Skill Failure and Limited Augments

[DocSk]

I am new to RQG but am enjoying the game so far. However, I am a little stumped as to how underpowered many characters are. Many of my players’ characters are rolling against skills in the 40 to 65 range. Roughly, this means that they fail half the time. Failing some is fun. Failing half the time gets tedious.

So I figured that was what augments were for. Characters could summon the power of a rune to help them in combat. However, as I understand it, they would only be able to use that rune during one combat per session. So it doesn’t seem to be runes, passions, and skills that make the characters more legendary. 
 

What am I doing wrong? Are we making characters wrong (the pregens seem tougher)? Are we using augments incorrectly? 

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, DocSk said:

Many of my players’ characters are rolling against skills in the 40 to 65 range.

First, make sure you've calculated the skill category bonus, and that you're adding that to the skill when rolling.

Then make sure you've added together the:

• Cultural Skill and Weapon bonuses
• Occupation skill bonuses
• Cult starting skill bonuses, plus make sure you've also included: Add an additional +20% to one of these starting skills and +15% to another. In addition, all initiates start with the following skill bonuses: Cult Lore (deity) +15%, Worship (deity) +20%, Meditate +5%
• Personal skill bonuses: +25% in 4 skills, +10% in 5 skills - be judicious in these, i.e. put them in skills that will bump up critical skills relevant to your character's occupation, or that might make a difference in combat.

If you spread broadly, then, yes, you can end up with lots of skills in a middle range. However, it's normal to have a fair number of skills in that range.

1 hour ago, DocSk said:

So I figured that was what augments were for.

Not just augments - remember your Spirit Magic! Many of these spells increase your chance of success, e.g. Bladesharp 2 will add +10% to your sword, Speedart +15% to your missile, etc. Coordination, Strength, Vigor bump up your characteristics, and consequently bump up your skill category bonus which also adds to your skills. 

Augments can help, but can swing you one way or another if you try to augment with a Rune, Passion, or skill that's particularly below 65%. Can be useful or dramatic, but rely on your spirit magic first. Make sure you've also added in your +50 points across your Runes so that you get some number of Runes in the 75%+ range which will give a good chance for augmenting with those. (Each Elemental Rune has a relevant category associated with it as well as specific weapons, so if you want to be particularly good at Spear or Bow, Scan, or Perception generally, get your Fire Rune up to 70-75%.)

And many Rune spells can dramatically bump up your skill. You need to keep these somewhat in reserve for when you really need them, but they'll give you 15 minutes of often powerful magic that can easily put you significantly higher. Don't be afraid to use it.

1 hour ago, DocSk said:

the pregens seem tougher

Make sure you are giving your players a decent amount of characteristic points as those make a difference for skill category bonuses. I target my players using 94-95 points across characteristics. Random methods are fine for establishing a base, but if the total sum of characteristic points is anything below 90, bump it to that target range. And then add in your +2/+1 to characteristics based on your top 2 Elemental Runes. This should give your characters a decent foundation.

My heavy infantry warrior Yarandros is very good at: 1H Sword 95% (incl. bonus), 2H Sword 75%, Shield 80% and Javelin and Short Spear 60%. And he's got Bladesharp 4 to given him a +20% boost to those sword skills.

But most other skills in the 40-60% range: Intimidate 45%, Battle 45%, Climb 45%, Jump 44%, Listen 40%, Scan 40%, Spirit Combat 40%, and he's got a few odd skills like Prepare Corpse 35% as he's a Humakti.

His job is to fight though, and he's going to be very average when it comes to scouting and poor on many Communication skills. Most of the time he'll be with others who can do the bargaining or investigating work.

That sort of specialization depending on Occupation and Cult is fairly typical.

 

 

[Runeblogger]

New characters are supposed to be competent in the main skills of their occupation, so make sure to spend the personal skill points to boost those if the skill category modifiers are not that great. For example, see the character I created here (light cavalry) with all the step by step process:

https://elruneblog.blogspot.com/2022/05/creating-grazelander-player-character.html?m=1

At the bottom there’s a link to the full character sheet of Tomiris, where you can see he’s got 80% in Lance and Bow.

[Joerg]

In the end, you either need to find a way to fail forward somewhat - introduce a gray zone of say 30 percentiles in which a failed roll achieves at least some of the player's goal at some cost to the player, which may be some hurt, loss of precious time, damaging their equipment in the process, or similar.

Such a rule reading needs group buy-in, but might make your life as GM easier.

For more on the concept, read the QuestWorlds SRD.

[Malin]

Another thing I do at my table when it comes to "softer skills" like perception-based ones is to have success not be black or white, but a sliding scale of gray. A failed scan roll will still give some information, a success more, and a special a lot. I often use the phrase "Make a scan roll, I just want to see how much you see here" to soften the player's perception of failure as a 'oh no, I don't see anything' and not make it seem like I give consolation prices for failure.

But yeah, the first time building characters in RQ:G it is easy to be spread too wide, especially if you make a character that is not focused on combat. Our GM had to go in and advise one player to shift some of the personal skill numbers around to make them good at a few things they should be good at. It's easy to be stuck in so many "must have" skills that they all end up in the 30's range or so.

Yet another thing I have done with small groups (2 players) is to give more points for them to place. In a larger, more classic 4-player party, you have space for a greater width of characters, but in a smaller group, there's less room for personal fun stuff in my experience. Giving out some extra starting percentage values means that there's room for more flexible and multi-faceted characters. It's your table, after all, do what is most fun for your group.

And finally, like people have already say, make sure you have added ALL the extra percentages you get, it's a bit muddled in the book, and it's easy to overlook things the first time. I know I did.

[radmonger]

If you use opposed rolls, then you can manipulate the chance of success by setting the skill of the opposition, without having to change the numbers on the PC sheet.

For example, someone with homeland lore 65% gets asked 'what do you know of the current chief of the Dundealos tribe'? This is not so completely trivial to avoid rolling, but 35% failure seems a bit high for someone so invested in the skill. So do an opposed roll against a 20% opposition, using a tie-break rule of highest roll wins.  This means that 80% of failed rolls have a 50% chance of passing, so overall chance of success is notably higher.

Or if two people with Tradetalk 35% are trying to communicate a simple commercial concept. something like the terms of a guarantee  would be say 10% opposition.  They succeed not only if either rolls under 35%, but if also either rolls higher than the opposition. So the _probably_ get it right, but there is a chance one walks away with a misconception.

I think this is in RQ:G somewhere as an option, though i am not sure it includes the Pendragon-style tiebreak rule that makes it mathematically work. What it does have is the advice to not roll if failure doesn't make any sense. It seems possible to not know much about the chief of a tribe on the the side of dragon pass, and if you need that information and don;t know it there is going to be someone you can ask..So the plot can still move forward after a failure.

 

 

[Akhôrahil]

13 hours ago, DocSk said:

I am new to RQG but am enjoying the game so far. However, I am a little stumped as to how underpowered many characters are. Many of my players’ characters are rolling against skills in the 40 to 65 range. Roughly, this means that they fail half the time. Failing some is fun. Failing half the time gets tedious.

So I figured that was what augments were for. Characters could summon the power of a rune to help them in combat. However, as I understand it, they would only be able to use that rune during one combat per session. So it doesn’t seem to be runes, passions, and skills that make the characters more legendary. 
 

What am I doing wrong? Are we making characters wrong (the pregens seem tougher)? Are we using augments incorrectly? 

You're not doing anything wrong, it's working as intended. PCs will tend to have a high percentage is a few core skills (often but not always combat), where you start out at 80+%. But a lot of your second-tier skills will be in the range you suggest, and that's intended. Also, in many cases it's enough if one person in the party makes the roll, and then you will often get a success at team level anyway. In some cases though, you fail and have to find another route. Or you could apply the "fail forwards" concept, where failure doesn't stop the attempt but just gives it negative consequences (you find the book but your enemies realize you're in the library, you climb the mountain but it takes a lot longer, you track your enemy but lose ground to them). 

This edition actually gives you much higher skill percentages than you used to - in RQ2, you would start out in the 30-40% range even in your good skills. 🙂

[Jens]

17 hours ago, DocSk said:

Are we making characters wrong (the pregens seem tougher)?

Just to repeat an earlier note, the pregens both start with high stats (which boost all skills thanks to skill modifiers), and were also created by people familiar with the system who knew which skills to boost. With the exception of a few things like Brother Monkey, they can all be created by the rules- @PhilHibbs has a great thread where he goes through them one by one, even loading them into his excellent Google character sheet for completeness.

 

[Mugen]

23 hours ago, radmonger said:

If you use opposed rolls, then you can manipulate the chance of success by setting the skill of the opposition, without having to change the numbers on the PC sheet.

For example, someone with homeland lore 65% gets asked 'what do you know of the current chief of the Dundealos tribe'? This is not so completely trivial to avoid rolling, but 35% failure seems a bit high for someone so invested in the skill. So do an opposed roll against a 20% opposition, using a tie-break rule of highest roll wins.  This means that 80% of failed rolls have a 50% chance of passing, so overall chance of success is notably higher.

I think it's wot mentioning there's an implicit rule in your example that in case of 2 failed rolls, the higher roll wins the contest nonetheless. Often, in roll-under opposed skill contests, failure versus failure is considered a tie, with 2 losers.

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by Mugen