Thread: Hackmaster +12
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Old 10-03-2003, 06:00 PM   #14
Faceman
Hathor
 

Join Date: February 18, 2002
Location: Vienna
Age: 43
Posts: 2,248
Quote:
Originally posted by Borg:
Under GWW, it's actually a 50% chance of dieing (excluding the save factor) during that round, given the 5% vorpal chance per attack. Heck, even under regular use, the average fighter with 3/2 attacks per round would die once every 14 rounds if the save were removed. With a 3 saving throw, you have a little better longevity, but probably wouldn't make it through one of the longer chapters of the game.

With my current evil party, I wouldn't mind giving the Hackmaster to Minsc and making him go into every battle just to see how long he lasts! Fun, fun.
Hehe, didn't do your probability calculus class correctly, did you?
According to your logic:
1 attack -> 5%
10 attacks -> 50%
20 attacks -> 100%
This is obviously wrong because there is a some possibility not to roll a "1" for twenty times in a row.
Let's look at this:
5% chance means 1 in 20 = rolling a 1 on a twenty-sided die (rather common in RPGs)
  • Your chance of rolling a "1" during ONE roll is obviously 1/20
  • Your chance of NOT rolling a "1" therefore is 19/20
  • Your chance of rolling a "1" two times in a row are (1/20)^2 because your chance for the first roll is 1/20 and only IF that occurs you get your second chance of 1/20 so 1/20*1/20=(1/20)^2
  • Your chance of NOT rolling a "1" two times in a row are therefore (19/20)^2
  • Your chance of NOT rolling a "1" 10 times in a row are therefore (19/20)^10=0.5987
  • Your chance of survival like calculated above is 59.87%. So your chance of dying (i.e. rolling "1" for AT LEAST one time) is about 40%
  • If you calculate it for 20 rolls you get (19/20)^20=0.3585 (35.8% survival chance)
  • To get to a fatality chance of 90% you have to take about 45 swings and for 99% you need about 90. For a 50:50 chance you need 13.5 attacks.
While that is still pretty high considering how often you fight my main point was that a warrior with nice saving throws can use some (easily available) magical equipment to get them to 1 or lower and then would be unaffected by the Vorpal Hit disabling the main disadvantage of the weapon.
If the save was removed a user could deal out 236.25dmg with a 50% chance to die in the course of this action. I think that's pretty fair considering that this can be easily increased with abilities like Kai or Critical Strike and does not include any (weapon style, strenghth,...) boni. So I say remove the save and maybe add a resurrection spell to the abilities that does some permanent damage (HPs, CON) to the raised
This will make the Hackmaster the ultimate last-resort weapon. Or maybe it could be toned down a bit (+3 only, no Vorpal) and only activate the +12&Vorpal at special (conversational) request ("OK Hackmaster, go nuts!").

[ 10-03-2003, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: Faceman ]
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