So this is split off from a thread from Pundit's rant, "Only Players Roll" is the Exact Opposite of Good Design, as it doesn't have to do with who rolls.

One of my pet peeves in RPG design has to do with the effect of skill. In the real world - and in many fictional worlds - someone with expert skill can reliably do tasks that a beginner has no chance at. Examples I gave from the earlier thread include,

Quote from: jhkim;8530971) An expert professional acrobat can do a back flip hundreds of times on stage without failing. A beginner can try a back flip over and over and never succeed.

2) An expert computer programmer can write a quick program to do something that someone new to computers has no chance at. Say, find the frequency that each of a given list of names appears in a given ebook.

3) An expert locksmith can reliably pop open a door that a beginner can't get through at all.

4) A grandmaster at chess can reliably beat someone who is middle-ranked. In turn, a middle-ranked chess expert can reliably beat someone who is a beginner to chess.

5) An expert sniper can reliably make a shot that a beginner can't hit even after dozens of tries.

6) An expert mountain climber can reliably make it up a cliff face that a beginner can't get up after dozens of tries.

This is not reflected by many systems. For example, in BRP, rifle skill starts out at 25% for someone with no training, and 90% is considered high expert skill.

My preferred way to deal with this is to have this built into the skill system.  For example, suppose my resolution mechanic is to take stat total + 1d10 and compare to a difficulty number (like Eden Studio's Unisystem).

I can say that a backflip is difficulty 15, an expert professional acrobat has stat total 14 or more, and a beginner might have a stat total more like 3 or 4. Then I can easily scale this, so that a legendary acrobat might have a skill of 22, and reliably perform feats that even experts regularly fail at.

Quote from: jhkim;853122CORPS (1990) is a generic universal RPG by Greg Porter, which can be a little drily generic, but has a lot of good features. I used a version of it for several Star Trek campaigns that I quite enjoyed.

I find that this sort of niche protection is actually quite fun for game-play, and indeed many RPG designs seem to downplay their skill system as niches, and instead play up non-skill abilities that are more absolute.

In the Star Trek games, say, there was no problem that other officers couldn't do the tricky engineering tasks that the engineer could. It's just like when other characters can't do magic like the wizard can, or can't fly the way the energy projector can in a superhero game.

On the other hand, there are other systems where skills are in a narrower range. Bren replied on the earlier thread,

Quote from: Bren;853137It sounds like you are saying characters either have Engineering - in which case they can fix the Jefferies tube - or they don't have Engineering - in which case they can't fix the Jeffries tube at all.

That doesn't sound that different to saying that a character with professional level skill in Drive Auto (40%) can driver the car without needing to roll unless the circumstance is very unusual and a character with 0% can't drive the car at all. (Not all characters get all skills above 0%.) A character with >0% and less than 40% might need to make a roll under some circumstances where the professional would not - say driving at speed in the rain or some such.

I'm not seeing what you find significantly different between the two systems. Can you elaborate?

Let's say we have four characters - one with skill 6%, one with skill 17%, one with skill 33%, and one with skill 40%. They want to drive to Arkham quickly. You say that the one with skill 40% doesn't have to roll. Does the one with skill 33% have to roll? What should his chance be? What should be the chances for the others?

In my preferred system, I'd just set a difficulty for the driving task, and everyone would roll their skill against that difficulty. There's no need for me to make judgement calls about who needs to roll and who doesn't - that's handled by setting the difficulty level.

I'm not saying that engineering is a binary case of either (a) has engineering means automatic success, or (b) not having engineering means automatic failure. Some characters might have a little engineering skill, some characters might be somewhat skilled and can do middling tasks, and some characters are masters. What you can do automatically is described by your level of skill.

Over on BGG a similar argument came up.

Thing is, in the real world even an expert will slip up now and then. And when they do, for some reason it tends to be catastrophically half the time.

I like 5es system as it allows even the unskilled to give something a try. They might fail, but they might not. And the DM or player can call where something might actually be outside the characters realm due to the required skills needed to accomplish.

Quote from: jhkim;853180My preferred way to deal with this is to have this built into the skill system.  For example, suppose my resolution mechanic is to take stat total + 1d10 and compare to a difficulty number (like Eden Studio's Unisystem).

I can say that a backflip is difficulty 15, an expert professional acrobat has stat total 14 or more, and a beginner might have a stat total more like 3 or 4.

That seems like a very elaborate way of figuring out that, neither character needs to roll, since the professional can't fail and the beginner can't succeed.

On the other hand, if the difficulty is set to 20 we have a very swinging success chance for the acrobat. About the same as what we get for a good driver with a 50% skill having to avoid incoming tommy-gun fire or a soldier with a 50% parry blocking a blow.

That seems like it could be a terrible system for combat as., depending on the difficulty good fighters would never even be threatened by lesser fighters. That hardly seems realistic except in the most artificial of dueling set ups.

QuoteLet's say we have four characters - one with skill 6%, one with skill 17%, one with skill 33%, and one with skill 40%. They want to drive to Arkham quickly. You say that the one with skill 40% doesn't have to roll. Does the one with skill 33% have to roll? What should his chance be? What should be the chances for the others?

Well, in CoC the characters with the 6% and the 17% must be from some primitive tribe since base for drive is 20%.

20% is good enough to drive on a smooth, level road, at a slow speed, with nothing difficult to deal with. I'd probably call for a roll at the beginning in part because the potential fumble for the 20% indicating that they weren't sure where the starter was would be funny.

40% is professional so 33% is fine for routine, recreational driving. Plenty of people drive I-270, I-495, and I-95 around my area with 33% skills. They don't get into accidents 2 out of 3 times they get behind the wheel. The drive roll is for more interesting situations. I mentioned them before. Depending on how interesting they would roll at skill x2 (for sort of interesting). Let's say to avoid the truck that is over the line and into your lane. Roll <= 33, you're fine, 34-66 a narrow escape kind of scary, maybe someone else should take the wheel from now on, 67-95 lose a fender, scrape up the side of the car, forced to drive off the road and stop, etc, 96-00 CRASH!

A saloon car full of mobsters driving parallel while the guy in the back cuts loose with his chopper? That's roll under your skill or take incoming fire.

QuoteIn my preferred system, I'd just set a difficulty for the driving task, and everyone would roll their skill against that difficulty. There's no need for me to make judgement calls about who needs to roll and who doesn't - that's handled by setting the difficulty level.

Except by setting the difficulty you are in fact deciding who needs to roll and who doesn't. You just aren't doing so explicitly, but implicitly.

QuoteI'm not saying that engineering is a binary case of either (a) has engineering means automatic success, or (b) not having engineering means automatic failure. Some characters might have a little engineering skill, some characters might be somewhat skilled and can do middling tasks, and some characters are masters. What you can do automatically is described by your level of skill.

That's OK. A little uninteresting from a game standpoint. A little unrealistic for a lot of cases. But it's OK. That's one way that Careers work in Honor+Intrigue. I just don't see it as superior in general.

I wouldn't bother basing a roleplaying system in real world too much.

As a player, I prefer GM saying 'it's not possible for your character' to my face, rather than him dishing out a number I have no chance to beat. I guess this could fall into 'don't roll if the result isn't interesting' category of thinking.

Quote from: Moracai;853215As a player, I prefer GM saying 'it's not possible for your character' to my face, rather than him dishing out a number I have no chance to beat. I guess this could fall into 'don't roll if the result isn't interesting' category of thinking.

That's fine. I'm talking about the underlying mechanics, not the words being spoken at the table.

If I know someone has only a 3 skill and the task is difficulty 18 (in a d10 system), then I'll just say "It's not possible for your character".

Got it.

In your example you mentioned unisystem. I'm not super familiar with it. How does it handle critical successes?

More importantly, how in your ideal system critical successes would be handled, or would it even have such things?

Quote from: Moracai;853256In your example you mentioned unisystem. I'm not super familiar with it. How does it handle critical successes?

More importantly, how in your ideal system critical successes would be handled, or would it even have such things?

Unisystem has degree of success but not critical successes per se. A "critical success" is just getting a result much higher than the target number.

I don't have a single ideal system. Especially depending on genre, a lot of different systems can fit reasonably well.

Note that in a lot of genres, the reliability of experts is even greater than reality. Star Trek is one - where Spock can do ridiculously good scientific feats all the time. There is similar in shows like Mission Impossible and Leverage, where experts are extremely competent.

In many RPGs, if Spock fails at a understanding some puzzling scientific problem, then he could copy the data over to all the other bridge crew, and if they all roll, then one of them would likely succeed and figure out what stumped him.


I tend to dislike critical failures as they usually encourage absurd results, but I like some critical success mechanics. Open-ended rolling can be OK depending on genre, but it can also be hugely overdone and make randomness overshadow skill and ability. In my Star Trek game, we used taking the lower of 2d6, where doubles normally cancel for a result from zero to five - but boxcars (double sixes) was a special result.

Quote from: jhkimMy preferred way to deal with this is to have this built into the skill system. For example, suppose my resolution mechanic is to take stat total + 1d10 and compare to a difficulty number (like Eden Studio's Unisystem).

I can say that a backflip is difficulty 15, an expert professional acrobat has stat total 14 or more, and a beginner might have a stat total more like 3 or 4.

Quote from: Bren;853202That seems like a very elaborate way of figuring out that, neither character needs to roll, since the professional can't fail and the beginner can't succeed.

If the only possible cases were an expert professional at skill 14 and a beginner at skill 4, then sure. But like all skill systems, this handles a lot more cases - like the relative chances of an intermediate acrobat (skill 9) and an expert, and lots of other skills and tasks.

Quote from: Bren;853202On the other hand, if the difficulty is set to 20 we have a very swinging success chance for the acrobat. About the same as what we get for a good driver with a 50% skill having to avoid incoming tommy-gun fire or a soldier with a 50% parry blocking a blow.

That seems like it could be a terrible system for combat as., depending on the difficulty good fighters would never even be threatened by lesser fighters. That hardly seems realistic except in the most artificial of dueling set ups.

I think even without an artificial dueling setup, a one-on-one fight between an untrained person and an expert combatant is not a significant contest. So if you have an Navy SEAL and some civilian dude, the SEAL is just going to shut him down - no rolls necessary.

If there are a bunch of guys, then they would get a bonus if they are rushing him all at once. Still, civilians aren't great fighters. For example, I found the ending of Unforgiven fairly believable - they can panic, get in each others' way, and otherwise fail to be effective.

I think that's fine for a game. There are some opponents who are just rabble that can't threaten the PCs; and there are some opponents just so tough they would be overwhelmed.

Quote from: Bren;85320220% is good enough to drive on a smooth, level road, at a slow speed, with nothing difficult to deal with. I'd probably call for a roll at the beginning in part because the potential fumble for the 20% indicating that they weren't sure where the starter was would be funny.

40% is professional so 33% is fine for routine, recreational driving. Plenty of people drive I-270, I-495, and I-95 around my area with 33% skills. They don't get into accidents 2 out of 3 times they get behind the wheel. The drive roll is for more interesting situations. I mentioned them before. Depending on how interesting they would roll at skill x2 (for sort of interesting). Let's say to avoid the truck that is over the line and into your lane. Roll <= 33, you're fine, 34-66 a narrow escape kind of scary, maybe someone else should take the wheel from now on, 67-95 lose a fender, scrape up the side of the car, forced to drive off the road and stop, etc, 96-00 CRASH!

The thing is that these numbers and results seem fairly arbitrary. What if I'm an expert stock car driver with a 75% skill? Are the results going to be:

Roll <= 75 you're fine
76-95 a narrow escape kind of scary, maybe someone else should take the wheel from now on
96-00

Or maybe you just wouldn't make the stock car driver roll at all to deal with a truck over the line? If so, it just seems very arbitrary where you're effectively frequently saying the 75% means 100%, and 17% means 0%, and otherwise making up numbers. I feel that having a wider range of skill (like in my example) handles this much more simply and easily.

In particular, let's say you've got an expert stock car driver with skill 75% and a driver's ed student with skill 20% or so. Can you suggest a task where the student has a chance of 20% to succeed, and the expert has a chance of 75% at the same task?

Quote from: jhkim;853357I tend to dislike critical failures as they usually encourage absurd results, but I like some critical success mechanics. Open-ended rolling can be OK depending on genre, but it can also be hugely overdone and make randomness overshadow skill and ability. In my Star Trek game, we used taking the lower of 2d6, where doubles normally cancel for a result from zero to five - but boxcars (double sixes) was a special result.

I too dislike critical failures, and have written about it on this board also. I especially dislike Apocalypse World and its deriatives where the 'crit fail' chance is so high, even when it is left for the GM to arbitrarily decide the result.

By saying that depending on genre open-ended rolling can be OK, you are a bit contradicting what you said earlier, like

QuoteA beginner can try a back flip over and over and never succeed.

QuoteAn expert computer programmer can write a quick program to do something that someone new to computers has no chance at.

QuoteAn expert locksmith can reliably pop open a door that a beginner can't get through at all.

And so on...

I agree with your previous statement that determining results should not be a binary process. I just observe some confict of interest in your statements (which is natural, because of the nature of roleplaying games).

Quote from: Moracai;853370By saying that depending on genre open-ended rolling can be OK, you are a bit contradicting what you said earlier

Those were examples of roughly what things are like in reality.

I don't think that RPGs have to necessarily match reality or any particular genre. RPGs are their own thing. However, sometimes rules generate ridiculous results that differ a lot from both reality and many genres. In this case, a lot of the most popular RPGs are very different from what reality - and I prefer them to be closer. If lucky beginners regularly outperform experts (say 5% of the time or more), then it nags a little at my suspension of disbelief.

Many open-ended rolls tend to regularly generate enormous swings of luck, which is what I'm opposed to - but it's the total size of the luck factor that is the issue. Open-ending in principle generates a tail in a curved distribution, which is reasonable.

Quote from: jhkim;853046Thus, I prefer to use a system where the result of applying the rules more closely matches reality - in this case, meaning that the difference between beginner and expert in most skills is bigger than random variance.

Reading this in the other thread, I'm now curious. Do you really think that's particularly realistic?
You slip as a beginner punches you in the jaw. I'm not persuaded that all experts can deal with that. No need for the beginner to actually be doing anything.

Personally, I like how EABA 2 is doing it. If your skill times two equals or beats the difficulty, don't roll:).
Simple, to the point and makes gaining extra dice really important, as it might mean not even having a chance to fail. Also, it means that enough modifiers actually guarantee success, which would be impossible otherwise due to the RollXd6 Keep(best) 3 dice system.

That said, was CORPS really that different? Never played it, I'm planning to simply wait for the next edition. But if I remember explaining me that tasks have skill levels, and you don't need to roll unless you're within a couple levels of the skill required.
Still, that's not so different from just getting modifiers in many systems. Most just don't make it explicitly a feature. But it still is, in any system that includes dice+modifiers against a target number. Opinions to whether this is a good thing vary wildly, though;).

Well, one of my pet peeves is how most RPGs don't bother accounting for the effect of mental state, and modifiers often are undervalued. It can make all the difference, and actually is often more important than skill. So it's not like I don't understand disliking an inaccurate representation...
And yes, this means Pendragon is a better representation of combat than most systems. It's simply true, although RQ6 with Pendragon Passions would be even better.

Quote from: jhkim;853398If lucky beginners regularly outperform experts (say 5% of the time or more), then it nags a little at my suspension of disbelief.

Likewise, but from where I'm coming from (in the regard of rpgs), that is the stuff of legends. Like a goblin stabbing a giant-hunter through the liver. Or some such equivalent.

Memorable by the players through the years.

In my new Fudge-based Cyberpunk game (Cyberblues City) I came with a neat solution to reflect the advantage experts have over amateurs. I wanted to keep things simple not have a whole lot of ad-hoc rules and modifiers or arbitrary restriction so I  took advantage of the fact that Fudge dice produce results that span from +4 to -4 and introduced the concept of Expert Dice.

If you are an expert in a specific field (as defined by the system) you can roll Expert Dice on related test. When you roll Expert Dice results less than zero and treated as zero.

There are a couple of caveats in that a -4 is still a failure and Expert Dice aren't used in combat. I was worried at first that this might be too much of a bonus but in play it has worked out really well.

I've also have the concept of Rookie Dice for skills that require specialist training which as probably guessed rolls above zero are treated as zero.

This isn't a universal fix, it's tightly tied with how the rest of the system works and the over all design goal of keeping things simple but I am rather  pleased with how it's worked out. Fudge and Fudge dice are very, very versatile. It does make tinkering with the rules a lot of fun.

Also, I am a total fan of 'player only rolls' systems. :-)  I enjoy GMing 'handsfree". Each to his own I guess.

Quote from: jhkim;853362The thing is that these numbers and results seem fairly arbitrary.

I have the same reaction to the system you describe. Setting the difficulty seems arbitrary and in the example you gave it was pointless. Sure maybe if you had 5+ characters with skills ranging from 4 to 14 we might care about the difficulty, but (a) that wasn't the example you used and (b) other than combat, I seldom see 5+ PC trying to do the same thing. For many things (e.g. perception, persuasion, first aid, cooking, calculation, craft object) allowing everyone to try makes very little sense and in some cases would actually be counterproductive.

QuoteWhat if I'm an expert stock car driver with a 75% skill? Are the results going to be:

Roll <= 75 you're fine
76-95 a narrow escape kind of scary, maybe someone else should take the wheel from now on
96-00

Yeah that sounds reasonable.

• 76-95 But do you have anyone better to take the wheel? And if you do, why weren't they driving the car in the first place?
• 96-00 I'd align with the fumble rules so 96-98 is a minor accident, 99-00 CRASH! would work.

QuoteI feel that having a wider range of skill (like in my example) handles this much more simply and easily.

I addressed that above. In practice the two systems seem about the same to me as far as success and failure. As far as I can tell, you are setting an arbitrary difficulty for the number used that varies by situation.

Quote from: jhkim;853357Unisystem has degree of success but not critical successes per se. A "critical success" is just getting a result much higher than the target number.

I suspected that it might. I tend to dislike degrees of success based on rolling above a target number.

QuoteIn many RPGs, if Spock fails at a understanding some puzzling scientific problem, then he could copy the data over to all the other bridge crew, and if they all roll, then one of them would likely succeed and figure out what stumped him.

I alluded to this above. I know of very few people who play that way, because in many if not most cases the process just seems really silly.

Imagine Spock actually passing the data around. Chekov might know something, but what are Sulu and Uhura going to make of it, much less that red or blue shirted nameless crew person on the upper level?

I see this as a problem with players metagaming not a rules problem. Aside from just disallowing it in the first place, the desire to try that goes away if the GM treats the die roll as OOC information. If the GM rolls for the players so that none of them know who rolled what the desire to try to use OOC knowledge goes away. You don't know what anyone rolled, so now who do you want explain the nature of that gaseous cloud, Mr. Spock or Lt. Sulu or nameless crew person #7?

QuoteI tend to dislike critical failures as they usually encourage absurd results...

I find that depends a lot on what critical failure results look like and how the participants view and explain the result occurring.

Unless the game is TOON, "Hit self in head with hammer" isn't likely to improve many people's gaming experiences. But if you treat that as the opponent getting in a free strike or, depending on situation, the PC crashing helmet first into a wall when they slip in someone's blood it may seem less like slapstick and more like a chaotic, in-motion battle scene. In addition, I find that critical failures are a good way to include events like weapons breaking, armor failing or being hacked loose, guns misfiring or malfunctioning, etc. And since I don't play games where the odds of a critical failure are more than about 3% it isn't like they are going to come up every round.  Moreover, some failures are just funny in a gallows humor kind of way which I like having in the game. But that is certainly a matter of taste.

Quote from: AsenRG;853410Reading this in the other thread, I'm now curious. Do you really think that's particularly realistic?
You slip as a beginner punches you in the jaw. I'm not persuaded that all experts can deal with that. No need for the beginner to actually be doing anything.

I don't have any particular knowledge about real-life hand-to-hand fighting, so it's not something I would make claims about.

There are certainly some activities where randomness makes a bigger difference than others. If hand-to-hand fighting is one of those fields where an expert can be more regularly outdone by a beginner, this can be handled by restricting how high a skill number characters actually have. (This could be increased cost, level limits, or whatever depending on the rest of the system.)

I do think it is true about the skills I cited. Seeing expert climbers, or expert breakdancers, there's no way that a beginner could do what they do - and they do it over and over again repeatedly. This goes equally for intellectual skills. There's just no way for a beginner to solve the issues that an expert in the field can. Note that an expert can guard against slipping - and indeed climbers in particular learn to be very careful about that.

Quote from: AsenRG;853410Personally, I like how EABA 2 is doing it. If your skill times two equals or beats the difficulty, don't roll:).
Simple, to the point and makes gaining extra dice really important, as it might mean not even having a chance to fail. Also, it means that enough modifiers actually guarantee success, which would be impossible otherwise due to the RollXd6 Keep(best) 3 dice system.

That said, was CORPS really that different? Never played it, I'm planning to simply wait for the next edition.

I haven't tried EABA, but I suspect since Greg Porter designed them both that they are similar.