Beginner's Luck + FoRKs?

[foxandwarlock]

Can I get some help on my Beginner's Luck roll by FoRKing an appropriate skill? Or must the Beginner's Luck stand on its own?

[Kublai]

No, I believe you can FoRK into a Beginner's Luck Roll. It would make sense, after all, if you knew how to swing a sword but were learning how to use a mace that you could use some of your sword knowledge in there.

[Thor Olavsrud]

You cannot FoRK Skills into Stats or Attributes. Neither can you FoRK Stats or Attributes into Skills. System book, pg. 40.

[Kublai]

I've always considered a Beginner's Luck roll to be more skill than stat and thus allowed FoRKs.

[Redoid]

I wouldn't want to grant "beginner's luck" if someone isn't a beginner, but has already some related knowledge he can fork into the task.

On the other hand, I have a question... If your root stat is n, and you open your skill during character creation, spending one skill point, you roll n/2 dice against an obstacl of x. If you spared the skill point, you roll n dice (all of your root stat) against an ob equal to 2x.

Opening the skills does zippo effect, as far as I can tell, on the statistical outcome of the task, and can even be detrimental, if your stat was odd, and your skill was rouded down. By rolling more dice with beginner's luck, you also get more chances to have a 6 and may open-end them to get a better effect more frequently.

Unless I am mistaken (and I am no statistics guru, so don't hesitate to correct me), beginner's luck is already great, and opening the skill could represent the fact that beginning a formal training, you get to apply related knowledge to your new field, hence the fork.

[Thor Olavsrud]

Opening the skills does zippo effect, as far as I can tell, on the statistical outcome of the task, and can even be detrimental, if your stat was odd, and your skill was rouded down. By rolling more dice with beginner's luck, you also get more chances to have a 6 and may open-end them to get a better effect more frequently.

Unless I am mistaken (and I am no statistics guru, so don't hesitate to correct me), beginner's luck is already great, and opening the skill could represent the fact that beginning a formal training, you get to apply related knowledge to your new field, hence the fork.

Granted, mathematics is not my strong suit, but I don't think this is correct (and I don't have my Monster Burner with me to check my math). Consider the situation if you have a root stat of B4 (I'm using this because it's the easiest for me, any math gurus are welcome to do additional permuations)

If you are making an Ob 1 test with a B2 skill, you have a roughly 75% chance of succeeding. However, if you are testing it unskilled, your Obstacle jumps to Ob 2. I believe your chances of getting 2 successes on 4 dice is roughly 47%.

Let's say it's an Ob 2 test with a B2 skill. You have a roughly 25% chance of succeeding. However, testing unskilled, your Obstacle jumps to Ob 4! You have a roughly 6.25% chance of succeeding.

Please shout out if I totally screwed this up, guys.

[stormsweeper]

As I reckon them, the chances are roughly:

Ob 1

B2 skill - 50% B4 stat - 25%
G2 skill - 66% G4 stat - 44%
W2 skill - 83% W4 stat - 69%

Ob 2

B2 skill - 25% B4 stat - 6.25%
G2 skill - 44% G4 stat - 19.75%
W2 skill - 69% W4 stat - 48%

[bad formula deleted]

[Thor Olavsrud]

Cool. Obviously I did something seriously wonky with the Ob 1 math. Glad I got the Ob 2 math though!

Thanks Anthony!

[Mickeroo]

No, that formula is wrong. A quick look at the ob 1 with a b2 will show that.

Rolling 2 dice gives 4 outcomes. A passes and B fails, B passes and A fails, both pass, and both fail. With an obstacle 1 test, 3 of these outcomes would be passes. Since the probablility of a pass on a single die is equal to the probabiltiy of a failure, the chances are a solid 75% for ob 1 with a b2.

I don't know what forumla to use, but it's more complicated then that. It involves taking into account each variation of success. For example, for ob 2 on 4 dice, 2, 3 or 4 sucesses would be passing. These must be calculated seperatly.

[stormsweeper]

I'm not accounting for order of dice. For one success on two dice, one die (it doesn't matter which) can only have 3 results, while the second can have all 6. That's 18 possible "success" results, out of 36 total. For 2 successes on 4 dice, you need 2 dice to have only 3 possible results, while the other two can have any - 3*3*6*6 - 324 possible "success" results out of 1296 total.

[stormsweeper]

Ok, that formula was messed up as I was recreating it incorrectly. I used the method above to work out probabilities - find out the number of successful results and divide by total possible results.

[stormsweeper]

Ok, I did some more digging, and the formula is really, really complicated (I couldn't post it here because of charset issue, but google binomial distribution).

Using the Java app here:

http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lane/stat_sim/normal_approx/index.html

The revised table should be:

Ob 1
B2 skill - 75% B4 stat - 68.75%
G2 skill - 89% G4 stat - 89%
W2 skill - 97% W4 stat - 98%

Ob 2
B2 skill - 25% B4 stat - 6.25%
G2 skill - 45% G4 stat - 20%
W2 skill - 69% W4 stat - 47.5%

[trial]

Edit: oops, didnt saw you already fixed the calculations

I might not remember the mechanics of the game, but doesnt B4 means you throw 4 dice? thus you are suppose to have better propability to success then B2?

[trial]

These are my calculations for a success in ob1:

B2: 75% B4: 93.75%
G2: 88.88% G4: 98.76%
W2: 97.22% W4: 99.92 %

[trial]

By the way, to calcualte propabbility of succes for ob1 is very simple.
If the propability of succes is p, q=1-p and n is the number of dice you have to trhow. Then the propabbility of succes is 1 minus the propabbility of failure, which mean you failed in all the dice you rolled.
Then the propabbility of success would be:
1-q^n

[Angaros]

Ther is (was?) a probabilities table in the downloads section. I've made one as well that can be found here (http://www.bronzeworks.org/downloads/die_probabilities.pdf). Stormsweeper's numbers are correct. Remember that when you test for Beginner's Luck you suffer a double obstacle penalty. Rolling all successes on your dice gets harder and harder when you add dice to the pool. The chance is halved for each die added. (For black dice that is. Grey dice chances get cut by 1/3rd and white by 1/5th approx.)

[stormsweeper]

Yes, my "Ob1" table there is for a base skill obstacle of 1. A stat test would have an obstacle of 2. The Ob2 section is really an Ob4 for the stat tests.

There's also a built in limit to how many times you get to roll the stat before it opens into a skill - our B4 stat friend would get 6 routine tests (difficult and challenging tests count for the stat) before he got the B2 skill. In that same time, the B2 skill person likely would have advanced to a B4 skill.

[Redoid]

These are my calculations for a success in ob1:

B2: 75% B4: 93.75%
G2: 88.88% G4: 98.76%
W2: 97.22% W4: 99.92 %

OK, thanks everyone, I just made the approximation for ob 1 tests, and didn't bother to look if it was changin after that. So the boon of Beginner's Luck only apply to very simple tests. That's good.