Killing Time

If you work with a single attribute as the modifier for increasing a skill then the range of values from 3d6 is small in absolute terms. But most characters will be developing skills for attributes that they have at reasonable levels ie between 9 and 18 so the bonus is quite limited. This is also one of the reasons why I made my original post - you can easily have a low INT character who can rapidly increase their medicine or science skill. This results in doctors and scientists with reasonable skills but who are effectively morons. If you want a character defined by skills alone then there are systems that do this (Gumshoe springs to mind) but if you include attributes then these should have an impact

I like the RQ3 idea. IIRC it uses the same principle as the old D&D idea of high attribute value giving a bonus to experience and hence increasing the rate at which level increases. Whether this is continued into next edition RQ is anyone's guess...

The 'sadistic murderer' example is a classic Call of Cthulhu scenario description. After GMing the 'Arrius Lurco' adventure for Cthulhu invictus I did wonder about a campaign set in ancient Rome with a plot using the types of themes explored in Rome (HBO series) and Spartacus: blood and sand - with maybe the odd bit of Cthulhu style horror thrown in. Actually that suggests a name: Cthulhu, Blood and Breasts

The main problem identified in the preceding posts appears to be one of the potential open ended nature of the rolls made in a test, which seems to be why the test against the challenge rating is used in rd100. Are there other significant problems that you identified?

Thinking about it, if we're using 3 rolls (for beginning, middle and end) then the average for 3D6 is 10.5 so for an average task the requirement would be to accrue 10 points to gain a successful result (climbing the mountain, identifying the disease). If you accrue over 15 points then the result is a spectacular success (you identify a particularly effective way of treating an illness, set a new route up a mountain that gets named after you). If the character only accrues 5-9 points then the result is a failure (possibly using the fail forward result if the GM is feeling generous); while a 4 or less is going to be abject failure. including the attribute modifier in this means that a genius level character (INT 18, +3 modifier) will succeed with ease on any task where their skill level is high enough to succeed on the 3 skill rolls. Someone with a -3 attribute penalty would not be able to complete the challenge which might be a bit harsh... so maybe the pass level should be 9, or there be an option for critical successes yielding a +1D6 bonus. My concern with this approach is that it a further abstraction from the story - possibly this is because we don't use a beginning, middle and end approach to combat and my original aim was to try to use the same approach in both combat and skill challenge situations.

Agreed - One of the problems with the one sided challenge is that the players could keep on failing the skill check so it takes loads of rolls to complete. There should always be a cost to this - failure to make progress while mountain climbing can mean HP damage from exposure or delays to a message getting through. so I disagree with that the opposition needs to score successes to make this a dramatic situation. I've been playing with the idea of having a challenge simply have a beginning, middle and end, with a skill check at each of these stages. Rather than have a goal/target number of points that the character needs to amass this could mean that there are levels of success - lots of points+ outstanding success (patient is successfully treated, mountain is climbed in record time), 0 points earned = resounding failure (patient dies, climb is abandoned). This does mean more work in identifying different bands though...

well I was hoping for a specific 'yes it works' or 'no, this is the problem with doing it that way' but I'll go for wading through a few hundred posts instead

I did have a look at the revolution d100 rules but didn't like the idea of the conflict pool for some situations - and also didn't like having to roll for the challenge rating. YMMV and all that.

I've always been a bit unhappy with the way that STR, DEX and other attributes affect skills- having a minimal impact on starting % but typically that's it. While you can have a genius scientist who is far ahead of the field (Dr House, for example) the same level of skill can be attained by someone with average intelligence (Dr Bedsit??) and a relatively small number of additional development points. My solution is to replicate the rule used for combat: after a successful roll for skill use an 'effect' dice is rolled and modified by the attribute. I'll use a 1D6 roll for the effect dice here. So Dr House gets to add his genius level bonus of +5 to the 1D6 effect dice after making a successful Medicine skill use, while Dr Bedsit can only add +1 for his slightly above average intelligence. If the target in an extended series of skill tests is to get 10 'effect' points then Dr House is going to make this in a couple of rolls and could even get there in the first successful skill check, while Dr Bedsit could require several skill checks to make it. If each skill check represents a day of testing and the patient worsens each day then Dr House will diagnose the relatively quickly, while Dr Bedsit may take so long that the patient dies before he makes the diagnosis. The same mechanism can work for extended tests when climbing a mountain or running a race. Each roll should be described in dramatic terms ('you run into a crowded market place and have to weave through the stalls') rather than a series of tests to avoid it being a roll-playing rather than role-playing exercise but no difference there from current practice. WDYT?

Well remembered - I've not played either Legend or RQ6 and the inclusion of a 'price is right' feature on combat passed me by. By tiered response do you mean the number of successes scored as per RQ6 or the critical/success/fail/fumble of a standard %ile roll? If the latter then this is not incompatible with the resisted roll mechanic - if your target was 40 or less, a critical would be 01-04. If the player is making all the rolls then an attack which gets a critical result would be resolved as for any critical hit. Not too sure what would happen if there was a critical on a defence roll - perhaps the attacker would have to roll on the fumble table? But this is getting more complex than I originally planned. Thanks for your input.

I've had a look at a number of BRP based games but haven't seen any use of combat as a resisted skill. In the game I run, if both attacker and defender roll well, the highest successful roll wins - so if a defence roll of 65 is successful then an attacker has to roll higher than this (but lower than their skill level) to land the blow. This stops the endless 'I hit' 'I parry' sequence that you get with high skilled combatants. You also get a symmetry in that both high and low rolls are good news. One alternative that I haven't tried is using the resistance table to resolve each attack&defence in a single roll- take the difference between attack and defence, add to 50 (if the attack is a higher level of skill than defence) and this is the target number for the attack to succeed. This increases complexity a bit but does remove a dice roll, and also means that you are looking at the difference between contestants rather than absolute skill level. If the skill level of the combatants is the same then attack has a 50% chance of hitting, no matter how skilled they are. This has two implications contests between low skill fighters are resolved more quickly: If both attacker and defender are, say 25% then the target number is 50%. I once ran a melee between a bunch of novices which took ages because of low skill levels on all sides. Equally, if combatants each have skill levels at 100% then the chance of the attack hitting is 50% Any thoughts???