Aid another

[Anders]

How do you handle 'aid another' situations, like when several people are using Tracking skill at once? Do you give them each a roll or does the best person get a bonus depending on how skilled the others are? Or something else?

[Kromm]

That's what complementary skill rolls are for. Normally, you can't complement a skill with itself, but I'm generally fine with allowing one or two assistants to help out for an extra +1 or +2 overall. Just remember that failures give penalties! "Too many cooks" is a serious problem for many tasks.

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Kromm

That's what complementary skill rolls are for. Normally, you can't complement a skill with itself, but I'm generally fine with allowing one or two assistants to help out for an extra +1 or +2 overall. Just remember that failures give penalties! "Too many cooks" is a serious problem for many tasks.

What Kromm said.

I'll allow other characters with the same skill to assist, so long as it makes sense that they could coordinate their efforts and they wouldn't get in each other's way too much.

Landing the starship, nope. Only one person can use the Piloting (Starship) skill, but it can be assisted with Elec Op (Sensors), Navigation (Air) and maybe even some Area Knowledge (planet).

Methodically searching a room for a specific plot device, yes. The person with the highest Search skill can employ other searchers for a bonus to find said item.

Performing Surgery, either way, but really, more than one extra surgeon is going to cause a distraction.

Erotic Art, absolutely, but I won't give any examples . . ..

[Walrus]

And for another side group activities there is Got You Covered rule in Action 2.

[Walrus]

Just random thought.
With help from another person you can make big amount of work, e.g. Camouflaging a vehicle, faster. So, you can buy off as much penalties for hurry as the penalty for SM with the rules for Complementary Skills.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Walrus

Just random thought.
With help from another person you can make big amount of work, e.g. Camouflaging a vehicle, faster. So, you can buy off as much penalties for hurry as the penalty for SM with the rules for Complementary Skills.

Oh? I'm not sure I follow you. I can certainly see how the skill bonus provided by Complementary Skills can be used to offset the Hurry penalty. But what does SM have to do with it? Do you just mean that the number of extra hands that can actually be helpful shouldn't exceed SM?

[Walrus]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Do you just mean that the number of extra hands that can actually be helpful shouldn't exceed SM?

Maybe. That was just an example of possible cap.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Oh? I'm not sure I follow you. I can certainly see how the skill bonus provided by Complementary Skills can be used to offset the Hurry penalty. But what does SM have to do with it? Do you just mean that the number of extra hands that can actually be helpful shouldn't exceed SM?

I think he means following the SM table in some way.

The benefits of many hands on a single project depends entirely on the project.

If your project is actually "one task repeated many many times" (stuffing letters into envelopes) then you can divide time required by number of people (plus a little extra time for managing everyone) more or less. It's almost linear.

If it's actually one, complex, interlinked project (writing a RPG book) adding a second person to the project will help, but it won't cut the time in half - you need a significant amount of extra time to co-ordinate between the two. Say, down to 62%ish assuming 20% of the time is co-ordinating. Number varies with complexity of project.

If you add a third person to the project, you don't get it done in 33% of the time (for three people) and you don't get it done in 40% of the time (for three people with 20% of their time wasted in co-ordinating) because with three people you might need 35% of your time co-ordinating. It gets more complex with more people. So now with three people you get it done in ~50% of the time. And so forth.

Exact numbers were totally made up, but the kind of diminishing returns curve is the problem. Eventually your project becomes a useless mass of meetings and never gets completed.

[vierasmarius]

Ah, that makes sense.

Hmm... how can we adapt the Size/Range table to Cooperative tasks? I could see something like each x1.5 helpers gives +1 to a "time divisor". This means that a few people (up to 3) can work at full efficiency together, but as the number exceeds that there are diminishing returns.
I fudged it at the top of the chart, to avoid dividing by zero. You're welcome, universe. =P

Divisor		Workers
1		1
2		2
3		3
4		5
5		7
6		10
7		15
8		20
9		30
10		45
11		70
12		100

Of course, this is but one possible progression. A less generous one may require a doubling of manpower per +1 divisor, for instance.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Exact numbers were totally made up, but the kind of diminishing returns curve is the problem. Eventually your project becomes a useless mass of meetings and never gets completed.

I think Bill Stoddard said something like that about Low-Tech. Coordinating the four writers was a nightmare (of course, if all of them had been used to working on projects like that it would probably have been easier.)