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EvoDoesGood
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon 25 Oct 2021, 18:44

Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 00:06

Late to the table, but I love seeing my table talk through problems and succeed on social challenges, but I always make it clear that they can't just declare a persuasion check and then treat it as mind control. The roll determines how successful your words are at appealing to them, but if they aren't open to discussion at all then nothing they say will work no matter how silver their tongue. Not every character HAS to be open to social influence under every circumstance: a tired guard towards the end of his shift who wants to go home could be convinced to just take a few pieces of gold and ignore that the party is sneaking out of the city, HOWEVER, a Orc soldier who is standing guard at the party's cell is probably more afraid of their commanding officer than of the Party, so he isn't likely to listen to anything they have to say out of fear of punishment or because he wants a promotion for delivering the prisoners to his master successfully. They can change the context by offering treasure or showing blackmail, but not everyone has to be open to hearing them out all the time.
But that's just my two cents
 
Spat
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Joined: Sat 04 Jan 2020, 13:32

Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 10:32


I'm a big proponent for not playing with players who would seek to "abuse" anything in a game, rather than trying to rule around them.

A Loremaster can always determine that certain actions simply aren't possible to attempt as well, if it seems particularly ludicrous.
I myself consider the "Rules" as a standard to have fun together. When we (around the table) conclude that a rule can be abused and therefore is not fun anymore, we usually try to change the rule before changing the player.
For the 2nd point, entirely true, "do not roll" is a valid option.
But this problem of "not adjusting TN" is true not only for Social encounters : your players might want to jump over a chasm. At what point do you say "we do not use the dice (with maybe an easy challenge due to this "not adjusting TN" issue), and "we do not roll, you're pretty sure to fail" : 3 meters, 4 meters, etc... ? It lacks adjustments, on one side you have quite an easy challenge, on the other side it's impossible. The probability of success for characters with high skills is high even with -2d. It lacks granularity.
The option to adjust with Risk Levels seems a good simple way to temper that.
 
Alphadork
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Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 13:03

Penalty dice don't have to max out at 2 (rules quote below)

"Penalties are normally indicated in the text as lose (1d) or more, meaning that a Player-­hero rolls fewer Success dice (down to a minimum of zero Success dice)."

Plus bonus and penalty dice being cumulative somewhat limits how much impact spending hope can have on a given roll as does adjusting the risk level (as others have wisely suggested). That said, any system with an auto success mechanic ("Gandalf") gives any character a small chance to succeed at seemingly impossible tasks. As the Loremaster/GM you can rule that success in certain situations doesn't necessarily equate to exactly what the character wanted

Example - "I'm going to ask Arwen to marry me" . . . "Her heart already belongs to Aragorn, but she is flattered and provides some boon the the character"

Certainly not suggesting that Loremasters start handing out huge dice penalties and risk levels for every task the characters are attempting but it can be a useful tool to "up the stakes" when needed

Ultimately we should be working with our players to create an immersive and entertaining narrative in the rich setting of Middle Earth . . . while being ready for the occasional outlandish idea/plan
 
hsi379
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Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 20:35

I think this is a big flaw in 2e. Adding and removing dice pool can be a really big swing in odds. It is not a subtle lever. You can easily go from auto success to very small chance of success.

Also because the TN is fixed, higher dice pools can easily produce auto success.

Adjusting TN is a much more incremental lever. As LM I just house rule that I can adjust TN as well as dice pool.
 
Sebastian
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Joined: Thu 01 Oct 2020, 04:58

Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 20:40

Yes I agree.
But as Rocmistro rightfully stated, a character with High Wits and good Persuade skill, why not Favoured, Mastery or Prowess, can easily brainwash everyone at key moments.
-2d is quite easily compensated by Hope or Support.
A LM could have to tweak the Rule As Written to cope for a player abusing this.
I don’t see the need to tweak a rule here. All attempts to convince a NPC have to be played out or at least have to be somehow plausible. No NPC gives a Player Hero all his money for nothing just because the Player rolled Awe. Just like you can’t climb a flat 20 meter wall without equipment, even if you have Athletics 4 and Strength TN 12.
 
hsi379
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Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 21:19

What you describe looks more like a Council Phase, than just a Persuade Test as you would do in D&D for example.
It is described p.104+ of the Core Rules, and it starts by "Set Resistance"...
Council / extended skill challenge math works even less well unfortunately. See this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=129&t=8509
 
Spat
Posts: 95
Joined: Sat 04 Jan 2020, 13:32

Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Thu 06 Jan 2022, 22:41

[ Just like you can’t climb a flat 20 meter wall without equipment, even if you have Athletics 4 and Strength TN 12.
I agree with you, saying there's no need to roll is always a possibility.
But then the question becomes when do you say it ?
If you consider the limit is 20 meter, then climbing 15 meter is possible, you roll, and it's easy for some characters. You just add 5 meters and it becomes impossible for the same character...
The system should be more granular, with probability of success decreasing step by step down to 0, not changing from "easy" to "impossible".
As hsi379 has demonstrated, the probability of success for characters with high skills is always high, if you allow to roll.

I think there could be a table stating malus dice or malus on TN according to the difficulty, like the Difficulty Class in D&D5, ranging from DC 5 Very Easy to DC 30 Nearly Impossible, by steps of 5... Even if DD5 is not my favorite, at least the players and the DM have clear and shared targets...
The issue is not really addressed in the Core Rules, unless I missed it.

And I don't see why a malus on TN is impossible, as it is clearly used in Combat : you raise the Strength TN with the Parry Rating of shields as it is harder to hit someone with one.
Then climbing a 20 meter wall is harder than 15 meters, you could raise the TN with a "Difficulty Rating"
Last edited by Spat on Fri 07 Jan 2022, 22:28, edited 1 time in total.
 
User avatar
Harlath
Posts: 517
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Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Fri 07 Jan 2022, 14:51

Skill endeavours/councils: agree the maths doesn't work in the right way for these. I've asked a question in the FAQ/errata thread on this. Simplest solution: scale up required successes faster than attempts allowed. That's what Savage Worlds does for its similar "Dramatic tasks" albeit the dice mechanic is slightly different there, but the same principle applies and they solved it elegantly. Same fix applies here. So if a standard task is 3 successes in 3 attempts, something harder might be 4 successes in 3 attempts, or 5 or even 6 successes in 4 attempts.

Different heights of walls: either a skill endeavour with my solution above (hopefully official via errata) or just use the bonus/penalty dice section at the start of the rules. That way you get granular success, albeit -1d,-2d, -3d is less granular than adjusting the TN (like in 1e), it has the advantage of being faster. That way the probability of success doesn't remain high for those with high skills, if the penalty dice stack up high enough or they need lots of successes over a limited number of attempts.

I think this is covered broadly by p21 on penalty dice and then p135-p136 "Loremaster characters as obstacles" but could perhaps have been clearer? And some people might have benefited from a table of examples to accompany p21? The rules go for broad text here rather than being prescriptive. But I can see how this is an obstacle to some.

p21: "At times, fortune seems to conspire against them, they may put themselves in danger by their own volition looking for a greater benefit, or they may have fallen victim to some malicious power or spell. When this happens, a Player-hero may suffer from a penalty."
 
Spat
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Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Fri 07 Jan 2022, 22:50

Well I found this table of probabilities for TOR 1E, I suppose it's the same in 2E :
Image

You can see the problem :
- changing the TN works well for lowly skilled PCs (2-3) but is ineffective for highly skilled (5+), you can succeed Daunting tasks all day long ;
- reducing the dice works better for highly skilled, but is a huge malus for lowly skilled...

So in the end I can understand why the designers didn't choose to change TN, too ineffective after a while.
And that's probably why Hope is now abundant compared to 1E, to help when you are undergoing too many malus dice.

I think I may use something like this, to see what happens :
Very Easy +2d
Easy +1d
Moderate +0
Hard -1d
Very Hard -2d
Daunting -3d
 
Inculta
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Joined: Wed 06 Oct 2021, 00:47

Re: Adjusting TN's for Skill Difficulty

Mon 10 Jan 2022, 23:51

Penalty dice don't have to max out at 2 (rules quote below)
That's what I was gonna say. The TN numbers seem static at first, that's totally how I felt, but you can add literally as many penalties to rolls as you want, make the consequences as dire as you want, or even just say "No" and not allow the roll to begin with. Convincing a villain who's been ordered to keep quiet's one thing, but if the party, assuming they're not evil, tried to persuade a Nazgul into helping them out there's no reason you have to allow a check to begin with. Remember that ultimately, regardless of what any rules say, it's your game that you can run however you see fit and change however you see fit, and the metric you should judge it by is how your players feel about it, whether the book supports you or not. In this case it does support you though, with a wide range of ideas and mechanics to make skill tests harder and consequences of failure much worse. And that's just regular skill tests, not counting something like Councils where you can make it as difficult at a baseline as you want.

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