[S] D&D.Sci: All the D8a. Allllllll of it. Evaluation and Ruleset

post by aphyer · 2023-02-27T23:15:39.094Z · LW · GW · 7 comments

Contents

  RULESET
    PLAYER STATS
  STRATEGY
  LEADERBOARD
  BONUS OBJECTIVES
  FEEDBACK REQUEST
  UNRELATED JOB HUNTING BLEG
None
7 comments

This is a follow-up to [LW · GW]last week's D&D.Sci scenario [LW · GW]: if you intend to play that, and haven't done so yet, you should do so now before spoiling yourself.

There is a web interactive here you can use to test your answer, and generation code available here if you're interested, or you can read on for the ruleset and scores.

RULESET

A party has three stats, corresponding to the three main types of challenge they will face in the course of the game:

Combat.  The Black King wields the immense power of his Ring Of Orbs N-fold (where N is # of players).  If your Combat stat is too low to defeat him, you will surely be vanquished.

Friendship.  You will need to make allies among the consorts and denizens of your world...and also stay on good terms with your other party members!  If your Friendship stat is too low to do this, you will end up killing NPCs you were supposed to work with, or with your party collapsing into recriminations and refusing to talk to one another.

Shenanigans.  The world of Skaia is full of self-fulfilling prophecies, stable time loops, and similar such Shenanigans.  If you manipulate these well, they can work to secure your victory - if your Shenanigans stat is too low, they can work to guarantee your defeat.

Your party's success rate is determined by whichever of these three stats is lowest.  So stats of 10-10-10 are better than stats of 20-20-9.

To determine victory, you roll a number of d4s equal to your lowest stat.  Each die showing a 4 counts as a success.  If you get a number of successes >= the number of players, you win - if not, you lose.

For example, if a 2-player party has Combat 6, Friendship 10, and Social 4 (abbreviated 6-10-4), they will roll 4 d4s and win if at least 2 of those dice show a 4.

A party's stat total is the sum of stats of its members:

PLAYER STATS

Each class and aspect has different stats (generally summing to 6):

Class	Aspect	Combat	Friendship	Shenanigans
Knight	Rage	4	1	1
Maid	Heart	1	4	1
Seer	Time	1	1	4
Rogue	Blood	3	2	1
Thief	Doom	3	1	2
Bard	Breath	2	3	1
Sylph	Life	1	3	2
Witch	Light	2	1	3
Mage	Mind	1	2	3
Heir	Space	2	2	2
Prince	Void	2*	2*	2*
Page	Hope	3*	3*	3*

To determine a character's score in a stat, you multiply the score of their class by the score of their aspect.  For example, an Heir (2-2-2) of Breath (2-3-1) has stats of 4-6-2.  A Seer (1-1-4) of Light (2-1-3) has stats of 2-1-12.

Two class/aspect pairs have special effects:

Prince and Void invert whatever they are paired with.  Any aspect paired with Prince, or any class paired with Void, treats all its stats as being 4 minus whatever they would usually be.  For example, the Prince (2-2-2) of Life (1-3-2) inverts the values of Life to 3-1-2, and so has stats 6-2-4.

Page and Hope provide great potential that is more difficult to reach.  They have higher-than-usual stats of 3-3-3, but any aspect paired with Page or any class paired with Hope treats all its stats as being 1 less than they would usually be (but not below 1).  For example, the Page (3-3-3) of Life (1-3-2) reduces the stats of Life to 1-2-1, and so has stats of 3-6-3.

Note that there is a symmetry between class and aspect.  For example, a Knight of Heart and a Maid of Rage are identical - both pair a 4-1-1 with a 1-4-1 for total stats of 4-4-1.  I don't think anyone actually explicitly realized this, but abstractapplic seemed very close to figuring it out (noticing that the six classpects that always lost a solo run were the Knight/Maid/Seer of Void and the Prince of Rage/Heart/Time).

STRATEGY

Having a high stat total is valuable, and some classpect combinations with low stat totals are bad.  However, more important than high stats is for your stat totals to be balanced.  

The highest stat total a character can have is 18, available to the Knight of Rage (16-1-1), Maid of Heart (1-16-1) and Seer of Time (1-1-16).  However, these characters are only good if other characters can compensate for their weaknesses, and on their own they're much weaker than a more balanced character.

Your party began with:

• A Mage (1-2-3) of Time (1-1-4), with stats 1-2-12.
• A Knight (4-1-1) of Blood (3-2-1), with stats 12-2-1.

So your current stat total is 13-4-13.

The most important thing for you to do therefore was to select high-Friendship characters to help resolve your weakness in that stat.

Best possible play was to bring:

• A Maid of Heart (1-16-1), bringing your stat total to 14-20-14.
• A character with 6 in both Combat and Shenanigans: that could be a Thief of Light or a Witch of Doom, either is 6-1-6.

This brings your stat total to 20-21-20, letting you roll 20 dice for your required 4 successes, for a win rate of 77.5%.

LEADERBOARD

Player	Characters	Combat	Friendship	Shenanigans	Lowest Stat	Win Rate
Optimal Play	Maid of Heart (1-16-1), Thief of Light/Witch of Doom (6-1-6)	21	20	21	20	77.5%
simon	Sylph of Breath (2-9-2), Maid of Hope (3-9-3)	18	22	18	18	69.4%
abstractapplic	Page of Mind (3-3-6), Seer of Void (6-6-0)	22	13	19	13	41.6%
Random Play	Two random legal heroes	??	??	??	??	36.2%
Yonge	Page of Hope (4-4-4), Heir of Space (4-4-4)	21	12	21	12	35.1%
Pessimal Play	Prince of Heart (6-0-6), Maid of Void (6-0-6)	19	4	19	4	0.4%

Congratulations to simon, who picked two heroes who were both strong in Friendship and okay in other stats, getting fairly close to the optimal score.

Condolences to Yonge, who selected two excellent all-around heroes (both 4-4-4) that would have been a very good 2-person party, but didn't fit particularly well into your existing party with its Friendship weakness.

 

BONUS OBJECTIVES

Troll Bonus 1: This was something of a matter of opinion, since 'which aspects are nice' is not set in stone.  My personal recommendation would have been a Maid of Hope and a Page of Heart, both 3-9-3, for total stats of 19-22-19 (one short of the optimal score of 20), or just choosing the Thief of Light rather than the Witch of Doom in the optimal solution.

Troll Bonus 2: Total stats of the troll party were Combat 46, Friendship 42, Shenanigans 49 (meaning that trolls contributing to Friendship were more valuable).  From most to least valuable (ties broken arbitrarily):

Troll	Combat	Friendship	Shenanigans	Lowest Stat Without
Knight of Blood	12	2	1	34
Rogue of Heart	3	8	1	34
Sylph of Space	2	6	4	36
Page of Breath	3	6	3	36
Seer of Mind	1	2	12	37
Bard of Rage	8	3	1	38
Heir of Void	4	4	4	38
Maid of Time	1	4	4	38
Witch of Life	2	3	6	39
Thief of Light	6	1	6	40
Mage of Doom	3	2	6	40
Prince of Hope	1	1	1	41

simon and abstractapplic both identified the Prince of Hope as not being very useful (this is one of two maximally-dreadful classpects with stats of 1-1-1, along with the Page of Void), and both flagged the Mage of Doom as being subpar (with mediocre overall stats and a tilt away from Friendship).  simon in particular gave a list that approximated this reasonably well (with the biggest diffs being in the Heir of Void and Maid of Time - while the Heir of Void (4-4-4) is much better than the Maid of Time (1-4-4) in general, in this party the Combat diff doesn't matter and both are equally okay).

FEEDBACK REQUEST

As usual, I'm interested to hear feedback on what people thought of this scenario.  If you played it, what did you like and what did you not like?  If you might have played it but decided not to, what drove you away?  What would you like to see more of/less of in future?  Do you think the scenario was too complicated to decipher?  Or too simple to feel realistic?  Or both at once?  Do you have any other feedback?

Given that this scenario got fewer answers and less engagement than past ones, I suspect I did something wrong in writing it, but I'm not quite sure what.  The scenario didn't feel that overcomplicated from the inside - was it much more unapproachable than I expected?  Was the dataset being too large a serious inconvenience?  Did the baffling Homestuck-based 'story' and 'art' turn off a lot of players?

In any case, thanks for playing, and I hope you had fun!

UNRELATED JOB HUNTING BLEG

I'm currently in the market for a new job.  (Summary: eight years work experience in finance/programming, currently working in NYC but unattached and willing to move).  If you know anyone interested in hiring the sort of person who spends his spare time writing these scenarios, shoot me a PM!  Thank you! 

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