The Percentages In The Dialogue Can't Possibly Be Right

[sirdilznik]

I understand that due to random chance percentages may seem out of whack sometimes when taken in a limited context. I get that. With that said I've been observing the percantages to hit in the dialogue with how often I hit and my enemies hit me [I count the hits that do no damage but glance off the armor as a "hit"]).

Just recently I was attacking a creature that (according to the dialogue) I had a 63% chance to hit. I hit the creature 1 out of 11 times. At the same time the creature had a 30% chance to hit me and hit me 5 out of 11 times. Now I would normally discount this to random chance but I've been tracking this for quite a while (hundreds and hundreds of attacks) and generally when I have let's say a 70% chance to hit according to the dialogue I tend to hit just under 50% of the time and when my enemy has 35% chance to hit according to the dialogue they tend to hit about half the time. So my question is are the percentages given in the dialogue not everything? Are there other modifiers that go into the equation before the actual chance to hit is figured?

Or am I just hallucinating?

[CrazyBernie]

It's maddening at times, but it's been proved to be correct in its function, by multiple players tracking hits. Back in Book I, BW even produced a dice-rolling program based on his code which just rolled a 50% chance to hit (a.k.a. flip a coin). Soemtimes it would take 1000 rolls to even out, but it always did.

When I was messing around with barrels, I was fighing some rats in the dark... overencumbered, with a lower chance to hit than the rat (20-something vs their 35%)... but I hit the rats every time, and they missed me every time.

[obiwan]

Modifying the distribution of the chance from uniform to gaussian would make it seem more fair. But it may quite drastically change the feel of the combat.

[sirdilznik]

Ah then it's just my imagination and it will all even out over time. There are just stretches I go through where it just seems impossible that I would miss that many times in a row with like a 78% chance to hit. I guess weird things like that happen, flip a coin 10 times in a row and have it land tails every time, and it will all even out eventually. Didn't take in a large enough sample size apparently.

Maybe the poison from the spiders is driving me insane?

[CrazyBernie]

Ah then it's just my imagination and it will all even out over time. There are just stretches I go through where it just seems impossible that I would miss that many times in a row with like a 78% chance to hit. I guess weird things like that happen, flip a coin 10 times in a row and have it land tails every time, and it will all even out eventually. Didn't take in a large enough sample size apparently.

Maybe the poison from the spiders is driving me insane?

Well there was that one time when I was playing tabletop D&D that I rolled a 1 to hit on a d20 five times in a row(with 2 different d20's... I switched after the third). The DM made a comment about the gods themselves working against me... >.<

[Arkos]

Heh, yeah. I think people who play D&D are more accustomed to so-called 'random' dice rolls not going their way. The D&D culture is chock full of luck rituals and artifacts. Heck, D&D players tend to be more superstitious than baseball players.

[Elwro]

I surely tend to remember 4 consecutive failures at 60% more strongly than I remember those lucky instances of 4 consecutive successes at 40% ("Hey, I hit him 4 times, I got really lucky" / "Hey, he hit me 4 times, the RNG is against me!")