Post by Father on Jun 12, 2015 20:09:47 GMT 1
This is primarily a condensed guide to how the rules works, there is little new here, though in case of doubt this is the official interpretation of how it works, seeing that even somewhat seasoned players sometimes err on these things, it may be a good idea to refer to this text when in doubt.
The Basic Test
For any kind of test, the following steps are followed:
1. Roll an amount of dice equal to the sum of the test dice and bonus dice
2. Discard an amount of dice equal to the sum of the bonus dice and penalty dice
3. Apply any modifiers to the test.
4. Compare the result with the difficulty.
Typically, a difficulty is given by the narrator for a given task, ranging from automatic (0) to heroic (21). If you succeed, you gain a number of degrees of success based on by how much you beat the result with:
0-4: 1 degree
5-9: 2 degrees
10-14: 3 degrees
15+: 4 degrees
Two other kinds of tests are also worth mentioning:
A Competition Test is one where two or more characters each roll against the same difficulty and compares results, whoever gains the most degrees of success wins, while an equal amount of degrees is typically a tie.
A Conflict Test is one where a character use an ability against another character. This may be to swing a sword past his shield or to sneak past undetected. The test is made against the relevant passive defense of the character in question, such as combat defense against attacks and passive awareness against sneaking. Sometimes an opposed roll is used instead. For example, the guard that a character is trying to sneak past is actively searching, the guard rolls awareness-notice, and that is the difficulty rather than the passive awareness.
Test Dice
These are the kept dice (though see penalty dice below). You have a number of these equal to the rank in the ability tested. Fighting 5D, for example means that you have 5 ranks in Fighting, and thus roll 5 test dices with fighting. Sometimes, you gain additional test dice. Noted as +XD, these are added. If you use reckless attack, you gain +1D, and would thus roll 6D on that fighting test, plus any additional test dices you could gather from other factors.
Bonus Dice
These are unkept dice. You have a number of these equal to the applicable specialty for the test in question. You may for example have Fighting 5D, Long Blades 3B. You roll the 5 test dices for the longsword as usual, but in addition, you also roll the 3 bonus dices, for 8 dice total. But bonus dices are unkept dice, so you only get to keep the 5 dice with the highest result. Some circumstances may alter the amount of bonus dice you get. If for example, you wield a bastard sword with it's training penalty of -1B, you roll one less bonus dice than you would have (so 5 kept and 2 unkept), if you took the aim action, you'd get +1B (for 5 kept and 4 unkept), and if you had animal handling 3 and were on horseback, you would gain an additional +3B. However, you may not have more bonus dice than test dice on a roll (some qualities and other factors allows you to circumvent this in specific cases, mind). So you remain capped at 5D+5B, if however, you use reckless attack, you have (5+1=6)D, which would allow you to roll 6D+6B.
Penalty Dice
These are additional unkept dice. Noted as -#D. If you have Fighting 5D, Long Blades 3B, and are using the charge action (which bestows a -1D on your attack) you roll 5D+3B as normal, roll all eight dice, remove the 3 lowest, as normal. And then you remove an additional dice because of the penalty. Essentially you roll eight dices and keep the four highest. Keep in mind that penalty dice does not reduce the cap on bonus dice. If you were charging on horseback as in the above example, you would roll 5D+5B and then apply the penalty dice after, effectively rolling 10 dice and keeping the 4 highest.
Rolling the Dice:
This game will use orokos for the dices, link: orokos.com/roll/
You should always have "Great Bastards" as the name of the campaign, and the name of your character filled out. Also, in the description you should try and make a reference to the sort of action you make, along with scene/event, ideally so that there is no mistaking where in the story that roll was made if one looks up your dice history (Expect that the management will be checking it every now and then). More importantly, any time you have to make a choice before rolling (certain benefits, jousting techniques, sometimes there are different tracks within an event, there are also planned cases of events where you may take a number of tests, but giving a bonus to the others if you do not take some of them), you should make note of this in the description. Your rolls may be invalidated and asked to be redone otherwise, this will always happen where your result is deemed to directly impact other PC's.
If you mess up the dicecode, rolled too few or too many dices, do not do it over again (unless you rolled d8's instead of d6's or used some other code that gives a result that can't be used). Rather, either roll the extra dices separately and determine manually what the result should be, or use the roller to randomly determine which dices to remove, roll a dice with 1 removing the highest die result, 2 the second highest and so on.
Other considerations.
Sometimes you must decide whether to apply a modifier before someone else makes a dice roll, this includes using fatigue to ignore armor penalty before an incoming attack or using a benefit such as Lucky or Blood of the Andals on a jousting roll (due to speed, one typically rolls both the charge and stay in saddle simultaneously, but the choice of using such benefits after one knows the result of one's own jousting roll still technically needs to be taken before one knows the result of the stay in saddle rolls). In such situations, it is prudent to specify under which conditions you would apply such options in advance. The same applies in circumstances (primarily jousting) where one might roll several rounds worth of actions for expediency but might wish to change one's technique or other modifiers under specific circumstances. Those circumstances must either be stated in the dice description or declared in a post with a timestamp (including any editing timestamp) preceding the timestamp of the dice, if it is also specified what to change to, then dice results can be resolved as normal with adjustments if specifications are sufficiently clear, otherwise dices rolled after any change of plan occurs needs to be redone.
The Basic Test
For any kind of test, the following steps are followed:
1. Roll an amount of dice equal to the sum of the test dice and bonus dice
2. Discard an amount of dice equal to the sum of the bonus dice and penalty dice
3. Apply any modifiers to the test.
4. Compare the result with the difficulty.
Typically, a difficulty is given by the narrator for a given task, ranging from automatic (0) to heroic (21). If you succeed, you gain a number of degrees of success based on by how much you beat the result with:
0-4: 1 degree
5-9: 2 degrees
10-14: 3 degrees
15+: 4 degrees
Two other kinds of tests are also worth mentioning:
A Competition Test is one where two or more characters each roll against the same difficulty and compares results, whoever gains the most degrees of success wins, while an equal amount of degrees is typically a tie.
A Conflict Test is one where a character use an ability against another character. This may be to swing a sword past his shield or to sneak past undetected. The test is made against the relevant passive defense of the character in question, such as combat defense against attacks and passive awareness against sneaking. Sometimes an opposed roll is used instead. For example, the guard that a character is trying to sneak past is actively searching, the guard rolls awareness-notice, and that is the difficulty rather than the passive awareness.
Test Dice
These are the kept dice (though see penalty dice below). You have a number of these equal to the rank in the ability tested. Fighting 5D, for example means that you have 5 ranks in Fighting, and thus roll 5 test dices with fighting. Sometimes, you gain additional test dice. Noted as +XD, these are added. If you use reckless attack, you gain +1D, and would thus roll 6D on that fighting test, plus any additional test dices you could gather from other factors.
Bonus Dice
These are unkept dice. You have a number of these equal to the applicable specialty for the test in question. You may for example have Fighting 5D, Long Blades 3B. You roll the 5 test dices for the longsword as usual, but in addition, you also roll the 3 bonus dices, for 8 dice total. But bonus dices are unkept dice, so you only get to keep the 5 dice with the highest result. Some circumstances may alter the amount of bonus dice you get. If for example, you wield a bastard sword with it's training penalty of -1B, you roll one less bonus dice than you would have (so 5 kept and 2 unkept), if you took the aim action, you'd get +1B (for 5 kept and 4 unkept), and if you had animal handling 3 and were on horseback, you would gain an additional +3B. However, you may not have more bonus dice than test dice on a roll (some qualities and other factors allows you to circumvent this in specific cases, mind). So you remain capped at 5D+5B, if however, you use reckless attack, you have (5+1=6)D, which would allow you to roll 6D+6B.
Penalty Dice
These are additional unkept dice. Noted as -#D. If you have Fighting 5D, Long Blades 3B, and are using the charge action (which bestows a -1D on your attack) you roll 5D+3B as normal, roll all eight dice, remove the 3 lowest, as normal. And then you remove an additional dice because of the penalty. Essentially you roll eight dices and keep the four highest. Keep in mind that penalty dice does not reduce the cap on bonus dice. If you were charging on horseback as in the above example, you would roll 5D+5B and then apply the penalty dice after, effectively rolling 10 dice and keeping the 4 highest.
Rolling the Dice:
This game will use orokos for the dices, link: orokos.com/roll/
You should always have "Great Bastards" as the name of the campaign, and the name of your character filled out. Also, in the description you should try and make a reference to the sort of action you make, along with scene/event, ideally so that there is no mistaking where in the story that roll was made if one looks up your dice history (Expect that the management will be checking it every now and then). More importantly, any time you have to make a choice before rolling (certain benefits, jousting techniques, sometimes there are different tracks within an event, there are also planned cases of events where you may take a number of tests, but giving a bonus to the others if you do not take some of them), you should make note of this in the description. Your rolls may be invalidated and asked to be redone otherwise, this will always happen where your result is deemed to directly impact other PC's.
If you mess up the dicecode, rolled too few or too many dices, do not do it over again (unless you rolled d8's instead of d6's or used some other code that gives a result that can't be used). Rather, either roll the extra dices separately and determine manually what the result should be, or use the roller to randomly determine which dices to remove, roll a dice with 1 removing the highest die result, 2 the second highest and so on.
Other considerations.
Sometimes you must decide whether to apply a modifier before someone else makes a dice roll, this includes using fatigue to ignore armor penalty before an incoming attack or using a benefit such as Lucky or Blood of the Andals on a jousting roll (due to speed, one typically rolls both the charge and stay in saddle simultaneously, but the choice of using such benefits after one knows the result of one's own jousting roll still technically needs to be taken before one knows the result of the stay in saddle rolls). In such situations, it is prudent to specify under which conditions you would apply such options in advance. The same applies in circumstances (primarily jousting) where one might roll several rounds worth of actions for expediency but might wish to change one's technique or other modifiers under specific circumstances. Those circumstances must either be stated in the dice description or declared in a post with a timestamp (including any editing timestamp) preceding the timestamp of the dice, if it is also specified what to change to, then dice results can be resolved as normal with adjustments if specifications are sufficiently clear, otherwise dices rolled after any change of plan occurs needs to be redone.