The Mersenne Twister . . . Gone Insane

I had my ass handed to me last night in the battle with Lareth's Lieutenant, Sergeant, and guards outside his quarters. Six 3rd level PCs - 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 sorcerer, 1 wizard, 1 ranger, 1 rogue, plus Zert and Fruella, both at 2nd level. My tactics were sound and the tactics of the enemy weren't particularly overpowering. Why did I get beat down? The random number generator.

It was amazing. I'd say my melee success rate was maybe 20%. Theirs was easily 90%. They almost never missed. They hit, and they hit well.

Same with ranged. All their guys must have taken the precise shot and point blank shot feats, because they hit my guys in and out of melee. They hit at close range. They hit at long range. They hit after avoiding A-o-Os from my adjacent PCs. They hit my PCs while they were getting hit by A-o-Os from adjacent combatants. They hit period.

Magic? Forget it. The Wiz was simply not a factor. Sleep: all enemies save. Tasha's: Lieutenant saves. Ray of Enfeeblement: Sarge saves. The only thing the Wiz did do was die.

The Cleric did okay, he cast bless and bane on everyone, but no one seemed to notice. He eventually went down in a hail of 3 ranged crits in 1 round . . . wtf? Sorcerer was the last PC standing, or rather running. Running away. They caught her though. She died, spell-less, after scoring a melee hit with a dagger on the Sarge. wtf?, version 2.

A-o-Os? We got A-o-Os. The rogue took his share despite being quite capable with his tumble skills. In fact, he died trying to flank the enemy, A-o-Oed to death like a wounded gazel at the hands of hungry dingos.

NPCs didn't fare too well either. Zert was KIA before he could desert, having suffered a massive strike from good ol' Sarge, who was eating up the field. Fruella got by for a while on attitude, and actually took the Sarge down near the end. She would have gotten Lewy too, but the crossbow guys weren't about to throw in the towel just yet. Not by a long shot. Not by a short shot either, because four consecutive hits later Fruella hit the turf, and with her fall our hopes were dashed.

My fighter, on the verge of perishing at -9 HP, was tended to by my medically skilled ranger, who promptly failed the heal. wtf? #3. And this after going down earlier on and being revived by a Cure Light Wounds from the doomed cleric, who infused 4 HP back into him. By the way, Mr. Cleric got A-o-Oed attempting to cast, but didn't get the spell disrupted (yay!). As soon as Fighter guy stood up, he went right back down at the hands of our good buddy the Sarge's A-o-O. He was like a jack-in-the-box, albeit a jack-in-the-box who died in the end, along with everyone else.

This battle really was all about death. And to think, I was one of those who argued for having Liv make Lareth come out and help. These guys didn't need help. Who needs help when you've got the Mersenne Twister random number generator on your side?

Gaear

 

Amazingly I have never lost that fight (the bugbears and ogre upstairs is another matter...) but i gotta say, i use charm and web in there. Pin em down then get em to take each other out.

Of course, thats not an issue for a 2nd level party... <tips hat for the attempt> I look forward to it now Liv has improved it.

 

Just to pont out, I consider this battle a RNG fluke, albeit the greatest-blue-streak-fluke-of-all-time. I don't know if Liv has tweaked the battle some, but I'm specifically pointing at the RNG for my thrashing. I actually did this one 4 times trying to figure something out about Lareth. It was #3 that went so horribly wrong. The others weren't bad. I won them without too much trouble.

Just goes to show that RNGs are, well, suspicious. I know the Mersenne Twister was thought to be a great improvement on the original, and analytically I can grasp that such an outcome as mine is possible. It's the common sense side of me that wonders if something foul-smelling isn't in the wind here. I remember hearing that the devs of PoR:RoMD deliberately skewed the RNG to make their battles harder.

 

Indeed.

Well, after paying rather close attention to the rolls window the last day or so, as well as reflecting back on all my playing time, I think I'm willing to venture a theory here. I honestly believe that power-characters, i.e. PCs with an 18 for their PR - and most particularly melee-types, are being penalized by some sort of built in equalizer. Just way to many critical misses. I have an 18 STR fighter who gets about twice as many critical misses, consistently, as Fruella, the other fighter on board at the moment. I'm no statistician or numbers guru, but I just don't see how the results could be so reliable. It actually makes sense too - Troika no doubt foresaw that people would be maxing out their scores and would prefer to maintain balance, and thus maintain interest in the game. As Liv has pointed out, constant success will take the shine off of this type of game in a hurry. No shine might equal drops in sales. The answer? Build a penalty into the RNG to level the field for power-characters. It's not so much a matter of average rolls, just the preponderance for critical misses with 18 STR characters.

If all this sounds too conspiratorial, I apologize. I may well be off my rocker. But the figures are there . . . for me at least.

I suppose some type of data-gathering effort would be in order to really demonstrate this, or debunk it.