Comparitive Ranks

Character A has Ability X at level 1.
Character B has that same Ability X at level 5.
Both have at least a 1 in 5 chance at failing in the use of that Ability.

I'll use Sneak as an example, since I'm familiar with it. Larry's got one rank in the skill -- he can crouch behind something and people have to make an Alertness test to see him. Joe-Bob's got the same skill at rank five. He can almost vanish into thin air even if folk are looking at him, but right now, he's doing exactly the same thing as Larry.

Thugs 1 through 5 have Alertness, and they group test against Larry and then Joe-Bob to see if they can spot him. Even though Joe-Bob is practically legendary at hiding, the odds that one of those thugs will see him is essentially 100% (1 in 5 shot, 5 people throwing against one person). This is especially true of the five thugs have already pre-arranged to each throw a different number when they're stuck in a group challenge.

So in this scenario, Joe-Bob's not really much better at hiding than Larry is.

I don't have a good suggestion for tweaking this...if it even needs to be tweaked. It does seem (to me) like a character with more ranks in an Ability should be better at the low-end stuff than someone who's just starting out. However, I'm not really certain of a good way to represent this mechanically.

Maybe (although I think this would have flaws also) someone who has sufficiently high ranks in a skill automatically succeeds on the lower level skill challenges, unless they're throwing against someone who has high ranks in the opposing skill.

For example...Larry (rank 1, Sneak) is hiding. Joe-Bob (rank 5, sneak) is hiding also. Thug 1 (rank 1, Alertness) tries to spot the two of them. He can throw against Larry, but since he's only rank 1 in Alertness and Joe-Bob is rank 5, Joe-Bob automatically wins. However, Thug 2 has 3 ranks in Alertness. He's allowed to make the throw, because his skill in spotting stuff is much better.

Thoughts?

PETE? SHANE?

I think I've got this one. For sake of simplicity I am going to assume they all have a 3 focus.

Larry and Joe-bob throw the test against the thug,

Larry and Joe-Bob both throw a 3 and the thug throws a 1

This makes the aggressors totals Focus + Skill +2 for throwing a 4 = 6

Larry's defense is 4 so he is spotted
Joe-bob however has a total of 8 so he isn't.

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Now lets talk about the scenario with 5 thugs, keeping to the 3 focus 1 Alert

Joe-Bob and Larry both throw a 2
Thug 1 throws a 1 totaling in 4
Thug 2 throws a 2 totaling in 6
Thug 3 throws a 3 Making an auto success
Thug 4 throws a 4 Botching the challenge
Thug 5 throws a 5 totaling in 2

The only one able to spot Joe-bob is thug 3 (a 20% likelihood)
Larry however is spotted by 2 of them (a 40% likelihood)


Rank 1 Alertness out of the book is what you need to even make that chop.


~Jen

Yeah, I just used Sneak/Alertness because I'm more familiar with them. Also, I see what you're getting at -- with a higher level, fewer people will succeed against you.

But no matter how high a level you get, *someone* is still going to succeed against you, once every five throws or so. Maybe that's the intent behind the system -- no one should ever win all the time, and no one should ever get so good that the small fry still can't land a hit every now and again.

If that's not the case, though -- if the challenges for Larry should be less than mere annoyances to the superior Joe-Bob -- then perhaps the system should reflect that differently.

Here's an example. I can't say if it's an improvement; it's just different. Maybe this has already been tried and rejected. I don't know.

On a 1: Challenger subtracts five from total.
On a 2: Challenger subtracts two from total.
On a 3: Challenger doesn't modify total.
On a 4: Challenger adds two to total.
On a 5: Challenger adds five to total.

Now let's look at the second example again. Joe-Bob's defense is 10 (theoretical max). Larry's is 4 (still pretty new to this). The thugs are at 4.

Joe-Bob and Larry both throw a 2
Thug 1 throws a 1 totaling in 4
Thug 2 throws a 2 totaling in 6
Thug 3 throws a 3 totalling in 9
Thug 4 throws a 4 totalling in -1
Thug 5 throws a 5 totaling in 2


In this setup, the focus is less on the randomness of the chops and more on the skill of the individuals. There's no way any of the thugs would be able to spot Joe-Bob, because they're ordinary mooks, and he's awesome. However, they're nearly on-par with Larry, which is why two out of the five see him. If challengers won on ties, it would be three thugs who saw him, so essentially we're looking at the closest to a 50/50 comparison as you can get.

Now suppose that Uber-Thug stepped in. His third eye of WTFulu lights up and he starts looking around with 10 ranks of bad-juju-alertness-powerz. Larry stands no chance at escaping the notice of this freak, but Joe-Bob's on par with this mofo, meaning there's a three-in five chance of escaping his notice (two-in-five, if Uber-Thug had eleven ranks).

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For the tldr version, I'm suggesting that auto-wins and losses have some limitations to them (which may be a good thing, depending on the system's intent). Personally, I feel that The Little Guy should never be able to hit The Really Big Boss...certainly not once every five shots. The adjustment as above makes the superior (or inferior) talents of individuals shine through more clearly. As it stands right now, five starting PCs could jump in The Boss Fight, whip out shotguns, and at least one of them would hit.

I'm pretty sure Pete intending that when he wrote the system. No one is "super" or perfect, everyone fucks up from time to time type style.