The thing brought up by Draz and Raeza are interesting, but not enough for me to make any mathematical conclusion.
Raeza wrote:I've noticed that sometimes it says you "dodge" the attack, and other times it says that you "parry" or "deflect" the attack. If these correspond to a failed roll against db and a failed roll against pb, respectively, then I would think you might be able to exploit these messages as a way to test this?
Yes, it would rely on the statistical analysis of the ob v (defense). When I say "(defense)" I am referring to all the possible ways that db and pb can be combined into total defense. To do this we would have to make assumptions about what the numerical value of the displayed "bonus" mean (i.e. it is a 1d(ob) with displayed ob being the max roll or is it 6d(ob/6) with displayed ob being the max). Based on the magnitude of the displayed values I tend to think assuming these values are the "max" value is a reasonable assumption.
Raeza wrote:It seems like you could first verify whether or not these messages do indeed correspond to which defense stat caused the attack to fail (e.g. by comparing a defender with high db and low pb, and then vice versa).
We need to determine how the displayed value is calculated and what kind of roll it is first. The easiest for this is an IMM to tell us. Outside of that we need to do various ob vs only various db and various ob vs only pb with large data sets to determine which roll pattern is most closely followed.
Raeza wrote:Then, if the messages do seem to indicate this, you could use that to test whether the two stats seems to be independent (one roll, followed by the other), or interacting in some way.
Just a thought...
Once we know the roll patterns for the melee any stacking would be easily verified.
For example
"one roll, followed by the other"
1d(ob=3) vs 1d(db=1) vs 1d(pb=2)
successfully defend 50% ("dodge" 67% of successful defense, "parry/deflect" 33%)
"stacked straight sum defense"
1d(ob=3) vs 1d(db+pb=3)
successfully defend 83% ("dodge" 40% of successful defense, "parry/deflect" 60%)
Draz wrote:What I found anecdotally is that either on its own is not fantastic, but dodge above certain threshholds seems to really help pb
This would seem to indicate some stacking. Once the roll are setup even some stacking should have enough of a difference to easily tell if defense is skewed from the one roll, followed by the other.