Originally posted by TheEngineer:
Hi Houston !
Yo, Germany!
Often its silly to punish players with "simple" task roles anyway...
Easy task rolls under UGM for most characters is either 100% or very close to it. I'd say only roll in "special" circumstances--a character is wounded, time is of the essence...something like that.
Guess any rule system could be tweaked until it fits.
Absolutely.
Well, after many years of tweaking and "house-ruling" I finally came to the conclusion to "keep the standard". Meaning I take rules as they are, because it makes life a bit easier.
It might not seem like it, and I may not convince you of this, but those are my exact sentiments. I only tweak things when I think they really, really need to be tweaked.
CT needed a task system, and I thought I could come up with something better than MT (even though, believe it or not, I do like MT), and...ta daaa...CTI was born.
And, shortly after CTI, UGM was created.
But what difficulty level increase would be used in UGM ?
Two levels up/down ?
Should be included in the UGM specification...
I'm keeping UGM "rules lite". I want it all to fit on single page.
This is up to the GM.
Two levels up/down sounds about right, but it would be easy to figure the same probability drop/increase that this type of rule has on standard MT.
Did you know that UGM produces probability numbers almost exactly the same (and in many cases exactly the same) as MT?
Probability-wise, the two systems are very, very close.
Though it does not fit to MT correctly, because it gos 3+ (simple) 7+ (routine) 11+ (difficult)
See, we are customizing again.
Actually, you'd be surprised at how UGM completely fits MT.
Sure, the standard MT numbers aren't used, but look at this thread:
http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=44;t=000278
You'll see stuff like this--
(Notice the UGM and MT numbers for the same difficulty category are exactly the same).
An average Skill-2, Stat-7 character is being compared on this chart.
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> MT UGM CTI
ESY 100% 100% 95%
ROU 92% 92% 82%
STD 72%
DIF 42% 42% 54%
CHA 17% 26%
FOR 3% 3% 7%
STG/INS 0% 4%
IMP 0% 0% 3%</pre>[/QUOTE]
[qb]The MT tasksystem differs between skilled or unskilled tasks.[/b]
I didn't "officially" write it into UGM, but I don't see any reason why this couldn't be done with UGM as well.
Doing a doctors job usually is not a "unskilled OK" task.
(snip example)
Yeah, all that stuff could be done with UGM too, if the GM wanted to.
That wasn't the point of my original example you were replying to.
MT gives skills higher priority and governs stat impact carefully.
Ok ?
In both MT and UGM, skills are weighted exactly the same. They're both 2D systems, and Skill-1 will give a +1DM to the throw.
So, the increase you get from having skill is the exact same for both systems.
Now, UGM actually lessens the impact of Stats than in the MT system (just a little bit).
You typically get +1 or +2 with MT.
With UGM, you typically get +1 or 0.
It's about a 1 point difference, yet UGM gets away from giving a Stat-15 guy a whopping +3, which makes him equal to a Level-3 skill.
I think that's a little crazy, giving a non-skilled person the quivalent of Skill-3. Heck, I even hesistated from giving my extra high natural ability characters a +2 in UGM, but I live with it because it doesn't happen often.
I think, at most, raw, natural ability, should be worth either (A) a penalty, (B) a +1 equivalent to Skill+1, or (C) no penalty or bonus.
Those should be the three choices. I hit two of them with UGM.
What I wanted to express:
Say you have somebody with a Dex stat 3 and a Dex stat 6.
As long as the natural throw of both is lower equal 4 or greater than 6 the "natural ability" modifier is the same.
Sure, but you're looking at this from an MT perspective.
That bonus isn't applied all the time. Higher stats get the +1 bonus (A) more often, and (B) are able to use that bonus on higher difficulty levels.
So, using your example, we've got Domingo with Stat-3 and Jynx with Stat-6.
Domingo is only going to get his bonus a miserable 8% of the time.
Jynx will get his bonus five times more often! 42% of the time! Almost half of all rolls made by the Stat-6 guy will get the bonus.
So, that's difference number one between the stat levels.
Difference number two is how useful that bonus will be to the character.
Domingo, with his Stat-3, will get his bonus when his rolls are 3-. That means (depending on skill level), that his bonus will only be beneficial to him on Easy task rolls (maybe Routine rolls if his skill is high enough).
Since rolling Easy rolls is typically 90%+ anyway, this is a very small benefit that the Stat-3 Domingo is getting.
But, look at Jynx with his Stat-6. He gets a bonus, and it will help not only with Easy rolls, but also with Routine rolls. If his skill is high enough, it will help him with Standard rolls.
So, what's the net result here?
--1-- Jynx will get his +1 natural ability bonus on almost half of his rolls--five times more often than Domingo gets his.
--2-- Domingo's bonus is worth next to nothing because he's already rolling Easy task rolls in the 90%+ range. He'll succeed Easy rolls with or without the stat bonus, so the stat bonus is next to useless for this lowly Stat-3 character.
--3-- Jynx not only gets his bonus half the time, but he also gets it on the most important difficulty categories in the game: Routine, Standard, and Difficult rolls are the "meat" of the game, and that's exactly where Jynx's bonus will help him. (Unless very highly skilled, Domingo will never get a stat bonus on these difficulty categories).
So, you see, there is A LOT of difference between stats using UGM. The higher the stat, the more frequent the bonus AND the more useful the bonus is to the character.
But nevertheless this system adds complexity (not meaning its complicate, but it adds a formal compare/classify step).
"Compare your roll to your Stat" has got to be at least as easy (I'd argue that it's easier) as what it replaces in the MT system, which is "Divide Stat by 5, then add that to the roll".
To be a little more correct in what you're saying, UGM doesn't add a step to the MT system--it replaces a step in the MT system.
Well, the difference is, that in MT the complete DM set and the resulting needed throw is defined before roling the dice, while in UGM the throw has to made and subsequently "analyzed".
You know, you mentioned in your first post something about "knowing the DM before the roll".
With UGM, it's not that far off the mark.
Your character's stat and the difficulty of the task you are rolling are pretty strong indicators (although not definite, of course).
For example, if you've got Stat-3, then you pretty much know, every time you roll, that you're not going to get a bonus.
If you've got Stat-9, then you pretty much know that you will get a bonus.
And, you're difficulty is a strong indicator too--If you've got to roll an Impossible task, then you're not going to get a bonus on it unless you automatically get the bonus anyway (Stat-12 or above).
So, after using UGM a bit, players will have a very good feeling when they will and when they won't get a bonus. Given that, I can't say I think your argument of "knowing all DMs before the roll" is that strong. Sure, there's some question, but even with the middle stats, players will know that on middle-of-the-road difficulty levels, they'll get the bonus at least half the time.
What You perhaps could do is to offer the natural ability DM generally if the base task difficulty is lower equal to the stat ?
I could see some GM coming up with a tweak like that if it suited him, but I actually like the check. It's very "Classic Traveller" (roll stat or less on 2D..if you do it, you get a bonus!).
And, the mechanic, doing it the "official" UGM way, provides a good penalty to low stat characters (in that they will hardly ever get the bonus, and when they do, it won't typically be useful to them).
And...another of my problems with the MT system is that a high-stat, high-skill character starts blowing away all the lower difficulty categories and really gets a good bonus on the high difficulties.
For example, under MT, a Stat-15 Skill-6 character has incredible numbers...he'll make every freakin' task, Easy to Difficult, 100% of the time. No need to roll. Formidable rolls, he'll make a whopping 72% of the time. And, even on Impossible tasks, he'll make those 17% of the time.
I know a Stat-15 Skill-6 character is a GAWD in Traveller, but sheeeshhh. I think those numbers are a little crazy. This is another area where I think MT is "bent".
And, with those Stat/3 tweaks, the numbers for this character are even worse.
Step in, UGM....
The same character will make Easy, Routine, and Standard tasks 100% of the time. I'm good with that.
But, there's some room for failure with Difficult tasks (97%...compared to 100% with MT).
Challenging (83%).
Formidable (58%...compared to 72% with MT).
Insane (28%)
Impossible (8%....compared to 17% with MT).
UGM, by design, tapers the top end down a bit, keep the hard difficulties hard. Under MT, this character might as well not roll unless he's rolling Formidable or Impossible tasks.
This just might be a taste-issue, as you've described, but I believe this is another area of MT that needs fixin'.
In order to convince somebody, who is using the MT task ruleset to use UGM, it might be useful to work out the value added by adopting the system.
Excellent point.
But, that's what I've been saying. I think people skim and miss "it".
What UGM gives you, over MT, is differentation between stats. It makes every higher stat more important to a character than the next lower level.
It makes your Stat-9 and Stat-8 characters different from each other.
And, it does this in a simple to use, easy to implement game mechanic that produces probability almost exactly the same as MT.
I think that's a pretty strong argument.
If I would like that, I just would customize this tiny bit in my MT ruleset.
How do you propose to customize MT to where each level of stat will provide a different benefit from the other?
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