Contested Will Probabilities

In follow up to yesterday’s post, I did the work and calculated out the chance to lose control of an intelligent sword in OD&D.  Here’s the full spreadsheet if you care to see the raw data, but I’ll boil it down for you to a couple of charts:

So, basically it looks kind of like a linear scaled chance to lose control based on your will difference.  There’s a slight S curve to the line, more pronounced when heavily wounded which is not surprising given the bell curve of the dice being rolled.  The slope also decreases for heavily wounded, with a complete spread from -5 to 15 will difference as opposed to the -5 to 10 of being lightly wounded.

For my own purposes, it’s very tempting to focus in on that second chart.  It very conveniently covers a 20 point will difference spread, and I’d like nothing more than to boil this whole thing down into a single roll of a d20.  I think we can perhaps generalize this by using the heavily wounded chart as a base and then simply shifting it to the right if you are lightly wounded or unwounded.

Here’s a stab at some rules:  

Determine you Will Modifier by adding your character’s Intelligence and Strength and then subtracting from this the sword’s Intelligence and Ego.  Calculate your Wound Modifier based on this chart:

Wound Level          Modifier
Full hit points            +15
>= Half hit points      +10
< Half hit points         +5

Roll d20Will ModifierWound Modifier >= 20 to retain control of the sword. 

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