Corran
2020-05-28, 01:30 AM
I created this thread to continue the conversation started here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?612120-Hierarchy-of-Saving-Throws/page5) (post # 131). What's being discussed is based on MaxWilson's application about saving throws and his idea for an encounter simulator. At least as far as I know. It's certainly not my idea. This is not meant to be a private conversation, so feel free to jump in and contribute in any way you want.
To provide some context:
I edited my post upthread but also wanted to bump the thread to bring this to folks' attention: https://maxwilson.github.io/Simple-SavingThrowGraphsFor5E/
As I said upthread, I'm still working on encounter construction, but you can at least look at individual monsters, filter for specific sourcebooks and creature types, and spot patterns in the data. I never realized before how weak liches are to Charisma-based attacks, or that the Tarrasque is proficient in Int saving throws.
========================================
Would you really want to exclude them, or would you like them factored into the effectiveness percentage somehow? Technically it's easy to determine whether/how many legendary resistances a given creature has--I just can't think of any useful questions to ask/answer with that data. The way I think of it right now is that "effectiveness" has to hit at least 4.0 before you can count on affecting any creatures with legendary resistances, so even if you choose a 100% effective spell (like Mental Prison against an Astral Dreadnought) it will of course always take 4 spells to affect it.
I can't think of any way to include legendary resistance in the picture that wouldn't make it more confusing, but maybe there's a way. Edit: I guess you could define Effectiveness as (average % failed saves) / (Legendary Resistances + 1).
BTW, "are your attacks affected by legendary resistance" is a redundant question. All saves are affected by legendary resistance, and no ability checks are. But you could ask whether you want to see effectiveness scaled down for LR... hmmm, I think I'll do that right now. One sec....
Hmm, for a combat simulator mini-game (similarly to how your chargen app did), the approach you are suggesting could be very good, if the outcome of, say, a day's worth of encounters is defined by your average effectiveness throughout that day (or in a similar way). For example, easy mode would let you survive/level up if your average effectiveness throughout the day was no lower than 40%. Average difficulty would have you survive/level up if your average effectiveness during the day was no lower than 60%. And hard difficulty would have you survive/level up if your average effectiveness during the day was no lower than 60% and your effectiveness for each deadly or harder encounter during that same day was also no lower than 40% or something. In which case, adjusting the effectiveness of spells that targets saves against legendary enemies is a good solution. Still, it does away with all the elements you would be worried about in a real game (as this approach is a big gamble, and reduced effectiveness is a very crude approximation of the risks it entails and of the possible delay in hurting/killing the enemy), but if you refine enough the odds of the various modes, and you also expand on the consequences (such as by adding gold as a parameter, eg if you play in the hard mode, and you achieve the average effectiveness, but you fail against one deadly encounter by no more than 10% effectiveness, the outcome is that you survive, earn half experience than you would if you had succeeded in everything, and also lose 1000 gold coins because one of your allies died and you have to resurrect them).
On the other hand, if you also want someone to be able to use the app in order to get a better idea about the game system (so as a tool helping to plan for spell selection), then:
I am thinking that it may be too ambitious to ask the app (even indirectly) whether burning through a creature's legendary resistances is a good idea, because that course of action relies on so many other factors. Namely I would say your group's overall options available and action economy (so for example potential monk allies, summons/allies with access to spells like command and polymoph), not to mention that this approach is more risky by its nature (win big or die). So, for a player that plans to contribute burning through the dragon's legendary resistances, the application as it is certainly makes sense (though I think you are right to want to factor in the delay/cost in resources somehow). But for a player who will not count on burning through the dragon's legendary resistances, the results can be misleading.
Which makes me think, that a decent and simple (at least as an idea) way to go about this, would be to ask the user to pick between some options. Essentially you are asking the user if the app will assume 0% effectiveness against legendary creatures (ie infinite legendary resistances), or normal effectiveness (ie as if they didn't have any legendary resistances). And you do that separately for creatures with 1 legendary resistance and for creatures with 3 legendary resistances. Just because someone might be playing a certain character with certain allies, for which it would be a good option to try and burn through 1 legendary resistance, but not through 3 of them. This way someone would be able to see for example for about how long they would be able to count on a spell like polymorph if I don't plan to use it against legendary creatures. And if I did, the app would give me a good indication of what saves I should target in order to burn legendary resistances. Coincidentally, this will make more apparent the usefulness of spells that don't rely on saves to affect the enemy to people who were not already aware of that.
I actually have this raw data already (including which creatures have advantage against specific conditions like being poisoned or charmed). What would be an appropriate UX? Maybe a selector asking you to optionally choose a type of effect from a list of conditions?
Would it be helpful to show multiple graphs at the same time?
Yes, I think having multiple graphs shown at the same time would be helpful, in that it would make comparing things easier.
Ideally, I would like to be able to add additional graphs on top of the existing ones. The existing ones show the effectiveness of spells with no typed condition, while the extra graphs would show the effectiveness of spells with typed condition. So, if I want to see how using a spell like web compares to other options, I just add a new graph that corresponds to dex saves and restrain.
Having the option to filter the results (by unselecting the graphs I don't want to see) would also be useful in that it would make it easier to see how one specific graph compares to another specific graph, without additional graphs in the way. So for example, consider how the app's results are currently. What I am saying, is that for example I would like to see only how DEX effects compare to CON effects. So I unclick everything else and now I see only the two corresponding graphs. Then I also want to throw INT into the mix, so I click INT and now I see three graphs, those of DEX, CON and INT. Etc.
I also have raw data on damage resistances/immunities/etc., and again I don't know how to do anything useful with it, in the current UI. Hmmm, I guess I could make "damage: <dice> of <type> for <dice amount> save for <half or none>" an option for you to select when you choose a spell, instead of picking a condition. And in that case, "Effectiveness" can be total HP of damage inflicted, instead of average % of failed saves.
Hmmm. I also cannot think of anything, cause in its current state (same holds if you end up incorporating condition resistances/immunities and legendary resistance), the app just shows how likely it is for you spell to land and affect the target, but it does not say 'how much' you affected the target. Unless you are planning to adjust effectiveness depending on how powerful the spell effects are, I'd say that you should treat damage spells the same way (if you end up including an option that allows you to add new graphs in a similar way to what I mentioned above). So for example, a fireball's effectiveness is judged by how likely the enemy is to make the save, and then it's a question of how we have fire resistance further adjust the effectiveness (fire immunity brings effectiveness down to 0% obviously). Bringing it down by a factor of 0.5 is good enough I think for when against fire resistant creatures.
Again though, it depends on what you really want this app to do, and how exactly you have envisioned your encounter simulator to work. If your chargen app was an indication of what you are trying to do with this, and for example your encounter simulator asks you to choose one spell for the encounter it poses against you, I am thinking of two approaches. One for concentration damage spells (eg animate objects), and one for no-concentration damage spells (eg fireball).
1) in the case of animate objects, I'd determine its effectiveness the same way you mentioned (AC instead of saves obviously), with the difference that I would also devide the enemies' hp by some number X. This number X would be the average number of rounds I would impose as an upper limit regarding how long this fight can last before you automatically lose. And this number could vary. It could be something like 5 for medium encounters, 4 for hard encounters, etc.
2) In the case of fireball (and any no concentration spells), I am thinking of a slightly more complicated solution. Most spells that target saves and don't do damage are concentration spells, and there are a lot of spells that target saves and do damage that are not concentration spells. So, have casting spells like fireball as an additional option when your first spell is not a no-concentration damage spell. Then, depending on how effective your fireball was, adjust the initial spell's effectiveness (ie your character's effectiveness in dealing with the encounter) upwards or downwards. The option to adjust downwards exists to symbolize the cost of spending actions and resources to use fireball in a moment where it was not effective. So for example, if fireball managed to take out no more than 10% of the enemies' collective hp, the effectiveness of my fear spell (which was my primary way of dealing with the encounter) is reduced by some amount (because using a fireball was resources and action not well spent, which will hurt me -either in this encounter or in the long run). While if a fireball managed to take out no less than 50% of the enemies' collective hp, then the effectiveness of my fear spell goes up by some other amount. If you like something like this as an idea, and you think it's possible to include it in a program, we could talk further think of what percentages and adjustments make sense. And ideally, the numbers we are using change depending on the difficulty of the encounter. So, a deadly encounter would require of you to make better use of your fireball for the same bonus to your effectiveness, compared to a medium encounter.
To provide some context:
I edited my post upthread but also wanted to bump the thread to bring this to folks' attention: https://maxwilson.github.io/Simple-SavingThrowGraphsFor5E/
As I said upthread, I'm still working on encounter construction, but you can at least look at individual monsters, filter for specific sourcebooks and creature types, and spot patterns in the data. I never realized before how weak liches are to Charisma-based attacks, or that the Tarrasque is proficient in Int saving throws.
========================================
Would you really want to exclude them, or would you like them factored into the effectiveness percentage somehow? Technically it's easy to determine whether/how many legendary resistances a given creature has--I just can't think of any useful questions to ask/answer with that data. The way I think of it right now is that "effectiveness" has to hit at least 4.0 before you can count on affecting any creatures with legendary resistances, so even if you choose a 100% effective spell (like Mental Prison against an Astral Dreadnought) it will of course always take 4 spells to affect it.
I can't think of any way to include legendary resistance in the picture that wouldn't make it more confusing, but maybe there's a way. Edit: I guess you could define Effectiveness as (average % failed saves) / (Legendary Resistances + 1).
BTW, "are your attacks affected by legendary resistance" is a redundant question. All saves are affected by legendary resistance, and no ability checks are. But you could ask whether you want to see effectiveness scaled down for LR... hmmm, I think I'll do that right now. One sec....
Hmm, for a combat simulator mini-game (similarly to how your chargen app did), the approach you are suggesting could be very good, if the outcome of, say, a day's worth of encounters is defined by your average effectiveness throughout that day (or in a similar way). For example, easy mode would let you survive/level up if your average effectiveness throughout the day was no lower than 40%. Average difficulty would have you survive/level up if your average effectiveness during the day was no lower than 60%. And hard difficulty would have you survive/level up if your average effectiveness during the day was no lower than 60% and your effectiveness for each deadly or harder encounter during that same day was also no lower than 40% or something. In which case, adjusting the effectiveness of spells that targets saves against legendary enemies is a good solution. Still, it does away with all the elements you would be worried about in a real game (as this approach is a big gamble, and reduced effectiveness is a very crude approximation of the risks it entails and of the possible delay in hurting/killing the enemy), but if you refine enough the odds of the various modes, and you also expand on the consequences (such as by adding gold as a parameter, eg if you play in the hard mode, and you achieve the average effectiveness, but you fail against one deadly encounter by no more than 10% effectiveness, the outcome is that you survive, earn half experience than you would if you had succeeded in everything, and also lose 1000 gold coins because one of your allies died and you have to resurrect them).
On the other hand, if you also want someone to be able to use the app in order to get a better idea about the game system (so as a tool helping to plan for spell selection), then:
I am thinking that it may be too ambitious to ask the app (even indirectly) whether burning through a creature's legendary resistances is a good idea, because that course of action relies on so many other factors. Namely I would say your group's overall options available and action economy (so for example potential monk allies, summons/allies with access to spells like command and polymoph), not to mention that this approach is more risky by its nature (win big or die). So, for a player that plans to contribute burning through the dragon's legendary resistances, the application as it is certainly makes sense (though I think you are right to want to factor in the delay/cost in resources somehow). But for a player who will not count on burning through the dragon's legendary resistances, the results can be misleading.
Which makes me think, that a decent and simple (at least as an idea) way to go about this, would be to ask the user to pick between some options. Essentially you are asking the user if the app will assume 0% effectiveness against legendary creatures (ie infinite legendary resistances), or normal effectiveness (ie as if they didn't have any legendary resistances). And you do that separately for creatures with 1 legendary resistance and for creatures with 3 legendary resistances. Just because someone might be playing a certain character with certain allies, for which it would be a good option to try and burn through 1 legendary resistance, but not through 3 of them. This way someone would be able to see for example for about how long they would be able to count on a spell like polymorph if I don't plan to use it against legendary creatures. And if I did, the app would give me a good indication of what saves I should target in order to burn legendary resistances. Coincidentally, this will make more apparent the usefulness of spells that don't rely on saves to affect the enemy to people who were not already aware of that.
I actually have this raw data already (including which creatures have advantage against specific conditions like being poisoned or charmed). What would be an appropriate UX? Maybe a selector asking you to optionally choose a type of effect from a list of conditions?
Would it be helpful to show multiple graphs at the same time?
Yes, I think having multiple graphs shown at the same time would be helpful, in that it would make comparing things easier.
Ideally, I would like to be able to add additional graphs on top of the existing ones. The existing ones show the effectiveness of spells with no typed condition, while the extra graphs would show the effectiveness of spells with typed condition. So, if I want to see how using a spell like web compares to other options, I just add a new graph that corresponds to dex saves and restrain.
Having the option to filter the results (by unselecting the graphs I don't want to see) would also be useful in that it would make it easier to see how one specific graph compares to another specific graph, without additional graphs in the way. So for example, consider how the app's results are currently. What I am saying, is that for example I would like to see only how DEX effects compare to CON effects. So I unclick everything else and now I see only the two corresponding graphs. Then I also want to throw INT into the mix, so I click INT and now I see three graphs, those of DEX, CON and INT. Etc.
I also have raw data on damage resistances/immunities/etc., and again I don't know how to do anything useful with it, in the current UI. Hmmm, I guess I could make "damage: <dice> of <type> for <dice amount> save for <half or none>" an option for you to select when you choose a spell, instead of picking a condition. And in that case, "Effectiveness" can be total HP of damage inflicted, instead of average % of failed saves.
Hmmm. I also cannot think of anything, cause in its current state (same holds if you end up incorporating condition resistances/immunities and legendary resistance), the app just shows how likely it is for you spell to land and affect the target, but it does not say 'how much' you affected the target. Unless you are planning to adjust effectiveness depending on how powerful the spell effects are, I'd say that you should treat damage spells the same way (if you end up including an option that allows you to add new graphs in a similar way to what I mentioned above). So for example, a fireball's effectiveness is judged by how likely the enemy is to make the save, and then it's a question of how we have fire resistance further adjust the effectiveness (fire immunity brings effectiveness down to 0% obviously). Bringing it down by a factor of 0.5 is good enough I think for when against fire resistant creatures.
Again though, it depends on what you really want this app to do, and how exactly you have envisioned your encounter simulator to work. If your chargen app was an indication of what you are trying to do with this, and for example your encounter simulator asks you to choose one spell for the encounter it poses against you, I am thinking of two approaches. One for concentration damage spells (eg animate objects), and one for no-concentration damage spells (eg fireball).
1) in the case of animate objects, I'd determine its effectiveness the same way you mentioned (AC instead of saves obviously), with the difference that I would also devide the enemies' hp by some number X. This number X would be the average number of rounds I would impose as an upper limit regarding how long this fight can last before you automatically lose. And this number could vary. It could be something like 5 for medium encounters, 4 for hard encounters, etc.
2) In the case of fireball (and any no concentration spells), I am thinking of a slightly more complicated solution. Most spells that target saves and don't do damage are concentration spells, and there are a lot of spells that target saves and do damage that are not concentration spells. So, have casting spells like fireball as an additional option when your first spell is not a no-concentration damage spell. Then, depending on how effective your fireball was, adjust the initial spell's effectiveness (ie your character's effectiveness in dealing with the encounter) upwards or downwards. The option to adjust downwards exists to symbolize the cost of spending actions and resources to use fireball in a moment where it was not effective. So for example, if fireball managed to take out no more than 10% of the enemies' collective hp, the effectiveness of my fear spell (which was my primary way of dealing with the encounter) is reduced by some amount (because using a fireball was resources and action not well spent, which will hurt me -either in this encounter or in the long run). While if a fireball managed to take out no less than 50% of the enemies' collective hp, then the effectiveness of my fear spell goes up by some other amount. If you like something like this as an idea, and you think it's possible to include it in a program, we could talk further think of what percentages and adjustments make sense. And ideally, the numbers we are using change depending on the difficulty of the encounter. So, a deadly encounter would require of you to make better use of your fireball for the same bonus to your effectiveness, compared to a medium encounter.