Why do many people prefer roll-high to roll-under?

Aldarc said:

In practice, however, I'm not sure that is always the case, hence why many people here complain about how their players forget all the different bonuses or which number they are using: e.g., ability attribute, attribute modifier, proficiency, spells, items, etc. There is a lot of math that happens at the table. While that may be an issue mostly with D&D, D&D and its kin are the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, and most (but not all) roll over systems are d20 D&D-based. There is a reason, for example, that Pathfinder 1 was referred to as "Mathfinder."

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All of which is about d20 games and similar, not about the specific thing I have been discussing, which is whether one general type of success determination framework is more intuitive. PF1 is IMO a truly terrible game, as is 3.5 D&D. 4e’s biggest flaw that would have eventually lead to us leaving it for a non-D&D if we hadn’t liked 5e is the proliferation of small fiddly bonuses. None of which has anything at all to do with the discussion I’ve been having.

Aldarc said:

So the whole "the lower, the better" doesn't really apply.

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This feels very pedantic to me, but maybe you genuinely didn’t get what I was saying. Lower=better and higher=better are very generic terms for any framework in which the goal is to be higher or lower than a given value. I don’t care beyond that, it is what it is.

Aldarc said:

There is no, "hey did you remember to add this, this, this, and this to your roll?" It's usually just, "did you roll under your ability score?" or "did you roll under your skill score?"

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Again, not a conversation I care about or am trying to have. Fiddly modifiers and opaque target numbers are associated with one framework because the most popular game happens to use both higher=better and silly amounts of modifiers most players don’t want to deal with. I’d D&D rolled low and had all the same mods (this time to the skill or ability score target number, probably, so a magic weapon would add 1 to your attack skill and damage), then you’d be making the opposite arguments.

Aldarc said:

Instead, for me the question is, "why are my players having an easier time with roll under than roll over?"

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Okay

Aldarc said:

Just like there are particular issues with some roll under games and not roll under systems universally.

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Okay?

Aldarc said:

I also introduce people to gaming via games other than D&D. They don't have problems with roll under. You often don't even have to add the modifier. You roll and compare with the number on your sheet. You know as soon as you roll. No arithmetic required. It's not hard

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All of which is also usually IME true of any additive dice pool game, and any number of other games.

Aldarc said:

Roll high is more intuitive than roll low. However, what is being contrasted is NOT roll high and roll low, but, rather, roll over and roll under. It is similar to but not the same as the aforementioned.

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It’s the same thing. This is very pedantic, and I refuse to engage with it.

doctorbadwolf said:

All of which is about d20 games and similar, not about the specific thing I have been discussing, which is whether one general type of success determination framework is more intuitive. PF1 is IMO a truly terrible game, as is 3.5 D&D. 4e’s biggest flaw that would have eventually lead to us leaving it for a non-D&D if we hadn’t liked 5e is the proliferation of small fiddly bonuses. None of which has anything at all to do with the discussion I’ve been having.

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I understand the argument from intution; however, I don't think that intution gives us the full picture especially when we look at the actual game mechanics of these systems in practice. It's a bit reductionist IMO. It implicitly boils the arguments down to "bigger is better is more intuitive; ergo, roll over is better."

doctorbadwolf said:

This feels very pedantic to me, but maybe you genuinely didn’t get what I was saying. Lower=better and higher=better are very generic terms for any framework in which the goal is to be higher or lower than a given value. I don’t care beyond that, it is what it is.

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doctorbadwolf said:

It’s the same thing. This is very pedantic, and I refuse to engage with it.

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When you tell me that I am just being pedantic here and later, that feels very dismissive to me. I am aware that intuitively people understand that "higher is better." However, I don't think that human intution tells the whole story. Nor does it say what is better. Nor does it say what is easier and quicker for play. I have shared with you my experiences with roll under. Your response seems to amount to just "Okay?" which again feels fairly dismissive. Because what I am trying to communicate that I have experienced a difference between what our intuition says is easier and how much easier/quicker that I have found a number of roll under games to be in practice.

doctorbadwolf said:

Again, not a conversation I care about or am trying to have. Fiddly modifiers and opaque target numbers are associated with one framework because the most popular game happens to use both higher=better and silly amounts of modifiers most players don’t want to deal with. I’d D&D rolled low and had all the same mods (this time to the skill or ability score target number, probably, so a magic weapon would add 1 to your attack skill and damage), then you’d be making the opposite arguments.

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I'm not following you here in the bold. Regardless, I would prefer if you didn't make bad faith assumptions about what I would be arguing. It feels needlessly hostile.

doctorbadwolf said:

All of which is also usually IME true of any additive dice pool game, and any number of other games.

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Of course, but this thread is just about comparing roll over with roll under, so the fact that this is also true of other games seems like a moot point. I even end my post by saying:

Aldarc said:

This is why I have come to increasingly value tabletop games that make it super quick and easy to read success when the roll happens: e.g., many roll under games, PbtA, FitD, Free League's Year Zero Engine, etc. I know that there are roll over games where that's the case too - e.g., Cypher System - but roll over more often then not puts the math after the roll and the TN may or may not be known.

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So clearly I am aware that this is true of other games.

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

I don't remember off-hand what A-Level exams are exactly and what would be the German school's equivalent, so I am not sure if this is the correct description.
But from German school grades 1 (youngest/earliest) to 10 (oldest/latest), we use a 1-6 grading system. At the "Oberstufe" from 11 to 13, the system moves to a 0-15 point system.
The conversion: 0 points = 6; 1 = 5-; 2 = 5; 3 = 5+; ... 12 = 2+, 13 = 1-, 14=1, 15=1+; Though 1+ is basically never used in the first 10 school years, IIRC. And weirdly enough, we still like to calculate our average grade with the 1-6 system, using decimals (so those Minuses and Plusses become decimal terms, you add them all together and divide by the number. With some additional weighting based on your subject classes.)
Gaming systems aren't the only thing with weird rules!

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I appreciate the clarification. I have lived in Austria for eight years, and I am now lving in Germany, but the grading system still feels quite foreign to me and the full grasp of it clearly eludes me still. Thanks.

Roll-under + Blackjack = Best dice mechanics out there IMO.

Aldarc said:

I understand the argument from intution; however, I don't think that intution gives us the full picture especially when we look at the actual game mechanics of these systems in practice. It's a bit reductionist IMO. It implicitly boils the arguments down to "bigger is better is more intuitive; ergo, roll over is better."



When you tell me that I am just being pedantic here and later, that feels very dismissive to me. I am aware that intuitively people understand that "higher is better." However, I don't think that human intution tells the whole story. Nor does it say what is better. Nor does it say what is easier and quicker for play. I have shared with you my experiences with roll under. Your response seems to amount to just "Okay?" which again feels fairly dismissive. Because what I am trying to communicate that I have experienced a difference between what our intuition says is easier and how much easier/quicker that I have found a number of roll under games to be in practice.


I'm not following you here in the bold. Regardless, I would prefer if you didn't make bad faith assumptions about what I would be arguing. It feels needlessly hostile.


Of course, but this thread is just about comparing roll over with roll under, so the fact that this is also true of other games seems like a moot point. I even end my post by saying:

So clearly I am aware that this is true of other games.

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Look, we are clearly trying to have different discussions, so I’m going to just clarify the part you indicated was unclear, and then move on.

[If] D&D rolled low and had all the same mods… then you’d be making the opposite arguments, [imo obv]

By “all the same mods” I mean that a magic item gives a +3 bonus on top of your ability modifier and providency, and there are situational bonuses and penalties, and PCs features could give bonuses, etc..
I then noted in parenthesis that such bonus’s would preferably be to the static number ie the skill or whatever, because making the number you need to roll under into a higher number is more intuitive than subtracting from what you roll.

Finally, I am positing that in a world where D&D and other reasonably big games used the described type of system, many indie games would go the other way with few if any mods to a roll-high, and overall you’d associate fiddly modifiers with rolling a low number to succeed. The whole paradigm would reverse.

Because the fiddly modifiers are the issue.

doctorbadwolf said:

Because the fiddly modifiers are the issue.

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I do think that fiddly modifiers are part of the problem when one looks at the bigger picture. Earlier in this thread I said:

Aldarc said:

One of the pitfalls of roll over, IME, is the tendency to increase the number of various floating bonuses in the game. So the game becomes about fishing for the bigger numbers with +Xs from different sources. That tends to slow the game down. Many people here have expressed, for example, that their players can never remember their various bonuses from proficiency, race, skills, feats, spell bonuses, etc.

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Because when "bigger numbers are better", game designers tend to provide different ways for you to make your character's numbers go up or for the GM to adjust those numbers as well. That's the common design answer in the market. And, again in my experience, it can lead to numbers inflation as well as increased math in the game.

I am more interested in the praxis of "roll over/under games" in concrete game systems rather than a pure abstraction of "higher is better" or "higher is more intuitive."

Aldarc said:

These are sometimes called Blackjack systems. Pendragon is probably the best example.

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I'm a big fan if there's a spending element like in Apocalypse Keys where 8+ is a success and 11+ is success with consequences and your bonus is based on how many Darkness tokens you are willing to spend. I'm a fan of push your luck mechanics in general.

doctorbadwolf said:

[If] D&D rolled low and had all the same mods… then you’d be making the opposite arguments, [imo obv]

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Unless you are letting these modifiers dip results into the negatives - which becomes the exact same system as roll high! - you will need to take steps to keep the results as close to the positive side of zero as you can. Making a lot of modifiers ultimately worthless. 5th edition essentially moves in this direction with its commitment to bounded accuracy.

Now that I mull that over, I think it's pretty important. In a roll-over system, there's no conceptual limit to how high you can roll. In a roll under system, optimal success is "as close to your target as possible" whether the target is zero or your skill level.

Committed Hero said:

Unless you are letting these modifiers dip results into the negatives - which becomes the exact same system as roll high! - you will need to take steps to keep the results as close to the positive side of zero as you can. Making a lot of modifiers ultimately worthless. 5th edition essentially moves in this direction with its commitment to bounded accuracy.

Now that I mull that over, I think it's pretty important. In a roll-over system, there's no conceptual limit to how high you can roll. In a roll under system, optimal success is "as close to your target as possible" whether the target is zero or your skill level.

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Exactly! With a blackjack style system, ie, roll under + roll above a TN, you end up creating a system where modifiers can be removed. Any modifier applies gets placed to the Blackjack TN, and there would be maybe one or two. Perhaps a boon/bane dice system ala Shadow of the Weird Wizard/Demon Lord would work here; roll a pool of d6 beside your d20 and pick the one you want (if a boon) or pick the highest one (if a bane) and apply it in some way to the TN.

This also encourages a degrees of success system.

However, I must point out that this is posisble in roll over if you use a PbtA-style method. Mike Mearls does this when he reinvented Ability Checks on his Patreon recently. If 1-3 is a Setback, 4-15 is a Success w/ Complication, 16-19 is a Success, and 20+ is a Triumph, you essentially only need a modifier that can get you above 15 or 20. But I still prefer the roll under version.

Shardstone said:

Exactly! With a blackjack style system, ie, roll under + roll above a TN, you end up creating a system where modifiers can be removed. Any modifier applies gets placed to the Blackjack TN, and there would be maybe one or two. Perhaps a boon/bane dice system ala Shadow of the Weird Wizard/Demon Lord would work here; roll a pool of d6 beside your d20 and pick the one you want (if a boon) or pick the highest one (if a bane) and apply it in some way to the TN.

This also encourages a degrees of success system.

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I like the Delta Green system, which is blackjack plus doubles is a critical success/failure.

Rolling over just feels better.
In addition to "addition being easier than subtraction", and "Bigger is better", you also can get the feeling of "Breaking the power scale."

For example, a +1 bonus on a d10 roll allows you to get the feeling of "11 out of a Ten point scale, above and beyond" even if the game math means you aren't actually doing it. As a more extreme example, you could also stack bonuses to the point where you basically overpower the die itself, feeling like you are cheating fate somehow.