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.
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