Is 200% the new 100%

[Utgardloki]

With all this talk about handling skill scores over 100% it seems like we'll be doing this a lot. Certainly with a lot of the house rules I have been kicking around and talking about on this forum, it would be pretty easy to get an effective score above 100%, or even close to 200%. Even by the book, it's pretty easy for a beginning character to start out with 80%.

As a guy running a Runequest Modern game, this does not bother me. In a lot of modern games, characters start out near the top of their game, and since most campaigns don't last very long, it won't matter if a character has an effective skill of 160% for an opposed roll. The NPCs can get their skills up just as easily :twisted:

For example, using the idea of allowing a specialization skill level to be added to a broader skill (such as Driving and Automobile Operation), if both start out at 80%, the effective skill level is 160%. It may be worse than that if I allow PCs to start out with skills above 100%.

I was also working out rules for generating modern characters, and am a bit torn between having the skill in Reading start at at 5 times Int or 10 times Int. I think a person's fluency in his native language could easily start out at 10 times Int; an intelligent person should be VERY fluent in his native language. It also seems that an intelligent person in modern times should be able to read as well as he can speak.

Am I the only one who is looking at a game where it may be routine for characters to have favored skills between 100% and 200%?

 

[simonh]

Am I the only one who is looking at a game where it may be routine for characters to have favored skills between 100% and 200%?

No, I've done that for a while. Under the Elric rules some characters can start with skills over 100%. With the right rules, it's no problem.

Simon Hibbs

 

[AKAramis]

Am I the only one who is looking at a game where it may be routine for characters to have favored skills between 100% and 200%?

No, I've done that for a while. Under the Elric rules some characters can start with skills over 100%. With the right rules, it's no problem.

Simon Hibbs

Elfquest, as well. Had characters with up to 140% STARTING skills. (OK, so they WERE OLD... They were gliders.)

 

[Bolongo]

Am I the only one who is looking at a game where it may be routine for characters to have favored skills between 100% and 200%?

No, I've done that for a while. Under the Elric rules some characters can start with skills over 100%. With the right rules, it's no problem.

Simon Hibbs

I like your variant, Simon. It's certainly preferrable to the halving rule, and also the inspiration for it is readily apparent. 8)

It does have one remaining problem: a skill between 101-109 will give a lesser chance to crit than a skill of 100. For each iteration of 100 you reach this problem gets steadily worse.
Something like this also happens in HQ - but because of the differences in crit rules and dice used a Mastery there just means you stop improving for a little while, not that you actually get worse.

What to do? One relatively simple solution is to state that skill value left after taking away the hundreds number can never be less than your base score divided by 10. So for example 101-109 becomes 10, 110-111 becomes 11 and for 112-200 the calculations are the same as yours. This mitigates the problem somewhat but doesn't clear it up completely. You could say it reproduces the HQ issue instead.

A more complex way to do it is to take the hundreds number, divide it by 10 and add it to the remainder. This might look simpler at first, but what about the cases where this addition again produces a number over 100? Well, then you would have to take that 100, divide it by 10 again, add it to the remainder, and apply an additional level of success increase to the roll. Whew, a lot of calcualtions there!

Also, this second method leads to a kind of reverse problem where there are sudden leaps in ability at certain points. Oh well, no system is perfect I guess. :roll:

Edit: I just thought of a third variant. :shock:

When you have a skill over 100, roll against your skill/10 and upgrade the result by one level for every 100 percentiles you "lost" in the division. This is possibly the simplest method of all, and produces no strange anomalies. The disadvantage is a loss of granularity, in that only every 10th percentile increase of your skill actually matters any more.

 

[simonh]

It does have one remaining problem: a skill between 101-109 will give a lesser chance to crit than a skill of 100. For each iteration of 100 you reach this problem gets steadily worse.

That's nto the intent, but it is ambiguous right now as the rule as written doesn't cover this situation. The chance of a crit shoudl never go down. I'll update the page to cover this.

Another option would be to auto-increment any character's skill directly to 110% as soon as they go over the 100% threshold. However that means the 10% crit chance situation gets jumped. Characetrs will go directly from a 9% to an 11% crit chance.

I think I prefer things as they are - just with a note saying that the crit chance is the higher of (skill/10) or (skill - 100).

Simon Hibbs

 

[Bolongo]

I think I prefer things as they are - just with a note saying that the crit chance is the higher of (skill/10) or (skill - 100).

So, just a more elegant way of stating my first option? :wink: