Best Practices for Tracking 1/5 and 1/20 Skill Ratings

[Stan Shinn]

What do your players track on their character sheets -- do they only write down their skill rating and then manually calculate Special and Critical Success each time they roll? Or maybe people write down the precalculated 1/5 and 1/20 numbers next to the skill on the list character sheet?

Only played BRP once about 10 years ago and really long the new edition, but constantly doing division will be a challenge for at least one of my players. Wondering what people typically do at their table to avoid excess math during the game session.

[Nakana]

My trick is calculating 10% (which is easy because it’s the same as skill rating just move the decimal point over) and then halve it for 1/20 or double it for 1/5. 
 

Edit: round fractions up

Edited April 9, 2023 by Nakana

[pansophy]

10 hours ago, Nakana said:

My trick is calculating 10% (which is easy because it’s the same as skill rating just move the decimal point over) and then halve it for 1/20 or double it for 1/5. 

That's my math for percentile calculations anyways ... 😄 

[Barak Shathur]

Copy out the chart for success levels and make sure everyone has access to one. 

[soltakss]

14 hours ago, Nakana said:

My trick is calculating 10% (which is easy because it’s the same as skill rating just move the decimal point over) and then halve it for 1/20 or double it for 1/5. 
 

That is good enough for most situations. You can see very easily whether a roll is a Critical, Special, or Failure.

24 minutes ago, Barak Shathur said:

Copy out the chart for success levels and make sure everyone has access to one. 

For edge cases and Fumbles, I'd refer to the chart, but not for most rolls.

However, the chart is always a good tool to have, particularly if it has been expanded to cover skills above 100.

 

[Nerval]

My trick is multiplication. If I roll low, I multiply the result by 5 to see if it's a special success (i.e. the result comes in under the skill roll). If I roll really low (under 05), I multiply by 20 to check for a critical.

[Stan Shinn]

Interesting. Thanks for all the replies so far! 

I am wondering if I created a character sheet like CoC 7e with room for all the stats right on your character sheet if that would be useful? Seems like that's how CoC 7e handled things to reduce the need for math during the game.

[trechriron]

I'm am working on a Google Sheets character sheet for BRP. Are you supposed to modify the calculations for critical / special success after modifiers? 

[Mugen]

On 4/9/2023 at 9:58 PM, Nakana said:

My trick is calculating 10% (which is easy because it’s the same as skill rating just move the decimal point over) and then halve it for 1/20 or double it for 1/5. 
 

Edit: round fractions up

It's quick and simple, but not really satisfying for skills with their units number around 5.

At 65%, You should have 13% Special chance, not 12%.

[Mugen]

10 hours ago, trechriron said:

I'm am working on a Google Sheets character sheet for BRP. Are you supposed to modify the calculations for critical / special success after modifiers? 

I always did it after modifiers.

[Nakana]

5 minutes ago, Mugen said:

It's quick and simple, but not really satisfying for skills with their units number around 5.

At 65%, You should have 13% Special chance, not 12%.

Why would you get 12?

6.5 doubled is 13. Even if you rounded 6.5 up to 7 and then doubled you’d get 14. 

I’d rather give my players a free point than rob them of one. 

[Mugen]

2 hours ago, Nakana said:

Why would you get 12?

6.5 doubled is 13. Even if you rounded 6.5 up to 7 and then doubled you’d get 14. 

I’d rather give my players a free point than rob them of one. 

Ok, I misunderstood your post. I thought you dropped the units before doubling.