SUCCESS ROLLS

A success roll is a die roll made when you need to test one of your skills or abilities. Sometimes you roll; sometimes the GM rolls for you. For instance, you might test, or roll against, your Strength to stop a heavy door from closing.

Roll 3 dice and add them together for a success roll. If your roll is less than or equal to the skill or ability you are testing, you succeeded. Otherwise, you failed. For example, if you are rolling against Strength, and your ST level is 12, a roll of 12 or less succeeds.

Thus, the higher the stat you are rolling against, the easier it is to make the roll.

Automatic Success

Some things are totally trivial. No roll is required when common sense says that both failure and critical success are impossible. However, if there is any chance of failure, a roll is required. Finding your corner store requires no roll. Hitting a target at point-blank range, even for an experienced warrior, does, since his weapon
might break or he might slip on an unexpected banana peel.

When the GM Rolls

Normally, the player rolls dice for his own character. There are two exceptions:

First, in a situation in which the character shouldnJt be able to tell whether he has succeeded I especially when he is trying to get information I the GM rolls in secret. If the roll succeeds, the GM gives the player true information. If the roll fails, the GM lies or gives no information at all.

Second, in a situation in which the player simply shouldnJt know what's going on. This includes most lsenseL rolls. The GM should simply roll in secret and inform the player of any consequences that his character would be aware of.

Modifiers and Effective Skill

Sometimes you will have modifiers (bonuses or penalties) to a roll. For instance, if you were trying to stop a very heavy door from closing, you might have to roll against Strength at a penalty of -2 (or ST-2, for short) because the door is heavy. In that case, with a Strength of 12, you would need to roll a 10 or less to succeed.

Likewise, for an especially easy task, you would get a bonus to your attempt. You might roll Animal Handling+4 to make friends with a very friendly dog. If your skill were 12, a roll of 16 or less would succeed.

Your effective skill for a given task is your basic skill (your actual level in that skill) plus or minus any appropriate modifiers. In the example above, your basic skill is 12 but your effective skill is 16. You may not attempt to roll if your effective skill is less than 3, unless you are attempting a defense roll.

Critical Success and Failure

A critical success is an especially good result on a skill roll; a critical hit is a critical success scored on an attack. You score a critical success as follows:

• A roll of 3 or 4 is always a critical success.
• A roll of 5 is a critical success if your effective skill is 15+.
• A roll of 6 is a critical success if your effective skill is 16+.

The GM determines what happens when you roll a critical success. This is always something good; the better the roll, the better bonus he gives you.

A critical failure is an especially bad result on a skill roll. You score a critical failure as follows:

• A roll of 18 is always a critical failure.
• A roll of 17 is an ordinary failure if your effective skill is 16 or better, and a critical failure if your effective skill is under 16.
• Any roll of 10 greater than your effective skill is a critical failure. That is, 16 on a skill of 6, 15 on a skill of 5, and so on.
• The GM determines what happens when you roll a critical failure. It's always something bad; the worse the roll, the worse the result.

Repeated Attempts on Success Rolls

Sometimes you have only one chance to do something; other times you can try over and over until you succeed. Sometimes you will not know whether you succeeded or failed until it's too late to try again. Finally, there will be times when you are injured by failure but can afford to fail a few times. The GM can use common sense to distinguish among these, according to the situation in which the players find themselves. As a rule:

(a) If the first failure kills them (or destroys the object of the attempt), that's that.
(b) If a failure causes damage of some kind, assess the damage and let them try again after a reasonable time passes.
(c) If a failure causes no damage, let them try again after a reasonable time, at a -1 penalty for each attempt after the first.

Contests of Skill

Sometimes two characters will need to compare their relative skills to settle a battle or competition. A Contest of Skill is a quick way to resolve a competitive situation without playing it out in detail.

When a Contest of Skill is called for, both characters make their success rolls in the appropriate skill. Any appropriate modifiers are used.

There are two types of contest:

A quick contest is usually over in a second; e.g., two people grabbing for the same weapon. Each character makes his skill roll. If one succeeds and the other fails, the winner is obvious. If both succeed (or fail) the winner is the one who succeeded by the most, or failed by the least. A tie means nobody won.

A regular contest may take some time; e.g., arm wrestling. Each character tries his skill roll. If one succeeds and the other fails, the winner is obvious. If both succeed or both fail, the charactersJ relative positions are unchanged and they may try again.

The time each attempt takes will depend on the activity, and is up to the GM to determine. In a combat situation, each attempt takes one second. In a library-research contest, with the fate of the world hanging on who finds a certain obscure reference first, each attempt could represent days of time.

If both characters have a very high skill, the contest could go on indefinitely. Therefore, shorten it as follows: If both skills are over 14, reduce the higher one to 14, and subtract the same amount from the lower one.

Eventually, one character will make his roll and the other one will miss. At this point, the one who made his roll is the winner of the contest.