Reducing many rolls to fewer rolls

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I have known enough runners to have seen a lot of crippling injuries over the years (sprains, torn muscles, popped ligaments, snapped bones, blown tendons, etc.).

A critical failure, for a normal person, will occur an average of once per 13.5 minutes. People don't hurt themselves badly that often.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Anthony

A critical failure, for a normal person, will occur an average of once per 13.5 minutes. People don't hurt themselves badly that often.

Indeed. The crit failure mechanic works fine for moments of dramatic tension, such as in combat, and thus when used sparingly, but it breaks down when it's applied to large numbers of rolls. Following the logic that crit fails in occur in 1/216 instances of someone making a "attribute/skill check" in a real life simulation would mean planes constantly falling out of the sky.

In the case where one is trying to simulate many rolls with just one or two suitably adjusted rolls, the crit fail occurrence would have to be suppressed to avoid the case of anyone doing anything for a long time automatically resulting in crit fails (and crit successes for that matter).

[AlexanderHowl]

The average person will collapse from exhaustion long before they critically fail on a sprinting check and, with an average of 3.5 points of damage, they will only cripple their leg once every six times (crippling damage must exceed HP/2), with the other times just resulting in an injury that should slow them down. In this case, I would use the rules for partial damage to limbs, even if you would normally not do so, to simulate the realistic impacts of lesser injuries.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Common Sense complicates these calculations because it would tell the PC to stop and rest after 9 failures. :)

That adds 5 minutes for recovery of 1 FP but keeps the PC at full speed long enough to make it.

Adds closer to one minute:

Originally Posted by Kromm

A trained jock with Fit and Breath Control (which in 4e is the totally realistic skill of pacing yourself) can get back 1 FP per minute (1 per 2 minutes with Breath Control, doubled for Fit).