Skill Rolls

Whether your trying to sweet-talk someone, teach him something new, intimidate him into submission, or simply beat him senseless, you always have a chance of failure. In fact, every time you try to so something important or dramatic in No-Mans Land, your actions can fall short. Representing these are skill rolls.

Skill rolls are simple in execution -- roll some dice, add up the results, and compare to a target number. If the total equals or exceeds the target, your roll succeeded, and your character accomplishes what he was trying to do.

When do you roll? Whenever the action:


 * 1) Is important to the story
 * 2) Is dramatic
 * 3) Has a chance of failure

You don't normally need to make a roll to bend a piece of wire, walk up a set of stairs, or chat with someone. But, you might need to make rolls for those same actions if that piece of wire were a crucial step in disarming a bomb, if those stairs were on fire and dangerously unstable, or if trying befriend a new ally (the Explosives, Resolve and Acrobatics, and Charm skills, respectively).

Furthermore, skill rolls represent fundamental, essential actions. There are no Reconnaissance or Seduction skills, since those tasks can be represented by skills that are more fundamental. Reconnaissance might use Spot, Examine, Resolve, and Fieldcraft, while you might seduce someone using Charm, Deception, and Presence.

On the other hand, skill rolls aren't microscopic actions. There are any number of steps that go into rebuilding an engine, but all those steps can be represented by a few Mechanics skill rolls.

The rest of this article describes exactly how to make skill rolls, as well as special circumstances, rules, and complications.

Making a Skill Roll
Roll three dice, add bonus dice (if any), and add the skill's attribute value. The attribute value is the amount of the attribute associated with the skill, such as Reflexes for the Dodge skill or Focus for the Drive skill. Some skills have two associated attributes, like Handicrafts (Intellect or Wits); choose one of the two attributes to add to your skill roll.


 * skill dice + (bonus dice) + attribute value

The skill dice you roll depend on your rank in that skill.


 * Untrained: Roll 3d4
 * Trained: Roll 3d6
 * Practiced: Roll 3d8
 * Expert: Roll 3d10
 * Master: Roll 3d12
 * Elite: Roll 3d20

Add up the results of all your dice plus the skill's attribute value. Re-roll any dice, if applicable (see "Rolling Doubles and Triples", below). The total is your skill roll result. Compare this to a target number for the roll, set by the game master. The target number might also might be the result of someone else's roll. If your skill roll result equals or exceeds the target number, your action succeeds.

To recap:
 * 1) Roll 3 skill dice + (bonus dice, if any) + attribute value
 * 2) Add up the result
 * 3) Re-roll doubles or triples and add to the result
 * 4) Compare the total result to the target number; if the result is equal to or greater than the target, you succeed

Bonus Dice
Favorable circumstances, good equipment, special abilities, teamwork, and other factors can make your skill rolls more likely to succeed. Each bonus you have to your roll, no matter its source, contributes a six-sided bonus die. Add up your total number of bonuses and add that many d6 dice to the skill roll.

Rolling Doubles and Triples
You can sometimes extend your success through good luck.


 * If your three skill dice roll a double (two dice have the same face value), add up your skill roll and then roll one of them again. Add the value of the re-rolled die to the total skill roll result.
 * If your three skill dice all roll a triple (all three dice have the same value, add up your skill roll and then roll two of them again. Add the value of the re-rolled dice to the total skill roll result.
 * If you rolled a triple, re-rolled two of them, and come up with a double, it works the same as above. You're entitled to roll one of them again and add it to the skill roll result.

Target Numbers
The game master sets target numbers for skill rolls. Many skills offer guidelines for assigning target numbers. As a rule of thumb, the GM can refer to the following table.


 * 0, trivial task.
 * 5, easy task.
 * 10, normal task.
 * 15, difficult task.
 * 20, very difficult task.
 * 25, extremely difficult task.
 * 30, heroic task.
 * 35, impossible task.
 * 40; beyond ridiculous.
 * 45; why are you even trying?
 * 50; seriously, forget about it.
 * Trivial tasks are ones that anyone can do without difficulty except under unusual circumstances (lots of handicaps). Examples: Climbing a knee-high ledge (Climb); replacing a battery (Electronics); remembering the name of the first president of the United States (Humanities, History and Religion); hearing unsuppressed gunfire from two hundred yards over open terrain (Listen).
 * Easy tasks are simple for even an Untrained character, and trivial for anyone ranked higher. Examples:  Swimming across a slow-moving stream (Swim); figuring out how to operate a forklift (Learning); winning an argument with a five year-old (Debate); explaining the basic principles of game theory (Social Sciences, Economics).
 * Normal tasks are easy if you are Trained, but more challenging for the Untrained. Examples:  Setting a simple snare trap using the perfect materials (Fieldcraft); finding information on Thomas Hardy's birthplace and childhood (Research); spotting a moving sparrow in a bush at six yards (Spot); setting a charge to breach a wooden door (Explosives).
 * For difficult tasks, the Trained character will fail more often than not, but Practiced characters will find it manageable. Examples:  Convincing a street vendor to give you a 10% discount (Negotiations); rebuilding a transmission (Mechanics); calculating the refraction index of a piece of glass (Natural Sciences, Physics); hiding a playing card up your sleeve (Sleight of Hand).
 * Very difficult tasks are hard for even a Practiced character, but within reach for the Expert -- with a bit of luck. Examples:  Racing a motorcycle down winding dirt roads on a mountainside (Drive); trying to pick the lock on a military bunker door in the middle of a firefight (Concentration and Lockpicking); determining the exact sequence that causes a rare genetic disease (Experimentation and Natural Sciences, Biology); attempting to convince a bouncer that you have friends in the club waiting for you (Deception).
 * Extremely difficult tasks are nearly out of reach for a Practiced character, and even Experts, but possible, with difficulty, for the Master. Examples:  Perfectly performing Rachmaninov's Concerto #3 on piano (Musical Instrument); tracking a fugitive across hard desert ground after a flash rainstorm (Tracking); diagnosing a rare disease while lacking necessary equipment (Medicine); rallying troops whose morale is ready to break (Speech).
 * When attempting heroic tasks a Master character can expect failure a majority of the time. The task is beyond most other skill ranks.  Examples:  Attempting to prove the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture (Formal Sciences, Mathematics); traveling two weeks through the Alps without food or water (Stamina); sneaking past a guard post with minimal cover, across an open field, in broad daylight (Stealth); dropping a human target in a single shot at 2,500 yards through high winds with a .50 caliber rifle (Marksmanship).
 * Only the Elite can expect to succeed at the impossible task, or a Master with help, favorable circumstances, and lots of luck. Examples:  Executing a successful campaign against an enemy with superior equipment and a 5-to-1 numerical advantage(Strategy); balancing on a rope in hurricane-force winds (Acrobatics); creating a true machine intelligence that mimics a human in every way (Formal Sciences, Computer Science, Engineering, and Computers); escaping the death grip of a thirty-foot anaconda while underwater (Grappling).
 * Anything beyond the impossible is doomed to failure; the only question is how bad. Only the Elite with perfect planning, equipment, teamwork, and supernatural luck has even a chance.  Examples:  Performing a successful heart transplant with a rusty knife and some duct tape (Surgery); finding the lost Ark of the Covenant (Search, Social Sciences, Geography, and Social Sciences, Anthropology and Archaeology); taming and riding a wild tiger (Animal Tending and Riding); provoking Mohandas K. Gandhi into throwing a punch (Taunt).

Handicaps
Often you will face difficult circumstances that hamper your efforts. These are handicaps. Handicaps increase the target number, or if you're making a skill challenge roll, add bonuses to your opponent's roll.


 * For target numbers, each handicap adds 3 to the target number.
 * For skill challenge rolls, each handicap adds a bonus die to your opponent's roll.

Degrees of Success or Failure
Sometimes it matters how much you succeed, or by how much you fail. This is most common for precise weapon attacks that add extra damage.

Compare the skill roll result and the target number and subtract the smaller number from the larger. This gives you the difference.
 * If the difference is in your favor (if your skill roll result was greater than the target number), you succeed by that much.
 * If the difference is against you (if the target number was greater than your skill roll result), you fail by that much.

Sometimes the GM will set a scale of target numbers. This is particularly common for knowledge skills. At target number 5 you might remember simple information, at target 10 you recall a little more, at target 15, more yet, and so on.

Types of Skill Rolls
In a normal skill roll, you roll once and compare to a static target number. However, there are other types of rolls.

Skill Challenge Rolls
A skill challenge roll pits two or more characters against each other. The one with the highest skill roll result is the winner.

Sometimes the two skills pitted against each other are the same skill, such as Debate versus Debate or Technique versus Technique. But the two skill rolls need not be the same skill, and in fact, will more often be different. A Deception skill roll challenges another character's Insight skill roll, and a Melee Strike roll challenges the opponent's Dodge or Block roll.

Each opponent rolls an equal number of times. So if someone is attempting a skill challenge that's also a combined skill roll, each roll matches another. However, the burden to succeed is on the character who initiated the rolls. Hence, the person who is trying to accomplish something has to succeed on all his rolls.

For example, suppose one character is trying to seduce another. He uses Charm and Deception, and his opponent resists with Composure and Insight. It's up to the first character to succeed on both his rolls; if either fails, he fails to seduce his mark.

Combined Skill Rolls
Sometimes a task tests two or more skills at the same time. In this case, roll each skill against the target number and take the lowest result. Or in other words, if one of the rolls fails (is less than the target number), you fail at the task.

Consider the illustration from the introduction -- a character tries to climb flaming, unstable stairs. He makes a combined Resolve and Acrobatics skill roll -- Resolve to push through the flames despite his fear of pain, and Acrobatics to see if he has the nimbleness to make it up the crumbling stairs. If he fails at either, he's unable to advance up the stairs.

It might matter which skill roll failed. In the preceding example, if he fails Resolve the character doesn't fall; his fear of the flames stops him before he even puts a foot on the stairs. But if he fails the Acrobatics roll, he starts up the stairs but falls, and might suffer damage.

The GM might set different target numbers for each skill in the combined skill roll. This is especially the case for skill challenge rolls. To extend the example, the stairs might be only lightly damaged (target 15), and easier to climb than it is to push into the fire (target 25). The result is the same, however -- if either skill roll fails, the character fails at the task.