Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm
...Do remember that task difficulty modifiers are not absolute across all tasks. They are relative to other tasks for that specific skill. To come up with an illogical test case: If there were a "Disarm Universe-Destroying Device" skill, then it would still have routine tasks that get from +1 to +10. So back to Surgery, if a laparoscopic cholecystectomy is easy relative to an open, and both are easier than a heart transplant, then it may well be that it's at +1 or better.
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The basic line is that (modern western) society won't tolerate people performing (all but the most difficult) high-consequence tasks without an effective final skill less than 15. The failure rate is too high, and we are rich enough to throw more resources into training. "Society" in general tries to avoid having people spend their time performing tasks with effective final skills above 17 because that just represents wasted potential.
What that means is that since we have a good target effective final skill (16), if we have a baseline skill (IQ+skill+talent+bonuses), we can back out a task difficulty. Or the other way around: baseline skills and TDMs are not independent. Of course, this should only be done for the hardest tasks which are expected to be handled routinely (most tasks will be significantly easier). Or, to put it differently, if training people to Skill 16 is affordable, and they get +6 in equipment bonuses, we'll happily set them to performing difficulty -6 jobs routinely (because, well, they can).
If you start to add up the time and training put into our medical corps, it starts to look like that is where we are: skills around 16, good tech bonuses, very, very hard tasks.