Question on Untrained Skills

[decker423]

I was going over the rules book and this just occured to me (the question) but first some info:
2nd Ed. Conan RPG book
Skills, p. 87 there are some DCs set for the difficulty of the task at hand. "Very Easy" has a DC of 0. Easy is "5". Average is "10". Tough is "15". Challenging is "20" and so on.

Now, for untrained skills (p. 89) it says, "the character simply rolls 1d20 and adds his key ability modifier along iwht other applicable modifiers. Any die roll result of 10 or above is treated as a result of 10. You cannot take 10 on a check for an untrained skill."

Now, given that the best one can do on an untrained skill is "10" and that "10" is an "average" difficulty; would it not stand to reason that someone CAN NOT achieve any success above "average (much less challenging or even impossible) success rate" in an untrained skill?

Am I wrong in interpreting untrained skills in this manner?

 

[Clovenhoof]

You are right, but you need to take into account that the difficulty guidelines are based on a trained character's perspective. For a trained person, an "average" task is something they just would Take 10 on, provided they are not under pressure.

In other words: for a blacksmith, forging a horseshoe would probably be Average and forging an Axe would be Tough. Even a second-year apprentice is gonna get a horseshoe right every time. But an untrained, and I mean completely untrained person would have to be rather lucky to get something horseshoe-like out of the forge, and would have no chance in hell to make an axe.

Note that this need not apply if the untrained character has some kind of guidance. That might give him a circumstance bonus enabling him to actually make a knife (DC12) (and possibly even Take 10).

 

[Ichabod]

Now, for untrained skills (p. 89) it says, "the character simply rolls 1d20 and adds his key ability modifier along iwht other applicable modifiers. Any die roll result of 10 or above is treated as a result of 10. You cannot take 10 on a check for an untrained skill."

Now, given that the best one can do on an untrained skill is "10" and that "10" is an "average" difficulty; would it not stand to reason that someone CAN NOT achieve any success above "average (much less challenging or even impossible) success rate" in an untrained skill?

I'm not sure what your question is since it should be answered by what you wrote. I'm not aware of any descriptive mechanic to the rules; AFAIA, it's purely mechanical/numerical, i.e. "average success" is a meaningless phrase.

Though, to be more precise to avoid confusing anyone, having zero skill ranks only matters when rolling "trained only" skills and caps the *die* result at 10 only for such skills (knowledges, professions, lot of thiefish skills).

You can't roll better than a 10 but could have bonuses that make the result 10+N where N is any number. In theory, someone with N of +15 trillion would succeed at the skill in all cases where 15 trillion and one would be a success. In practice, you have a 55% chance of rolling a 10, some sort of bonus to the roll, and if 10+N can't get to the difficulty number of the roll, then the character is wasting time rolling. But, if 10+N can get to the difficulty, then the character has no worse than a 55% chance of success.

 

[decker423]

I guess what I"m getting at with my question is that there is NO WAY someone using an untrained skill can pull off "one hell of a result" (something INCREDIBLY hard or borderline impossible), despite any modifiers. The best they can do is a "10". If the DC is a 25 and you're untrained then there's no real reason for you to even attempt to try. That's my point and my question is to confirm that.

 

[Clovenhoof]

Ichabod explained it better than I did. So again, in a nutshell:

This limitation applies ONLY to Trained Only skills, such as Decipher Script, Disable Device, Tumble etc.
For these skills, the die roll is capped at 10. To that, you add your ability modifier.
If the DC is greater than 10 + your ability modifier, then yes, you are wasting your time and don't need to roll.

However, most skills can be used untrained without penalty (including mundane Craft skills, so my previous example was poorly chosen); the die result is not capped and you may even Take 10 or Take 20 just as usual. (Of course, if the DC is 25 and your Ability is less than 20, you are still wasting your time as you simply can't beat the DC even with Take 20. That's Life.)