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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4312514" data-attributes="member: 3424">Actually, in a standard skill complication, the PCs need to score 8 successes before they accumulate 8 failures, and a party of 5 PCs has five chances to score successes during the progress phase against the chance to accumulate two failures during the complications phase. While I haven't done the math in detail, the checks are usually at moderate DCs, and a trained character will usually have a better than 50% chance of succeeding at a moderate skill check (say, 60% with a +2 ability modifier), while even an untrained character would have a 25% chance of success (assuming no ability penalty). A party in which two characters are trained in the relevant skills would score an average of 1.95 successes and 1.22 failures in the respective phases. Chance thus favors the PCs in a standard skill complication. This is not unexpected - a standard skill complication is only based on an elite monster, after all.A major skill complication requires the PCs to earn 12 successes before they accumulate 6 failures. A party of five with only two skilled characters will thus have a tough time dealing with one and may fail. A party with three skilled characters has better odds, though - it will score an average of 2.3 successes against 1.08 failures. So, if the necessary skills are a reasonably good match for the characters, even a major skill complication is quite winnable.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 4312514, member: 3424"] Actually, in a standard skill complication, the PCs need to score 8 successes before they accumulate 8 failures, and a party of 5 PCs has five chances to score successes during the progress phase against the chance to accumulate two failures during the complications phase. While I haven't done the math in detail, the checks are usually at moderate DCs, and a trained character will usually have a better than 50% chance of succeeding at a moderate skill check (say, 60% with a +2 ability modifier), while even an untrained character would have a 25% chance of success (assuming no ability penalty). A party in which two characters are trained in the relevant skills would score an average of 1.95 successes and 1.22 failures in the respective phases. Chance thus favors the PCs in a standard skill complication. This is not unexpected - a standard skill complication is only based on an elite monster, after all. A major skill complication requires the PCs to earn 12 successes before they accumulate 6 failures. A party of five with only two skilled characters will thus have a tough time dealing with one and may fail. A party with three skilled characters has better odds, though - it will score an average of 2.3 successes against 1.08 failures. So, if the necessary skills are a reasonably good match for the characters, even a major skill complication is quite winnable. [/QUOTE]

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