Now that (I think) I understand it, I find the skill check system remarkably clever and elegant. But on pages 13-14 of the Rulebook v.0.13 (“RB13-14”), the subsections on Skill Checks initially left me confused. I took quite a while to think on it, but I will spare you at least some of the details and jump to three main rants/suggestions. I don’t like how thin my hlines are showing up so I’ll put “S#” at the start of each individual point I’m trying to make.
S1: I think it would help players (or at least, players like me) a lot to be told somewhere explicitly, by way of summary, something like this, all in one go:
The three types of skill checks are built one atop the other. A “Skill Check With Progress” involves completing multiple “Skill Checks with Results” – the Results of each skill check are summed to track your Progress. Each individual “Skill Check with Results” requires completing a “Base Skill Check” to score a Hit – your Result is the highest value you rolled on a fate die that is less than the Action Score (1d6+stats+mods). A “Base Skill Check” simply requires scoring a Hit by rolling at least one fate die under the Action Score – in the Base case, the specific value on any die is never noted as the “Result,” only the Hit matters.
Personally, I think something like this would best be placed before the discussion of each type of Skill Check. It primes the reader to see how each type of skill check is “Just like the last one, but then do this additional step.” But, whether here or elsewhere, a gloss of how they all fit together would be helpful.
S2: It is notable that none of the examples of Skill Checks on RB13-14 remind the player to calculate the Action Score by adding Stats and Mods. I think it would be useful to alter some inset image(s) to show how some card(s) in a player’s Hero Tableau can supplement the 1d6 and bump up the Action Score. Otherwise, one might get the impression that they can never get a Hit if their fate die rolls are all 6s, 7s or 8s.
S3: The subsection on “Skill Check With Result” was the source of most of my initial confusion, and it strikes me as too terse and ultimately misleading.
At time of writing, both the subsection on “Base Skill Check” and the subsection on “Skill Check With Result” begin with the identical passage:
“[this skill check type] takes the form: Check STAT. For example, check MUSCLE or check LORE.”
This was the core source of my initial confusion, as the rulebook seems to tell me explicitly that 2 distinct types of skill check are indistinguishable, which can’t plausibly be right.
If I now understand correctly, the vast majority of Skill Checks with Results will occur as Hero Attack rolls in combat, and these never seem to involve a written prompt on any card of the form “check STAT,” rather it is simply to be universally assumed that all Hero Attack rolls are a Skill Check with Result (See RB34). I have checked every card in the box and find only one in which prose instructions seem to indicate that the card is requesting a Skill Check with Result, however it is a problematic case. Spoilers, possibly:
Encounter Card Z8 “Vats” begins with a very puzzling skillcheck: “Open with MUSCLE(3); if the result is >5 then lose D6+2 Party HP.” First, this should be “check MUSCLE(3)” to match the forms of the rulebook. Second, it would then match the form of a Skill Check with Progress. Third, however (and despite RB 13’s suggestion that a Skill Check with Result will be of the form “check STAT”) what specifically indicates that this as a (possible) Skill Check with Result is the fact that (after this ‘form’ has appeared) the sentence goes on to invite the player to check a Result at all. So, pulling it all together, this appears to be a renegade “Skill Check with Progress and also with an independent Result.”
A different spoiler tag is required to accommodate a paragraph break.
I have difficulty making sense of this. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem sensible that the ‘result’ could be the cumulative sum of Progress since that violates the rules for a Skill Check with Result – a Result is never a sum, it’s just the face value of some die. On the other hand – and notwithstanding that with Mods and Stats in view to augment the Action Score, it is indeed possible for a single Skill Check with Result to return a Result >5 – the instruction on the card doesn’t make it sufficiently explicit if the intention is that the player should check the Result on each roll as they try to build up progress. If that’s the intention there is no “the Result” (singular) to check, and the player should instead be told to check “each Result” (one at a time, taken independently in sequence as the player tries to build up progress).
Something needs revision. Minimally: the way the rulebook currently points to the prose “form” of a “Skill Check with Result” doesn’t help players keep track of 99% of the relevant cases. I think that first passage must be struck from the section on “Skill Checks with Results.”