Unskilled rolls

[Jackal]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

If the solution is instead for everyone to make a 4d or 5d roll against IQ until they succeed, it changes a natural story-based solution to a die-rolling solution.

This.

Unless the talent has a specific penalty for trying to use it unskilled, I would tell players to find some one to help them.

That said, if the GM wants to let a player try, CJM's idea to add 1d6 per talent cost, above, is pretty cool!

- Jack

[Steve Jackson]

Here is a draft of a *simple* approach, which does leave some things to our GM:

Unskilled Rolls

Some talent (e.g., Climbing) specify what may be attempted by a person who does not have the talent.

For other talents, the GM may, at their sole discretion, allow attempts at a penalty of one or two dice. For instance, suppose a situation specifically requires an Thief roll to open a lot. But it’s an easy lock, big and old. The GM could say “I’ll let you try it without Thief skill, but at a penalty of 2 dice.” Thus, the non-Thief players would have to roll 5 dice to tickle that lock into opening.

The commonest example of this is with regular weaponry. Most weapons are fairly easy to use, so if you pick up a weapon without training, you can still hit with it, at a penalty of 1 die. So you roll 4 dice every time you attack with that weapon.

But the GM should ruthlessly prohibit unreasonable uses of this rule. No matter how high your basic stat might be, some things are just not possible without training. There is no “unskilled” ability to fire multiple arrows in a turn, or to be a Priest or Physicker or Vet. Likewise, skills like Throwing, Veteran, and Warrior, whose whole effect is a numerical bonus, cannot be invoked in an unskilled mode.

[JLV]

I like it, but I still am willing to bet you'll get a lot of questions about it from people that are having a problem extrapolating from the basic rule as written... ;-)

[Jim Kane]

With that said, does that then leave us at the stage of determining which specific talents fall default into the *unskilled mode* categories of:

• Prohibited without requisite base talent
• Generally difficult for anyone without the base talent - as a fixed DX penalty (i.e. -4 DX).
• Generally difficult for anyone without the talent, but due to the nature of the task-at-hand, some people will naturally end up better when attempting this thing than others (i.e. get lucky) - as added Die (dice) to the roll, where the variance of the die represents some folks ending up being better than others when attempting a thing).

Or, are you considering the "add dice" method as the exclusive revised method, and eliminating the "fixed DX penalty" method in the case of attempting a thing without the talent altogether?

JK

[tbeard1999]

My opinion:

Before proposing a default talent use rule, we should probably consider what kind of success rate we want default talents to have. Consider these attribute levels, and the -4 modifier:

• 8 (25% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 5% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 5% on 4d)
• 10 (50% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 9% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 16% on 4d)
• 12 (75% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 25% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 34% on 4d)
• 14 (91% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 50% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 56% on 4d )
• 16 (95% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 74% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 76% on 4d)
• 18 (95% chance on an unmodified 3d6 roll; 91% chance on 3d with -4 mod; 90% on 4d)

So...do you want default talents to allow average or near average folks to succeed some (but not most) of the time? Or do you want average folks to succeed almost never, but high attribute folks to succeed far more often? Etc. And as this chart shows, the concern about high attribute levels being way too capable with default talents is well-founded.

Default Talents
I think that figures should be able to perform the following talents at some default level:

• Physical talents - talents that rely mostly on ST or DX (weapon talents, athletic talents like running, swimming, and acrobatics, silent movement, climbing, etc.)
  
• Knowledge/Physical/Observation Talents - talents that require some knowledge, but mostly rely on physical or observation abilities - tracking, hearing, alertness, bard, recognize value, naturalist (maybe)).
  
• Common/simple Talents - talents that are simple or that the figure would have lots of exposure to (cooking, a lot of mundane talents, driving in a modern setting, firing modern guns)
  

No-Default Talents
I don't think that these kinds of talents should be allowed to be used at a default:

• Advanced version of other talents (fencing, master thief, expert horsemanship, etc.)
  
• Weapons talents that enhance other weapons talents like missile weapons, thrown weapons, two weapons
  
• Many peculiar weapons talents (if they are to remain in TFT)
  
• Talents that require a great deal of knowledge/education (physicker, chemistry, alchemy, scholar, foreign languages)

Comments

• The standard default we've discussed is -4 or +1d (I'm agnostic at this point). As noted, this will allow figures with very high attribute levels to use default talents extremely well and figures with average attribute levels to succeed very rarely. This will always be an issue when applying a positive or negative modifier to a bell curve.
• A +4 (for intance) applied to DX 10 will drop the success change from 50% to 9%, but will only drop the success chance of a DX 18 from 95% to 90%.
• Some talents (thief for instance) have other default rules; I haven't considered whether or not they should be retained.

I can think of several ways to address the issue with high attributes, but and all represent different approaches than the standard TFT mechanics:

• Provide that (say) 12-15 is an automatic failure, if using a 3 die roll. This makes the default skill have a maximum success chance of about 63%. On a 4 die roll, a 14+ is an automatic failure.
• Let figures use the default skill at (say) 1/2 the attribute level (round up). This will definitely reduce the advantage of high-attribute figures. A figure with DX 10 will succeed 5% of the time; a figure with DX 18 will succeed 38% of the time. That may be too much of a penalty, but other fractions don't work so well.
• Combine the above methods - halve the attribute but give a +1 positive modifier. A figure with DX 10 will succeed 9% of the time; a figure with DX 18 will succeed 50% of the time.
• Or...and this is REAL odd... Apply no modifiers to the default skill, but also roll a different colored "default die". If the 3d roll succeeds, AND if the default die is (say) a 1-3, the roll succeeds. If the 3d roll fails or if the default die is a 4-6, the roll fails.
  
  This will halve the normal success chance. So an average person will have a 25% chance of successfully using a default skill and someone with a 15+ attribute will hav a 48% chance.

Note- I played around with this system long ago, after designing A Fistful of TOWs 2.

The idea was to have no negative modifiers for harder than average tasks. In addition to the 3d roll, you'd roll a different colored "difficulty die". To succeed, the 3d6 roll had to be a success AND the difficulty die would have to be equal to or more than the difficulty level of the task.

Normal tasks were level 1, so a difficulty die wasn't required for them.

I calibrated the system by assuming a typical attribute rating of 12.

• Hard tasks (roughly like a 4d6 roll) would be difficulty level 4. (The success chance is half of the base success chance.)
• Very hard tasks (roughly like a 5d6 roll) would be difficulty level 6. (The success chance is 1/6 of the base success chance).
• Easy tasks would be a 2 die roll.

I abandoned it, because, while I liked the statistical properties, it really didn't solve any major problems I had (I did not generally allow default talents).

That said, a difficulty level of 2 corresponds roughly to a -1 modifier (again, calibrated on a 12 attribute rating). A difficulty level of 3 corresponds roughly to a -2 modifier. So it could replace the modifier AND extra dice systems completely, with a minor loss of resolution.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Here is a draft of a *simple* approach, which does leave some things to our GM:

Unskilled Rolls

Some talent (e.g., Climbing) specify what may be attempted by a person who does not have the talent.

For other talents, the GM may, at their sole discretion, allow attempts at a penalty of one or two dice. For instance, suppose a situation specifically requires an Thief roll to open a lot. But it’s an easy lock, big and old. The GM could say “I’ll let you try it without Thief skill, but at a penalty of 2 dice.” Thus, the non-Thief players would have to roll 5 dice to tickle that lock into opening.

Maybe use a different example, since thief already has default rules written into the description.

The commonest example of this is with regular weaponry. Most weapons are fairly easy to use, so if you pick up a weapon without training, you can still hit with it, at a penalty of 1 die. So you roll 4 dice every time you attack with that weapon.

Unskilled weapon use is already covered in the rules - they are -4 DX (which is more or less equivalent to +1 die).

But the GM should ruthlessly prohibit unreasonable uses of this rule. No matter how high your basic stat might be, some things are just not possible without training. There is no “unskilled” ability to fire multiple arrows in a turn, or to be a Priest or Physicker or Vet. Likewise, skills like Throwing, Veteran, and Warrior, whose whole effect is a numerical bonus, cannot be invoked in an unskilled mode.

I see no problem with adding this paragraph, but it may not be of much use to GMs, at least as it's written. They will eventually have to compile a list of talents that can be used by someone without the talent and ones that won't. Players, of course, will craft elaborate arguments worthy of Daniel Webster to support why they should be able to use the talent.

It might be more helpful to provide a simple notation for talents that can be used by figures without the talent.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

With that said, does that then leave us at the stage of determining which specific talents fall default into the *unskilled mode* categories

It seemed clear to me, but apparently isn't that this isn't the way the rule is intended to be used (at least I don't think it is or should be).

It applies by *task* not by *talent*. It may need a more explicit statement of that, perhaps as an extension of that lock example that a little harder lock, or some more complicated task covered by Thief Talent could not be attempted at all. And perhaps the weapon use needs to be phrased as "most weapons are relatively easy to hurt someone with, even if you are not using them quite properly" or something to make it clear the intent even there isn't necessarily you can do anything you could with the actual Talent, just the admittedly most important part of hurting your enemies with it.

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

My opinion:

Before proposing a default talent use rule, we should probably consider what kind of success rate we want default talents to have.
…
the concern about high attribute levels being way too capable with default talents is well-founded.

This is what worries me, a character with a high IQ (or DX, ST) should not have a 90% chance to succeed on a task they are not skilled at.

I think that there should be a rule in here to prevent this, similar to the GURPS rule of 14 (Page 360 Campaigns).

Now, we might not choose 13 like GURPS does; 14, 15, or 16 might be more reasonable.

Maximum Attribute Level
If your attribute exceeds a base of 10 plus the number of dice of the check, reduce it to that value for the purpose of a difficulty check.

Example
You have IQ 19 and attempt to use a skill you have no talent for. The GM determines that it will be a 5 dice difficulty check. Your IQ is considered to be 10+5 = 15 for the purpose of this roll.

Following are some examples with percentage chance of success, all rounded down.:

Max chance of success on a 4d roll with base of X, compared to an attribute of 19.
9+4 = 13 44%
10+4 = 14 55%
11+4 = 15 66%
12+4 = 16 76%

vs attribute of 19: 94% (auto failure at 20 in any case)

5d roll
9+5 = 14 22%
10+5 = 15 30%
11+5 = 16 39%
12+5 = 17 50%

vs attribute of 19: 69% (auto failure at 20 in any case)

I know that looks scary with all the percentages but it's not too bad in play as the papers won't see that.

Thoughts?

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Wayne

This is what worries me, a character with a high IQ (or DX, ST) should not have a 90% chance to succeed on a task they are not skilled at.

...

I know that looks scary with all the percentages but it's not too bad in play as the papers won't see that.

Thoughts?

There are any number of ways to go at it. However, all of them are going to require significantly different mechanics than the standard TFT mechanics.

Your rule seems a bit fiddly (though no more fiddly than some of my proposals). Or maybe I'm just tired.

I think that the fastest approach is to use my "default die" idea or simply state that a default talent fails on a roll of (say) 12+. The first takes a little getting used to and the second requires you to remember something.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Wayne

This is what worries me, a character with a high IQ (or DX, ST) should not have a 90% chance to succeed on a task they are not skilled at.

I think that there should be a rule in here to prevent this, similar to the GURPS rule of 14 (Page 360 Campaigns).

Now, we might not choose 13 like GURPS does; 14, 15, or 16 might be more reasonable.

Maximum Attribute Level
If your attribute exceeds a base of 10 plus the number of dice of the check, reduce it to that value for the purpose of a difficulty check.

Example
You have IQ 19 and attempt to use a skill you have no talent for. The GM determines that it will be a 5 dice difficulty check. Your IQ is considered to be 10+5 = 15 for the purpose of this roll.

Following are some examples with percentage chance of success, all rounded down.:

Max chance of success on a 4d roll with base of X, compared to an attribute of 19.
9+4 = 13 44%
10+4 = 14 55%
11+4 = 15 66%
12+4 = 16 76%

vs attribute of 19: 94% (auto failure at 20 in any case)

5d roll
9+5 = 14 22%
10+5 = 15 30%
11+5 = 16 39%
12+5 = 17 50%

vs attribute of 19: 69% (auto failure at 20 in any case)

I know that looks scary with all the percentages but it's not too bad in play as the papers won't see that.

Thoughts?

Nice idea. I'm thinking that for these generic default attempts we're talking about, an average person (attributes at 10) should probably have a better chance at a generic talent's task, than someone without the talent but with however-high attributes. If the base task is a 3-die test, then according to your tables, that looks like if the test is 4-dice for someone without the talent, then the maximum attribute value used for a default roll should be no more than 13.