Lamentations of the Flame Princess // Ability checks?

[psiconauta_retro]

I am reading the basic book "Rules & Magic" of Lamentations of the Flame Princess which I understand is the equivalent to D&D´s Player´s handbook.

I have seen the rules for combat and its basic mechanic (roll d20, apply modifiers and try to get higher than the adversary´s AC), however I haven´t found anything about Ability checks or how to solve them. I imagine that the basic mechanic will be to roll d20, apply modifiers and the Referee will compare against a DC, but I don´t find anything about Difficult classes either. Did I miss it?

AD&D´s Player´s handbook is very clear about how to solve the ability checks since the glossary. I don´t have any knowledge about OD&D or other OSR systems. Would someone else please enlighten me? I did look for posts related to this subject and I still don´t have a clear answer.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The classic OSR method is to simply roll a d20 and see if it's equal to or under the specific ability score. The DM can add or subtract modifiers as they see fit.

There might be something in the referee pdf, too:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/148012/LotFP-Referee-Book-old-Grindhouse-Edition

 

[psiconauta_retro]

The classic OSR method is to simply roll a d20 and see if it's equal to or under the specific ability score. The DM can add or subtract modifiers as they see fit.

There might be something in the referee pdf, too:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/148012/LotFP-Referee-Book-old-Grindhouse-Edition

Thank you!!! I wasn't aware that the referee book is free!

While reading Rules&Magic and without finding any specific instructions about how to make Ability checks my first idea was to do exactly what you said (roll a d20 and see if it's equal to or under the specific ability score), but there are 2 things that confuse me:

1. Following the rules of AD&D the Ability checks are rolls trying to get low results as you need to get a number equal or lower to your Ability score in order to succeed (right? I haven't played or read AD&D rules in a long while...). In AD&D each ability will give modifiers for different aspects (strength affects hit prob., dmg adj., weight allowed, etc., dexterity affects reaction adj., missile attack adj. and so on...) but those modifiers do not apply when making an Ability check. In LotFP i see that there is a single table showing which is the corresponding modifiers for each ability score and I guess that when doing Ability checks those modifiers should not be applied as they would give the opposite effect desired (we want to roll low numbers and the modifiers for high abilities are positive, so if applied to an AD&D-like ability check they would cause harm (we would get higher numbers) instead of helping.
   
2. In the rules it is mentioned that "Loss of ability scores only affects the character so much as their modifiers and bonuses will change", which gives me the idea that the modifiers are important and useful and that the ability scores are only useful to get better modifiers, but not as DC for making ability checks, as if when doing an ability check we should aim to get a high result so we could match or exceed a DC set by the Referee (maybe the Referee book has a table for the Difficulty classes). If the ability scores would set the number to beat as it does in AD&D then loss of ability scores would affect the character by making the modifiers and bonus lower AND also by reducing the chances of success in the ability checks.

What do you think about this? I will check again Rules&Magic and also the freshly downloaded Referee book looking for clues!

 

[psiconauta_retro]

Exploring LotFP´s forum I found the answer, it seems OD&D didn't have ability checks so they are not covered in the these rules.

Just for the ride I would be willing to try a few sessions following the current rules and if it doesn't go well then I would stick to the classic OSR method!