8
\$\begingroup\$

For example a player wants to kick a door open or transport glasses over a slippery wet floor. The player has no fitting advanced skill for those.

The base SKILL is 1d3+3 which can be very low. Rolling that under 2d6 is very hard. Everyday tasks become impossible. I could let them spend extra LUCK to boost their roll but that feels unnatural. Players tend to save their LUCK when they need it.

Alternatively I could let them roll 2d6 + SKILL versus or under a given difficulty but the Troika! does not have any rulings for this.

How to check for an normal task that sometimes fail?

\$\endgroup\$

2 Answers 2

3
\$\begingroup\$

TL;DR

It's working as intended, and you don't need to roll for most simple tasks.

More detailed:

It is a 2d6 roll under Skill in the cases of there being no actively opposing party, e.g. climbing without a Climb Advanced Skill is just roll under Skill, but Punching an Owl would be 2d6+Skill trying to roll higher than the Owl's 2d6+Skill. It's working as intended.

This can be taken to be subtle design intention to not have PCs rolling for everything all the time. E.g., climbing a tree should rarely be an instance a check needs to be made. And there are also examples of equipment that adds to skills, so to expand on that, common things like a rope or other climbing tools would be a small bonus.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • \$\begingroup\$ So, if I want them to fail I just force it on them? In other systems there is an easy way to add a bit of uncertainty. How would I achieve that? \$\endgroup\$
    – aggsol
    Jul 2, 2020 at 8:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ If you're looking to have a forced failure I dunno if Troika is the game you want. If you want uncertainty, the game already does that with the skill/luck test. \$\endgroup\$ Jul 4, 2020 at 3:50
3
\$\begingroup\$

If you'd really like to have players roll for stuff like this, you can make it an arbitrary opposed test. Roll for the ice to establish the difficulty. Do you think this patch of ice has the tripping advanced skill? Sure why not, it has tripping at 2. Looking through the book at skill values I randomly decide 4 is good for a random patch of ice, so there it is. 2d6+6 will produce a difficulty number for you.

If that seems kinda silly, maybe consider where the patch of ice came from. Wizards are bad, everyone knows wizards are just the worst, so let's assume a bad wizard did it. Skill 4, spell -- Icy Shit 2, so we're back at 2d6+6 for your difficulty number.

If you can't come up with a story about why the ice is interesting at all in the first place, either don't make anyone roll for it or homebrew your own static difficulty system so you don't have to do these exercises. I'd start with the locks advanced skill in the main book:

Locks

This allows a character to examine and open locks but does not detect traps. Roll Versus an imaginary locksmith whose Skill is somewhere between 6 and 12 with 6 being easy and 12 being very hard.

\$\endgroup\$
4
  • 2
    \$\begingroup\$ I like the notion if animated things having their own advance skills. Also the imaginary locksmith helps to explain the uncertainty and different qualities of the locks. \$\endgroup\$
    – aggsol
    Jul 6, 2020 at 7:16
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @PurpleMonkey You missed one - "Icy Shit", I don't know the system so for all I know that could be a real move in the game, but if it's not, I guess that should be swapped out for "friendlier language" too (not knowing the system is why I left it alone) \$\endgroup\$
    – NathanS
    Jul 6, 2020 at 10:56
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ @NathanS hmm, so I did. I don't know the system myself but I have my doubts that it is a real game move. I will leave it for that same reason but, framweard, or anyone else who knows the system, if this is not the name of actual in-game ability then please change it. Profanity isn't welcome on this site unless it is explicitly part of the game. \$\endgroup\$ Jul 6, 2020 at 22:36
  • 1
    \$\begingroup\$ i'm good, don't reckon i'll stick around here \$\endgroup\$
    – user64788
    Jul 6, 2020 at 22:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .