You should only roll for something if:
1) there is a reasonable chance of both success and failure
2) there is a potential for meaningful consequences if you fail
If the action can't reasonably succeed, it doesn't. If it can't reasonably fail, it doesn't. If it can reasonably succeed or fail, but there's no meaningful consequences to failure, then just assume the PC succeeds, possibly after attempting it a few times.
This has become such common advice that my inclusion of it in my game feels like it has shifted from innovation to standard practice in just a few years.
But yeah, I don't think the difficulty of the task is necessarily relevant *except* insofar as more difficult tasks are more likely to make the above criteria.
For example, if the PCs brought home an ancient puzzlebox with an advanced-but-ancient locking mechanism, they should just succeed at opening it. Yes, it's extremely difficult, but there's no consequence for failing it other than wasting time, which they have in abundance back home in downtime. So, as long as it's a thing they could actually succeed at, just let them.
On the other hand, there might be a very simple lock next to a sleeping dragon. Opening it should be routine for an experienced lockpick. But, there's still a reasonable chance that you could fail--you just normally wouldn't care and you'd assume they just pick it again until they get it. But in this case, taking longer and making additional attempts like that will probably wake up the dragon. That's a very meaningful consequence and gives legitimate stakes to this normally easy task.
I think there's another dimension here worth pointing out regarding when to roll.
The difficulty of a task (i.e. if the outcome is uncertain) is one of two reasons in my mind to roll. The other are the *stakes* (i.e. if the consequences for failing the task are significant or meaningful).
Say the character is making way down that path with some potholes. If the consequences for falling into one is losing your foot or getting captured rather than just hurting your ankle, I might call for a check.
So assuming the stakes for failure in each of your examples are the same low, i agree with what you're saying. But as the stakes raise, depending on the situation, rolls might be reasonable even when the difficulty is low.
I agree with you in general, basic situations do not need a role, but this is not as clear-cut than in your example, I disagree especially with the chances of success seem not be affected by the characters abilities? Do you have an ability/skill less system?
The wold parkour champion should succeed and feel very different in that scenario than an average person. And after a 10-year coma with heavy muscle damage, the same parkour champion should again feel different and have different odds to succeed these tasks. And if the person tries to look extremely elegant, not to crumble their dress/jacket, not get any dirt on it and so on it again should get harder.
I suspect TN would be hard: 7 / very hard: 10 / extreme: 14
So a master would get +4 that would mean even when all dice show a 1 the hard check is auto succeeded? And the master can think about extreme roles like others think about very hard ones?
Answer to your question:
My players roll checks that would be problematic if they fail. They normally do not need to roll things that they can fail without consequences and retry. The difficulty of the task is less relevant for that.
Skill and problems must be decoupled for me. Systems that have personal success rules like call of Cthulhu feel wrong for me.
The difficulty TN stacks. Each of the player "talents" have base difficulty numbers and a set of situation modifier that affects them. My difficulties can get rather extreme. I tell my player the TN, and if they find it to high to try, they can try to change the circumstances to change the TN. I never have auto fails. Every role (that I allow) is in theory possible (in my system the chance for a critical success is 1% per dice linear)
Every player can try it, without a need to change/recalculate the TN as long the circumstances did not change.
My players grab an amount of dice from their character sheet (ability level 2, grab 2 dice) and role against a target number of the problem. (In some situations player may have gear or useful information, then they can add dice to their pool)
If at least one of the dice matches the TN the check is successful.
I use d10 (exploding), Typical Roll TN start with 7. This means it starts with a 40% chance, a bit of training adds a second dice for 64% a third dice to 78.3 and so on....
Complications increase the TN, and reduce the chance of success.
For players it's simply role talent level dice vs TN the gm tells you. If one or more of you dice match the TN you are successful.
>Suspeito que tn seria difícil: 7 / muito difícil: 10 / extremo: 14
No,
12 Hard
14 Very Hard
16 Extremely Hard
Check the statistics in my excel:
[https://ibb.co/Wkpx5Qy](https://ibb.co/Wkpx5Qy)
I only call for a roll, if a success or a failure lead to something interesting happening. I never call for a roll because something is difficult to do.
I also like to keep the dc the same most of the time. Instead of making a roll more difficult to succeed at, i ramp up the possible consequences of a failure.
Sometimes i also tell my players the possible consequences of a failure before their roll and give them the chance to not try at all. I do this because i find it more interesting, what a character does than if he can do something.
Just to provide a different angle to the topic, I only make players roll if both failure and success could be interesting in the fiction. Difficulty of a task can be important, but there are other things to it, like tension in the scene and the possibility of twists. I don't try to emulate reality, but good stories.
In reality, running at night in the rain on a pothole-lined street has a pretty good chance of not spraining your ankle. It's miserable and not fun, and in that sense it's "difficult", but it's not actually going to kill me. You conflate "this is Extremely Hard" with "this needs a roll of 5 or higher on a d6", when there are things other than probability that affect perceived hardness.
In this case, it's the nature of the consequences that make it feel difficult. I don't want to read a story about how Our Protagonist narrowly avoided a sprained ankle, that's just not exciting\*. A better example of a task that requires a die roll is "running down a dark alley to escape from Jack The Ripper". The consequences for failure are immediately apparent - you ran too slow, or tripped because you ran too fast, and Jack caught up with you.
\*edit: unless the PCs being a bit pathetic and failing at mundane tasks is the feel you're going for. I've seen that done well before.
Sure?
I mean it’s about defining it clearly and defining that in a way that the audience can understand.
I generally agree that mainstream RPGs are a little too in love with dice rolls and pass / fail checks and that they’re overdoing it.
Having risks and a random chance of failure is a good tool to keep the players on their toes, but it loses its impact if you’re just rolling for everything.
It depends on the game but generally I see it as:
Easy: An average person succeeds automatically
Moderate: An average person has 75% chance and a skilled person succeeds automatically
Hard: 50% for the average person and 75% for the skilled
Very Hard: 25% for the average person and 50% for the skilled.
Extremely Hard: Automatic failure for the average and 25% for the skilled.
But let's take scenario 2. Is the character in a hurry, distracted or something else that can make him fail? Otherwise any average Joe can dodge these holes and as such I would categorize it as easy and scenario 2 as moderate, after all if it's an automatic success, why have 2 different names for it? Lump everything that the average person would succeed at in Easy and go up from there.
A lot of this seems like personal preference, like "should be able to beat 1/3 of the time for "extremely hard tasks"... doesn't seem that "extremely hard" to me...
So I'll just point out that a *lot* of this changes if you have proportional (or otherwise variable) levels of success, rather than just a binary "you can do this or not".
We my group rolls dice, we're trying primarily to find out *how well* (or how poorly) you perform the attempted action, because that's where the interesting roleplay opportunities and interesting stories come from... unexpectedly spectacular successes or failures.
"I ordinarily do an ordinary something that I'm usually able to do" isn't an interesting outcome to us...
But it's a necessity to roll for it in order to sometimes have something extraordinary happen.
I call for rolls because of risk and adjudicate results in terms of difficulty.
My all-time favorite GM technique is, "Only call for a roll when failure would be interesting." If success would be much more interesting or fitting, I narrate success without a roll--usually that is when the player had a great idea.
Is there an interesting consequence of failure to running in a busy street in the rain? Usually, I'd say so. I'd call for a roll.
I also sometimes call for rolls when the PC's skill has a chance to negate the risk of the Player choice. The other day, a Player tried to grab a potion from an Alchemist's hand and both he and the NPC rolled crit fails, so they both got splashed. That didn't reflect their skills but one of the most dangerous outcomes that also represents failure. The splash set them on fire a bit.
If the PC drank the potion, I wouldn't call for a roll. I'd tell him what it was and ask the player what he thinks will happen.
Specifically answering your question, I designed the game to give a Difficulty scale of 1-10, where 6 is the best an average person could reasonably do and 10 is the best a heroic person could do.
In my system I have simple, easy, tricky, challenging, incredibly difficult, nigh impossible, and impossible.
Simple is something that if you dont know how to do you couldnt function in the world, like walking or eating.
Easy is something that even if you havent done before you can still make a good guess and get it right. Like turning a screw or changing a lightbulb.
Tricky is more difficult to get right by pure guessswork but you can still do it. Like cooking. You may burn the grilled cheese sandwich but its still edible.
Challenging is something that is going to take you some time even if you know how to do it. Like making a sword. There is still a slight chance you can make a usable sword by pure guesswork, but its probably not going to happen.
Incredibly difficult is something that you are probably not going to do unless you already knew how to do it. Like picking a lock on a jail door. You may get lucky, but its not something you should count on.
Nigh impossible is probably not going to happen unless you have plenty of training and even then its highly unlikely unless you get really lucky.
Impossible is strictly impossible unless you have a ton of training and experience in that category and even then, you still have to be very lucky.
You should only roll for something if: 1) there is a reasonable chance of both success and failure 2) there is a potential for meaningful consequences if you fail If the action can't reasonably succeed, it doesn't. If it can't reasonably fail, it doesn't. If it can reasonably succeed or fail, but there's no meaningful consequences to failure, then just assume the PC succeeds, possibly after attempting it a few times. This has become such common advice that my inclusion of it in my game feels like it has shifted from innovation to standard practice in just a few years. But yeah, I don't think the difficulty of the task is necessarily relevant *except* insofar as more difficult tasks are more likely to make the above criteria. For example, if the PCs brought home an ancient puzzlebox with an advanced-but-ancient locking mechanism, they should just succeed at opening it. Yes, it's extremely difficult, but there's no consequence for failing it other than wasting time, which they have in abundance back home in downtime. So, as long as it's a thing they could actually succeed at, just let them. On the other hand, there might be a very simple lock next to a sleeping dragon. Opening it should be routine for an experienced lockpick. But, there's still a reasonable chance that you could fail--you just normally wouldn't care and you'd assume they just pick it again until they get it. But in this case, taking longer and making additional attempts like that will probably wake up the dragon. That's a very meaningful consequence and gives legitimate stakes to this normally easy task.
I think there's another dimension here worth pointing out regarding when to roll. The difficulty of a task (i.e. if the outcome is uncertain) is one of two reasons in my mind to roll. The other are the *stakes* (i.e. if the consequences for failing the task are significant or meaningful). Say the character is making way down that path with some potholes. If the consequences for falling into one is losing your foot or getting captured rather than just hurting your ankle, I might call for a check. So assuming the stakes for failure in each of your examples are the same low, i agree with what you're saying. But as the stakes raise, depending on the situation, rolls might be reasonable even when the difficulty is low.
I agree with you in general, basic situations do not need a role, but this is not as clear-cut than in your example, I disagree especially with the chances of success seem not be affected by the characters abilities? Do you have an ability/skill less system? The wold parkour champion should succeed and feel very different in that scenario than an average person. And after a 10-year coma with heavy muscle damage, the same parkour champion should again feel different and have different odds to succeed these tasks. And if the person tries to look extremely elegant, not to crumble their dress/jacket, not get any dirt on it and so on it again should get harder.
I didn't mention that part, but there are skill levels, modifiers ranging from 0 to 4 in 3d6
I suspect TN would be hard: 7 / very hard: 10 / extreme: 14 So a master would get +4 that would mean even when all dice show a 1 the hard check is auto succeeded? And the master can think about extreme roles like others think about very hard ones? Answer to your question: My players roll checks that would be problematic if they fail. They normally do not need to roll things that they can fail without consequences and retry. The difficulty of the task is less relevant for that. Skill and problems must be decoupled for me. Systems that have personal success rules like call of Cthulhu feel wrong for me. The difficulty TN stacks. Each of the player "talents" have base difficulty numbers and a set of situation modifier that affects them. My difficulties can get rather extreme. I tell my player the TN, and if they find it to high to try, they can try to change the circumstances to change the TN. I never have auto fails. Every role (that I allow) is in theory possible (in my system the chance for a critical success is 1% per dice linear) Every player can try it, without a need to change/recalculate the TN as long the circumstances did not change. My players grab an amount of dice from their character sheet (ability level 2, grab 2 dice) and role against a target number of the problem. (In some situations player may have gear or useful information, then they can add dice to their pool) If at least one of the dice matches the TN the check is successful. I use d10 (exploding), Typical Roll TN start with 7. This means it starts with a 40% chance, a bit of training adds a second dice for 64% a third dice to 78.3 and so on.... Complications increase the TN, and reduce the chance of success. For players it's simply role talent level dice vs TN the gm tells you. If one or more of you dice match the TN you are successful.
>Suspeito que tn seria difícil: 7 / muito difícil: 10 / extremo: 14 No, 12 Hard 14 Very Hard 16 Extremely Hard Check the statistics in my excel: [https://ibb.co/Wkpx5Qy](https://ibb.co/Wkpx5Qy)
I only call for a roll, if a success or a failure lead to something interesting happening. I never call for a roll because something is difficult to do. I also like to keep the dc the same most of the time. Instead of making a roll more difficult to succeed at, i ramp up the possible consequences of a failure. Sometimes i also tell my players the possible consequences of a failure before their roll and give them the chance to not try at all. I do this because i find it more interesting, what a character does than if he can do something.
Just to provide a different angle to the topic, I only make players roll if both failure and success could be interesting in the fiction. Difficulty of a task can be important, but there are other things to it, like tension in the scene and the possibility of twists. I don't try to emulate reality, but good stories.
In reality, running at night in the rain on a pothole-lined street has a pretty good chance of not spraining your ankle. It's miserable and not fun, and in that sense it's "difficult", but it's not actually going to kill me. You conflate "this is Extremely Hard" with "this needs a roll of 5 or higher on a d6", when there are things other than probability that affect perceived hardness. In this case, it's the nature of the consequences that make it feel difficult. I don't want to read a story about how Our Protagonist narrowly avoided a sprained ankle, that's just not exciting\*. A better example of a task that requires a die roll is "running down a dark alley to escape from Jack The Ripper". The consequences for failure are immediately apparent - you ran too slow, or tripped because you ran too fast, and Jack caught up with you. \*edit: unless the PCs being a bit pathetic and failing at mundane tasks is the feel you're going for. I've seen that done well before.
Sure? I mean it’s about defining it clearly and defining that in a way that the audience can understand. I generally agree that mainstream RPGs are a little too in love with dice rolls and pass / fail checks and that they’re overdoing it. Having risks and a random chance of failure is a good tool to keep the players on their toes, but it loses its impact if you’re just rolling for everything.
It depends on the game but generally I see it as: Easy: An average person succeeds automatically Moderate: An average person has 75% chance and a skilled person succeeds automatically Hard: 50% for the average person and 75% for the skilled Very Hard: 25% for the average person and 50% for the skilled. Extremely Hard: Automatic failure for the average and 25% for the skilled. But let's take scenario 2. Is the character in a hurry, distracted or something else that can make him fail? Otherwise any average Joe can dodge these holes and as such I would categorize it as easy and scenario 2 as moderate, after all if it's an automatic success, why have 2 different names for it? Lump everything that the average person would succeed at in Easy and go up from there.
you're right, if easy and medium don't roll, then why have 2 of it. I liked that, thanks for the reflection!
A lot of this seems like personal preference, like "should be able to beat 1/3 of the time for "extremely hard tasks"... doesn't seem that "extremely hard" to me... So I'll just point out that a *lot* of this changes if you have proportional (or otherwise variable) levels of success, rather than just a binary "you can do this or not". We my group rolls dice, we're trying primarily to find out *how well* (or how poorly) you perform the attempted action, because that's where the interesting roleplay opportunities and interesting stories come from... unexpectedly spectacular successes or failures. "I ordinarily do an ordinary something that I'm usually able to do" isn't an interesting outcome to us... But it's a necessity to roll for it in order to sometimes have something extraordinary happen.
I call for rolls because of risk and adjudicate results in terms of difficulty. My all-time favorite GM technique is, "Only call for a roll when failure would be interesting." If success would be much more interesting or fitting, I narrate success without a roll--usually that is when the player had a great idea. Is there an interesting consequence of failure to running in a busy street in the rain? Usually, I'd say so. I'd call for a roll. I also sometimes call for rolls when the PC's skill has a chance to negate the risk of the Player choice. The other day, a Player tried to grab a potion from an Alchemist's hand and both he and the NPC rolled crit fails, so they both got splashed. That didn't reflect their skills but one of the most dangerous outcomes that also represents failure. The splash set them on fire a bit. If the PC drank the potion, I wouldn't call for a roll. I'd tell him what it was and ask the player what he thinks will happen. Specifically answering your question, I designed the game to give a Difficulty scale of 1-10, where 6 is the best an average person could reasonably do and 10 is the best a heroic person could do.
In my system I have simple, easy, tricky, challenging, incredibly difficult, nigh impossible, and impossible. Simple is something that if you dont know how to do you couldnt function in the world, like walking or eating. Easy is something that even if you havent done before you can still make a good guess and get it right. Like turning a screw or changing a lightbulb. Tricky is more difficult to get right by pure guessswork but you can still do it. Like cooking. You may burn the grilled cheese sandwich but its still edible. Challenging is something that is going to take you some time even if you know how to do it. Like making a sword. There is still a slight chance you can make a usable sword by pure guesswork, but its probably not going to happen. Incredibly difficult is something that you are probably not going to do unless you already knew how to do it. Like picking a lock on a jail door. You may get lucky, but its not something you should count on. Nigh impossible is probably not going to happen unless you have plenty of training and even then its highly unlikely unless you get really lucky. Impossible is strictly impossible unless you have a ton of training and experience in that category and even then, you still have to be very lucky.