Group tasks

[Tupper]

I also think that The One Ring's way of handling stealth is very elegant.  I'd note that it takes a symmetric approach to parties who are in danger of being ambushed, in which case each member needs to succeed at their awareness check to avoid being penalised when the ambush happens.  People who succeed better can warn other party members (just like with stealth).  

On the topic of other games, D&D 5e's approach is, in some ways similar (for the stealth side):

• A group making a stealth check succeeding if more than half of the party make the roll successfully.
• A group making a perception check would consist of one person rolling, with advantage because they have help (akin to using an augment).

So again (for stealth) some people can fail individually, but the party collectively pulls through.

Perhaps a way to RuneQuest-ise this school of thought would be:

• Everyone rolls their hide roll.
• If someone gets a Special success, he/she may treat it as a regular success, but raise another group member's success by one level (from fumble to fail, or fail to success).
• If someone gets a Critical success, he/she may lower it one level to raise another group member's success by one level.
• The party's minimum success level is the one that is compared to the guards.

One could apply the same method to the guards who are searching, but the use of a minimum here feels less intuitive (but needs to be there, or we're back to the original problem of it being too easy for the searchers).

The appeals of this approach would be two fold:

1. Everyone in the party gets to roll, which is fun.
2. Because there's no use of augments, that leaves them free to be used for other things, such as Move Quietly augmenting Hiding.

[davecake]

I tend to run these sort of situations very similarly to a HeroQuest simple group contest these days. Every person has a roll of an appropriate skill, a net number of successes determines the degree of success (eg every succeeds and the group goes in quickly an silently - successes outnumber failures means the group goes slowly and cautiously). Criticals and Fumbles generate opportunities for an interesting challenge, or add/bypass obstacles - a fumble might mean one member is surprised by a guard and must try to kill them quickly and silently, a critical might give an opportunity to steal keys, or let the character overhear useful conversation. 

I'm generally pretty generous in these situations about Augments, as you don't want to, for example, prevent an entire party using stealth because one member is lacking in it.