Rolling for Skill Checks is fairly simple. The base Difficulty Check (DC) of the roll is equal to the level of the actor's relevant skill. The DC is further modified by the Challenge Rating (CR) applied by the current situation or circumstances. After finding the Final DC, the actor is aiming to roll equal to or lower than the final result for a success. Rolling higher than the final DC will result in a failure.
For example, a player is attempting to conceal an item without anyone noticing. Their Sleight of Hand is at 60. For the sake of this section let's say nothing else hinders or helps the situation, giving a final DC of 60 for the roll. The player rolls a d100 Sleight of Hand roll and gets a 50, meaning they pass the check and are successful in concealing the item.
GM TIP: A good rule when deciding if something should be a skill check is to consider how often the situation can occur in day to day life. If the situation is a common enough occurrence, then a skill check is not required. You wouldn’t need to roll a check to open an unlocked door, but may need to roll a check to break a door down if it is locked or barricaded. Always use your best judgment when calling for a skill check.
Foundry Tip: In foundry checks are rolled using the formula
1d100ms@dc, which basically is the same asd100-@dc, but with a small twist, you may ask, what doesmsstand for? Well it stands for 'Margin of Success' which the official Foundry KB Article describes as:This modifier subtracts a target value set by the user from the result of the dice rolled, and returns difference as the final total. If the amount rolled is less than the target it outputs a negative number, and a positive number if there is a remainder after subtraction.
Basically what this means is that in the roll result you will always see the 'net' result, so if you have 40 in a skill, and roll a 35, the result will show
-5as that is your 'Margin of Success'.
The Challenge Rating is a set of modifiers that increase or decrease the DC of a skill check. Things like weather, type of terrain, the action being attempted, etc. can alter how easy or how difficult a skill check can be. These modifiers are as follows:
When deciding the Challenge Rating for a check, consider how easy or difficult the situation may be for something without proper training than basing it off any individual character’s aptitude. Many tasks people face during everyday life fall between Ordinary and Easy, but once you start looking at complicated or skill-determininate tasks or challenges, it can get hard.
During combat, most tests are considered to be Challenging at default.
Many times, it is useful to know by how much you succeed, as if you superlatively succeed at a task in the dice, that should have a mechanical effect too! Success (and failure) can be measured by degrees. Basically, for every 10 points by which you exceed the DC of a skill test and succeed at a roll, you are considered to have an additional degree of success (DoS) on that skill test.
Each additional degree of success should have some sort of impact on the magnitude of success to a skill test, so when you make a test to, say, leap across a raging, flooded river and its rocks, succeeding at a Acrobatics check by <10 (1 DoS) would have you successfully do so, albeit very slowly. Succeeding by 53 (6 DoS) would have you clear the obstacle deftly, quickly, and avoiding getting your clothes wet! Or, perhaps, giving you the advantage to avoid possible debris or aggressive Pokemon also caught in the flood outright (where if you failed to make the jumps as fast, you’d have to make those subsequent tests too)!
Certain Perks, Traits, Abilities, and Status Conditions may add or remove degrees of success/failure for certain skills, or even specific applications of a given skill.
In some situations, multiple creatures working together can ensure success over a single creature attempting to do so by itself. If the GM agrees to the proposal, one or more creatures can assist another with a Test they are about to roll. When doing so, the creature with the highest Skill + Modifers makes rolls the Test, gaining +10 to the Test's DC per assisting creature.
Limitations:
Creatures can generally assist each other in most tasks, but some leeway can be had, subject to GM approval:
investedSkillPoints / 10.Luck is representative of a "cosmic karma", one that guides a creature's favors and fortunes. Luck allows the manipulation of Skill Checks, and a few other aspects of the game. Luck is a resource that only Player Characters and Aces have, due to the "plot importance" these creatures tend to have, both in-game and out-of-game. At character creation, a Player determines their initial luck by rolling 3d6 and multiplying the result by 5.
Whenever a creature fails a Skill Check, Accuracy Check, Critical Hit Check, Effect Check, Capture Check, or Critical Capture Check, they can spend a number of their Luck equal to how far off they were from succeeding to change it to a success. This means that if a player rolled a 45 on a DC 40 check, they can spend 5 luck to change it to a success.
Fortune is not limited to changing a failure to a success. A player can also choose to increase the rols DoS by spending the amount of Luck needed. So like with the above example, you can spend 15 Luck instead to have it reach 30, or 2 DoS. And this can be done with naturally successful rolls too, like if you want to speed up the crafting of an item!
When Luck is spent, the creatures’s Luck decreases depending on how it is spent. Luck many only be spent once per roll to affect it. And, crucially, Luck can be spent on behalf of creatures you are considered to own or have as your trusted partners - Pokémon or otherwise!
On a failed Skill Check, a player can choose to Push their Luck. This allows them to reroll the failed check, provided the player offers a way for the situation to worsen if they fail a second time. Luck cannot be spent on this reroll.
Also on a failed Skill Check, a player may also choose to take the "Devil's Deal". The player and the GM must agree for a way to make the failure much worse. In exchange however, the player gains luck as per the End of Session roll (below): gaining d6+4 Luck for their troubles.
In any game, Players may encounter a scenario where a Skill Check won’t give them the right answer, their own problem solving is letting them down, or they are simply rolling poorly. These are the times where a GM can offer a Lucky Break. This works the same as a Skill Check where the players roll a d100 Luck roll, using their current Luck as the DC. Unlike normal Skill Checks, CR is not applied to a Lucky Break, and Players cannot spend Luck to alter the result of a Lucky Break, nor use Push Your Luck on this roll.
Now, this not an exhaustive list of uses. Other potential examples include:
There isn’t neccesarily a wrong way to use a Lucky Break, but we recommend using the mechanic sparingly or for when the session may start slowing down to a crawl or when all other options seem to be exhausted.
When a Lucky Break is declared, any Player that agrees to take it rolls a combined Luck Check, each Player rolling Luck. At least 1 Player needs to agree to take a Lucky Break to continue. On a success, the GM grant that Player's Character some meta knowledge the GM feels is appropriate for them to use (or, in all scenarios outside of the GM nudging the party forward in meta sense, the GM should provide the situational or material reward they feel is appropriate for the current situation).
For a combined group Luck Roll, count the number of successes, treating the player with the lowest Luck’s success twice. If the number of successes is greater than half the rolls made, the Lucky Break is treated as an overall success.
As a general rule, do not penalize players for failing a Lucky Break roll. Completely failing this just means they may need to rethink their approach or return when they are better prepared.
At the end of each session, Players roll a d100 with their current Luck as the DC, succeeding on a roll that is greater than or equal to the DC. On a success, they recover d6+4 Luck. Players and Aces cannot have more than 100 Luck.
Dev Note: This does mean that players with lower Luck have a higher chance of recovering it at the end of a session. This is intended so players feel more incentive to spend Luck. In fact we encourage players to spend it as much as possible!