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Old 06-16-2009, 09:43 AM   #27
Landwalker
 
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Cumberland, ME
Default Re: Is the "Inspired Creation" spell talking about rules that don't even exist?

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Making up? No. I'm looking at Task Difficulty Modifiers on B345-346.
Which don't say anything about how margin of success or failure impacts the in-game effects of the roll. B.347, however, does at least mention them, but only to the extent that "many rules use these margins to calculate results that matter in play". Unfortunately, the crafting rules aren't one of them, because there aren't any to begin with.

In the general sense, though, even this section strongly implies that "A success is a success, unless it's a critical success or it's using rules that explicitly state otherwise." Two people with Skill 10 and Skill 14 who roll a 10 have both done their tasks equally well (unless it is a task that explicitly states otherwise) -- the difference is in frequency of success (Guy #2 is going to do that well the considerable majority of the time, but Guy #1 is not).

Cheers.

Edit: For a specific example, consider Carpentry, which at least pretends that it's following a ruleset: "A successful roll lets you do one hour's worth of competent carpentry. A failed roll means the work was bad." The end. A Skill 14 carpenter rolling a 10 doesn't do any greater quantity of work or greater quality of work than a Skill 10 carpenter, just like a Skill 14 bowman rolling a 10 doesn't shoot that goblin any better than a Skill 10 bowman rolling a 10. The only time margin of success would matter to skills like these would be during competitions of some sort -- the Skill 14 bowman would hit closer to the bulls-eye, the Skill 14 carpenter would make a more award-winning product, etc. But in non-competitive situations, the margin of success has no effect -- Skill 14 Carpenter rolling a 10 makes just as good a chair as Skill 10 Carpenter does.

Last edited by Landwalker; 06-16-2009 at 09:51 AM.
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