Thread: Difficult and Easy rolls

Do Difficult and Easy skill rolls decrease or increase a characters chance to score a crit or special success? Ive always assumed they did but where in the BRP rules is this discussed?

Interesting - I can't find an explicit explanation, either. Going by the "Terms Used in Basic Roleplaying" in Chapter 1, difficulty affects the skill chance, which is also what criticals, etc. are based on. So the implication is that, yes, cits and such do vary with difficulty.

Even without this, I think it's clear that that would be the only logical approach.

That's how I've always played it.

I take into account all modifiers, bonuses and penalties, whether they are situational. from spells, from abilities or whatever, that gives me a skill and the Special/Critical/Fumble chances come from that calculated skill. Anything else becomes far too complicated to work out.

The only sticking point might be when to apply the Difficult/Easy modifier. If you have a skill of 50% and have situational modifiers of +30% and spell modifiers of +20% and the roll is Easy, do you:
(a) Use (50 + 30 + 20) x 2 = 200%
(b) Use (50 + 30) x 2 + 20 = 180%
(c) Use 50 x 2 + 30 + 20 = 150%

Similarly, if the roll is Difficult, do you:

(a) Use (50 + 30 + 20) / 2 = 50%
(b) Use (50 + 30) / 2 + 20 = 60%
(c) Use 50 / 2 + 30 + 20 = 75%

I'm sure it says in the rules but I can't be bothered to have a look (and I promised my wife I'd only be on the computer for 5 minutes)

I can't be absolutely sure (I'm french and I sometimes misunderstand English texts) but rules sounds to answer clearly to your questions...

• Page 173: "The chance of fumbling an action roll equals 5% (1/20th) of the chance of failure." So, it is obviously after every bonuses, penalties and skill modifications have been done...
• Page 175: "Special Success (roll < or equal to 20% of target) / Critical Success (roll < or equal to 5% of target)". The target number is the modified skill, not the skill as written on the character sheet.
• Page 177: "Circumstantial modifiers should be applied after the base chance has already been adjusted based upon action difficulty, as described above." So, to my mind, the answers are always (a) in your examples above. Note that, here again, the rules are made to simplify things: "As a rule of thumb, if circumstantial modifiers would modify a base chance up or down by more than 30%, shift the difficulty of the roll up or down one level instead." Which means that an easy action with + 30 and + 20 bonuses just becomes an automatic action and that a difficult action with + 30 and + 20 bonuses just becomes an average action without bonus. Which gives exactly the same result than those given by the calculation, actually.

Originally Posted by eric71

Do Difficult and Easy skill rolls decrease or increase a characters chance to score a crit or special success? Ive always assumed they did but where in the BRP rules is this discussed?

The fumble/special/critical chances are figured after all modifiers are accounted for.

Originally Posted by silent_bob

The fumble/special/critical chances are figured after all modifiers are accounted for.

Do you know where in the rules it says that?

Pages 173 to 175, as written in my previous reply.

This is not explicitly written but the terms used ("chance of failure", "target") don't let any doubt. The chance of failure is the chance of failure of the specific action, not in general, and the target number is the number under what you roll, i.e. the modified skill, not the base skill.

The problem comes from the critical and fumble table (page 172), which says "Base Chance" rather than "Modified Chance". In my humble opinion, it is just a typo.

The chance is increased/decreased on the modifiers. An example is given in the Spot rules on page 215 for Backstabs and Helpless Opponents. The "chance to attack is Easy for this one attack... No additional damage is done by such an attack - the heightened chance at inflicting a special or critical success and the lowered chance of avoiding the attack is advantage enough." So if the special/critical chance wasn't increased commensurately to the modifier, there really would be no advantage to backstabbing or to attacking helpless opponents.

Originally Posted by eric71

Do Difficult and Easy skill rolls decrease or increase a characters chance to score a crit or special success?

Yes, they do.

Originally Posted by Gollum

Pages 173 to 175, as written in my previous reply.

Oops, missed your reply before silent_bob's, there. Anyway, good to have it confirmed from the horse's mouth.

Er, no offence, Jason!