AutoFail in 1.64

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teleri
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AutoFail in 1.64

Post by teleri »

The new home of the AutoFail discussion
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teleri
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Post by teleri »

AutoFail is an integral part of the D&D system rolling a 1 has always been a failure regardless of your adds. Changing this is turning the game into no more than a mindless walkthrough for the higherlevel characters who will have no reason to fear any of the bad guys abilities as the saves eventually become overwelming and to match the attack to those saves breaks it for every other character. The fact that you fail 20% of the time has been a constant in the D&D universe forever.

As a Player I cannot count how many times I was frustrated by this "Anything but a 1" has become synonumus with of course you will roll a 1 in the gaming groups I play in for PnP. On the flip side of the coin as a Player I have been saved many times by the DM's roll of a 1 where anything else would have ment certain doom.

As a DM too many times has my carefully laid plot been thawarted by a major villian failing on a roll of 1 or having a player die because of a roll of 1. As a DM I have played "fast and loose" with what was needed to make the story run but I work very hard to make sure my players always felt that what happened to them could and does happen to the bad guys as well.

This is something that is very much a part of D&D the removal of this kind of failure moves the game one step closer to becoming a clone of Diablo and nothing more.
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Post by Starslayer_D »

Problem with online NWN:
Too many checks for failue with too amny encounters relying upon it.
As a PnP DM I can carefully create my encounters and have failsafes in place to adjust when the Shit hits the fan.

Online, I seem to encounter cretaures who rely on the autofailure as their only means of destruction far, far too often (There are about 60 + encounters involvling pyrolisks in Ferrell. After a time it becomes very tendious to spend hours as a statue when you only wanted to gather herbs. Same applies to fear efects and death efefcts from undead. ).

As creatures in NWN usually come in spawns of a dozen, the probability of failing a safe with autofailure becomes a certainity.

There is realism, increased danger on teh one hand. On the other hand, there is the mounting frustration at constantly being stoned or fear effected or deathplaned due to a deluge of autofailurs.

Fun Facor versus realism.

The equation is as simple as that.
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Post by Arandil »

Removing autofail removes the element of chance. As a player of an epic PC, I'd hate to see autofail disappear, even if it would benefit me.

Arandil
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Post by JollyOrc »

I can see both sides of this coin.

One side: 1 out of 20 encounters with certain creatures WILL kill you. This is not fun if a normal evening of adventuring will give you 40+ of these creatures.

Other side: Being immune is not fun, as the element of risk is missing.

Solution ?

Maybe we can alter autofail so that when the 1 gets rolled, there's a another roll to check if autofail really occurs ?

So instead of making autofail happen in 1 out of 20 times, we make it happen in 1 out of 30 or even 1 out of 100 times (fiddle to your hearts content here)

No idea if this is feasible of course.
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Post by Starslayer_D »

(using Amonien as an excample here.. but she's my experience with epic in NWN)

It's not 1 out of 20 encounters witha creature.. it is one out of 20 attacks the creature uses!!!!

Take eg. Pyrolisks: They spawn in packs of three +. To kill one of them takes ~ 3 combat rounds for Amonien. This means, she gets attacked about 9 times with a petrifying peck untill she kills the first one, then 6 more picks until the next one falls, and then 3 more pecks untill the third one falls. More pecks if more pyrolisks are around.

But this amount of connecting pecks means that the chance for an autofailure adds up to an allmost certainity for one spawn alone. ..

Same with fear auras around mummies... she encounters normally ~ 5 mummies in a pack... wich aren't dangerous to her.. but given that each mummy takes time to kill, and hasa fear arua, wich checks for the save each round, usually ends up with amonien running in fear effect from an undead encounter.

Autofailure has a big problem with the laws of probability the way it's done here.

In PnP, you normally encounter far fewer, but tougher creatures each level, and allmost never encounter createrues way below your CR.
in NWN, you normally encounter may a few creatures on your CR as epics, and literally thousands of lower CR creatures. If even 10% of them make special safe or be screwed atatcks, you do have a problem with it.

My request: Provide challening epic creatures.
I rather die against a creature rated as challenging in a tough fight, then dozens of times simply trying to travel from A to B due to soem autfailure. It at least would feel like I was dying to a challenge, and not ag ame mechanism wich basically comes down to a game of chance with the loaded dice against you.
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Post by Khaelindra »

JollyOrc wrote: So instead of making autofail happen in 1 out of 20 times, we make it happen in 1 out of 30 or even 1 out of 100 times (fiddle to your hearts content here)
This solution has been brought up before: don't remove the autofail, but make it less than that awesomely big 5%, which as said i way too much for spawns of 4-8 of creatures that each deal safe-or-be-shitted attacks each round. Use the analogy of critical hits.

Critical hits don't occur whenever you roll a 20. You first get a critical threat, which depending on the attack-AC scores has a higher or lower chance of actually being a critical. Very high AC give a crit-chance of as low as 0.25% per attack (double-20 is always a critical), while a very bad AC and good threatrange on the weapon can make it as high as 52% per attack.

Projecting the basics of this system on saves, you can allow a natural 1 to be a failure-threat, with an additional die rolled for the determination of actual failure. This would occur if a 1 would not be a failure if case of absence of autofail, and would be either another flat %-roll (modifying the fail-chance according to a muliplier-slider) or for instance another saving throw at -10, with both saving throws failed means a true failure. The analogy of the last system with criticals is that someone with a wildly better saving throw (in this case 10 higher than the DC) has again that 0.25% chance of failure (present but very small), while someone who would 'just' make it with a 1 would still have 50% chance of failing the save.
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Post by PlasmaJohn »

Khaelindra wrote:
JollyOrc wrote: So instead of making autofail happen in 1 out of 20 times, we make it happen in 1 out of 30 or even 1 out of 100 times (fiddle to your hearts content here)
This solution has been brought up before: don't remove the autofail, but make it less than that awesomely big 5%, which as said i way too much for spawns of 4-8 of creatures that each deal safe-or-be-shitted attacks each round. Use the analogy of critical hits.
Unfortunately your solution requires source code to the Aurora engine. The only option is "on" or "off". I had argued on the Bio-boards for adjustable autofail and autosuccess but that fell on deaf ears (blind eyes?)
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Post by JollyOrc »

PlasmaJohn wrote: The only option is "on" or "off". I had argued on the Bio-boards for adjustable autofail and autosuccess but that fell on deaf ears (blind eyes?)
then I would personally vote for the "off" position for this switch.

Why ? Because I think that every character should only die to stupid actions, ill-chosen enemies, etc. See Starslayers calculation for elaboration.
bye,
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Post by vergilius »

I'm for turning auto-fail off. Arguments based on PNP fail to realize that this is a computer game and differ substantively from a table game.
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Post by Strangg1 »

Turn it off. Autofail is NOT a fixture of D&D, autofail (and autosuccess), and no group i ever played in has ever used with exception to weapons combat, because auto hit and miss in combat WAS a fixture. Autofail/success on skills and saves is absolutely horrid.

As a matter of fact, you won't find autofail for skills and saves in ANY published WotC 3e "core" book(If it is in other books i haven't seen it either). It is not in the Players Handbook, it is not in the Dungeonn Master's Guide and it is not in the Monster's Manual of 3e D&D (I don't know about 3.5, because 3.5 is a pile of crap and i never bought it, and we don't use it). Nor will you find the rule in the Errata published WotC.


Also if you will check page 60 in the 3e PHB it specifically states under Skill Checks:
PHB wrote: A natural 20 is not an automatic success, and a natural 1 is not an automatic failure (as is the case in the combat rules).
I couldn't find anything with regards to saves one way or the other in any of my books.


Autofail on saves/skill checks is nothing more than a house rule. As DM's we can of course institute any house rules we wish, (Rule 0), but this is one house rule i hate with a passion, mainly because it makes no sense.


As a note i checked the errata here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rules

I checked eratta as well as the 3.5 update book that was supposed to summarize the changes(Just for kicks) , I also checked the FAQ (for 3e) and found nothing on autofail for saves or skills, other than for skills but it was the same as what was stated in the PHB.


~S
Last edited by Strangg1 on Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Starslayer_D »

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Post by Nob »

I have two primary objections to auto-fail.

First: The number of saves you're expected to make in NWN is exponentially higher than in any pen and paper situation where the house rules give an auto-fail on 1. Rather than the one or two per encounter you're expected to roll, any nasty encounter will include somewhere around half a dozen rolls per ROUND. 1 in 20 isn't that poor in terms of odds if you have to do it twice, 1 in 20 becomes an almost certainty if you do it 30 times throughout an encounter.

This comes to objection 2.

Second: This is more just a pet peeve in general, but...

It encourages min-maxing and the acquisition of immunity items and makes saves next to worthless. Who cares about that 8 will save at level 30? No one, since you just go and get immunity items.

Having 23 will? No point, you'll ALWAYS at least fail once on a DC14 fear check. DC30 reflex? Sorry no, you'll get zapped by the chain lightning.
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Post by teleri »

As stated earlier this will be handled on a world by world basis.

Below is a Rant against Design and incudes my PW as well (: ((examples are from Outlands)) I am just as bad as anyone else.

If you are building encounters with that many saves than I question that the encounter is balanced not tha tthe rule is bad.

A PnP game with a fear aura requires a save every round same as in NWN so the odds of failure are the same. Having a spawn of 8 spell casing goblin shaman is somewhat broken especially when all 8 cast the exact same spells all requiring the same saves which a character will eventually fail.

I am working to adjust my spawns to fix that issue. So any single spawn only generates 1-2 of the monster types that will require saves. For example I am adjusting the Goblin Spawns so that there are 3 differnt shamen with 3 differnt spell lists, Healer, Aider, Combatant, eventually there will also be combinations of the three but I am limiting spells that require saves to 1 or 2 of the same spell per encounter this will give the game a better balance overall.

The having to save against 40 pyrolysk gaze attacks, 60 Doom spells, 90 magic missles, 8 Fear Auras, etc, etc,... means more that the encounter should probably be reworked more than the autofail is broken.

Going byond the design flaws of the NWN engine to allow us as World Builders and designers to mask the issues.

One thing I find intereting is that most PnP designers and DM's will cast spells with persistant effects and forget to make the PC saves. I know I have been guilty of that before. This often leads to the thought that PnP has less save rolls.
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Post by Malathyre »

Personally, I don't like autofail either and even more, I hate abilities in rpg's that allow for instant death or petrification (which is basically instant death). My lone concern is how many different things would need to be altered/changed to make them viable again if autofail is turned off. The utility of many spells and class abilities would change, and the power of self-buffing over using abilities that affect opponents would be increased even further. To me, this seems like one of those class balance issues where if you change this one thing, you either have to go through and change everything it affects or change nothing it affects and live with the consequences of doing so. The consequences, to me, seem pretty steep. I dislike autofail, but I dislike the idea of turning it off and having a bunch of PC's with useless abilities even more.
<Daerthe> There is only room for so much realism before things start to get silly.
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Post by Sarrena »

Sorry, dont buy the "autofail will doom us all" in reguards to fun argument. Putting an element of risk in to ensure a PC must at least die one out of twenty times hardly seems to have a point IMO.

Class powers wont suddenly fracture because you no long have a pathetic 5% chance of them working. Why? If your using a power with a 5% chance, your using the wrong power. Spell casters have many many options to pull from. Powers from shifters, well, guess what, they aren't there to make you uber. They wont instakill another equal PC but will really mop up the lesser pests in a room. Perhaps thats the idea.

If a PC has high saves, they have high saves. Having a high saving throw doesn't make you a god. Magic and blades will still do them. There are many ways to skin a PC or a monster.
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Post by Khaelindra »

Looking at it from the perspective of a caster that has no hefty damage spells but a fair allotment of save-or-die spells, i can say that i hardly learn them at all because of the generally low chance of serious opponents being affected by such spells and an even lower chance of not-serious opponents affecting -ME-. I would not allot spellslots to a 5% chance of affecting someone, so i really wouldn't notice my opponents having or not having that 5% mischance. This is not meant as a "i don't use it so nerf ahead" statement, but to show a bit also what Sarrena says: you as actor should not rely on 5%-chances of success for your spells for survival, so removing the autofail shouldn't impact you much as actor. However, as receptor, it makes a huge difference in dealing with masses of puny monsters that really shouldn't be a threat, but only are so because of said autofail.

I don't think it's logical that a cluster of water elementals is as much of a threat to a lvl 40 fighter as it is to a level 15, while an encounter of same challenge rating monsters like giants is a real challenge for a lvl 15 but no problem for a lvl 40. As a character grows stronger, the same monsters that first were hard should become progressively easier, their place as challenge replaced by monsters with a higher CR. We don't give regular goblins a death-attack to be frightening to high-levels, regular goblins are not an issue for an epic character, who has 'earned the right' to not fear regular goblins. I have no problem with the fact that a level 40 fighter also has no fear of regular water elementals instead of having to count on dying on average once per encounter simply because of autofail, or a cleric that needs to quaff clarity-potions to stop the cluster of mummies from scaring him away each encounter even though they are 30 CR lower than his level.

Making multi-facetted balanced spawns will solve part of the problem, especially for the newer worlds who don't already have hundreds or thousands of spawns in place, but it also completely skips the point that NWN is not PnP...it's not only 1-2 saves per encounter versus dozens per encounter (which can be remedied by fine-tuning the spawns), but it's also 50 encounters per few-hour playing session instead of 4 or 5. No matter how you spread the numbers, that 5% will come and bite you in the behind several times per day if you keep it in.

Autosave/Autofail? Off with their head! :twisted:
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Post by Pesky »

Class powers wont suddenly fracture because you no long have a pathetic 5% chance of them working. Why? If your using a power with a 5% chance, your using the wrong power. Spell casters have many many options to pull from. Powers from shifters, well, guess what, they aren't there to make you uber. They wont instakill another equal PC but will really mop up the lesser pests in a room. Perhaps thats the idea.
Why would I transform into a basilisk to petrify a bunch of goblins in a room. They can't hurt me anyway and I'll kill them faster with my bare hands. I don't buy the argument that shifter powers are there only to be an rp element.
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Post by Zelle »

Pesky wrote:Why would I transform into a basilisk to petrify a bunch of goblins in a room. They can't hurt me anyway and I'll kill them faster with my bare hands. I don't buy the argument that shifter powers are there only to be an rp element.
They're not. But holy hells shifters! As Bioware's community Shifter Expert, I am all FOR turning autofail off! I am really amazed at how much the other shifters around here are wanting it kept on for the 5% chance of stoning something.

Shifter is about playing to something's weakness. If you can't stone it because it has good saves, learn your lesson, and don't try that tactic again. Obviously their fort save is NOT their weakness, so why are you trying to do that anyways? And if you're using something that is not the most effective thing you could be doing there, guess what, you MUST be doing it for RP reasons.

All the reasons and arguments stated in this thread are ones I would agree with. Tons of low level critters being as liking to "get lucky" on a level 40 chara as a level 15, because of the overwhelming numbers of saves one has to make. I'm told, for example, in PnP, you only make one save per encounter vs a Dragon's fear aura. In NWN, you need to save once per ROUND! (I think.) This means unlee you get yourself Mind Immunit or Fear Immunity, you WILL Autofail to it during that fight. And a level 40 fighter who should have "earned" the right to not fear that wussy dragon, will run away like a little girl.
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Post by Orleron »

Some simple numbers for those who want to see how it adds up:

I have a 20-sided die. The probability that I roll a 1 is 0.05 or 5%.

I now have 20 20-sided dice. If I roll all 20 of them, the probability that each die has to roll a 1 is still 5%, but the probability that *at least one of those 20 dice will roll a 1 is*:

5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% = 100%, or close to it.


So if you encounter something and wind up saving once per round for 20 rounds, you WILL autofail. It's almost a certainty. As Starslayer said.
I know it's been said, but sometimes it's easier to see with numbers.


To summarize the argument:

* Autofail will make people die a lot more than they do now.

* Bioware does not give us the ability to adjust autofail. It's either on or off.

* 3rd Edition D&D does not have autofail or autosuccess for skills, and likely not for saves. Why should we?

* NWN has autofail for skills and saves. NWN is broken. We know that.

* Adjusting encounters will help somewhat, but it does not change the fact that during a session of D&D you have 2 fights lasting 12 hours and in NWN you have 12 fights lasting 2 hours.

* Last but not least, this is an internal matter, so each CoPaP world will decide on its own, so if you don't agree with what your favorite world is doing, let them know personally. CoPaP cannot help you.
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Post by Orleron »

Having said that, I just want to lament the fact that Bioware does not allow this to be coded by us, because I would support a "critical hit" and "critical miss" system. When I play pnp, I sometimes use it and I think it's fun. But basically, the way it would work is simple:

Roll a 1 ---> a script kicks off and rolls another 20 sider ---> if it rolls a 1 again, you have a critical (perhaps automatic) failure.

That gives you a 1 in 400 chance of fucking up badly, which isn't too bad. It's a clear and present danger, but it's not horrible. You might encounter it once every couple days, or once per day if you play a long time.

Luckily, on a natural 20, NWN is already programmed to keep rolling threats until it rolls a miss, then it calculates damage. I've always liked that because one of my big beefs about D&D is that your chances of dying instantly are about nil if the thing you are fighting has no special abilities. A 10th level fighter can take a cannon ball in the chest and be FINE. At least in 3rd edition, though the chances are very remote, that canon ball can roll a triple critical and take him out.
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Post by dougnoel »

teleri wrote:A PnP game with a fear aura requires a save every round same as in NWN so the odds of failure are the same.
Actually, dragon and mummy fear auras a 1/day in PnP. Same with a ghost's horrific appearance. NWN's implementation is sheer laziness. Basically, the aura goes off every round and everyone has to make a chaeck because who has made a check before isn't stored.
Orleron wrote:Having said that, I just want to lament the fact that Bioware does not allow this to be coded by us, because I would support a "critical hit" and "critical miss" system. When I play pnp, I sometimes use it and I think it's fun. But basically, the way it would work is simple:

Roll a 1 ---> a script kicks off and rolls another 20 sider ---> if it rolls a 1 again, you have a critical (perhaps automatic) failure.
I use this system in my PnP game and it has been enjoyable for the players as well as myself. A roll of 1gets you another roll to see if "bad things" happen. Otherwise, it's treated like a normal roll. On the other end, a player can continue to confirm criticals, allowing them to increase the damage dealt by quite a bit for a really good shot. Sometimes it adds comic relief, sometimes it makes an easy encounter more challenging, and sometimes it makes a tough encounter much easier (especially for the characters who roll lots of critical hits.) I also incorporated an chaos magic rule in certain areas where a catser rolls a d20 and follows the same rule. A 1 makes the spell less effective and a 20 makes it more effective. Successive rolls can make a spell more or less effective.
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Post by Khaelindra »

Orleron wrote: I now have 20 20-sided dice. If I roll all 20 of them, the probability that each die has to roll a 1 is still 5%, but the probability that *at least one of those 20 dice will roll a 1 is*:

5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% + 5% = 100%, or close to it.
To be precise, the chance of rolling at least one 1 is equal to 100% minus the chance to miss the 1 twenty times in a row, i.e. 1-(0.95^20) = 1-0.36 = 0.64, meaning you have two-third chance of failing somewhere in those 20 rounds.
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Post by Khaelindra »

Orleron wrote: Luckily, on a natural 20, NWN is already programmed to keep rolling threats until it rolls a miss, then it calculates damage.
Not sure i understand you correctly but...are you saying that NWN has the opportunity to do more then 'just' a critical, i.e. an attack has no theoretical maximum damage?
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Post by Orleron »

Ah yes, that sounds better. I was actually searching through my old statistics textbooks to find the answer, but I couldn't get the right book so I took a stab at it. 64% chance to fail in 20 rounds means "more often than not you will die when playing NWN for any length of time in dangerous areas". Also, how many fights last more than 20 rounds in NWN? I imagine quite a few.

Not sure i understand you correctly but...are you saying that NWN has the opportunity to do more then 'just' a critical, i.e. an attack has no theoretical maximum damage?
If NWN follows 3rd Ed D&D rules, then yes.

When you roll a natural 20, or even a natural 19 or 18 with some weapons, it's called a "threat". The computer then rolls another d20 attack roll. If that roll hits the creature's AC again, then you've scored a "critical hit". So it rolls your weapon damage twice, and that's what the creature takes.

Now, let's say you roll a threat, and the computer rolls a natural 20 (or 19, etc.) for the second attack roll. That's a double threat, so it rolls a third dice. If that dice hits, you've scored a "double critical".

IF that third dice is a 20, it rolls again to hit. And so on....

Theoretically, if it keeps rolling threats, it will not stop until it rolls either a miss or a regular hit for the next roll. So theoretically, yes, you can do infinite damage with a regular dagger.

This is why keen weapons are so dangerous, because if your weapon has +1 keen, it means that normally if you need to roll a natural 20 to get a threat, now you only need to roll a natural 19.

My wife plays Aratelda Rinthon in our campaign. She's got a +5 keen longsword, which is normally a threat on 19 and 20. But because it's +5, she only needs to roll a natural 14 or higher to get a threat. Consequently, I've seen her walk up to a Balor and wack it in the head for a 6x critical causing >200 pts of damage with one attack... dead Balor.

So yeah you're darn right it can be theoretically infinite.
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