So if you're sneaking in a dungeon, how often do you roll?
A good discussion of that very question came up on the SJG Forums.
Here is the thread in question.
Basically, the more rolls you have to make the more chance of failure. A blown Stealth roll means you're not being stealthy, and makes for a very easy chance of detection. Making a PC make a lot of rolls basically can amount to "roll until you fail."
My approach is, roll once, and then only roll again when the circumstances change.
I explain it a bit here, along with the idea of preserving a single roll, and just changing the modifiers as you go. How does that idea work? It involves tracking your modifiers and your scores.
For example: Guard has Per-12, and makes his roll by 2. You have Stealth-14, and roll a 9, making your roll by 5. You have a net margin of success of 3. You can get within 5 yards of him before your margin of success is 0, within 5 yards before it's -1 and he's heard you. Whether he recognizes the sound for what it is, or can react before you see him notice and do something about it, is another question.
The downside to this is that you basically know how sneaky you're being, and how close to try to get. Even if you don't know the margin of success, you know it's no better than (whatever number you succeeded by). So this can discourage people from moving close on a bad roll. Conversely, it may encourage risk taking with a high roll, because they don't know if the guard made his roll or not, nevermind the margin of victory.
As far as a more official person's opinion, Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch put up two responses, that boil down to "keep your roll until your circumstances change for the worse." In other words, when things change for the worse, roll again. Otherwise, you're good.
Kromm responses are here and here if you want more detail.
I second any ruling that makes you roll less, and which keeps tension up (how close can I risk getting with this roll I made?). So keep the total rolls down, roll when it gets worse.
This is good for all sorts of skills. I was wondering about this as well for social encounters: carousing, observation, psychology, etc. Knowing the margin basically can help draw the line as to how much a character can get away with.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, you're right. Set the margin, and you know when then change from "Yes" to "No."
DeleteIn my usual groups, we assume that the PC knows how well he did unless the player crit-failed, in which case he thinks he's doing fine.
ReplyDeleteWhen it's an opposed roll, this works very nicely; you know that you've rolled a margin of five points on your skill, you know what (some of) the modifiers are, but you don't know how well the opposing character rolled. It's reminiscent of one of the DGP extensions to Traveller that became the GDW House System, where for an "uncertain" task both player and GM would roll (the GM secretly) and the result was a composite of the two.
Not so good when it's an unopposed roll, but usually that's a one-off rather than an ongoing situation anyway.
Yeah, I figure the same - but you don't know how well the other guy did. So I wouldn't announce the contest results, but it's fine to know that you did pretty well.
DeleteOn a crit fail, I depend on people roleplaying. My guys are pretty good about that - they'll roll an 18 and really act like they'd rolled a 3. "Damn, I'm sneaky. I move right up to him."
The way I do it, you only roll when there is a chance of being detected - with the GM rolling in secret if need be - such as when a sentry is patrolling near your hiding spot.
ReplyDeleteThat'll help cut down on unnecessary rolls too!
DeleteCould you mitigate the gaming of the numbers aspect somewhat by having the Stealth roll itself be made by the GM? I know it's one more thing to keep track of but would get rid of the effect you're talking about. You could say "you think you're pretty quiet" or other descriptions like that...
ReplyDeleteYes, although I prefer to let the players roll when it's their character. They feel better about their failures that way.
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