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Monday, January 8, 2024

Margin of Success vs. Fixed Effects

The more I play DF Felltower, the more I have found myself leaning towards fixed effects instead of Margin of Success effects.

I find fixed effects compelling for a number of reasons:

- it's usually faster. You have a certain effect if you win a contest or succeed in attaching some effect to a foe. You only need to know, binarily, success or failure. You don't need to know by how much; who won is usually obvious and margin isn't terribly important.

- it's consistent. For the most part, GURPS inflicts specific effects. Damage may be random, but penalties for conditions (Stunning, Euphoria, Pain, etc.) are fixed.

- it's easier. You need only know a specific effect, and track if that effect is on or off.

I've largely gone to fixed effects whereever I can. Damage isn't fixed, of course, and I don't like it to be. We've moved to a CP-based system* instead of a fixed Grappled condition, but that's still based on the idea that margin isn't important.

We're still using MoS on Feints, against my preference, but hopefully I can get that gone at some point. Lightning spells inflict a stunning penalty with a minus to recover based on MoS, but I'm considering making that fixed, too. I just find a specific effect, or random damage, or a random table result, preferable to MoS.


Does anyone really love MoS and have an argument in favor of keeping it I should here before I change more in the system?






* which I gather isn't as good as Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, but too bad, I like Dungeon Fantastic Grappling better.

2 comments:

  1. GURPS has two systems in parallel, in a way. You have margin of success for skill vs. skill or attribute vs. attribute or whatever combination thereof, then a binary system for defense rolls, which is skill vs. half-skill. Having a HT save, say, would be like HT/2+3, but if you succeed in it, you win, regardless of MOS.

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    1. That's a good way to look at it. I think, over time, it's just that I've become convinced that this one system deprecated in favor of fixed results.

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