New Character Failure Rate (longish)

[Doc4]

Hello there,

I am a veteran GM of some 25 years. I've been using a custom rule set for several campaigns based on a d% mix of Mythus & Cthulhu. My group and I are excited to try out MRQ, as it is similar to our own rules but adds much more goodness.

So, this morning, I am putting together a sample character to see how things work. I make a charming swordsman who grew up a merchant's son but envisions himself a thief and ladies man. I make no effort to min/max him, just create a balanced and fun character as I expect my players will. He ends up with a 66 longsword, 40+ Influence/Evaluate, a 30 here or there, and lots of 22's and below.

In our old system, the players would start with 70 in a big stat, 2 60's, 3 50's, a few 40's and a couple of 35's. You get the idea. We also had the same difficulty modifiers. +0 standard adventuring difficulty with +-60% for other attempts. So my concern is that the characters will miss a great deal with their skill rolls based on MRQ's default setup.

Sure, the starting wizard shouldn't have a 90% to leap across roof tops, but there are so many skills rated 30 that I anticipate frustrated players. 1/3 of the time on almost every skill a player has, they are going to fail an average difficulty task. How has this affected your games?

Bumping LOTS of my extra points into Stealth and Dodge to make my character a bit thiefy, he still only has a 28% and 38% respectively to succeed at these tasks. I would be fine if these were the starting stats for these skills for a wizard type, but it seems low with me still dumping lots of points into them.

When I made my character, I picked backgrounds and professions that made sense for the character I envisioned. Is this what you and your players do? Or do you select your backgrounds/professions by what skills you receive?

Average difficulty is +-0%, something harder is 20%, an easier task is +20 to 60%, but it seems like I have a few basic options here:

1) Pound the concept into the players that their characters are veritable newborns and need to only tackle extremely easy tasks for any reasonable chance of success. "I want to run across the roof edge!" "Well, you better get on your belly and pull yourself along before you fall off for sure."

2) Simply add +40-60% to every fun adventuring task they want to tackle to give them a reasonable 50-70% of success in the game. This just seems too arbitrary and wrong though.

A last rambling example: my swordsman has a 66% to hit with his blade, sounds great. He can dodge with a 38% which makes me raise my eyebrow a bit, but ok. Then, if he gets into a fistfight, a staple of adventuring, he has a 17% of hitting on average. 17%? I can just hear my players getting frustrated and wondering what the hell is wrong with their character.

- I understand I can start players higher, just wondering what your game play experience has been.

- I understand I can alter difficulties, but if I'm just going to add +40% to most every roll in the early adventures, then there really isn't a big feel of accomplishment from the players when they earn those 40 points over time.


So am I doing something wrong in character creation or do I simply need to change my point of view here?


Thank you,

Tom / Doc4


p.s. What method of characteristic points do you use? The 80 point distribution from the GM guide seemed balanced until I did the math and saw the average for rolling the 4d6/3d6-lowest method (and assigning them) gives many more points on average. Something like 94-96. That 80 method seems quite low. I used the 4d6/4d6 standard method from the book, by the by.

 

[zozotroll]

I have not had to many problems but I do use 100 points to spread out. I have start4ed a couple of advanced charecters just to see how that worked.

If your players dont mind being newbies, 100 points is fine.

I do have a problem with the only improve 3 skills, and have gone back to check the box.

 

[Da Boss]

low skills / high failure chance is a thing that I come across in both WFRP and BRP/RQ stlye games etc, I think partially because its obvious that you have a low chance of achieving things whereas in some systems its not obvious.

Ie just glancing at your example, A player knows he is only going to hit about 1/3 of the time (or less). Its one of the things I really like that you instantly get a rough idea of how likely you are to acheive something but it can be disheatneing to players looking at the skills.

I think it works well, if as you suggest, the players are playing reletive youngsters or apprectices etc and understand that at the start. All good! However if the characters background is experienced - the skills and stats I feel need to match this or be aware their skills won't match the concept. I found this a problem with Savage Worlds alot - although ti be fair its a system I really do not like.

If you prefer (like me) to have a more cinematic game I allow quite a large increase in skill points (although usually with cap on a starting maximum), no limit of exp checks etc. I also use drama points but thats just me................

re char gen - I ask about the world, find a cool picture I like, make some background and try and adapt the system to fit the concept - with varying success depending on the system limitations...............

 

[Deleriad]

What I tend to do with newish characters is twofold. One is that I try to avoid rolls that don't add much to the game. Basically, unless failure is actually going to be significant then I let them get on with it. The second is that except in high stakes issues, I treat failure as simply not doing as well as success. E.g. making an athletics roll to run through some trees at speed, those who fail simply go a bit slower while anyone who fumbles trips and falls.

That said, I have also changed the skill starting scores so that they're always equal to the sum of two stats, that way someone just starting out is usually around 25% in untrained skills based on their best stats.

Finally, PCs may fail to sneak but that doesn't mean that the guard will successfully hear them. i.e. NPCs should on the whole be no better than the PCs.

Alternately, you could just start the characters as seasoned which may provide characters closer to what you like. RQ still has a bit of an old-school ethos where beginning characters wobble through the world like baby wildebeest fresh from the womb.

BTW, you may not realise that sword skill at 66% includes both attacking and parrying so you can stay away from dodge except in emergencies.

 

[Halfbat]

I haven't had any issues with newbies - in fact, ime RQ encourages the characters to work together more to make up for their lack of skills elsewhere. And it really is important to realise (as mentioned above) that NPCs should be at the same level/rules as PCs, or worse, if you think the PCs should be heroes or are more active and adventurous than the general population.

As with all RPGs, the encounters just have to be adjusted to the skills of the player characters. One of the great things about all RQ is that PCs learn pdq to _run_ from toughies.*

Apart from the adding more Free Skill Points, or Veteran characters, there are other ways. At risk of advertising, Sceaptune released the Collected Character based on a collection of extended char gen rules we were already using in-house (and then we realised others may like it!!) to get over this problem in a more flexible but balanced fashion.

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* Apart from one player I know who insisted on taking on a giant, single handed, as the rest of the group scattered. The lucky wotsit then proceeded to impale the giant in the leg with his lance as he charged with his first attack. ::sigh:: a GMs life is made of such things. :lol:

 

[soltakss]

The problem with lower skills is countered by giving bonuses to easy situations. If you have a Journeyman Tumbler, for instance, you wouldn't expect him to be able to use Acrobatics to jump off a 10m wall and survive, but you would expect him to be able to jump across a 2m gap, because that is easy. So you give him a 20% bonus, taking his 30% to 50%, so he only fails half the time.

When I first start playing a RQ PC with low skills, I angle for as many pluses as I can, wihin reason and decency, and also I try to do things that don't necessarily need a skill roll.

A low skill does not mean that everything will fail very often. Some tasks are so menial and routine that you do not need to roll for the task if you have a certain level of skill. That helps players build up their confidence. Of course, if they want to leap off cliffs then let them try ...