Unskilled rolls

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

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

Unskilled Rolls

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.
.

I think this is a decent mechanic, but it's also unnecessary.

* The weapon talents already have the penalty explained (if you change -4 DX to +1d, it's the same).

* many of the other talents, including Thief, already have this (so does Recognize Value, etc.) but the penalty is stated to be 2d, not 1d. (A small number of talents say "double dice" instead of +2d).

* I believe the only other talents that could be used "unskilled" that don't already have a mechanic are, perhaps, Tracking, Disguise, and Detect Lies, if you think they should be universal, and perhaps Mundane Talents, though these don't even mention die rolls anyway. <Everything else has special case mechanics like +1 reaction bonuses or logically isn't usable>

Three talents is so few talents that just adding "You can try this without the talent: add +2d" to each, individually, to these talents is cleaner and simpler!

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by David L Pulver

* The weapon talents already have the penalty explained (if you change -4 DX to +1d, it's the same).

I want to point out to everyone again, that -4 DX and +1d6 are *not equivalent* in terms of what they can represent. While the mathematical difference in value is negligible (4 vs 3.5), these two methods *play* very different in terms of what the simulate.

• -4 DX is a *static* factor which acts *predictably* with a *constant* value;

whereas,

• +1d6 is a *dynamic* factor which acts *unpredictably* with a *variable* range of values.

The key difference as far as TFT is concerned lay in the fact that +1d6 possess the quality of being able to reflect a degree of *luck* working randomly for, or against, a character.

-4 DX on it's own has no such random quality - it affects uniformly across the board.

Bottom Line: -4 DX and +1d6 are numerically very close in value, but are worlds apart in the conditions they represent, and how they represent those conditions when simulating a thing. Therefore, and unless, one method is going to be used in the future of TFT at the exclusion of the other, we really *need both methods* to properly reflect those situations where *luck*, or random chance, may play a hand in the success, or failure, when performing a given task.

We need both methods. and we need to apply them appropriately in play.

JK

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

We need both methods. and we need to apply them appropriately in play.

Aye, I’ll raise a bottle of rum to that! A section on when to use extra dice versus when to do a die roll modifier would be very useful.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by pyratejohn

Aye, I’ll raise a bottle of rum to that! A section on when to use extra dice versus when to do a die roll modifier would be very useful.

That's what I tried to say earlier, but was much clumsier in expressing! ;-)