4) Tasks

 You've generated your stats and chosen your skills – now it's time to put it all into practice by doing something. Whenever a character performs an action where the outcome is important, we treat it as a Task.

All tasks have a related Skill and Stat combination, a Difficulty rating and three classifications: Opposed or not, Skilled or Unskilled and Safe, Normal, Hazardous or Fatal. Some tasks will be listed in the rules, but others

Tasks are resolved by rolling 2D10 + skill level + relevant stat + situational modifiers, versus the Difficulty number, which is a multiple of five. The task difficulty numbers are listed below:

Task Difficulty Difficulty Number

Very Easy: 10

Easy: 15

Average: 20

Difficult: 25

Very Difficult: 30

Nearly Impossible: 35

Impossible: 40

The average skill level for someone who knows what they're doing is 3-4, and the average Stat score is 5-7. Therefore, an average person would succeed on an Easy task about 90 per cent of the time, an Average task about 50 per cent of the time, a Difficult task 10 or 15 per cent of the time and a Very Difficult task maybe one per cent of the time.

It may seem that either success or failure at some tasks will be impossible for some characters, but there are several factors which make this less certain.

Situational Modifiers

Situational Modifiers are positive or negative modifiers to the task roll, depending on circumstances. They can greatly change the odds of success or failure. Enterprising players can use these modifiers to make impossible tasks possible, while the GM can use them to make an easy task difficult, thus increasing the tension and drama of the situation.

All Situations

Situation Modifier

Character intoxicated: -1 to -6

Physical tasks

Situation Modifier

Blinding light:

Daylight or brightly lit: 0

Dim light: -2

Night-time: -5

Complete darkness: -10

Character intoxicated: -1 to -6

Manual and technical tasks

Situation Modifier

Blinding light: -4

Daylight or brightly lit: 0

Poor light: -2

Night-time: -4

Complete darkness: -6

Basic instructions: +2

Detailed instructions: +4

Mental tasks

Situation Modifier

Interpersonal and language tasks

Situation Modifier

Familiarity Bonus

The more you do something, the easier it gets. To reflect this, a character gains a permanent bonus for a specific task depending on the number of times they have successfully completed it, up to a maximum of +5 or half their skill level, whichever is lower, according to the table below:

Number of successes Bonus

1 +1

2 +2

5 +3

10 +4

20 +5

To qualify for the bonus, the task must be very specific (e.g. cracking a particular model of safe, or clearing a particular type of stoppage on a particular model of rifle*), it must be difficult enough that the character has to roll to succeed, and it must be in a Stress Situation (see below). You don't get a +1 familiarity bonus to your drive skill every time you putter round to the all-night garage for ten Benson and Hedges, a packet of Rizlas and some chocolate digestives.

GMs should be wary of allowing players too many familiarity bonuses, at the very least because keeping track of them takes up time during the gaming session. Don't bother giving them a familiarity bonus for a task they're never going to use again, and feel free to delete or reduce bonuses for tasks that haven't been performed in a long time (in-game time that is).

*Obviously M16 owners will gain Weaponsmith familiarity bonuses much faster than AK-47 owners.

Skilled and Unskilled tasks

All tasks are classified as either skilled or unskilled. For a skilled task (for example repairing a broken-down car) the character must have the required skill at at least level one, or suffer a -3 modifier to their skill roll. For an unskilled task (like climbing over a fence) no negative modifier is imposed for lacking the skill, although the character still suffers a disadvantage compared to someone with the right skill.

Opposed Tasks

Some tasks, such as hand-to-hand combat or a poker game, pit the skill of two rivals against one another. This is called an Opposed Task. For an Opposed Task, both opponents roll D10, adding their skill level and stat. The two scores are compared and the highest wins, with a draw indicating a stalemate.

Fumbles and exceptional successes

An unmodified roll of a 2 on a task indicates a Fumble – the character automatically fails at the task, and also has to make a D6 roll on the relevant mishap table to see how badly things went wrong.

An unmodified 2D10 roll of a 20 on a task is an Exceptional Success. The character immediately rolls another D10 and adds the result to their first roll. If the result is another 10, roll the die again and add the result. A roll of a one on any extra die rolls does not result in a fumble.

Mishap Tables (Roll D6):

Physical (Agility, Strength and Toughness) task mishaps:

1: You fail miserably and make yourself look stupid. Other characters may laugh.

2: You drop whatever you are holding, carrying or trying to lift. This can include a backpack or a holstered or slung weapon if there is nothing in your hands. It takes one action to pick it up again, unless you dropped it in a river, off a building, out of a moving vehicle or some similar situation.

3: You slip and are thrown off-balance. It takes one round to recover, during which you suffer a -3 modifier to all actions.

4: You fall over, or off your motorbike or horse, or out of the driving seat of your car (this may have serious consequences). If already prone, you end up flailing around on your back. It takes one Round get back to a favourable position, during which time you cannot act.

5: You accidentally run into, hit or kick the closest person to you, causing one DC ½ non-lethal hit (to a random location) to both them and yourself.

6: You fall badly, run into a solid object or drop something, hurting yourself. Take a DC 2 non-lethal hit to a random location.

Interpersonal (Geniality and Nerve) task mishaps:

1-2: You say or do something stupid and people laugh at you. How you react to that is up to you...

3: You bore, annoy or mildly offend your audience. Apply a -3 modifier to your next interpersonal task with the same people.

4: You really turn off whoever you are talking to. Any further attempts at that specific task will automatically fail.

5: You lose your cool and shout or say something you may regret.

6: You offend whoever you're talking to so badly that you start a fight!

Mental (Intelligence) task mishaps:

1-3: You haven't got a clue about it, and it's obvious to everyone around you.

4: You go off down a blind alley (intellectually speaking), and confuse yourself. Take a -3 modifier to your next attempt at that particular task.

5: You are completely baffled and confused. Any further attempts at the task will automatically fail.

6: Not only do you get the wrong idea, but in fact what you come up with will have the opposite effect to that intended. This will probably with harmful consequences, unless you were actually trying to harm someone.

Manual and Technical (Coordination and Know-How) task mishaps:

1-3: You fail utterly. You may curse yourself.

4: You drop the device or a tool you are using. Make a Reliability roll to see if it is damaged or broken. The GM may rule that you lose the item, depending on the situation.

5: You damage the object you are using or working on: a difficult Mechanic/Technician task is needed to fix it.

6: You break whatever tool or machine beyond repair. If working with explosives, they blow up in your face.

Mishap tables for vehicle and combat tasks are found under the relevant sections of the rules.

Safe Tasks

Some tasks have no unforeseen consequences for failure, no matter how abject. A safety razor is so-called because not even the world's greatest idiot can do themselves serious harm while shaving with one. Even if you fail miserably at a Research task, you won't injure yourself. For these Safe Tasks, an unmodified 2D10 roll of a two is still an automatic failure, but without the consequences of a fumble.

Hazardous Tasks

For some Tasks failure always has unfortunate consequences. An example might be a Driving skill Task to pull a handbrake turn in a car at high speed – failure will probably mean losing control of the car, colliding with something or flipping it over. This is classed as a Hazardous Task. Failure at a Hazardous Task, even on a roll greater than two, means an automatic roll on the mishap table. The GM can rule that a task is Hazardous at their discretion, although they should be prepared to justify their decision.

Fatal Tasks

There are also Tasks for which failure can only have one, usually disastrous, outcome. For example, failing an Acrobatics Task to walk a tightrope means that the character falls off, full stop. The GM might allow an Agility or Reflexes check to catch the wire, but again failure means that they fall. These are called Fatal Tasks. There is no need to roll on the mishap table on any failure at such a Task – the outcome is clear.

Stress and No-Stress situations

Normal task difficulties assume that the task is being performed under pressure, with a something at stake. Generally it is much harder to get things done when there is something important (like a pile of money or your life) riding on the outcome. Imagine a steel girder with an eight inch 20 cm) wide top surface placed on the ground. It wouldn't be very difficult to walk along it without falling off, would it? But imagine trying to walk along the same girder one hundred feet up in the skeleton of a half-built skyscraper, like some of the old silent film stars who did their own stunts. Not so easy now, is it?

To reflect this, the difficulty of a task reduces by one level in No-Stress situations. Thus the 2D10 roll needed to hit a target while practising on a firing range will be five points less than it would be in combat (or at a high-stakes marksmanship contest), and an accountancy task will be less difficult when routinely doing a company's books than when checking for embezzlement or tax fraud.

Also, accidents are much less common in stress-free situations, so an unmodified 2D10 roll of a two on a task does not automatically mean a Fumble. Roll another D10 – a fumble only occurs if the result of the second roll is a one.

The golden rule is this: If it matters to the plot of the game (or the character's survival, which is the same), it is a stress situation.

Non-Task actions

Most of the actions that a character performs are so easy, routine, mundane or unimportant to the plot of the game that it is a waste of time rolling to see if the player succeeds or fails. Similarly, some tasks are so obviously impossible (“my character flaps his arms and flies off like a bird!”) that the GM should simply rule that failure is automatic. These are Non-Task Actions, and it is the GM's call as to whether they succeed or not.

Role-playing Task resolution

Lead and Chrome is a role-playing game, not a tabletop war game, and the point of RPGs is the role-playing, not roll-playing. Interpersonal Tasks like important negotiations or trying to pry information out of a tight-lipped customer should be role-played as often as possible.

Of course, there are skills to cover these actions and some players or GMs won't feel confident or comfortable about role-playing certain situations, but they should be encouraged to do so often, at least once per session.

Interpersonal Tasks between players should always be role-played rather than settled by a dice roll. The GM should never let one player's character seduce or swindle another's against their will.