KW came across something possibly relevant here.
Psionic Powers 8's Varying Difficulties box "Just Like Riding a Bike"
Uses 3 reqs, a minimum TDM bonus like you suggested, effective skill 15 (which is LESS than the NNR perk... weird) and it being unresisted.
Looking back to 3e... Psionics 6 also had this:
A die roll is required only if there is a significant question of skill or if the skill is somehow opposed.
For instance, no skill roll is needed to shove someone with TK, just as you don't roll vs DX to pick up a book.
However a roll would be required to move something to a precise spot, especially if you want to move it fast.
I'm of the "I want to roll DX to pick up a book" (that's just a change posture / ready I think RAW) nature, but "JLRAB" seems like a kind of basis for unpaid NNR requiring even less skill.
The big distinction (since "resisted" seems a lot like "combat" or at least "adventuring situations") is probably the minimum +3 from TDR you would require, making the rule inapplicable to situations with +2 or below regardless of what final effective skill is.
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Originally Posted by kirbwarrior
That doesn't quite explicitly work when training often involves attacking in a safe environment; training dummies, safe weapons, not using full strength, etc.
Those are trivial combat rolls.
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We can probably fine some helpful guidelines to this outside of magic/fantasy, in the guns supplements.
HT85 "Plinking vs. Combat Shooting" for example gives usual non-combat situations the TDM, advising a +4 on average.
TS26 Precision Aiming (Extended Aiming Table from Time Spent) requires IQ rolls to go beyond the usual '3 seconds' cap for Aim bonuses (failure you lose ALL) so "Precision Evaluating" or "Precision Concentrating" could be options to extend that to melee/magic?
TS9 "Non-Combat Bonuses" is similar. One element of the potential cap of +10 here involves Rangefinging (TS27) but I don't think that'd apply to melee.
NCBs “no risk to self” bonuses applying should depend a lot on the factors as we see them.
"nobody else shooting" for example might more broadly be thought of as "nobody else attacking" (ie no +1 if someone's punching you, it's not just gunshots that are scary).
A better idea ("risk" in particular) is to evaluate whether or not an attack is even capable of harming you. If in an "all things ideal" situation of critical hits it's still impossible, then even if someone is attacking/shooting you it shouldn't matter.
For example: if someone is shooting a pathetic-range gun at you (B275 max-400 Wheel-Lock for example) and you're confident you are safe at 500 yards away (bullet just can't reach you) then you should get that +1 regardless of the shooting.
Or: maybe you know you're in range, but you know the 20 DR provided by your mega-armor will always stop the pathetic 1d Piercing bullets, so it's just an annoying distraction like a buzzing fly, to be fired upon by this while trying to snipe.
Perhaps whether you get this is passing some kind of fright check? You get bonuses for awareness of weapons (IQ based roll against appropriate weapon skill?) where in a pass you correctly know it's Max and to eyeball how far they're shooting from (Observation?) you can then evaluate if you're in or out of the Max.
This could actually lead to situations where you're IN range but wrongly think you're out of it, and getting the bonus. In this case ignorance is narrowly advantageous. Like blindness protecting you from sight-based fear penalties! OTOH getting a "no risk" bonus might not be worth the shock penalty to your roll if a bullet actually does graze you!
A new hearing/sight roll might be appropriate for bullets narrowly missing you. That could indicate "I overestimated the distance between us" or "I underestimated the max". Or to evaluate "wow, this is actually chipping away at my suit's ablative DR, maybe the bullets are higher-damage than I assumed".
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Originally Posted by kirbwarrior
Unless you mean rolls during combat time, which can make sense but even then NNR can work there (travel rolls to cross a gorge for your Move maneuver might be no harder than usual and I would allow that, I've seen plenty of people allow NNR for Fast-Draw outside of contests).
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Rereading PP2p16, the NNR perk is actually more limited than I remember:
not directly relevant to such adventuring situations as combat, investigation, and theft.
Of course the perk is broader too. It's not just one skill but "specific background task" whcih could be multiple skills. Area Knowledge / Driving / Navigation is one such example in the intro and the "Transporter" example, with "Swinging" covering Perception/Observation, Acrobatics and Innate Attack (ie for retractible binding)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirbwarrior
Back to the topic; I really like the idea of letting TDMs affect Least Spells. In fact, I'd likely also go a step further and hand pick specific normal spells that could be affected, too; Light is basically a convoluted Accessory: Light and letting people use it by spending FP without a roll seems fine in trivial circumstances.
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I'd just say they affect all spells but GM would have to decide what each tier represented.
Skipping the roll is skipping the chance to spend no FP at all on a critical success or whatever other benefits exist.
We might arguably view Enchantment like an example of this. Thaumatology 108:
the GM could simply eliminate the requirement for a skill roll at the climax of the process
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GM should probably limit this change to Slow and Sure enchantment – Quick and Dirty work is supposed to be chancy
That approach would probably affect the Powerstone economy a little bit. My guess is you'd have guys starting off using QAD then as more is at risk on a fail, switching to SAS to avoid exploding their powerstones.
How pressing that need is would also depend on stuff like how many enchanters have Unstable Casting, Stable Casting, if it's being done in Low Mana (though I'm unclear how that influences crit fails to be less bad for powerstones) or Wild mana, etc.
T109 doesn't make this "no final roll" a guarantee against quirking of course, if you're using the daily rolls for Long Tasks to determine 'hours out' from 'hours in'
a failure (or at least a critical failure) might give the item a “quirk” or other odd feature, rather than result in outright disaster
Limiting it just to crit fails seems better to me, since you could have a lot of normal failures piling up rolling this every day for weeks/months on end.
When we compare base time needed to enchant 100 energy (1 hour for QAD, 800 hours for SAS) you're spending way more than the 30x Time Spent you would get a +5 for, so maybe that would be a logical explanation for how it would be stable enough to instead erquire a crit fail to emulate a normal fail, and a normal fail to do nothing but waste time.