OOC Chat

Sorry it's been a busy day. Drinking the pain away now. Will post maybe tonight, definitely tomorrow.

Bummer. But at least you've got liquid medicine. :)

Besides, we have to see how terribly the Priestly Ranger and Tonto screw up calming down the mob.

Also Ipwet can always try being a blowhard, she's pretty good at that :)

That sounds like a fantastic idea.

Oh man.... this just keeps getting better and better. :)

So, are we saying that both Tefri's and Adom's posts happened? Or are we resolving Tefri's first? I can kill mine and repost after what's happening now.

Only vaguely understand the whole advancement mechanic

That's good. Sabra is the strong silent type.

Ok, so if you look at my sheet, the skills and stats have the little bracket things next to them.

For most things, any time you roll for it, you earn a Test (think of it like XP) against that skill or stat or whatever. The number of dice you roll vs the obstacle of the test determines whether it's considered Routine, Difficult, or Challenging.

Depending on how good you are, it gets harder to advance, modeled by having to make more Difficult or Challenging checks to advance. It's also harder to earn those because the obstacle required to challenge you gets higher with your skill.

If you don't have a skill, you get to roll Beginner's Luck. Basically, you use the root stat of the skill against DOUBLE the original obstacle. You need (10 - the root stat) Tests/XP on skill you don't have yet to unlock it.

There's a few things you can't use Beginner's Luck for, and there are a few things that you don't earn Tests/XP for unless you actually succeed on your roll. Most of the time, it's okay to fail on your attempt because you're still earning "XP" against improving that skill/ability.

Thats ok. When you first roll a skill you don't have, its called beginners luck. you're fumbling around trying to accomplish things you have no skill in. that's why you have the double Ob penalty.

Keep track of how many beginners luck tests you've made for a skill, because once you've made a number equal to 10-Will, the skill opens up at half the root stat and its a skill on your character sheet just like any other.

Okay, does the test also count towards increasing my Will?

CRAP! I actually had typed out that I was going to use a Fate Point to make it open-ended... but then I deleted it because I've been rolling so crappily. LOL

Using a fate point in that way you can declare it *after* the roll if you want!

Wait, you can spend a Fate point on luck after.... but NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Lol of course...

Oh man, what a roller coaster. That was awesome! :)

Ok, so rolled 3 dice vs obstacle 4, so that's a Challenging Test earned for Oratory. Nothing to sneeze at.

For reference...

1) I compared the number of dice I rolled (on the left) vs the threshold. For 3D, I rolled against obstacle 4, so it counts as a Challenging roll. This is the top chart at the bottom of my character sheet in my thread.

Difficulty Threshold: Dice rolled (excluding artha) vs obstacle
(Routine / Difficult / Challenging)
1D 1 | 1 | 2+
2D 1 | 2 | 3+
3D 2 | 3 | 4+
4D 2 | 4 | 5+
5D 3 | 5 | 6+
6D 4 | 6 | 7+
XD X-3 | X | (X+1)+

2) I earned a Challenging Test on my Oratory skill, so I'll mark that down next to my Oratory skill. Looking at it now, I only need to earn 3 Routine Tests to advance the skill to the next level.

* Oratory B3 [ 0/3R & ( 0/2D or 1/1C ) ]

So I may have whiffed the roll, BUT I just finished the hardest part of advancing that skill.

That's actually super helpful.... I was having a hard time understanding that part of your character sheet. Thanks!

Yup. The XP system is a bit crunchy, but I liken it a bit to that Dungeon Siege video game. Basically, the more you use a skill, the more it improves.

I'll do another sample like that the next time I do a Beginner's Luck test. :-)

The Beginner's Luck thing is also why I have that blank section under the skills called "Skills In Progress". Once I do my first Beginner's Luck test on a given skill, I'll list it there with an entry similar to the other skill entries.

For instance, if I tried to stab somebody, it would look something like this:

* Knives (agility B4 1/6)

The root stat for Knives is agility, so that's the stat I'll be using to roll for it (against double the normal obstacle while I'm still a noob at it). I need 10 - agility = 6 attempts before I unlock the skill. Once I hit 6, I unlock the skill at half the root stat. So as soon as I've tried knife-fighting 6 times, I unlock the skill at B2.

Also, if I recall correctly, skills like Knives don't earn a test for every swing. It's more like you earn one Test for the highest difficulty test you made during the combat. If you already have all the Challenging Tests you need to advance, but still need a Difficult or a Routine test, you can "downgrade" to fill one of those.