Math of Role Playing Games

[Depression Moon]

I was deciding to do a presentation assignment on a math topic and I decided to do it on Role Playing video games. I was wondering if I could get some advice on it. I have the ideas to include these topics in my discussion.

Player stats such as (HP, MP, Str, etc.)
Items
Combat

That's it so far.

[Roogle]

Final Fantasy Tactics has a Battle Mechanics Guide on its page at GameFAQs. The battle mechanics use simple and advanced mathematical formulas. This would be a good starting point for you to begin to understand the amount of math that goes into the programming and logic of various role-playing games.

[Depression Moon]

No I'm not trying to do anything in programming as I hate programming. I meant more as the math involved in playing RPGs.

[JKTrix]

What Roogle was talking about was the kind of math you should be talking about in the game. People have figured out the exact formulas to calculate damage and stuff for this game and others like Pokemon. By 'programming' he means 'this is exactly how the game was designed to work'.

Apart from that, the math involved in just playing an RPG isn't complex enough for a class on the level that I assume you're at. Just basic addition/subtraction.

You like fighting games, I'm sure guys like Roogle and Lionx and maybe me can guide you in the ways of frame data.

[Ouch!]

As the others have mentioned, you're, at the very least, going to need to engage damage formulas. Discussing the stats as numbers is useless unless you can describe how they interact with one another. I would recommend looking into the mathematical formulas involved in MMORPGs. More so than other titles, I feel that the community actively engages knowledge of these formulas in order to maximize their damage output. My personal experience lies almost exclusively with Final Fantasy XI, but I imagine that most other communities are similarly neurotic about the data.

[Roto13]

I have a mental image of you standing in front of a slide of a character status screen with a laser pointing saying "Look! Numbers!"

[blackmage_nuke]

Im not sure how advanced this maths has to be but you can use damage forumales to calculate probability distribution and the such.

Though I cant imagine any class where a presentation about math is applicable

[VexNet]

and here I was thinking of something simple like the math involved in a D&D game, where a simple role of the dice would let you know how much damage you have inflicted. I had always imagined that's how Video Game RPGs kind of worked. Your weapon would have a top set of HP it takes off while your STR would act as your bonus buff points and a number is chosen at random to decide how effective the final hit would be.

like if a weapon has 20HP it takes off tops.
and your STR is +40 (in this case let's say the amount this adds to the weapon is half of the +40 so it would be 20HP)
then a number is chosen at random between one and twenty at how efficient that attack would be.
Lowest/weakest attack would be 20HP taken off, while strongest attack would be 40HP taken off.
(20 + (40) 20) w/ (R) = Attack

and then on top of that you can add armour and equipment buffs or de-buffs.

or am I totally wrong in this way of thinking?

[Goldenboko]

At the very least, you're going to need to go into the math of equation-based damage calculation. It's pretty god damn simple still, so don't worry about needing to know programming math.

More importantly than all of this is, what class are you presenting this to?

1. If I had to do a presentation for my Calculus class, I'd probably go into something more complex, probably not even something based in an RPG, something like projectile motion in Angry Birds and how using derivatives in programing assigns characteristics to the motion.
   
2. If I was making a presentation to an Algebra class, than RPG's would do nicely, but I'd have to at least look up the equations that decide how stats base damage for attacks and how equations differ for different attacks.

If you don't want to go as deeply as number 2, then you better be in an arithmetic class!

[KentaRawr!]

I made a blog post about this on omgmygame!!

RPGs and their numerical nonsense! | omgmygame

[Depression Moon]

I appreciate the help from everyone. I will take a look at the damage formulas.

and here I was thinking of something simple like the math involved in a D&D game, where a simple role of the dice would let you know how much damage you have inflicted. I had always imagined that's how Video Game RPGs kind of worked. Your weapon would have a top set of HP it takes off while your STR would act as your bonus buff points and a number is chosen at random to decide how effective the final hit would be.

like if a weapon has 20HP it takes off tops.
and your STR is +40 (in this case let's say the amount this adds to the weapon is half of the +40 so it would be 20HP)
then a number is chosen at random between one and twenty at how efficient that attack would be.
Lowest/weakest attack would be 20HP taken off, while strongest attack would be 40HP taken off.
(20 + (40) 20) w/ (R) = Attack

and then on top of that you can add armour and equipment buffs or de-buffs.

I was actually thinking about including this. Along with items I was planning to include equipment such as weapons and armor. I know for example in some RPGs like FFIX there is both an attack and a Str stat.
The ATK stat is the one that does the actual damage and I know in some RPGs I've seen the ATK stat increase because of the Str stat so I was wondering if a certain amount of str points equals 1 ATK point and you also have some attacks in RPGs that do damage based on amount of HP like Demi.

More importantly than all of this is, what class are you presenting this to?

Survey of Math (Probability, Geometry, Trig, Number theory, etc.)

[Crowseye]

RPG math is probably a bit more suited to discussion in a Probability & Statistics class where you can talk about modeling, expected values, distributions, min-maxing, etc.

Still, my own fascination with RPGs is largely due to the underlying mathematical concepts and associated problem solving. I love questions such as "What are the best talents/feats/abilities to select?" or "Which weapons should I use?"

RPGs all have the quality of inherently trying to model fictional/imaginary scenarios using mathematical concepts. Some such "models" are very loose and are aimed at fun and ease-of-use, and others are so complex that they could loosely be considered a "simulation."

[Ouch!]

See, when I said damage formula, I was talking about something like this.

[blackmage_nuke]

and here I was thinking of something simple like the math involved in a D&D game, where a simple role of the dice would let you know how much damage you have inflicted. I had always imagined that's how Video Game RPGs kind of worked. Your weapon would have a top set of HP it takes off while your STR would act as your bonus buff points and a number is chosen at random to decide how effective the final hit would be.

like if a weapon has 20HP it takes off tops.
and your STR is +40 (in this case let's say the amount this adds to the weapon is half of the +40 so it would be 20HP)
then a number is chosen at random between one and twenty at how efficient that attack would be.
Lowest/weakest attack would be 20HP taken off, while strongest attack would be 40HP taken off.
(20 + (40) 20) w/ (R) = Attack

and then on top of that you can add armour and equipment buffs or de-buffs.

or am I totally wrong in this way of thinking?

A few wrpg's do work this way like Baulder's gate and the such but more often than not since computers can do calculations so much more precise their random number generators go beyond a dice system. Or so Is my knowledge

[Mirage]

Nothing wrong with a dice as a random number generator though. They're as random as you need them to be anyway.