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BRP basic skill rules giving me cognitive dissonance


j0nnyfive

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The percentage value does NOT* represent the limit of normal human skill nor does it represent your skill in relation to other humans. It is a marker of competency. Once you reach a skill of 100% you can successfully perform all normal uses of this skill under stressful and demanding circumstances 19 times out of 20. (Because in stressful circumstances no matter how good you are you can always screw up.) Exceeding 100% means that you are more likely to succeed at the kinds of crazy stunts that even a regular master would fail at.

I can see, now, how it would not represent any sort of limit, but I'm not sure how it wouldn't be used to compare one human to another. If we assume that a GM at least tries to somewhat standardize "normal uses", "stressful", and "demanding circumstances", would this not make the skill rating a useful tool for comparison? Or does "normal use/stressful/demanding" change in relation to who's using the skill? Not sure I follow...

Thanks for your continued input, guys!

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Okay, my thinking on this has been refined a bit more now... *ahem*

A skill rating is a percentage of the "amount of mastery" one possesses. From this rating can be derived some useful game information such as the odds of success vs normal, easy, & hard challenges, critical successes & failures, as well as when to apply any special rules or bonuses that relate to the given skill.

The fact that a 50% skill has a 50% chance of success is simply a convenient feature of the game system. But one should not confuse percent of AMOUNT with percent of CHANCE. (e.g. A skill of 120% AMOUNT still only has about a 95% CHANCE of succeeding.)

Tada!! No? No? Ehhhh? :tu::td::tu:;D

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Okay, my thinking on this has been refined a bit more now... *ahem*

A skill rating is a percentage of the "amount of mastery" one possesses. From this rating can be derived some useful game information such as the odds of success vs normal, easy, & hard challenges, critical successes & failures, as well as when to apply any special rules or bonuses that relate to the given skill.

The fact that a 50% skill has a 50% chance of success is simply a convenient feature of the game system. But one should not confuse percent of AMOUNT with percent of CHANCE. (e.g. A skill of 120% AMOUNT still only has about a 95% CHANCE of succeeding.)

Tada!! No? No? Ehhhh? :tu::td::tu:;D

That's it in a nutshell. Mastery of a skill (90%) means that in most cases, most of the time you will succeed at the skill under stressful conditions.

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Okay, my thinking on this has been refined a bit more now... *ahem*

A skill rating is a percentage of the "amount of mastery" one possesses. From this rating can be derived some useful game information such as the odds of success vs normal, easy, & hard challenges, critical successes & failures, as well as when to apply any special rules or bonuses that relate to the given skill.

The fact that a 50% skill has a 50% chance of success is simply a convenient feature of the game system. But one should not confuse percent of AMOUNT with percent of CHANCE. (e.g. A skill of 120% AMOUNT still only has about a 95% CHANCE of succeeding.)

Tada!! No? No? Ehhhh? :tu::td::tu:;D

j0nnyfive is alive! Yep, that's about as good as you'll get, I think.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

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