Taking Chances With Skills

When you use a skill, you take your chances against the risk of failure and see how well you do. The higher the chances of your success, the more likely you will beat the odds.

Simulation of Taking Chances

Your result must match or beat a risk of failure based on the circumstances. The harder the task, the higher the risk number you need to match.

Taking a skill chance combines your skill factors with luck to yield a total chance. Roll 1-100 and add your skill factor. The skill factor incorporates your training with that skill, your relavent ability factor, and any other miscellaneous factors that apply. The higher the result, the better. A natural roll of 100 is not an automatic success, and a natural 1 is not an automatic failure.

Your skill chance is calculated as follows:

Luck (1-100%) + Skill + Ability + OTHER Factors VERSUS RISK OF FAILURE OR OPPOSING CHANCE

Chances Against Risks OF Failure

Some chances are taken against a risk of failure. The risk is a percentage that you must match as a result on your skill chance to succeed.

Risks		Who Could Do Such A Thing
0%	Very Easy	A nearsighted man spotting something in plain sight
20%	Easy	A weak person climbing a knotted rope
50%	Average	Anyone hearing a patrol walking 10 meters away
80%	Tough	An intelligent soldier disarming an explosive
100%	Challenging	A sailor navigating a course through reefs
120%	Formidable	A smart cracker breaking a secure computer network
150%	Heroic	A strong acrobat jumping across 10-meter chasm
180%	Suphereroic	A con artist bluffing guards to give up passwords
200%	Impossible	A world-class climber surviving alone in Himalayas

Chances Against Opposition’S CHANCE

Some skill chances are opposed contests. They are taken against the opponent’s chance, which is determined seperately. The opponent’s chance is usually based on luck and a skill that resists your own.

Best Chance Wins

Whoever gets the higher chance wins the contest.

Tie Breaking

For ties on opposed chances, the person who has the higher ability factor wins. If these scores are the same, you might as well flip a coin.

Opposed Chance Examples

Task	Skill	Ability	Risk	Ability
Win an election	Politics	Cha.	Politics	Cha.
Expose false papers	Forgery	Int.	Forgery	Int.
Secure PC network	Security	Dex.	Security	Dex.
Win a car race	Driving	Dex.	Driving	Dex.
Shoot someone	Shooting	Dex.	Dodging	Dex.
Sneak up on someone	Sneaking	Dex.	Hearing	Per.
Hide from someone	Hiding	Dex.	Seeing	Per.
Con someone	Deception	Cha.	Empathy	Per.
Pretend to be someone else	Disguise	Cha.	Seeing	Per.
Steal a keychain	Stealing	Dex.	Seeing	Per.

failure’s Consequences and trying again

You can usually take another shot at a skill chance if you fail, and keep trying until you make it. Some skills, however, have consequences of failure that must be taken into account. It may be futile once you’ve taken a chance and failed to accomplish a particular task. For most skills, when you have succeeded once at a given task, additional successes are meaningless. If a skill carries no consequences for failure, you can take it slow, making luck 100% without rolling, and assume that you go at it long enough to succeed eventually.

FACTORS: Favorable & Unfavorable Circumstances

Some situations may make a skill easier or harder to use, resulting in a plus or minus to the chance of success or risk of failure. You can alter the odds in four ways to take into account exceptional circumstances:

Positive Factors

Give the skill user a +10% chance of success to represent circumstances that improve performance.

Negative Factors

Give the skill user a –10% chance of success to represent conditions that hamper performance.

Risk Increases

Reduce the risk of failure by –10% to represent circumstances that make the task easier.

Risk Reductions

Increase the risk of failure by +10% to represent circumstances that make the task harder.

Risks, Chances, It’s All The Same

A chance increase and a risk reduction have the same result: they create a better chance that you will succeed. But they represent different circumstances, and sometimes that difference is important. This makes more sense with a specific example: Two shooters aim at the same target, which has a single dodging risk, but the more skilled shooter has a higher shooting chance. The resulting probabilities are different.

Plan For Success By Taking Factors Into Account

Before you attempt to use a skill, consider all the factors that could work for and against you. Forgotten factors are mistakes waiting to happen.

Skill Percentages Plus Bonuses

Your skill percentage refers to the percentage of skill you have learned. Your skill chance (or factor) refers to the combination of your skill percentage, relavent ability factor and other factors such as advantages. Many determinations of your skill are based on your training rather than on your total chance with all factors included. For example, a feature with requirements requires a certain skill training, not total chance.

Taking Time For Skill Chances

Using a skill might take one second, take no time, or take several seconds or even longer. Most skill uses are either actions, movements or instantaneous. Types of actions define how long activities take to perform within the framework of a second and how movement is treated with respect to the activity.

Some skills take more than a second to use, and the skill descriptions often specify how long these skills take.

Some skill chances are instantaneous and represent reactions to an event, or are included as part of another action. These skill chances don’t prevent you from taking other actions that second.

Other skill chances represent part of movement. The distance you jump when taking a jumping chance, for example, is part of your movement.

Nearly Impossible Risks

It’s hard to draw a clear line between what is actually impossible and what is nearly impossible. Flying by flapping your arms is impossible, but jumping incredible distances through the air is concievable. Impossibility is subjective.

Doing something that’s practically impossible generally requires that you have at least 50% skill and attempt something with a –100% chance or a +100% on the risk (which amounts to about the same thing).

Degrees of Success and Failure

There’s success, and then there’s spectacular success. Likewise, there’s failure and then there’s miserable failure. Taking a chance and beating a risk indicates success but sometimes the degree of success or failure becomes important to the results.

For example, someone sneaks up you in the dead of night. You take a hearing chance against the intruder’s sneaking chance and are successful. You might hear:

1. You think something’s out there, but you don’t see anything. 2. You hear what sounds like a person moving behind you. 3. Your hear an approaching person about 8 meters southwest of you.

You can handle this situation by subtracting the chance from the risk. In the example above, success means that the GM gives answer #1. If the you beats the intruder’s result by 50% or more, you gets answer #2. If you exceed the intruder’s sneaking by 100%, you get all the information of answer #3. In general, this means:

Result Degree Hearing Example risk or higher Success You hear a noise risk +50% or more Great Success You hear its direction risk +100% or more Perfect Success You hear its exact location

Margins of Success and Failure

Sometimes the exact margin of success or failure becomes important. For example, when a shot misses because of cover, the cover is struck if the margin of failure is less than the cover’s dodging factor. Every point above the risk is a margin of success point. Every point below the risk is a failure point. Exactly matching the risk just succeeds.

Taking Time To Average Luck

Sometimes you can use a skill under favorable conditions and average the luck factor.

When you are not in a rush and not being threatened or distracted, you may choose to take 50% instead of a random luck factor. Instead of randomizing a % for the chance, calculate your result as if you had a 50%.

When you have plenty of time (generally 1 minute for a skill that can normally be chanced in 1 second, and when the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 100% instead of randomizing the luck factor. Calculate your result as if you had rolled 100%. Taking 100% means you are trying over and over until you get it right. Taking 100% takes about 100 times as long as taking a single chance would take.

===Cooperative Skill Chances When more than one character tries the same skill at the same time and for the same purpose, their efforts may overlap.

Individual Events

Often, several people attempt to the same risk and each succeeds or fails on her own. For example, several people trying to climb the same slope.

Helping the Leader

Sometimes the individual characters are essentially reacting to the same situation, but they can work together and help each other out. In this case, one person (usually the one with the highest bonus) is considered the leader of the effort and makes a skill test normally. The others assist instead.

Assisting

Assisters take skill chances against a 50% risk. (You can’t take 50% on this chance.) For each assister who succeeds, the leader gets a +10% chance (as per the rule for favorable conditions). In many cases, assistance won’t be beneficial, or only a limited number of characters can help at once. The GM limits assistance as she sees fit for the given conditions.

Skill Synergy

It’s possible for you to have two skills that work well together. In general, having 25% or more skill gives you a +10% synergy bonus on chances with its synergistic skills, as noted in the skill description. Having 75% or more skill gives you an increased +15% chance with the other skill.

This works a bit like extra credit.

Skill qualifications should be designed to match with this system. There may be two different skill qualifications that weigh different subskills but the ACTSPEC standard ones are those used in the simulation.

Learning From Failure