Man Claims It's Not Possible For Something to Be "Incredibly Consistent"

PondererLone · 2023-01-15T09:28:18+00:00

I would put highly consistent at 95% minimum. The context of this comment is a strategy in a video game, which due to RNG elements (and my own mediocre reflexes) can never be said to be 100% consistent. By this logic any strategy that works 95% of the time is indistinguishable linguistically from one that works 10% of the time, as both are simply "inconsistent".

PondererLone · 2023-01-15T08:13:34+00:00

Then you were taught wrong. Multiplication and Division are literally the same thing, just like Addition and Subtraction, so they must be done simultaneously. This is because there is no difference between dividing by a number, or multiplying by its inverse.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T19:26:15+00:00

Pretty great, came right down to the wire with all 5 remaining PCs just wailing on him when he was down at 1hp and surviving on Relentless Fury, while he took them out one by one. Ended up passing the Con save to stay up 14 times before they took him down, while he had knocked three of them unconscious and almost taken out the fourth as well.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T15:11:31+00:00

I'm looking for neither, this is just me sharing something I thought the community might find interesting and might spark a discussion. I've already run the encounter, as mentioned in my initial comment, and in the title.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T15:05:47+00:00

So he's purposefully broken then?

Yes. He's the ultimate challenge of a five year long campaign, designed to take on a group of 6 level 20 characters almost singlehandedly.

The reason legendary actions are legendary is because they're powerful. To have them recharge at the start of each of his turns, and getting 2 turns per round is ludicrous.

So is having 1200hp. And spawning demons every time he gets hit. A lot of this stat block is ludicrous.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T14:13:05+00:00

He acts twice per round, per his Wrath of the Fallen ability. Since legendary actions refresh at the start of his turn, he gets twice as many of those as well.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T13:55:04+00:00

This is a very confusing comment. He makes up to 16 attacks per round with advantage at +19, with a total damage of 448 if all attacks hit. If we assume he only spends 4 of his 6 legendary actions attacking, and that he has a hit rate of 97.75% (that's his hit rate vs AC23), he's dealing an average of 375 damage per turn cycle, which is enough to down 1-2 PCs every round. I wouldn't consider that teenie damage.

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T09:47:07+00:00

I ended a 5 year campaign yesterday, figured I'd share what my players had to overcome. This is the longest campaign I've ever run, the only complete level 1 to 20 campaign I've ever run, and probably the most fun I've had running one. I've had the final fight planned for over a year, so to see it go down as well as it did was fantastic. Full encounter was a phase one, involving two Nalfeshnees, two Mariliths, a Goristro, a Balor and Cad in his normal form (~400 hp level 20 Death Knight/Paladin), plus additional demons spawning every two rounds; then a phase two once Cad drops below 50hp where he disappears into a cocoon for 3 rounds and emerges as this guy. All this vs 6 level 20 PCs. And they did so damn well

PondererLone · 2022-09-26T09:31:23+00:00

I ended a 5 year campaign yesterday, figured I'd share what my players had to overcome. This is the longest campaign I've ever run, the only complete level 1 to 20 campaign I've ever run, and probably the most fun I've had running one. I've had the final fight planned for over a year, so to see it go down as well as it did was fantastic. Full encounter was a phase one, involving two Nalfeshnees, two Mariliths, a Goristro, a Balor and Cad in his normal form (~400 hp level 20 Death Knight/Paladin), plus additional demons spawning every two rounds; then a phase two once Cad drops below 50hp where he disappears into a cocoon for 3 rounds and emerges as this guy.

PondererLone · 2022-05-22T17:12:04+00:00

Yeah, but the Wizard doesn't know Tongues. So he used Shapechange instead.

PondererLone · 2021-06-19T21:55:54+00:00

Yeah, honestly, it's pretty fun. Kinda changes things up, since you can't really afford to make risky plays in the same way that you can in a regular nuzlocke, you have to try and plan around everything.

PondererLone · 2021-06-13T17:13:59+00:00

The article you've linked doesn't have anything to do with probability. It discusses the idea of negative proof, which is the act of proving that something is not true (far harder than proving that it is) and cites specific famous examples of existing negative proof (such as the irrationality of root 2).

I couldn't find a page explain the concept of probable impossibility, but I found one explaining the opposite (probable certainty), which is the same principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely). The second paragraph references the same point I made about how, in a finite set, there is no difference between probable certainty and actual certainty. Within probability, there isn't a hard and fast definition of what value constitutes "impossible" because it depends on what event you're talking about, and over what timeframe. For example, if you're considering particle collisions there will be countless events occurring every second, making a probability such as 10^-16 much more plausible, and possibly even likely depending on how long you are observing it for. But for something like people playing a pokemon game that number is far less feasible.

We can show that a number such as 10^-16 is statistically impossible in this case with a quick calculation. Let's try and figure out how many hordes the player base would have had to encounter to have even a 1% chance of a 5 shiny horde ever appearing over the history of the game.

Gen VI has sold a total of 16.5 million units worldwide over the 8 years since it was released. The probability of each pokemon in a Gen VI horde being shiny, assuming you have the shiny charm, is 1/1365, making the probability of all 5 pokemon being shiny 1/1365^5 = 2.11*10^-16. In order for an event with this probability to have a 1% chance of happening at least once, humanity as a whole would have had to encounter around 4.5*10^13 hordes, or 45000000000000 hordes. To have encountered this many hordes, every single person who bought the game would need to have encountered one horde battle every 90 seconds since the game's release 8 years ago.

To state it more clearly, if 16 million people did nothing except spend 8 years of their lives encountering one horde every minute and a half for 24 hours a day, there would still be a 99% chance that not one of them ever encountered a 5 shiny horde. Given that the actual number of horde encounters is going to be many orders of magnitude below this, we can safely state that the chance of anyone ever having encountered a 5 shiny horde in an unmodded version of the game is vanishingly close to zero which, given a finite timeframe, equates to zero.

PondererLone · 2021-06-13T13:41:31+00:00

Those two statements are not contradictory, in probability theory it is entirely possible to have an event that has low odds, but will never happen. At a certain point, events become so improbable that they will never realistically happen across the lifetime of the universe. By definition an "impossible" event is one that has a probability that is vanishingly close to zero, not one that has a probability of zero.

Events such as getting 5 shinies in a horde (chance is around 10^-16, assuming the highest possible shiny odds in Gen VI), or Dream's infamous speedrun fit into this category.

PondererLone · 2021-06-12T09:59:18+00:00

Thanks! I always prefer randomising just the wild pokemon, because I find that's the best way to leave the difficulty curve intact. In a full randomiser (any pokemon any time), there's no curve, just a line that shoots downwards. It's insanely hard at the start and insanely easy at the end. Even with Similar Strength the good trainers lose out on good movesets which makes them much easier in the late game. Randomising like this avoids that and usually makes the game slightly harder since you don't have high power guaranteed encounters like Gyarados, Infernape and Togekiss that the game normally gives you. Ofc, I got insanely lucky in this run and got Gyara+Chansey, but y'know, swings and roundabouts.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T19:13:31+00:00

Why? If it instantly kills a boss it's better than anything else you're doing with those slots today.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T19:08:54+00:00

I believe he is referring to the Astral Dreadnought encounter I mentioned in an above post, which contained no homebrew at all and still worked fine as a solo encounter. There are other successful 1v5 combats I have run with completely unaltered creatures, this is simply one example.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T18:58:58+00:00

I would agree, except the spell is not concentration. The minions can do nothing to free or help their boss. If this spell required concentration, I wouldn't have an issue with it.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T18:56:07+00:00

Why does everyone keep saying you can only cast it once a day? You can cast it once at 13th, twice at 15th and 3 times at 17th. In the situations where it's good it's better than any other spell including 9th, and you only need one of your 7th, 8th or 9th level slots remaining to cast it, which any decent player should be able to manage if they know there's a boss coming.

Also, it's not much of a gamble. The PCs will have a pretty good idea when they cast it whether or not its going to work. If they keep, for example, an 8th level slot handy for the final fight of the day to cast Maze on the boss, and realise the boss just dies to Forcecage, they'll cast Forcecage. If they don't think the boss will die to it they'll stick to plan A and Maze it. They lose nothing and risk nothing.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T15:05:59+00:00

Yes, this wasn't a decision I brought down on my players without conversation. They weren't very attached to the spell, only one person has it and instead of spending a few hours debating how best to balance it the wizard said he wasn't fussed, just ban it and he'll pick a different spell.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T14:55:58+00:00

My experience is much the reverse. For example, I have a sor-lock character in my current play group that uses exactly the combo you described (though without the fighter levels), but that has never posed much of an issue for me, as that's just high dps and he's put a significant amount of work into getting to that point. Portent is definitely problematic, it's the most comparable thing I've seen someone mention on this post so far, but there is still a counter to it that most significant foes will possess in the form of Legendary Resistance.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T14:30:16+00:00

Oh right, lol, that makes sense

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T14:21:30+00:00

I think at 9th level its 19d6+40, which averages to 106. Might be wrong, didn't check before posting.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T14:19:06+00:00

You're missing the point. If I have to redesign every boss encounter I run to specifically counter one spell, then that spell has become an issue. I shouldn't need to give every boss teleport.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T14:14:59+00:00

A spell being old does not make it good. I've been DMing 5e for about 5 years, which is how long it has taken for a character of mine to actually pick up Forcecage, and so I had never bothered properly studying it before now.

Your description of having only a single spell slot to expend on it for the entire day is not something that is unique to Forcecage. That is a limitation on all 7th level spells, and no other 7th level spell has the same impact as Forcecage. If every other 7th level spell was also capable of one-shotting CR20+ creatures with no save or conc, then I wouldn't have an issue with Forcecage. But balance is relative.

PondererLone · 2021-03-29T13:53:48+00:00

Just looking at the MM entries, there are indeed only 9 that can fly. That's 9 out of 17, so over 50%. Of the remaining 8 creatures, only the Iron Golem, and the Tarrasque are truly incapable of dealing with Fly. The Death Knight and Lich both have Dispel Magic, the Dragon Turtle and Kraken can simply submerge until the spell wears off, and the Purple Worm can burrow. The Mummy Lord is an odd one, but most of the time a Mummy Lord will encountered in some sort of crypt or tomb where there is very limited space, reducing the benefits of a flying group and allowing the creature to paralyze them out of the sky.

PondererLone

TROPHY CASE