faustusnotes's page

Hi folks, it's been a while since I posted here, but I thought I'd mention that I've done a new simulation of Pathfinder combat, this time to generate decision rules for creating fighters. I ran a million completely random simulations and applied a method called Classification and Regression Trees (CART) to identify groups of feats, ability scores and weapon choices that might work together to improve survival against our favourite orc, Gruumsh. Results are here. There's even a flowchart! (And a promise of more to come).

The results mostly support previous research on the issue, but it does appear that the people with the best survival chance are high strength, high constitution dwarves, possibly regardless of feat choice.

At this point I'm drowning in data ... ideas and suggestions would be welcome!

Hi fellow numonauts,

I have updated my blog with a new analysis of pathfinder survival, in which I pit my hapless fighters against 200,000 orcs, 100,000 of whom have been given the ferocity feat. The 100000 who were unfortunate enough to get a ferocious orc in their lunchbox fared very badly, with mortality rates as high as 70% amongst halflings, and 90% in those few fighters who had a strength of -2. Single ability scores lose some of their importance in predicting survival - against ferocious orcs, only the tough AND strong survive.

As usual, the details, eye-bleedingly tedious as the stats can be, are on my blog.

This week I will examine point buy systems for character development, then pit Pathfinder vs. OD&D.

Hello fellow adventurers! I have updated my blog with a new set of results, testing three types of fighter and including races and feats. I have simulated 100,000 warriors against 100,000 random orcs, but this time my fighters have what I call "purposively selected" ability scores and feats. "Purposive" means they chose one ability score and the other two were 9 or 3d6, whichever was higher (so mimicking ability scores suited to fighters, but retaining some randomness).

I developed three types of fighter: strong, fast and tough. The results: tough fighters never die unless they're halflings or elves, and focusing on dexterity/agile fighting will lead to a high death rate (around 45% for elves and halflings). The detailed results are at my blog.

My next questions: survival rates for different point buy systems, and what are the relative survival rates of OD&D fighters compared to Pathfinder. My prediction of the latter: OD&D fighters live longer. Want to place bets?

Hello fellow adventurers!

I have started running a series of simulations of combat in Pathfinder, and conducting analysis of the resulting survival rates. The first analysis is reported on my blog.

In this analysis, I ran a million simulated battles between a bare-bones fighter and an Orc, and tested the effect of the three physical ability scores on survival. My findings:

- orcs are nasty buggers: overall survival was only 25%
- strength is far and away the most important score, having a huge effect on survival probability
- constitution is almost useless, with very little effect on survival across reasonable ranges of values

I also show the distribution of hit points under a 4d6/choose-the-best-three system of ability score assignment. It's almost uniform!

I'm going to be trying more of these simulations over the next few months. My next steps are to incorporate feats and racial adjustments, then maybe also vary weapon and armour choices. I have a suspicion that over the long term constitution is the most important stat, but I will be dealing with that later. I also want to test the long-standing theory that wizards are more powerful than fighters at higher levels.

If any readers here have ideas for analyses I should try, please let me know!!! Also, your thoughts on the initial findings would be appreciated. Think of it as peer review!!

Hello Fellow Dungeoneers

I recently went to an end of year party for my Warhammer 3 gaming group, who are Japanese, and at the party one of my fellow players opened his closet to disclose a huge haul of near-mint-condition Japanese translations of old school games, including D&D, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, etc. I have a post on my blog and if anyone's interested in seeing a few pics of Japanese versions of old school (along with some thoughts of mine about old school gaming in Japan) then please drop by.

Hi everyone, I previously posted a thread here describing some aspects of a Japanese role-playing game, Double Cross 3, based on superheroes at High School, with some interesting twists and a weird task resolution system.

Since then, I have had the chance to play the game in a group at my local convention, and I've put a report on play up on my blog. If anyone is interested in reading about how a popular modern Japanese RPG is played in practice, and some of the ideas that surround it, or if you want to see how that weird dice pool system works in practice, then please don't hesitate to visit my blog.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

I have posted elsewhere on the forums about my experiences of playing and GMing pathfinder in Japanese, and in the process I recklessly committed myself to giving a report on a Japanese language role-playing game that I decided to read. As far as I know it's a representative example of a swathe of untranslated games from a popular company called FEAR.

I have now put two posts on my blog about it, one outlining the game concept and one running through a quickstart character creation.

If anyone reading this has an interest in Japanese-made RPGs, please do me the honour of visiting my blog. Also do me this honour if you're interested in Japanese schoolgirls with super powers, because of course that's the first character I created!

Have you ever been in the midst of a warhammer 2nd edition battle and thought to yourself, "Holy Gods of Chaos but this is taking a long time to get over with"? I think it's a common view that because Warhammer characters are so crap at everything, combat must in essence be deadly. However, I've analysed the probabilities on my blog, comparing survival probabilities with D&D3.5 for first level characters, and found that Warhammer characters in general survive a lot longer than D&D3.5 characters at first level. It takes 17 rounds for a Warhammer fighter-type character to have a 50% chance of dying, while this takes 11 rounds for a D&D3.5 fighter-type.

Also, the length of combats seems to be independent of level - a 4th or 5th level character will have a very similar cumulative probability of death to a first level character.

I'd be interested to see if this matches any readers' experiences of playing warhammer 2nd ed - I've only played twice and both times found this length of combat to be a significant problem.

Hi

Previously I posted here about playing Pathfinder in Japanese, and there was some interest, so I thought I'd let those readers know that I have since decided to jump in at the deep end, and DMd a session of pathfinder in Japanese. I put some preparatory notes and a review on my blog, so for those who are interested, the notes are here, the game report is here and some observations about how it went are here. Somewhere in amongst all of that there are stats for a Gnomish steam rifle, as well.

I think it's less interesting than the last thing I put up here, being the second time, and everything, and there are no photos (though I'll put some up soon). Thanks for your patience and, as ever, sorry to disturb your normal viewing schedule if it's not of interest.

This is slightly blatant blog broadcasting, but I thought it might be of some interest to some people on the paizo boards, so I'm posting it here in case.

I recently discovered that there is an unofficial (ish?) Japanese translation of Pathfinder, and I recently joined a group at a convention in rural Japan who are playing this version of pathfinder. It was my first experience of role-playing in Japan, and I'm aware that not that many people in the west get a chance to do this, so I've put a description of how it happened at my blog, which is here. If any pathfinder players here are interested in seeing how and whether it's done differently in Japanese by the Japanese, or in how Japanese nerds do western nerdish stuff, perhaps there's something there to interest you. otherwise, sorry to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming, and please ignore this post.