shockvalue

I *may* have found an alternative that I can live with: * The PC rolls skill. If they roll over their base skill value, they fail (regardless of the opponent's skill) * If the PC's roll succeed, the NPC opponent rolls. If the NPC rolls over their base skill value, the PC wins. * If both succeed, compare the actual values rolled by the PC and the NPC - the highest roll wins (i.e. the blackjack method - highest roll without going over wins) So, if an Investigator has a Stealth of 60 and a guard has a Listen of 50, and the Investigator rolls a 25 and the guard rolls a 10, the Investigator succeeded in their Stealth attempt. I don't know how to build a graph like Tranquilitis Ordinis, but I wrote an anydice script that can calculate this for whatever values you want to put it. (It's a little clunky - it kept breaking unless I explicitly included "d100" as a variable in the script.) https://anydice.com/program/20267 In general, this definitely advantages high skill PCs when they're up against high skill NPCs. It slightly disadvantages PCs vs low-skill NPCs (but see below as an option for NPCs below 50% skill). Example: A PC at 90% vs an opponent with a 40% skill. In RAW, the PC would have a 90% chance of success. Under this system, it would be 82%. However, that same 90% PC vs an opponent with a 50% would only have a 45% chance of success under RAW. Under this system, it would be 77%. And vs an opponent with a 90% opposing skill, the PC would have a 50% chance of success (rather than the 18% by RAW). Potential add-ons and considerations that I haven't explored fully: * If you need the PC's success level, you can still just look at if the PC rolled under their Hard or Extreme skill values. In the example above, the Investigator would have rolled a Hard Success with their roll of 25 vs their skill of 60. * For simplicity in the game, if the opponent's skill is less than 50, just simply have the PC roll (only) as per normal. The percentage chances don't change much at those levels. Given that most NPCs seem to have lower levels of skill, this means that play proceeds as quickly as in RAW. It's only when an NPC has a notable level of skill that you'd take the time for the extra roll. * I don't know how this balances out with Push rolls and Luck. It may be that it advantages PC too much, reducing the need for Push and Luck as balancing mechanisms.

Yes, thank you. That was a clumsy choice of words on my part, but I did understand that's how the rules work.

If I understand CoC 7e correctly, the difficulty of a skill is set by the skill of the person opposing the roll. If the opposing person's skill is <50, it's Standard difficulty; 50-90, Hard difficulty (1/2 chance); and if they're over 90%, it's Extreme difficulty (1/5 chance).Further, it seems that the idea is to have the Investigators do the rolling. So, if an Investigator thief is trying a Stealth roll, a guard's Listen roll sets the difficulty. Conversely, if an NPC thief is sneaking past an Investigator, the Investigator makes a Listen roll with the difficulty set by the thief's Stealth skill.Nice and elegant, for sure. But it creates some oddness, I think? If an Investigator thief with a Stealth of 60% is trying to sneak post a guard with a Listen of 60%, then the Investigator's chance of successfully sneaking is 30% (1/2 of 60).But if the situation is reversed and the Investigator is the guard, then the Investigator rolls their Listen, with only a 30% chance of success, which means the NPC thief has a 70% of successfully sneaking.Is that right? Or am I wrong about the player always being the one who rolls? (In which case, who rolls: Stealth with a difficulty set by the opposing Listen, or visa versa?)