Morien
05-19-2009, 04:51 PM
If two knights using swords face one another off, it is likely that they will continue bashing away at one another, until one of them gets a critical (probably after knocking the other guy down). I have a feeling that this might happen quite often in most games, which is why people feel that sword is good enough. After all, once you crit, it doesn't matter that much if you are using a flail or a sword.
One thing that impresses me to no end in Pendragon combat system is how many options you get from a single comparison of two rolls. Makes it a bit of a pain to quantify, though. :P Since I am not getting paid to do this, and since I am sure you all agree that 'close enough' is good enough, I am going to cut some corners (i.e. ignore the small chance of draws, for example).
1. The chance of A hitting B, knocking B over, is about 50% (A rolls higher)*50% (B fails DEX roll) = 25%.
2. If B is down, things can get complicated. But lets just give them the +5/-5 to keep things simple (in our group, it is customary to use Defensive, but since the enemies are usually wanting to live, they don't often resort to berserk tactics unless desperate, hence +5/+5 is usual). This means that A has about 25% chance of critting.
3. From 1. and 2. it follows that the chance of knocking someone down and critting is about 25%*25% = 1/16 = 6.25%.
4. The chance of critting with first strike, or the second strike, is about 5%+5% = 10%.
5. Hence, it is actually more probable to see 'straight' crits than knockdown crits, which was a small surprise to me.
6. This is getting very well into the quick-and-dirty territory, so mathematicians might wish to look away... Combining those probabilities, we get a chance of about 1/6, lets be conservative and say that it is 1/7, that A crits against B.
7. Now, this works the other way too... So a combined chance that one or the other crits is about 1/4... BUT! This was during the first two rounds. Not the first round. So the fight would actually take on average 8 rounds before it would be solved by a crit.
Good thing I caught that, because I actually had already written how 4-round combat would make all weapons 'equal', since a crit kills no matter what the weapon. Which would have explained why people see a Sword killing just as good as an Axe. Maybe I will write a computer program and really crunch the numbers out...
One thing that impresses me to no end in Pendragon combat system is how many options you get from a single comparison of two rolls. Makes it a bit of a pain to quantify, though. :P Since I am not getting paid to do this, and since I am sure you all agree that 'close enough' is good enough, I am going to cut some corners (i.e. ignore the small chance of draws, for example).
1. The chance of A hitting B, knocking B over, is about 50% (A rolls higher)*50% (B fails DEX roll) = 25%.
2. If B is down, things can get complicated. But lets just give them the +5/-5 to keep things simple (in our group, it is customary to use Defensive, but since the enemies are usually wanting to live, they don't often resort to berserk tactics unless desperate, hence +5/+5 is usual). This means that A has about 25% chance of critting.
3. From 1. and 2. it follows that the chance of knocking someone down and critting is about 25%*25% = 1/16 = 6.25%.
4. The chance of critting with first strike, or the second strike, is about 5%+5% = 10%.
5. Hence, it is actually more probable to see 'straight' crits than knockdown crits, which was a small surprise to me.
6. This is getting very well into the quick-and-dirty territory, so mathematicians might wish to look away... Combining those probabilities, we get a chance of about 1/6, lets be conservative and say that it is 1/7, that A crits against B.
7. Now, this works the other way too... So a combined chance that one or the other crits is about 1/4... BUT! This was during the first two rounds. Not the first round. So the fight would actually take on average 8 rounds before it would be solved by a crit.
Good thing I caught that, because I actually had already written how 4-round combat would make all weapons 'equal', since a crit kills no matter what the weapon. Which would have explained why people see a Sword killing just as good as an Axe. Maybe I will write a computer program and really crunch the numbers out...