When you have concealment or total concealment, and are attacked, you get to roll a percentile die to negate the attack. Do the rules require you to get a higher roll or a lower roll?
I've always assumed the person rolling the die (any die) wants a higher roll; so if you have 20% concealment, for example, you would want an 81 or better.
However, my friends tell me that most role players roll for the lower numbers, so in the above example, you would want to roll a 20 or lower.
Who's right? Which rolling method is the intended method?
Doesn't particularly matter, the probabilities for getting either result is the same, it just boils down to personal preference (which should be called out before a roll is made).
The dice assume a result from 1 (00 and 1) to 100 (00 and 0). If a player calls "low," then like you said, anything 20 or less is a miss.
Similarly, if a player calls "high," anything 81 or better is a miss.
The rules are silent on the matter as far as the Combat chapter is concerned, and to be honest, I feel it'd be a waste of space for them to specify, because as I've said, the need for specification isn't really there.
Mathematically, it really doesn't matter. Roll percentiles after calling high or low, roll a d10 and take 1-2 or 9-10, or roll a d20 taking 1-4 or 17-20, or any other method that gives you 20%. So the question is which way makes you feel lucky?
Actually, the rules require that you use percentile dice.
Concealment gives the subject of a successful attack a 20% chance that the attacker missed because of the concealment. Make the attack normally—if the attacker hits, the defender must make a miss chance d% roll to avoid being struck. Multiple concealment conditions do not stack.
See the bolded part. It's not "may" or "can," it's "must."
Therefore, anyone who uses other means of determining concealment is technically wrong, even if mathematically it makes no difference.
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If you have a 20% miss chance, a roll of 1-20 would miss.
If you have a 50% miss chance, a roll of 1-50 would miss.
If you have a 100% miss chance, a roll of 1-100 would miss.
Super simple.
I've seen all manner of rolling to accomplish those results, but I don't see much of a point to using them, other than a desire to "do things differently".
I've always assumed the person rolling the die (any die) wants a higher roll; so if you have 20% concealment, for example, you would want an 81 or better.
If your opponent has 20% concealment, i.e. 20% of all attacks would miss, you definitely do not need to roll for 81+ on a d100, this would be 80% concealment.
If your opponent has 20% concealment, i.e. 20% of all attacks would miss, you definitely do not need to roll for 81+ on a d100, this would be 80% concealment.
Only if he chose the "roll low" option
If he chose the "roll high" option then rolling anything between 80 and 100 would mean the attack missed.
But that is indeed, confusing, and Nefreet's description is the clearest way to explain these probabilities.
If your opponent has 20% concealment, i.e. 20% of all attacks would miss, you definitely do not need to roll for 81+ on a d100, this would be 80% concealment.I've always assumed the person rolling the die (any die) wants a higher roll; so if you have 20% concealment, for example, you would want an 81 or better.
If my opponent had concealment, then per the rules, he would be the one rolling for miss chance, not I.
Also, if you considered 81+ to be a miss, like I said, that's 20% concealment, not 80.
If he chose the "roll high" option then rolling anything between 80 and 100 would mean the attack missed.
If I'm not mistaken, an 80 in that case would be a hit. It would need to be an 81+ to miss.
While "subtracting from 100" is not the most taxing mathematical operation, it's probably simplest if you just go with "roll over the concealment percentage and it's a hit, under and it's a miss."
While "subtracting from 100" is not the most taxing mathematical operation, it's probably simplest if you just go with "roll over the concealment percentage and it's a hit, under and it's a miss."
Yeah, the other players in my groups said that this was the reason why it was more prevalent, because it was easier to remember.
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Our gm is a sadist, every time he's about to roll he'll smirk and ask "High or low?"
In general, rolling high numbers in Pathfinder is good, so I like to do it that way for consistency. And no, I don't insist on d% when I could use a d10 or d20.
I know someone that calls middle.
Oh damn.
I know someone that calls middle.
That is the most messed up thing I've read, and quite frankly I wouldn't know how to adjudicate it, since the middle between 1 and 100 is 50.5.
So, that means his "middle" isn't specific enough, since it means I have to use either 41-60, or 40-59, which means that said player would still have to indicate "high or low."
In my book, that's needlessly complicated. If I want needlessly complicated, I'd just throw millions of CR 1 Zombies at players (even if it is hilariously fun for the PCs to slay hordes of undead).
Also it means that rolling higher is better, which is consistent with PF's general paradigm.
This would only be true if the attacker was making the concealment roll, but the rules are clear that it's the defender who makes that roll.
I couldn't find a satisfying explanation of how to read d% rolls in a quick flip through the Core Rulebook. However, the Beginner's Box is very explicit about the d% die roll for concealment being a miss if you roll the % number or under (Hero's Handbook, p. 59):
Concealment Miss Chance: Having concealment means the enemy has a 20% chance to miss you. If you have concealment and an enemy attacks you, the enemy has to roll d%. If the attacker rolls 21–100 on its d%, it gets to make its attack roll normally, but if it rolls 01–20, it misses automatically and doesn’t get to make its attack roll.
The total concealment rules (p. 60) spells it out the same way, but with 51-00 and 01-50.
This makes the intent of the core rules pretty darn clear, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, there's some discrepancies in regards to the Hero's Handbook and the Core Rulebook that don't add up.
Then again, this question is so pedantic, I imagine if someone makes a FAQ thread out of this, that the PDT would respond with "No response required," saying that it doesn't particularly matter which manner of resolution is done, since all of it mathematically, mechanically, and universally comes out the same.
The same probability is there, the same mechanics are enforced, and the outcome, no matter which way it's carried out, will not be any different than any other method.
What? Where?Also it means that rolling higher is better, which is consistent with PF's general paradigm.This would only be true if the attacker was making the concealment roll, but the rules are clear that it's the defender who makes that roll.
Hero's Handbook is from the Beginner's Box, which gives a basic understanding of the rules.
Core Rulebook is a hard cover book.
Hard cover books based on release date supersede rules references in other books, such as Fencing Grace from Advanced Class Origins being reprinted in Ultimate Intrigue.
Sounds like you got an uphill battle, my friend.
Nobody's saying Obscuring Mist gives 80% concealment. Where the hell are you getting that from?
I don't think so.
If people don't see that giving 80% concealment for obscuring mist is broken, then I'm happy not to sit at their tables.
Not one person has said that, or even inferred it.
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I don't think so.
If people don't see that giving 80% concealment for obscuring mist is broken, then I'm happy not to sit at their tables.
Changing who actually makes the roll doesn't change the mechanics, or percentage chance. Changing whether you need high or low does not change the percentage chance if done correctly. The intuitive method is to roll dice, and if you roll the miss chance or lower, it misses. In theory, though, you could roll a d10, and declare any 2 numbers, and rolling either of those would be a miss, and this would be the same chance.
The real interesting part for me is that the Core rulebook version of miss chance currently means that the Core rulebook version of Blind-fight doesn't actually work. The concealment rule makes the defender roll the miss chance, but Blind-fight allows the attacker to re-roll his miss chance...
So on a 21+, the attacker misses.
I don't think anybody will agree with that. That's one of the worst instances of pedantry I've ever heard of.
You're misunderstanding the quoted rule.
So on a 21+, the attacker misses.
I don't think anybody will agree with that. That's one of the worst instances of pedantry I've ever heard of.
The rules don't say that on a roll of 21+, the attack is a miss. All it says is that the subject who benefits from concealment has a 20% chance of an attack normally hitting the target being considered a miss because of concealment, and that they roll percentile dice to determine whether the attack falls into that 20% chance or not.
So no, nobody's going to agree with it, because that's not what the agreement is.
It also doesn't particularly matter if the defender or the attacker rolls for concealment, since it all flows into the same result, which is whether or not the attack missed due to concealment.
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Also interestingly, the wording for both concealment and blind-fight is inherited from 3.5...so, it hasn't worked for a long time.
In the end, it really is immaterial who makes the roll, or what range of results are used, or even what die, so long as there is understanding beforehand of how to interpret the results. Where I play, with gamers who are veterans of 3.x, 4e and 5e, virtually everyone rolls concealment dice along with attack rolls to speed things up. We also mostly roll damage dice along with attacks, and a goodly number of people with builds with multiple attacks use multiple sets of colour-coded dice at once. And all of us use the convention of 'high roll is good', meaning 01-20/50 misses.