really adds anything. It is all the other stuff that matters. Randomness has nothing to do with 1 shotting people.

 

[ProphetSword]

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.

Granted, it could happen. However, the chances are so slim as to be laughable. In this situation, you would need to roll a 1 ten times in a row while your opponent rolls a 20 ten times in a row. I'm not sure what the actual probability would be (and if someone is good enough at math to figure it out, feel free to post it), but I bet the chances are astronomical.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

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.

Granted, it could happen. However, the chances are so slim as to be laughable. In this situation, you would need to roll a 1 ten times in a row while your opponent rolls a 20 ten times in a row. I'm not sure what the actual probability would be (and if someone is good enough at math to figure it out, feel free to post it), but I bet the chances are astronomical.

Who would give a shit if it did happen once, just reload...

 

[Delterius]

There's no luck in CRPGS. That natural 20 is nothing special if all it does is avoid another reload. Or cause it. You can either do something or you can not. And in RPGs you almost always can.

And in tabletop, 'luck' is no more than a powerful illusion cast by the DM. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That lucky critical miss from the evil dragon which saved your character was mandated by God. Not by the false idol of the Dice.

And yet you are all blissfully ignorant. Fools.

Then again I like shiny dice so that stays.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

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.

Shout out to you, man. I just picked up the Dark Sun bundle + Forgotten Realms Gold Box bundle on GOG. It will be my first time going through them when I play (currently playing BG:EET so it will be awhile before I get to them), but I thank you for this post. It inspired me to check 'em out (and I really liked what I saw.)

 

[Telengard]

The truly disingenuous part of this particular argument (which one does find everywhere) is it ignores one of the basic, fundamental building blocks of rpgs versus strategy games versus adventure games. Strategy games are designed around pitched battles. Your side is not automatically gifted with the enviable position. Sure, if you're white in chess, you have a slight advantage, but both sides are largely equal, and you compete to the death to see who wins.

A crpg is different. In a crpg, the player characters are expected to win this fight and the next one and the next one after that and the next one and the next one and the next one after that and... Rpg fights are thus not fights between equals. Odds are in your favor at all times, and it is the slow wearing down of resources that is your potential downfall. Since the Player is expected to win any one particular fight, there must be implemented in each fight a method for the Player to be able to achieve that win. Because that is the case, in removing randomness, you also remove the chance of failure. Because there must be a path to victory, and since there is no randomness, there must then inevitably be a certain list of keypresses that will hand the Player said victory conditions. The player's task in such a situation is to find that list of keypresses and input them in order to output success. Because victory must be possible, and because there is no randomness, victory must then be inevitable once the proper keypresses are discovered.

And so by removing randomness from crpgs, you have not created chess, you have created chess puzzles. In other words, a chess board, pieces in a certain grouping, and you are given a certain number of moves to achieve the desired puzzle result. And in so doing, you have stopped being a classic crpg, and become a puzzle game.

So by definition, no you cannot have a classic rpg without randomness, because to remove randomness is to remove the chance of failure, which is to remove the "game" part of role playing game, and instead turned the whole shebang into a role playing puzzle.

 

[Elex]

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?

computer game rpg =\= pen and paper tabletop rpg

 

[Elex]

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.

plot twist: RNG is simply MORE math.
you can determine the outcome of an rng combat with math.

 

[FeelTheRads]

*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.

Jesus, another newfag. This time we're going for the "'''''realistic"""" shit, eh? Because absolute determinism is totally realistic, of course.
If the only thing you have is this extreme example, then you have nothing. Just a typical cluelessness of how RNG works.
And planning gone to shit? How the fuck? You plan around RNG.
Reminds me of the time at the start of PoE's development when Sawyer wanted to have it so you can't miss, because he's the ultimate autistic anti-fun retard. And of course some were defending this with stuff like "why would you want to miss?".
No you fucking retard, I don't want to miss, which is why I'm improving the character to reduce his chances of missing because this is a fucking RPG and that's what you do.
What do you do with determinism? You press the correct buttons to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies. Wow, such excite, much plan.

 

[Elex]

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.

so you mean that the entire point of developing a character is minimize the rng?

 

[Trashos]

Because victory must be possible, and because there is no randomness, victory must then be inevitable once the proper keypresses are discovered.

The "there is no randomness" part is not 100% accurate, and I have commented on it before. Anyway. I do not accept that the player should be destined to win. He may have fucked up his character design, for example. Or he may not be able to solve the combat "puzzle".

But my bigger issue with what you wrote is the following:

So by definition, no you cannot have a classic rpg without randomness, because to remove randomness is to remove the chance of failure, which is to remove the "game" part of role playing game, and instead turned the whole shebang into a role playing puzzle.

No, you do not (have to) remove chance of failure. Combat and character building are still problems to be solved. The big question is: When you fail, why do you fail? Your answer seems to be "because it's lolrandom!". What do failure and success mean when they are lolrandom? Nothing.

Games where we fail because we are bad players (and not because they are lolrandom) have their own charm too.

 

[Elex]

What do you do with determinism? You press the correct buttons to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies. Wow, such excite, much plan.

what you do with RNG?
you stack the correct +bonus to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies.

 

[laclongquan]

Tying AI behaviors to the D&D character sheet so companions act autonomously has been done before? Where? I didn't think it had been.

Anyway, my idea isn't to just have stupid companions (although Intelligence can play a role, no doubt.) It's about having companions that act on their own interests and behalf. You can't just take your Evil Drow Cleric and say, "Hey, you're going to stand right there and cast a spell WHEN I TELL YOU. Got it?" You'd have to respect all the characters in your party. In other words, it's more of an adventure sim with "real" companions, rather than the player being the "omnipotent authority figure" as Jaheira so lovingly points out in Baldur's Gate.

Fuck you fluent! I have equal respects for every NPC in my party same as my MC. They are to fucking move where I fucking tell them, not where they damn well please.

If they shoot me in the back, that is because I fucking tell them too, with intent. not because they decide to do so just for the heck of it.

 

[Alex]

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.

Granted, it could happen. However, the chances are so slim as to be laughable. In this situation, you would need to roll a 1 ten times in a row while your opponent rolls a 20 ten times in a row. I'm not sure what the actual probability would be (and if someone is good enough at math to figure it out, feel free to post it), but I bet the chances are astronomical.

The chances would be 5% to the twentieth power. That is less than 9.6e-29% chance. That is 0.00000000000000000000000000096%. You are more likely to win the lottery 3 times in a row than this happening. If the guy who had no chance manages to pull it off, I say he deserved. In fact, I think the game should shift around and become about him instead.

 

[FeelTheRads]

What do you do with determinism? You press the correct buttons to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies. Wow, such excite, much plan.

what you do with RNG?
you stack the correct +bonus to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies.

No, actually, because with RNG you have the chance of killing creatures much stronger than you. Or, alternatively, be killed by creatures less powerful than you.
Killing being the extreme example, of course, thing is you have to plan around it and deal with its consequences during combat too, not only during character creation.

I know a newfag who started playing games with the millennium would say that's unbalanced, but I can't help you there.

so you mean that the entire point of developing a character is minimize the rng?

No, it's only part of it. Minimizing RNG is part of improving your build.
You just focus on RNG for some reason, like if there's any RNG everything is broken and everything is a 50/50 chance. You are a moron.

In fact, I think the game should shift around and become about him instead.

If that happened it would instantly make the game 10x more fun.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Tying AI behaviors to the D&D character sheet so companions act autonomously has been done before? Where? I didn't think it had been.

Anyway, my idea isn't to just have stupid companions (although Intelligence can play a role, no doubt.) It's about having companions that act on their own interests and behalf. You can't just take your Evil Drow Cleric and say, "Hey, you're going to stand right there and cast a spell WHEN I TELL YOU. Got it?" You'd have to respect all the characters in your party. In other words, it's more of an adventure sim with "real" companions, rather than the player being the "omnipotent authority figure" as Jaheira so lovingly points out in Baldur's Gate.

Fuck you fluent! I have equal respects for every NPC in my party same as my MC. They are to fucking move where I fucking tell them, not where they damn well please.

If they shoot me in the back, that is because I fucking tell them too, with intent. not because they decide to do so just for the heck of it.

Listen dog, it's like this. We got approximately 9 million RPGs where you can already do that. Can't we have one where shit is a lil' different? That's all I ask.

Shit, I'd take it as a modded project for NWN at this point. I feel it could be interesting if done well (I had this idea while playing Swordflight btw. Dope module, quite challenging in more ways than one and sparked a lot of ideas related to this.) It could be good, trust me.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Alex]

There's no luck in CRPGS. That natural 20 is nothing special if all it does is avoid another reload. Or cause it. You can either do something or you can not. And in RPGs you almost always can.

And in tabletop, 'luck' is no more than a powerful illusion cast by the DM. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. That lucky critical miss from the evil dragon which saved your character was mandated by God. Not by the false idol of the Dice.

And yet you are all blissfully ignorant. Fools.

Then again I like shiny dice so that stays.

That is rather disingenuous. If the issue is that someone can't resist the lure of reloading, there are several ways of dealing with that. There is the obvious idea of making the game in iron-man mode, like many rogue-likes have done. You could also limit where the player can save, which is always a bit of a pain, but can make reloading a whole lot less attractive. You could use seeded saves, where the rolls are the "same" no matter how many times you reload. But really, I think simply adding a good amount of variety as to what can happen with a roll and designing your system so that a single bad roll isn't going to cripple the party most of the time, but rather can be even interesting, would make reloading mostly a non-issue.

Also, if your DM cheats, you should look for another DM.

 

[Elex]

A computer RPG is a simulation of playing a tabletop D&D-like game. Tabletop D&D-like games have RNG. Case closed, fuck off.

dice was brought to tabletops for lazy GMs. It brought lazy excuse/shift of blame for killing characters. It became overused in process.

In the end that cancer spread to first RPGs.

Fun fact: There are over 2k posts on this forum claiming that Deterministic system > RNG

And the poll at the top of this page says that 72.5% of people in this thread think differently.

facts are... facts. Your feelings and different facts wont change them

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.

uhm... no? You are removing abstraction(RNG) and leaving void in its place. Than you proceed to convince yourself that such system would be retarded... duh.
Look at hard west(not rpg i know) with its luck mechanic or DOS2 with its armor system(which is flawed but i believe it can be improved to make people love it).

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).

Actually thats how it works. In martial arts you dont throw punches to connect, but to force enemy to respond. You execute sequence which ends up with you striking proper blow(or earlier if enemy was not skilled enough).

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.

but wasting spell due to RNG save is fine?

in dos2 the gear is bloated RNG stuff.

this is still rng: finding good gear and in particular good weapon right after a level up you will have a clear advantage.

the rng happen in a different moment but still affect combat.

 

[Elex]

What do you do with determinism? You press the correct buttons to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies. Wow, such excite, much plan.

what you do with RNG?
you stack the correct +bonus to be able to deal with the next tier of enemies.

No, actually, because with RNG you have the chance of killing creatures much stronger than you. Or, alternatively, be killed by creatures less powerful than you.
Killing being the extreme example, of course, thing is you have to plan around it and deal with its consequences during combat too, not only during character creation.

I know a newfag who started playing games with the millennium would say that's unbalanced, but I can't help you there.

so you mean that the entire point of developing a character is minimize the rng?

No, it's only part of it. Minimizing RNG is part of improving your build.
You just focus on RNG for some reason, like if there's any RNG everything is broken and everything is a 50/50 chance. You are a moron.

In fact, I think the game should shift around and become about him instead.

If that happened it would instantly make the game 10x more fun.

i focus on RNG because this topic is about RNG.
50/50 is not broken.
50/50 is a fair chance.
50/50 mean the enemy have the same chance as you of win: is litterally the definition of a balanced fight.

 

[ProphetSword]

dice was brought to tabletops for lazy GMs. It brought lazy excuse/shift of blame for killing characters. It became overused in process.

In the end that cancer spread to first RPGs.

Dice exist in CRPGs; because D&D literally evolved from a wargame and CRPGs evolved from D&D.

facts are... facts. Your feelings and different facts wont change them

This works in both directions, so I'm not sure you proved anything.

uhm... no? You are removing abstraction(RNG) and leaving void in its place. Than you proceed to convince yourself that such system would be retarded... duh.
Look at hard west(not rpg i know) with its luck mechanic or DOS2 with its armor system(which is flawed but i believe it can be improved to make people love it).

So, your examples include a game that is not an RPG and a system that is flawed. Good to know.

Actually thats how it works. In martial arts you dont throw punches to connect, but to force enemy to respond. You execute sequence which ends up with you striking proper blow(or earlier if enemy was not skilled enough).

Cool. DVD Players allow me to control their actions via a remote control. Should I also use that as an example that has nothing to do with CRPGs?

but wasting spell due to RNG save is fine?

It is; because the difference is that with a saving throw, you have a chance to connect with the damage. The system that was suggested in the post this response is a response to allowed no chance for damage. Would you prefer to have a 65% chance to do damage with your spell or a 0% chance to do damage with your spell? Think about it...I'll wait.

 

[Sigourn]

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.

For tabletop inspired videogames it makes sense to use dice rolls, since the idea is to simulate those systems. But "have dice rolls!" is not the only way to make an RPG, especially when the game you make is not based in any tabletop RPG in particular, or it is not in your interest to emulate a tabletop experience.

Dice rolls exist in D&D because I can't think of any other way you could solve a combat situation. In a videogame, however, you can be in control of your character, and "did that hit land or not?" doesn't have to be resolved by a dice, but by actual gameplay. I was this close to say "the only advantage of tabletop-inspired cRPGs is that you can actually make a character that sucks at what he does", but then I remembered Gothic already implements this fairly well (with the player being a complete paperdoll at the beginning).

At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple question: do you want to let the game do the work for you (just like cRPGs already do by rolling the dice instead of you), or do you want to play the game yourself and be in charge of your failures? As incredible as it sounds, some of us like playing our RPGs as opposed to simply barking orders at avatars.

And anyone advocating for such popamole trash can go play Mass Effect Andromeda or whatever.

And anyone advocating for such outdated dice-rolling trash can go play Bard's Tale. It's easy to make anything look bad by proposing the worst game of the bunch.

 

[Elex]

It is; because the difference is that with a saving throw, you have a chance to connect with the damage. The system that was suggested in the post this response is a response to allowed no chance for damage. Would you prefer to have a 65% chance to do damage with your spell or a 0% chance to do damage with your spell? Think about it...I'll wait.

0% mean "hey you, yes you, you, the mage the one with 18 int after 10 years of arcane knowledge 20 point in elemental lore, you realize that the fireball will not damage that fire elemental right?" (I die inside every time i can kill a fire elemental with fire or similar stuff like that btw)

65% mean "hey see that barn full of hay, well if you throw a fireball, a magical fireball, the one that require extreme concentration and a complex ritual maybe maybe, the barn will not burn, BUT if you try again WITH THE SAME SPELL the barn WILL burn, maybe, maybe will work, next time use the gold for some matches instead of the reagents"