[RPG] Are Fudge/FATE skills swamped by the dice

dicefatefudge

I've started GM'ing our group's first Fudge game after 20+ years playing GURPS. The change was made because our games were becoming less and less number crunchy and more and more story driven.

However …

After about a dozen play sessions there is some dissatisfaction. One of the key areas is that the 4DF seems to swamp the skill. A character with Fighting at Great rolls -2 and gets beaten by an NPC mook rolling +1 on a Good skill. The feeling is that 3D6 has less effect on a 3 to 18 Skill level in GURPS, so a good fighter remains good more of the time … but is this just perception? Could it be GM style, in which case what symptoms should I be looking for? A player suggestion is reducing to 3DF, just to ameliorate the dice effect. Has anyone tried that and if so with what result?

(We have a number (too many!) mathematicians at the table so any discussion on probability spirals out of control in seconds: I'm trying to avoid that!)

As another footnote – I'm looking at changing/tuning again and going in the FATE direction: the free-form nature of Fudge seems to be one step too far.

Best Answer

Actually the problem is the opposite of what you stated. A +1 bonus with 4DF when you are dealing with opposed rolls has a far greater impact than a +1 with 3d6 and 1d20.

To see this, take a look at this anydice At Least graph. You will see that the first set of result has a result of 0 occurring at least 61.73 percent of the time. And +1 occurs at least 38.27 percent.

At +1 to the die roll then +1 occurs at least 61.73 percent of the time as you can see in the second set of results. This is an improvement of 23 percent!

I first noticed this when I was playing a Fudge based RPG that I wrote. It doesn't show up right away but as more session were run it was obvious that a +1 bonus was a big deal in a way it isn't with other systems.

I wrote a combat simulator to check this and sure enough when I give one of the fighter a +1 skill the odds shifted dramatically over 10,000 fighters. The reason it doesn't show up right away because as you noted the result of a fudge die is from -4 to +4. Which can and does swamp a +1 or even a +2 difference in ability on an opposed roll.

Plus we are talking about tabletop roleplaying where the character can find themselves in a variety of circumstances that make the fights more than just two guys wacking away at each other like in my simulation.

To sum this up, what you are seeing is just bad luck on your group's part. Over time the frustration that build when dealing with opponents that are more skilled in opposed situation will be a far bigger issue than the range of result from the Fudge Dice.

As a final note, note the shape of the bell curve of 4dF on anydice versus that of a 3d6. Fudge dice have a more dramatic peak in the middle. This is what causes the issues that I been seeing.

Related Topic