RD
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Revision as of 11:20, 17 July 2010
RD stands for Roll Difficulty and is the one number that defines how difficult an attempted activity is. Usually RD also defines how risky an activity is, except for Safe Rolls.
RD is the number that each rolled die (twelve-sider, d12) must equal or exceed in order to count as a Success. If there are no Successes in a roll, then the RD is used to determine whether the outcome is a failure or a Fumble, and if a Fumble, then the RD is also used to determine the degree of Fumble. The exception to this is Safe Rolls, e.g. used for sensory perception. Safe Rolls cannot Fumble.
The default RD is 8, intended as the standard RD in an adventuring-situation, e.g. the most common RD used during the exploration of an underground facility populated by hostile beings (a "dungeon crawl") or a special operations mission carried out by elite soldiers.
Routine activities, taking place under non-critical and stress-free (or nearly so) circumstances, have much lower RDs. The RD for a true routine activity is 4, e.g. driving to or from work in normal traffic intensity, or cooking a typical meal.
Characters may get bonuses or penalties, for instance a character who is Wounded gets an RD penalty to all physical rolls, and a character who is in Pain gets an RD penalty to all rolls. Characters may also get bonuses for using high-quality tools or magical tools, or penalties for not having the proper tools for an activity, or magical bonuses not grounded in tools, e.g. combat "buffing" spells that gives an RD bonus to certain combat skills under some or all circumstances.
Since a lower RD is preferable, from the point of view of the character attempting to perform the activity, a bonus to RD is always expressed as a negative number, e.g. -1 RD bonus, or a bonus of -3 to RD (the later being huge and very significant), and a penalty is always expressed as a positive number, e.g. a +2 RD penalty. Sometimes modifiers are expressed without the word "bonus" or "penalty". If so, always take a negative number to meana b onus, and a positive number to mean a penalty. And positive RD modifiers must always be preceeded by a plus, e.g. always +3 RD, never bonus of 3 to RD.
A character can also get RD modifiers due to receiving assistance from another character. This is usually in the form of a bonus, except if the other character is incompetent, uncooperative, mentally unhinged, or Fumbles his Assistance Roll. External circumstances may also modify the roll, such as inadequate lightning, strong winds, a combat target moving very fast, being airborne, or being of unusual size (an RN bonus for attacking a larger-than-human target, and a penalty for attacking a smaller-than-human target).
In addition to these modifiers, characters can also, for most activities and tasks, choose to use the Time Use rules to get an RD modifier in exchange for performing the activity faster or slower than it is usually performed. Faster for a stiff RD penalty (and much faster for a huge RD penalty!), or slower for an RD bonus (or much slower for a larger RD bonus).
Some activities cannot be performed at any unusual speed, such as cooking (cooking a given meal always takes as long as it takes; it cannot be rushed, or taken slowly and carefully). Other activities can only be rushed but not done slowly and carefully, and other activities again cannot be rushed but can be done slowly, and for some activities one or both of the extreme Time Use options (Very Fast or Very Slow) may be unavailable. The [[GM] uses his sense of realism, in cases where the rules say nothing.
Note that Spellcasting does not use the Time Use rules, but instead some slightly different rules.
See also
Task Time Step Scale (TSS)
