Staggering Probability

[UserClone]

You would think that the odds of rendering an opponent staggered, via dropping them to exactly 0 hp would not come up in combat often, but in my group it does. A lot. I would hazard a guess to say that as much as 20% of the enemies we have faced as a party have become staggered. And no, it wasn't by DM fiat. He was as surprised as the rest of us. In fact, no matter which of us DMs, someone inevitably gets staggered. How frequently does this condition come up in your game?

[rollfrenzy]

pretty often, But I bet you'd be surprised if you actually started tracking number of bad guys killed versus number of staggered.

It's called the Availability Heuristic. It seems to happen much more often because you remember the instances when it happens much better than when it doesn't.

[UserClone]

I would agree, but I am familiar with that effect (if not its actual name), so I would think that, bearing it in mind, I would err on the side of underexaggeration, so instead of the 25% I was originally going to post, I went with 20%, which is still an exaggeration, but I would daresay that I am positive that it is more than 10%, as we tend not to have a lot of fights against many weak foes, but get hammered with foes close to, at, or above our own CR.

[rollfrenzy]

I would bet you would be VERY surprised.

But I could be wrong theres a reason they call it probability and not certainty.

If I am wrong, that's pretty cool. I love statistical anomalies.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

You would think that the odds of rendering an opponent staggered, via dropping them to exactly 0 hp would not come up in combat often, but in my group it does.

Nitpick: "Staggered" refers to having Nonlethal Damage exactly equal to your current hit points. When you have exactly 0 hp, you are "Disabled."

[UserClone]

Yes well, "disabling probability" sounds lame, unless of course it's a thread about the Scarlet Witch.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Yes well, "disabling probability" sounds lame, unless of course it's a thread about the Scarlet Witch.

Huh.

Well, I didn't even really think about the title as a pun. Just saw it as, "The concept of this defying probability is just staggering!"

Guess that "-ed" ending versus the "-ing" really goes for something.

In any case, "Disabling Probability" does sound nastier if you play D&D too much. 'Cause you know it's a worse condition.

[Prometheus]

Anytime an enemy is not dead, he will be hit another time. So we are looking at the probability associated with the final hit. If we assume that an any is hit multiple times and therefore the previous hits and hp result in an essentially random amount of life before that final hit (up to the damage that final hit does), than the probability of the creature of being disabled is = 1 / (the average final damage dealt to it). Anytime it regenerates or is cured past this point more than that average damage dealt, it essentially counts as if it were another creature. If a character has the option to use "just enough" damage rather than overkill, than this final damage would be lower than the average damage dealt in combat.

In a 1st level campaign, this would be a hit roughly 1d6 to 1d10+4 or somewhere between 28.6% to 10.5% per monster, depending on the makeup of your party. At higher levels, it depends on how much the players power-game, and whether they play offensive or defensive but in general decreases over time. But then again, a lot more monsters can be thrown at you so it is a lot more likely to happen in an encounter.

So lets say the probability should be 5% at your level, whatever that is - an average final damage value of 20. The law of large numbers is still going to make it hard for your observed probability to be significantly above that. For example, if you take the binomial distribution in 40 deaths, the probability of 6 or more (that is, 15% or more) of the enemies being disabled is 13.81% chance.

Maybe you are one of that 13.81%, because no one else hear seems to share that experience and you are the one to make the post about it. But the encounters should be even higher than 40, so perhaps the board is right and guessing that it is subconscious exageration.

I'm not sure if that counts as killing catgirls since I was actually talking about phenomena within the D&D world. Maybe several fangirls playing catgirls died.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

I'm not sure if that counts as killing catgirls since I was actually talking about phenomena within the D&D world. Maybe several fangirls playing catgirls died.

No. It doesn't count. 'Cause it's probability, not physics.

[mostlyharmful]

My group almost never gets them partially due to damage output optimization and partially because they use so many nonHP diasbling methods, then CdG. It might be fun to run a "tak'm alive" bounty hunter that uses Subdual and see how many get Staggered. Just for the purposes of Science you Understand....

[-Cor-]

Orr group has the uncanny ability to drop monsters and be dropped ourselves by monsters to 1HP. Not sure why this keeps happening, but I can't think of a combat we've had so far (and I'm really racking my brain here) where one of the mobs or one of the players wasn't dropped to exactly 1HP.

Of course, nothing happens at 1HP. You're just as good then as you are at 600HP.

<shrug> Just odd that it keeps happening.

[Prometheus]

Orr group has the uncanny ability to drop monsters and be dropped ourselves by monsters to 1HP. Not sure why this keeps happening, but I can't think of a combat we've had so far (and I'm really racking my brain here) where one of the mobs or one of the players wasn't dropped to exactly 1HP.

Of course, nothing happens at 1HP. You're just as good then as you are at 600HP.

<shrug> Just odd that it keeps happening.

Odd huh, almost like something or someone is artificially prolonging your character's lives...probably nothing :P

[-Cor-]

Odd huh, almost like something or someone is artificially prolonging your character's lives...probably nothing :P

Yeah. I thought the same thing after about 10th time it happened and asked our DM about it. Turns out it's not fiat, but actually happening. Our DM keeps all of the mobs HP on index cards and has since let us see exactly how much damage we do to things if we ask. He also refuses to know exactly how much HP we have.

We actually prefer to have a little fear in the world that something really bad could happen, and our DM has absolutely no problem killing us.

This is what makes it so odd that the 1HP thing keeps happening. If it were just the DM keeping us (or the mobs) alive (which it's not), we'd be ever so pissed. He says he's not and I have no reason to not believe him. Even if I did, he's given evidence to prove it.

[silentknight]

I love telling the players that, yet again, the critter they have been pounding on has used his last action to teleport (or whatever) away again, and that with better damage rolls they could have killed it because it only had ONE MORE HIT POINT (or maybe 2).

[Roderick_BR]

Reminds me of the first time I played a paladin in 3.0. In the first battle the leader of the attacking group put me down exactly to 0 HP, giving me the chance to Lay on Hands me back to 1, just in time to help an ally flank him.

[Prometheus]

I'm just teasing you -Cor-, I've had lots of moments that have looked like DM fiat and really weren't supposed to. For example, there was someone who I truly wanted them to talk to before they defeated him, but they dropped him to -1. But then as I started to describe his death I looked at the numbers again and I had made an error, by one hp, so that he was at 0. Everyone thought that it must be DM fiat, but sure enough, I could show that it wasn't.

When it is DM fiat, I don't beat around the bush
"What a strange magical effect...I roll a knowledge (Arcana) and a spellcraft check."
"It's DM fiat."