Skills Checks

A player character must perform a skill check whenever they want to use a Skill or Combat Skill (Influence is different; see Influence Skill Checks). This is when the player rolls dice to see if they succeeded or failed. All skills checks are pit against a task of varying Difficulty Rating. The higher the skill score, the better the chance of pulling off that particular skill.

Number of Dice to Roll

To figure out how many dice to roll, check the skill against the Trait score. That score tells you how many dice to roll. It will be a number between 1 and 10. Player will roll that many d10 dice.

Successes

The skill point for the skill being used indicates what a player must roll under to achieve success. The more difficult the challenge, the more dice must be under the skill point. Every dice that rolls under the skill score is counted as a success. If the successes equal or exceed the task's Difficulty Rating, the attempt is a success.

Bonuses

If a player has any + bonuses tied to the skill, they can use these to "help" achieve successes on individual or multiple dice. For example, a +1 bonus to a skill can change one die by one increment (changing a 5 to a 6, for example). A +3 bonus would allow a player to change 1 die by three increments, or they can break it up into 1 increment and 2 increments, or 3 individual increments (changing a 4 to a 7, changing a 1 to a 3 and a 7 to an 8, or changing three fives to three sixes, etc.)

Increments of Success

Some things, such as Damage, incorporate something called Increment of Success (IoS). This simply means the number of successes compared to the DR of the task. Meeting the DR exact is an IoS of 1. Rolling 5 successes for a DR of 4 gives you an IoS of 2, and so on.

Degrees of Success

A player can also achieve varying "degrees" of success:

• Critical Success - the Increment of Success is a 3 or higher. This is a slam dunk, and the skill was executed perfectly!
• Basic Success - the Increment of Success is a 1. The desired effect is produced, but nothing spectacular.
• Barely Succeeding - the number of success dice does not meet the task's difficulty rating unless bonus points are used.
• Disaster - the Increment of Success was a -3 more lower. Disasters have adverse effects.
• Flubbed - this happens if a character has a Trait score of 10 and a Skill score of 10. Mathematically, this would make every attempt a success, but if that player rolls 3 or more 10s on the dice, the attempt was flubbed, or fumbled.

Example Skill Roll

A player character is attempting to pick a lock that has a difficulty of 4. Lockpicking falls under the Dexterity trait. The character has a Dexterity score of 7 and a Lockpicking score of 5. This means that to succeed, the character rolls 7 total dice, and must have 4 dice be a 5 or lower (4 is the task's difficulty level, 5 is the character's skill score).

• The player rolls 7 dice. 5 dice land on 5 or lower, exceeding the Difficulty Rating of 4. This is a success!
• The player rolls 7 dice. 3 dice land on 5 or lower; it does not match the Difficulty Rating. This is a failed attempt.
• The player rolls 7 dice, but has a +1 bonus to the skill. 3 dice land on 5 or lower. Player uses the +1 bonus to change a roll of 6 to a 5, meeting the criteria for a success. This is considered "barely" succeeding.
• The player rolls 7 dice and gets: 9, 9, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 1. They have a +3 bonus. Since only two dice succeeded, they use the bonus to change a 6 to a 4 and the other 6 to a 5. This is considered "barely" succeeding.