Category: Tasks

Cheating Death and Avoiding Other Such Mishaps – Luck in Hack100

Post author By Stanage
Post date 24 September 2021
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Savage Worlds has its “Bennies” that allow characters (and non-player characters) to re-roll unfavourable dice throws (or receive other ad hoc benefits) when things are going against them.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition has its (overly-complicated in my opinion) currencies of “Fortune”, “Fate”, “Resilience” and “Resolve” that characters can draw upon to re-roll dice, overcome adverse psychological effects and even avoid certain death.

Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition has its “Push” mechanic that allows failed skill tests to be re-rolled with the risk of additional consequences. It also offers an optional pool of Luck Points that characters can draw upon to tweak failed rolls.

Although these various mechanics all work in slightly different ways, they all have the same objective – to soften the consequences of unfavourable dice rolls on player characters.

Optional Rules Tasks

Question: How Much of an Advantage is “Advantage”? Answer: It Depends…

Post author By Stanage
Post date 14 September 2021
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In recent role-playing games, a popular mechanic for making task rolls easier or more difficult is the concept of “Advantage and Disadvantage“. It is also sometimes known as “Bonus Dice and Penalty Dice“.

The idea is simple. When a character tries to perform an action that, due to the prevailing circumstances, is either easier or more difficult than usual, instead of rolling a single die they instead roll multiple dice. If the task is easier, they take the best result from the dice pool. If the task is more difficult, they take the worst. In d100 systems that use this mechanic (e.g. Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition), this typically only applies to the “tens” die; the “units” die is rolled normally.

Tasks

Opposed Tasks

Situations will arise in which there is a need to pit an Ability of a character against an Ability of an adversary. For example:

A character attempting to sneak past a guard would pit their Stealth Ability against the guard’s Perception Ability.

Tasks

Criticals and Fumbles

A successful roll that is also a double (e.g. 11, 22) is a “Critical” and the protagonist concerned receives some extra benefit. This might mean that the task is performed particularly well or quickly, or that it brings some additional (but related) benefit. In combat, this typically means inflicting additional damage or causing an opponent to drop their weapon (see Chapter 4). Non-combat examples might include a critical Influence roll leading to the target divulging additional important information, or a critical Arcane roll leading to a spell’s effects being magnified in terms of its range, duration or power.

Tasks

Task Roll Difficulty Modifiers

Post author By Stanage
Post date 23 May 2020
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Sometimes the Referee may decide that a certain Task Roll is either easier or more difficult than usual. This could be for a variety of reasons including the prevailing local conditions, the specialist nature or complexity of the task, or the fact that someone (or something) is actively trying to disrupt the undertaking.

For example, when an Agility Task Roll is used to determine whether a character successfully climbs a surface, the Referee might rule the Task Difficulty as “Hard” if the surface is particularly smooth or slippery, and modify the Target Percentage accordingly.

Other examples of situations that might make a given task either easier or more difficult include:

Tasks

Task Resolution

In Hack100, a Task Roll is required for any action that has a non-negligible chance and consequence of failure. A routine activity such as walking up a flight of stairs would not require a Task Roll. Running down a flight of stairs whilst pursued by an enemy probably would – there would be a chance of stumbling with the possible consequence of injury. Another consequence of failing a task might be lost time, e.g. repeated failures to pick a lock.

The procedure for performing a Task Roll is as follows: