Let's look at this in terms of simple contests (completely vanilla rules), because simulating extended ones leads into thorny questions about bidding strategy.
The base case (neither augmented):
Actor Skill: 17 Opponent Skill: 6
Complete victory: 0.25 %
Major victory: 7.25 %
Minor victory: 53.75 %
Marginal victory: 2.5 % Any victory: 63.75 %
Tie: 1.5 %
Marginal defeat: 22.75 % Any defeat: 34.75 %
Minor defeat: 9.75 %
Major defeat: 1.75 %
Complete defeat: 0.5 %
Iron Hand augments for +2:
Actor Skill: 19 Opponent Skill: 6
Complete victory: 0.25 %
Major victory: 7.75 %
Minor victory: 59.75 %
Marginal victory: 2.5 % Any victory: 70.25 %
Tie: 1.5 %
Marginal defeat: 18.75 % Any defeat: 28.25 %
Minor defeat: 7.75 %
Major defeat: 1.25 %
Straw Man augments for +2:
Actor Skill: 17 Opponent Skill: 8
Complete victory: 0.25 %
Major victory: 6.75 %
Minor victory: 46.25 %
Marginal victory: 5.25 % Any victory: 58.5 %
Tie: 2 %
Marginal defeat: 26.5 % Any defeat: 39.5 %
Minor defeat: 10.25 %
Major defeat: 2.25 %
Complete defeat: 0.5 %
For comparison, both augment for +2:
Actor Skill: 19 Opponent Skill: 8
Complete victory: 0.25 %
Major victory: 7.25 %
Minor victory: 51.25 %
Marginal victory: 5.25 % Any victory: 64 %
Tie: 2 %
Marginal defeat: 24.5 % Any defeat: 34 %
Minor defeat: 7.25 %
Major defeat: 1.75 %
Now, the trouble with wading through all these numbers is, how is the statement "increases his chances far more" to be interpreted? If IH augments, IH's chance of victory goes up from .6375 to .7025, an absolute difference of .065 (10.2% relative); if SM augments, IH's chance of victory goes down to .585, an absolute difference of -.0525 (-8.2% relative). Seen that way, one could argue that IH's augment actually helps him more than SM's does. You could also flip it around, and look at it from SM's POV, which is an important thing to do with simple contests, since their results are not symmetric -- it can happen that *both* sides lose. I won't include the four tables again, but interestingly, SM's chance of victory (28% base) is not at all affected by whether IH uses his +2 augment or not (it makes some minor victories into marginals and some marginal defeats into minors, but not the overall win/loss ratio), but SM does go up to 33.75% chance of victory when he augments himself, for a relative increase of 20.5%, so you could say he gets twice as much out of the augment as IH does. I don't honestly know which gets the "better" deal. Also, as a further caveat, these calculations are based on what happens when one contestant in a 17 vs. 6 contest uses a +2 augment; it is unwise to generalize too far from this one case.
> I think I was thinking of going along the lines of natural 1 or 20
> always critical or fumble (unless masteries interfere!)
Oh! That would certainly be much less unbalancing. Then the effect of one of your augments is superficially the same as a standard one: augment 'N' means N rolls that otherwise would have failed are instead treated as successes. However, there are two subtle differences. First, in the standard system an augment that pushed you up to a new mastery level would prevent you from fumbling and increase your chances of a critical (or make it possible for your opponent to fumble and much less likely for him to critical, if he started with a mastery advantage against you); your system will never do this. OTOH, in your method the augmentation means that ties (i.e. both succeed or both fail) are more likely to be resolved in your favor via the "lower roll wins" rule. Relative effects could indeed be worked out, as above, but again, you'd need to try lots of different cases to work out what part of the result was signal and what was noise.
So, in quest of more data, yes, by all means, try it and see! Then be sure to tell us what happened.
Ryan Caveney
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