[CF-Devel] PROPOSAL: Luck

[Tim Rightnour]

On 16-Sep-01 Andreas Vogl wrote:
>
     
      That's just what i said above. I don't see where I need to enlighten
     
     >
     
      you any further Tim. :)
     
     
Oh..  I wasn't trying to be a dope.. You just said "a lot more effects" and
listed 3, so I assumed "a lot more" meant more than 3.  :)

>>
     
      I would agree with Tim on this point actually. I like the idea of luck
     
     >>
     
      being used in all random counts. It will of course make the amount of
     
     >>
     
      luck someone has very important, but then it should already be like that
     
     >>
     
      now.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      Now that's exactly the point where I disagree. The thought of a stat
     
     >
     
      which affects every single aspect of the game horrifies me, as a developer.
     
     >
     
      Artifacts with high luck bonus would surely pop up in such a case,
     
     >
     
      and they would then unbalance every aspect of the game - Yuck!
     
     >
     
      Besides, spells/monsters/maps etc. already need to be tested against
     
     >
     
      players of different levels, I don't want to test everything against luck
     
     >
     
      bonuses in addition.
     
     
I read this, and I think the point of confusion here might be the poor way I
described the formulae to generate these rolls.  I'm going to post my patch to
the list for comment (in my next email) but I wrote my code into a quick
verification program to not only prove to myself my math was unflawed, but to
show some distribution data on how it worked.  First, lets look at a 1d20 roll:

At a luck of 0, (ie, how it is now for 95% of things) the average roll on a
1d20 is 10.5.  My patch never allows luck to have a vast effect on things, it
also caps useful luck at 10, so lets look at what it does to your 1d20 roll, at
various points:

LUCK=-5 AVG IS: 10.267799  LUCK=-1 AVG IS: 10.453693  LUCK=0 AVG IS: 10.497334
LUCK=1 AVG IS: 10.520817   LUCK=5 AVG IS: 10.625877   LUCK=10 AVG IS: 10.743736

So, taking this into account, assuming we were using 1d20 for damage, and the
character hit 1000 times, he would do 10500 HP of damage, vs, 10743 HP of
damage with a luck of 10.  Luck doesn't translate directly into a +1 for him,
it's a gradual curve.  In 1000 hits, he does an extra 243HP of damage.  Also
worth noting, He will *never* do more than 20 HP of damage per hit.  A 1d20
means just that, the luck is simply moving the average slightly upwards on the
scale.  I've appended more data at the bottom for the curious.

>
     
      That's why I think the luck bonus shouldn't get out of hand.
     
     
I agree, and I truly feel that this doesn't make luck into this great +1 to all
stats unbalancing nightmare.  A +1 luck translates rougly into a .2% average
increase on all rolls.  This sounds minute, but I chose this number because of
the high number of random rolls in the game (combat is very fast paced and
common).  The point is, that he is generally more lucky, over the course of the
entire game, not on a particular encounter, spell, learning experience, etc.


Now for some more statistical garbage for the math inclined.

1d6:
LUCK=-5 AVG IS: 3.303961   LUCK=-1 AVG IS: 3.461715   LUCK=0 AVG IS: 3.499840
LUCK=1 AVG IS: 3.525508    LUCK=5 AVG IS: 3.624600    LUCK=10 AVG IS: 3.750733

2d6:
LUCK=-5 AVG IS: 6.656916   LUCK=-1 AVG IS: 6.922005   LUCK=0 AVG IS: 6.998947
LUCK=1 AVG IS: 7.048354    LUCK=5 AVG IS: 7.218781    LUCK=10 AVG IS: 7.375188

10d10:
LUCK=-5 AVG IS: 54.179418  LUCK=-1 AVG IS: 54.620459  LUCK=0 AVG IS: 54.995167
LUCK=1 AVG IS: 55.168149   LUCK=5 AVG IS: 55.472328   LUCK=10 AVG IS: 55.501497

---
Tim Rightnour <
     
     root at garbled.net
     
     >
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS 
     
     http://www.netbsd.org/
     
     
NetBSD supported hardware database: 
     
     http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi