Let's Read DFRPG Exploits: Chapter 1, Rolling the Dice

Chapter 1: Rolling the Dice

A lot of this is stuff we already saw in my introduction post to Adventurers, but we go into more detail here. Check that post for the dice notation, the definition of success, reaction, and damage rolls, and Quick Contests.

Success Rolls

As mentioned earlier, success rolls are done using three dice with the aim of rolling a number equal to or less than your effective skill level for a given task. Your margin of success or failure is the difference between that skill level and what you rolled.

Effective skill level means your base level in the relevant skill or attribute adjusted by any bonuses or penalties that apply in the present situation. A roll of 3 or 4 is always a critical success, a 18 always a critical failure. 5 or 6 can be critical successes if your effective skill level is 15 or 16 respectively. A 17 is a critical failure if your ESL is 15 or less, and a normal failure if it’s 16 or more.

The first bit of new material here is a box about who rolls and how. Players roll for their PC’s actions, of course, and they always roll in the open. GMs roll for everyone else in the world, and should also roll in the open unless the action in question is happening entirely outside the knowledge of the PCs, or when the outcome isn’t something they’d know right away.

We also get two rules for teamwork: Complimentary Skills and Group Tests. Complimentary skills let a PC make a roll for the same or a related skill to help another’s attempt. A success grants a +1 bonus, a failure a -1 penalty, and criticals in either direction double that. A group test is for when all the PCs are trying to do the same thing as a team, such as sneak past a monster or survive in the wilderness. The PC with the highest skill rolls, with a -1 penalty for each other PC who doesn’t have the skill. Everyone shares in the result.

We also get rules for Time Spent: when you’re attempting something that takes a certain amount of time by default, each doubling of that time gives you a +1 to your roll. On the other hand, if you’re hurrying, each 10% reduction of the standard time gives you a -1. Yes, you can roll to pick that lock instantly at -10.

Repeated attempts get their on subsection. Stuff where repeated attempts are the norm (like attacking in combat) get no penalty. If failure injures you, you can try again after a short time without penalty other than risking more injury. If it doesn’t injure you, you instead get a cumulative -1 penalty per repeated attempt. And finally, if failure kills you, you obviously don’t get to try again…

Contests

As seen earlier, a Quick Contest is when both opponents roll once and compare their margins of success. The one with the greatest marging wins. The roll doesn’t have to be against the same skill for both participants. For example, a wizard can roll against their spell skill and the spell’s target can roll against their Will or HT to resist, and that’s still a Quick Contest.

One new thing that will come up a lot here is the Rule of 16, and it applies mostly in situations like the example above. In spellcasting or magical attacks, the attacker’s skill level is usually much higher than the defender’s HT or Will, which can be a bit unfair. This rule caps the caster’s effective skill at 16 or the defender’s resisting attribute, whichever is higher, to make it less of a foregone conclusion. So a wizard casting a sleep spell with skill 20 at a Will 9 orc will roll a contest of 16 vs. 9. If it was a Will-18 greater demon instead, it would be 18 vs. 18.

We also have Regular Contests, which are the boring version of Quick Contests where both sides roll until one succeeds and the other fails. It’s theoretically meant to model prolonged disputes, but I never ran into an occasion where using this rule would make things more fun.

Sense Rolls

This takes up a whole page, and explains GURPS’ take on the classic adventurer activity of “rolling to notice stuff”. You always roll Perception for this, as expected, but the GM decides which of the character’s senses is most relevant to the roll, and applies relevant modifiers. This starts with the proper Acute (Sense) advantage, and then goes through several penalties relevant to that sense. Vision cares a lot about illumination, Hearing about volume and intervening obstacles, and so on.

If more than one sense matters, I imagine you make separate rolls for each. These are usually entirely handled by the GM because a PC wouldn’t know if they “failed to notice” something in the fiction.

Influence Rolls

These represent deliberate attempts to influence someone’s opinion, as opposed to just letting your good looks and melodious voice do the work for you. Instead of making a reaction roll, roll a Quick Contest between your most applicable social skill and the other person’s Will. The same modifiers that would apply to the other person’s reaction roll now modify your skill. A success means a Good reaction, and a failure generates a Bad one. If you’re a skilled talker, this can be slightly safer than relying on reaction rolls, which can get you both much better and much worse results.

By default you can only try to influence people, but there are advantages that let you do it to nonsapient animals, spirits with alien mentalities, or even plants.

Fright Checks

These are Will rolls to resist fear, but they’re also a bit of a special case. Your Will is modified by a host of courage-related advantages and disadvantages, then by how scary the thing causing the fear is, and then capped at 13. Failing leaves you mentally stunned for seconds equal to the margin of failure, which is potentially lethal in combat.

Failing also forces you to roll on a table to see if you develop long-term trauma in the form of new mental disadvantages. These reduce your point value, but can be bought off with earned points.

The Unfazeable advantage lets you ignore all this, as is traditional for GURPS.

Reaction Rolls

We already explained these back in the Adventurers introduction: roll 3d with modifiers applying directly to the rolled result, higher is better.

There are some new notes about how monsters react to PC delvers. As with NPCs, logic is sovereign; if you’re sure a monster would attack on sight, or behave in some other way, do that. If you’re not sure, you roll. However, monsters have some heavy reaction penalties if the PCs are invading their territory, if they’re supernaturally compelled to guard an area, or if they’re particularly alien or evil in nature. They all stack, and in your typical dungeon delve at least one will apply to most denizens the PCs encounter.

As mentioned earlier, reaction rolls can be replaced by Influence rolls if appropriate.

Coming up Next

Dungeon Delving!