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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9664537" data-attributes="member: 11760">Knock #1 (if I recall correctly) had an article that suggested a test before doing any kind of roll:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Does the character making the roll have the skills to accomplish the task?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Does the character have the tools necessary?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Does the character have the time necessary?</li> </ol>If the answer to all three is "yes," then there's no roll, and the character automatically succeeds. So an ordinary lock could always be opened if the thief had the time to work on it safely and quietly, under good conditions.If the answer to all of those is "no," then there's no roll, because it's impossible; the cleric is not going to figure out how to pick a lock with their holy symbol having never tried to do so while under direct fire from archers.I believe the Knock article suggested that characters should roll if two of the conditions were met. So the thief has the tools and the skills but is facing archer fire. In systems with advantage/disadvantage, like Shadowdark, I would also allow it if only one of the conditions was met and give out disadvantage (or cancel out advantage, in the case of a thief's skills) in those circumstances. The thief has the skills, but they broke their last lockpick and they're under archer fire. Good luck and maybe open up a tab to the Shadowdarklings character generator!And this is, unfortunately, a newer "OSR" principle. I think if it had been enshrined in TSR D&D, and thieves were only rolling when the crap hit the fan, their low levels of skill wouldn't matter most of the time. Instead of thieves falling to their deaths trying to climb perfectly ordinary walls, it would only be a challenging situation if the circumstances weren't ideal, which would incentivize the thieves getting the circumstances to be ideal, which feels right for thief characters anyway.Mothership works in a similar fashion: If PCs are rolling all the time, they're going to fail a bunch (and deal with stress, which is bad in Mothership). But they're not supposed to be rolling most of the time -- they just succeed at ordinary tasks when circumstances are relatively normal.</blockquote>

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