In narrative play, skill checks are used to determine the outcome of complicated situations and actions. They are only required in tense narrative situations and when making a roll will move the story forward. Your pilot will generally always succeed in mundane tasks, especially if it relates to their background. You don’t need to make a skill check to open a door, cook a meal, or talk to a superior officer – unless there’s something complicating your attempt, the outcome might further a situation or relationship in an interesting way, or it might answer a question.
Skill checks can cover activities as broad or specific as the narrative requires. For example, a skill check might cover an entire day’s worth of infiltration into a covert facility, or you might instead roll for individual moments of action – sneaking into vents, hacking doors, disabling guards, and so on.
|SKILL CHECK QUICK CONSEQUENCES REFERENCE |
|---|
|Harm: Physical harm to the pilot. Usually 1-2 damage, but can be worse depending on the situation.|
|Time: The activity takes longer than you thought it would. This can end up causing other complications.|
|Resources: Something is used up or lost. Can be anything from ammo, weapons, and important items to things like reputation or social standing.|
|Collateral: Someone or something else pays the price for your mistake! Bystanders, buildings, etc.|
|Position: Physical or social. You get pushed to the edge of the cliff or onto the Baron’s bad-side.|
|Effect: A less potent result than you were hoping for. An injury instead of a kill, the guards heard you sneaking around, the hack only stops the turret temporarily.|
See Expanded Consequences for more examples
ROLL 1d20 :LaLancerD20:
- Name your goal.
- The GM decides the consequences of failure. If there are no consequences, then you automatically succeed.
- Determine which triggers activate, if any, and whether you or the GM are invoking your pilot’s background (+1:LaLancerAccuracy: or +1:LaLancerDifficulty: ).
- Roll 1d20 :LaLancerD20: and add any relevant modifiers from triggers, :LaLancerAccuracy:ACCURACY, or :LaLancerDifficulty:DIFFICULTY. On a 9 or less, you fail to accomplish your goal and suffer the established consequences.
- On a 10+, you accomplish your goal.
Only roll once to achieve your goal, and stick with the result, except when you want to push it.
If people want to help someone carry out an action, only one character rolls as usual. The character that makes the skill check gains +1:LaLancerAccuracy:Accuracy (no matter how many people are helping), but everyone helping suffers any complications or consequences of failure.
A DIFFICULT roll is harder than usual and adds +1:LaLancerDifficulty:.
A RISKY roll has clear and obvious complications.
When rolling a RISKY skill check, a character always suffers the consequences (or a lesser version of them) on any result < 20. A RISKY skill check still succeeds as usual on 10+, but the character suffers consequences anyway. If an action is so hard that success seems outlandish, the GM can make it HEROIC.
A HEROIC roll is only successful on a result of 20+, and the character making the attempt also suffers consequences if the result < 20.
If the GM wants to push things even further, a HEROIC roll can also be DIFFICULT. Pilots that accomplish such tasks are the stuff of legend. The GM may always declare that a skill check can’t be made under the current circumstances.
^risky
As long as a skill check isn’t RISKY, you can make a second attempt to achieve the goal of a failed skill check in the same circumstances. This is called pushing it. However, if you do this, the skill check immediately becomes RISKY. If the situation is already RISKY, you can’t push it further unless the GM allows it, in which case the skill check becomes HEROIC. A HEROIC check can never be pushed further.
When you roll less than 10 on a skill check (or less than 20 on a RISKY skill check), you suffer the established consequences. Since NPCs don’t act on their own in narrative play, these complications and consequences are the main tools the GM has for responding to player action. Before a roll is made, the GM must outline the consequences of failure. They can only inflict consequences that are clearly established this way. The nature of the consequences depends on the skill check and situation. For example, if you’re trying to take someone out with a sniper rifle at 200 meters and they have no way to see you or fire back, it’s unlikely that failing the roll will immediately result in you being shot. If you’re in a melee struggling over someone else’s gun, the possibility of getting shot is much higher.
Here are some examples of consequences or complications that might apply to a roll:
Damage, injury, or bodily harm. If you try to take control of the gun someone’s pointing at you and fail, you’re probably going to get hurt. Most of the time, established harm results in 1–2 damage, but getting shot at close range could cause 3–4 damage and truly deadly harm might cause 6 damage or more.
The action takes longer than usual. In a calm environment, you can hack any console – and this one is no exception – but under fire and half-dressed, it’s going to take a lot longer.
Something must be used up, lost, or temporarily exhausted. This could be something concrete like running out of ammunition, losing a map, or your gun jamming, or it might be a social resource – reputation, political power, favor, and so on – that you need to spend in the process of completing your objective.
Someone or something other than yourself or your intended target takes harm or injury, or is put in danger. This could be an innocent bystander, an ally, the whole building, or an organization you belong to.
Your actions put you in a worse position. such as:
- right in the line of fire.
- clinging to the edge of a cliff.
- in the bad graces of the baron.
- under a spotlight.
Your action is less effective than intended. If you’re trying to kill someone, you merely injure them. If you’re trying to sneak away undetected, you make a lot more noise than you hoped. If you’re fixing a broken door, it only opens for a few people at a time.
A player makes a skill check to knock out someone who just drew a knife on them. They fail their roll, meaning they don’t knock their target out and they take a nasty slash for 2 damage.
A player makes a RISKY skill check to charm the baron’s seneschal into granting them an audience. They succeed, but don’t get 20+: the baron lets them stew for a few hours, but finally meets with them. As a result, the players miss their appointment with a weapons broker.
A player makes a skill check to patch up an NPC’s wounds, and fails. Not only does the NPC bleed out and die, but the player runs out of medical supplies trying to treat them.
A player fails a skill check to blow up a door. The door’s blown open, but the whole building starts to collapse.
While infiltrating a hidden base, a player makes a RISKY skill check to assassinate a target with a sniper rifle. They succeed but don’t get 20+.
They kill their target but have to fire several times, alerting the entire base.
A player makes a RISKY skill check to sabotage a security system and succeeds, but doesn’t get 20+. They only manage to shut it down or five minutes, giving their team limited time to act.
When a group of players are working together to achieve an objective, the outcome is determined by a skill challenge. Everyone involved makes a relevant skill check, and success is determined by the proportion of successful rolls. If more players succeed than fail, the challenge is a success; if more players fail than succeed, the challenge is a failure. If the same number of players succeed and fail, the success hangs on a razor’s edge – flip a coin or roll a dice to determine whether the challenge succeeds or fails.
Here are some examples of skill challenges:
Infiltrating a guarded facility:
- Success means everyone gets into the facility unnoticed
- Failure means the guards are alerted.
Gaining the baron’s favor:
- Success means the group receives a private audience with the baron
- Failure means they are thrown out by rival nobles who have noticed their meddling.
Traversing the wastes:
- Success means they cross the wastes unharmed
- Failure means they cross the wastes, but it’s a harrowing journey and they arrive with no supplies, food, or water.
Challenges are ideal when players (and GMs) want to extend the narrative impact of rolls.