Adventurers learn some commonly used skills, in the course of their chosen career. Certain classes have their own special rules for determining success in these instances, the Thief in particular. Unless otherwise stated, the following rules help determine a Characters chance of success at accomplishing typical adventuring tasks, when random determination is called for.
For example, a non-Thief character has found a Trap and is attempting to disarm it. After the Dungeon Master explains what the Character sees and has found out, the Player will then tell the DM, how he is going about removing or circumventing the Trap. If the Player’s plan is sound and there is no need for a random number to be introduced, then the Character will succeed. If the plan is a risky one and the DM decides that an appreciable chance for failure exists, then the Character’s Dungeoneering Roll will come into play. If the Player isn’t sure how he would go about disarming such a trap, or concocts a seriously flawed plan, then he will also be allowed to fall back on the Character’s Adventuring Skill. This may be particularly necessary, in cases of highly complex, specialized Traps.
Other types of Adventuring Skills, like those covered under Stealth, will always be determined by a percentile roll.
Dungeoneering: Dungeoneering includes Disarming Traps, Jimmying Locks and other common tasks involving mechanical aptitude. Characters begin with a base 10% chance, +/- their Dexterity Adjustment, to perform these actions. Racial modifiers may also come into play.
Stealth: Stealth includes Moving Silently and Hiding. Hiding is not quite the same thing as a Thief’s ability to Hide in Shadows, or a Druid’s ability to Hide in Natural Surroundings. Characters begin with a base 10% chance, +/- their Dexterity Adjustment, to perform these actions. Racial modifiers may also come into play. Stealth abilities may not be used, when wearing metal armor.
Perception: Perception helps determine a Character’s chance of detecting secret doors, detecting traps, being surprised, and noticing easy to miss details. The base chance for most of these actions is a 1 in d6. Surprise can be variable, but in situations where it comes into play, Characters, Monsters and NPC’s will usually have a 2 in 1d6 chance of being surprised.
Expertise: At times, a Player will want his Character to perform an action, which is related to his class, but for which there is a chance of failure. For instance, a Player may need to know if his Magic-user Character is familiar with an obscure Arcane legend. In such instances, the Character’s base chance of success will be 10%, + 10% per every other Level of Experience, up to a maximum chance of 98%. In certain cases, Ability Score adjustments will also be factored in and with such a broad area of action, there are often other considerations, which may affect a Character’s chance of success.
Advancing Adventuring Skills
Expertise is handled as given in the description above, but a Characters abilities in Dungeoneering, Stealth and Perception, may also increase.
At 2nd Level and every third Level thereafter, a Character’s Dungeoneering or Stealth skill may be increased by 10%. The Player may, if desired, split this between the two Adventuring Skills, however he sees fit. After adjustments for Ability Scores and Racial Modifiers have been taken into account, a Character’s Dungeoneering or Stealth skills, may never go beyond 90% (this restriction is not placed on any of the abilities of the Thief Class. Likewise, a Ranger may increase his Stealth to 98%)
Instead of increasing Dungeoneering or Stealth, a Player may save up these points until +20% has been banked, and then use them to add a +1 bonus to Perception. Perception may never be increased beyond a 5 in 6, and regardless, the chance of being Surprised will never be less than 1 in 6 (though Dexterity Adjustments can effectively, further negate Surprise effects.)
If the Thief Class is not available in the Campaign, or if no Player elects to run a Thief, then the DM might allow Characters to add an additional +10% to their Dungeoneering and Stealth and to start with a Perception of 2 in 6.
End Open Game Content.
I wanted to add a Comment of mine, from below:
End Open Game Content.
I wanted to add a Comment of mine, from below:
Thanks guys. A lot of the inspiration came from a Fight On! article by David Bowman, which discussed letting non-thieves advance in dungeon type tasks, using the d6 mechanic. I'm using a modification of the Thief by Al at Beyond the Black Gate, which also helped shape things. I split up his Thievery into Thievery and Sneakiness, which are more comprehensive versions of the Dungeoneering and Stealth, which other characters get. His Thief also has another skill set, the name of which escapes me, but it covers the same things as the Perception skill, listed above.
