Traveller 5.10 - Book 1, Part 5

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Tasks

After character generation, the next chapter deals with tasks. We have a character, with skills and knowledges, how do we use those things? And this is also why the benchmarks chapter comes up before this, as there are some useful concepts that apply to tasks. There are 11 pages dealing with tasks, so this is not just roll 8+ to succeed. 

One of the arguments I've heard against the T5 task system is that it your characteristics tend to overshadow the actual skills you may have. There is a basic function to determine tasks:

nD <= [characteristic] + skills + mods

where nD is the die roll needed. Where it gets complicated is just how many dice you need to roll. Of course, there is a table. And there are adjustments depending on if you are in a hurry or take your time. Basically, the number of dice ranges from an easy 1 (which should be about automatically a success unless you have some seriously harsh modifications), through difficult at 3 dice, to the previously mentioned beyond impossible needing 8 dice, 9 if you are in a hurry! And, in a complete reversal of 40 years of Traveller, this is a roll under roll. The advantage of a hasty roll is that the time takes half the normal time. And cautious takes twice as long. It is noted that your "characteristic represents the base natural skill". I can sort of see that, and with the dice pool mechanism, it makes as much sense as the various systems that grant a modifier based on a range of values (i.e., strength 18 gives you a +3 damage in melee). As Traveller 5.10 really wants to fine tune random rolls far beyond the original short 2d6 bell curve, this fits in with that vision. But it is hard for me to see it as Traveller!

An overview of the various kinds of tasks, such as cooperative, opposed, actions, arcane, and so on. And then a list of the important terms so that everyone is talking the same language in how we set things up and resolve them. 

An example is given: to repair a grav vehicle, the referee decides that this task should take 1-6 hours and is a difficult task. The task format looks like:

To repair a grav vehicle (1D hour). Difficult (3D) < (Dex + Gravatics) + 1 for tools (required)

Knowing that and knowing that the bad guys are on the way, the player can decide they really need this fixed ASAP, so it becomes 4D < dex + gravatics +1 for the tools. If they don't have the tools, they cannot do this.  But if this is just a lazy day in jump, they can take their time and it is only 2D. So, taking a character with a dexterity of 7, and a gravatics skill of 2, and having the required tools, the player must roll 3 dice and get < 7 + 2 + 1, or < 10. Which with 3 dice is about a 50/50 chance (hey, I play a lot of Fantasy Trip!). Note that the dexterity characteristic is the largest piece of the formula. However, I will also note that Traveller 5.10 can give a lot of skills, so if you had a gravatic engineer, that skill level could rival the dexterity. However, I can understand how this could be a strange thing. If you had someone with a dexterity of 12, they would beat a character with a lower dexterity but actually has the gravatic skill and knows what to do via training and education. It can allow players without a skill to be better than those with the appropriate skill. It may be that the skill is required, though. Ahh, yes - the skill (in this case, gravatics) is generally required. However, characters do get a set of default skills at level 0. Those skills allow them to attempt the task but This Is Hard so it is an extra die. Not sure where the default skills are listed, but I think that balances it a little better. 

The This Is Hard also has an interesting twist: if the skill level is below the number of dice, you actually add another die! Going back to our repair job for our grav vehicle: with that skill level of 2, the number of dice now becomes 4 as the difficult level of 3 > the level 2 skill. Of course, taking their time reduces the die so back to the regular difficulty. But the other side of this is a This Is Hard Beyond Impossible Task done in Haste - that needs 10 dice to roll under the target!

Then we get into some weeds with the default skills and phantom skills and so forth. And some tasks don't require a skill, such as moving something. If just a characteristic, the mod is always +3. For instance, putting something heavy in place is a difficult task, or 3D < Str + 3, no skill required. The phantom skills are for tasks where a characteristic does not apply. The example given is trying to convince a buyer that the goods are acceptable: Average (2D) < 7 + Broker. Where 7 is the "phantom" skill. And 7 being the average of 2d6. Though in this case, I could see adding mods based on social levels of both the buyer and seller, depending on a number of things. If the player role played it (at least tried to role play it: some of my attempts at character to NPC dialog are more stilted than I would like) I'd also give a bonus. 

We then go into duration: some tasks it really does not matter, some are variable, some are fixed. The variable ones are like the repair job above, 1d6 hours. And another table for standard variable durations. Which is pretty interesting and think I may use that for my next software estimation as it is as good as anything I can come up with! A month is 6 + flux weeks, or 1-11 weeks. Yep, if I think a month, 1-11 weeks is probably right!

Cooperative tasks are interesting: two characters can help each other, and we use the highest skill and characteristic from each. Going back to our grav vehicle, Susy has dexterity of 12 and grav-1, but Johnny has dexterity 6 and grav-6. Now the roll is 3d6 < 12 + 6 + 1 or 3d6 < 19, pretty easy to do! There are a few other examples given as well. 

Opposed tasks are whoever rolls lowest. Which seems backwards but remembering that this is a roll-under system, so the lower the number the better your success. 

Uncertain tasks the GM rolls one of the dice, so very similar to the "listen at the door" sort of thing where the referee is supposed to roll the dice. I figure my players can handle failing a roll and their character thinks they know. Though I do see this both ways. But I like the players to roll their own dice when they can. 

Speaking of better success, we have spectacular successes and spectacular failures. 3 ones on the dice ( so not possible for 1 or 2 dice difficulty levels) always has a spectacular success even if the roll fails. Which is odd as the beyond possible with 9 dice means you have a better chance of a spectacular success! The reverse for failure is 3 sixes. It is noted that for tasks of 6+ dice, you can roll both a spectacular success and a spectacular failure, making it spectacularly interesting! The referee is encouraged to make it a rousing, memorable event.

The infamous Jack of All Trades skill comes up. Effectively it is used as a skill replacement at -2, so that a JoT 3 will give a skill of 1. The This Is Hard rule applies if the skill is less than the dice difficulty. 

There are some notes about creating tasks and cautions to take into account. The chapter finishes with 2 pages of examples and several more charts. The examples have 3 characters doing the same tasks with differing levels of characteristics and skills. 

In finally reading through this chapter, I think I've a better understanding of what Marc Miller was doing. And I think it does make sense in many ways. The hard part for me is coming up with the task definitions. I would love a list of a bunch of them to help me create my own as necessary. I do think I may try to do this when I run my next Traveller game. Though getting my players to generate T5 characters will be a challenge! Though 1 player does have the T5 rules, I don't think he's actually read them (he collects games). 

I think the same mechanism is applied to fighting, especially shooting. I think the difficulty is set by the size of the object and the range band, so that we can calculate the difficulty based two things we should know. But I'll know for certain when we get to that chapter! The next chapter is the skills list, and I'll cover that in the next review post!

gotta fix that air/raft!