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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9259787" data-attributes="member: 907">That's a nice sentiment, but it's often not how games (and/or adventures) work. For example, since I've been playing GURPS today and had occasion to check the Piloting skill, the skill description there specifically states that you need to roll for takeoffs and landings, with a failure of 1 indicating a "rough job", and a failure by more indicating some form of damage to the vehicle. There is some insurance against very good pilots (15+) crashing, where a critical failure requires a second check that's also a failure to actually crash. But that's a minimum of two checks per trip to "avoid damage". Identifying a creature in D&D 3.5/Pathfinder/Pathfinder 2 requires a check with a DC determined by the creature's level/CR – because elephants are way more obscure creatures than leopards. And I can't recall ever seeing a lock in a published adventure for any game that you can open without either the proper key or some kind of skill check.One way of handling this kind of thing is to step back from discrete task resolution and look at larger challenges that involves multiple skill checks, and where the aggregate determines your overall level of success. For example, the Swedish game Eon uses such a mechanic for certain things, and it involves rolling for three different skills and counting aggregate margins of success. For example, let's say you want to get into the Guard Captain's office to find a particular document. In most games, this would be something done in separate stages: first a Lockpicking check to get the door open, then a Search check to find the document, and then maybe a Stealth check to get out without anyone noticing. Failing any of those checks would be bad. But using the Eon challenge system, you'd still roll the same skills but you'd aggregate the results. So perhaps narratively, you fail your Lockpicking check, but that doesn't mean you don't get the door open – it just means it took longer than you had expected, but your extra successes on your Search check mean you compensate for that by finding the document really quick. Or maybe you didn't roll extra successes on your Search check so you only got a partial success on the whole challenge – maybe you found the document but left some stuff behind that can be traced back to you. This kind of stuff feels much better than "Nah, you failed your Lockpicking check so the door stays closed."</blockquote>

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