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How To Use Skills - Roll Until Critical Fail
or "how to have fun skills with coin toss math".
A proposed generalization of the Thievery/Pick Lock mechanics to all skills.
The new PF2 math, where every die roll is pretty close to a coin toss, works decently in combat. Because rolls are repeated, you are not stuck with failure - you can always try again. A miss is the expected result on a second or later attack, but the payout on a lucky roll is good and thus its worth trying (unless you have something better to spend actions on that is not an attack). Not so with most skill rolls. Skills often allow only one roll, and if that roll fails there is no recourse. This proposed mechanic seeks to alleviate that. It also makes table 10-2 more tolerable, even if you fail against those high DCs, you can still try again.
Proposed Skill Roll Mechanic
Any skill task requires a number of successes depending on the complexity of the task. One success for simple tasks, multiple successes for lengthy or complex tasks. Each attempt takes a time depending in the mode of play. In encounter mode, this is a single action. In exploration mode this is 10 minutes. In downtime mode, one day.
All skills use the following table of success:
Success: The task comes one step closer to the goal.
Critical Success: This counts as two successes.
Failure: No result except wasted time. You are free to continue.
Critical Failure: You suffer a setback, as determined by the GM. Others attempting the task are not affected.
The most common setback is that the method you have been using is shown to be ineffective, meaning you have to come up with a new way to solve the task. This leads to a negotiation with the GM. The GM has a fail-forward mechanism here, tasks that are meant to succeed can have trivial "new ways" while tasks that are outside the scope of the adventure or otherwise troublesome to the GM or story might require very ingenuitive new methods.
Other setbacks include falling when climbing, getting hit in the head by a rock when spelunking, crushing the contents of a treasure chest when forcing it open, destroying a scroll you are attempting to decipher or fool, erroneous information when attempting to recall, and so on. These do not hamper further attempts, but may cost you the successes you have collected so far. Nobody else is affected in any way. GMs are encouraged to use these in tasks that the story demands that the PCs succeed.
Damaging your tools or otherwise penalizing future rolls is not a good setback result, as it either has no effect (if the PC has reserves) or stymies all future efforts, making the players give up.
Applications
Cooperative Tasks
A cooperative task is simply when several people are trying to gather successes on the same task. Each can continue until they critically fail. Everyone can try, but those with poor skills are likely to get setbacks that either damages them or forces them out of the race. This does not hamper others involved in the task.
Task Progression
Some tasks, like gathering information or climbing a wall, lend themselves naturally to having partial successes. This should only be used where partial results are meaningful, not where a certain number of successes are used as a goal final goal with no intermediate results. An Athletics check to climb or an Acrobatics check to balance moves your speed each time, A Diplomacy check to gather information or a Lore check to recall information reveals one piece of information with each success. Each check using Thievery or Athletics to demolish a wall opens up a 1 ft. a hole, Medicine restores Hit Points per the rule in 1.3, and so on.
Different Time Scales
Skills can be used either in encounter, exploration, and downtime mode. Any task that could succeed in encounter mode would automatically succeed in exploration mode (spending 10 minutes rather than 1 action) and the same for exploration tasks in downtime mode. Sometimes, it is dramatically appropriate that things move must faster in encounter mode and this rule can be ignored.
Things like a Medicine check to restore Hit Points, which affects up to 6 people in exploration mode, could perhaps affect a single creature in encounter mode?
Examples
Gathering Information at a Formal Dinner:
Diplomacy or Society vs. Perception defense. Success: One bit of information. Fail: Small talk. Crit Fail: This person gets bored with you and you need to talk to someone else.
Jumping a Chasm
Athletics DC as determined by Athletics/Long Jump. 1 success. Success: you jump. Failure: you stall and do nothing. Critical Failure: You jump, but fail. You can still try to use Acrobatics/Grab edge.
Climbing a Rock Wall:
Acrobatics or Athletics vs DC 12. Success: You climb 5 ft. If your Speed is 40 feet or greater, you move 10 feet instead. Fail: You get nowhere. Crit Fail: You slip and fall.
Demolishing a Dungeon Wall
Athletics or Thievery DC18, 20 successes. Failure: Sweat. Critical failure: fatigued for 10 minutes.
Cooking A Meal
Craft or Society DC 8, 3 successes. Failure: Wasted time. Critical Failure: Ingredients for 1 person are spoiled and needs to be replaced, requiring a trip to the scary cellar.
Comments
This system has similarities with 4E's skill challenges. The same goal of "every roll matters" is met. The main difference is that a character with low skill can still contribute. In 4E, unless you were the character most likely to succeed in a skill challenge, rolling meant you were sabotaging the team effort. Here, the worst that can happen is that you and only you suffer a setback.
One important reason to NOT use the "lose a success on a critical failure" mechanic of the current Thievery/Open Lock rules is that that can lead to making 500 rolls. With this system, you either succeed or critically fail in short order.
People on the boards have been asking for a system where all 4 degrees of success applies to skill rolls. This system does that.
The reason a critical success gives 2 successes (rather than finishing the task completely) is that even an unskilled character can achieve a critical success on a lucky 20 - this would overshadow the skilled characters' efforts.
We did some simple spreadsheets to gauge results, which were encouraging in that your skill really matters. But we're not sure enough of those results to quote them here.
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Interesting notion, but I worry that it might bog down play, as if a failure does nothing but require an extra roll, and maybe waste time if you're on a clock, statistically you're going to have fairly frequent strings where the player doesn't roll a 1 and doesn't roll a success, many times in a row (and that's just assuming you only need 1 success, or that each success gives some sort of discrete benefit). Dice pool systems often actually function on a similar notion (though not entirely the same), but they have the benefit that you're rolling at once, so getting a success or consequences is something that only requires one roll to see, which keeps the game flowing, and keeps the tension of the dice.
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Maybe its going further afield from PF, but I'd like to see non-combat skill rolls embrace the "yes, but" style from some other games on failures. Rather than relying on repeated rolls of the same task over and over.
Let's take disarming a trap for instance:
CS: You disarm the trap and get some of its components/can make it look like no one was here/re-arm it safely after plundering/etc
S: You disarm the trap.
F: You disarm the trap, but 'damage some of the things inside the chest'/'make more noise doing it'/'get exposed to a weak version of hte poison/damage'
CF: You set off the trap.
Having to roll lots of times for the same task is very much a part of PF2. Lock Picking is just one example. It creates pretty neat statistics, but it is tedious. Having such a series end of a critical fail is actually a way to shorten the task, by giving it a definite fail condition.
Not many comments, and I discovered there is a sub forum where this should have been. I'll work on it a little bit, adding a Stealth example and re-post in the skills and powers forum.
I said I'd re-post this, slightly modified, in the right forum. But I don't think I will. Since we came up with this, we have come to realize that a big problem in PF2 is the endless string of checks required for some activities - lock picking and poison being the worst offenders, medicine is close. See this post.
A system where you cannot continue trying after a crit fail, like this one, would be slightly better, but I'm afraid it would not be good enough.
Ant thus, for me, the last excuse for keeping Table 10-2 dies.
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Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Table 10-2 should be destroyed"
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Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Table 10-2 should be destroyed"
What would you replace it with?
As a GM I need some sort of guidance on setting the DC of skill checks that come up. If the players ask to do something inventive that I hadn't thought up before hand, I need to be able to come up with something quickly that is fair and reasonable. It also needs to have a chance for success and a chance for failure, and I need to be able to have choices that will adjust those chances for success and failure. Also, the success chances should also be based on what the player has decided to have their character be good at.
I'm open to removing table 10-2. I have no emotional attachment to it. But I need something. I can calculate probabilities and expected values, but not quickly enough to do it on the fly during a game.
PF1 had suggested DCs for skill rolls. Sure, there could have been more examples, but overall that system worked very well.
The tagline is something I try to remember to use for all posts on these forums, following the example of Cato the Elder.
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Furthermore, I am of the opinion that Table 10-2 should be destroyed