Margins of Failure

In reference to yesterday's article on failure probability, I wanted to talk a bit about my interpretation of the Margin-of-Success rules on page 42 of A Time of War. As previously discussed, I think of this system as having an assumption of success -- most players taking on a basic task can expect to accomplish it on the first try if they have any bonuses at all in the relevant skill. How much they succeed by rarely matters to my mind -- generally they set out to do something, and making the check means they did it. Cut-and-dry.

Failures are different. I try to gauge the failure margin on a scale of how much the failure impacts the party. Using the delineations Catalyst provided us with:

Almost (-1 to -2): If a check falls into this range, it usually just doesn't work. Unless it was obviously a one-time thing, the player can try again next action.

Bad (-3 to -4): I often rule that a character has no idea how to do this particular thing on a check that fails by this much -- they need to either find another way around, or let somebody else take a crack at the problem, because their character is just out of ideas.

Terrible (-5 to -6): These can actually hurt the player attempting them -- hitting the character with a mild penalty (status effect, loss of equipment, etc.) is generally the level of pain of mete out for this poor a roll.

Disastrous (-7 and up): These are exceedingly rare, and the players normally have to decide to take a calculated risk to open themselves up to the possibility of this occurring. A failure by seven or more I consider a mission-jeopardizing failure. At the very least the problem cannot be solved by the party this way anymore, and possibly a new challenge emerges in the form of broken and now-dangerous equipment, additional bad guys showing up, or even severe injury to one of the PC's.

I hope that these guidelines that I use can be of some use when you're laying out your own.