Thought I'd post this here since I stumbled on some Glimpses, etc.
The common misconception is that the full pool is rolled, and the total successes determine how good the effort is. This is generally not how Extended Tasks are handled. Extended Tasks have three major components:
- Difficulty -- how complicated is the task?
- Time Elapsed -- how long does the task take to complete?
- Quality -- how well was the task done?
Successes rolled represent two things: progress, and completion of the attempted task. The quality of work attempted is represented by assessing a difficulty penalty to the dice pool rolled.
- An Exceptional Success on a roll in an E-Task means nothing more than great progress (maybe some other cookie if the ST wants)
Dice Pool: Attribute + Skill MINUS penalty for Difficulty (how badass of A Thing is trying to be done)
Target Number: How long will this take + how complicated is it (drawing with a pencil versus painting with hand crushed pigments with gemstone flakes :P )
Successes: Task Completion + timeframe
TL;DR
Any effort without a Difficulty mod results in a 'meh' for quality.
Smiley face (0 penalty) versus Mona Lisa (-5 penalty). Racking up successes won't turn a smiley face into the Mona Lisa.
These are the general rules for nWoD. Venues are free to tweak, but it's worth noting that Vampire will adhere to them.
Working Example
Edwin Bridges wants to make a necklace for Ashley Cohen for Christmas
A) Does he have the tools and/or shop needed to work metal?
- Equipment bonuses could come into play if the character has good tools and/or a Workshop.
B) Does he have the Resources required for the materials?
- Generally this is equal to Cost minus one dot. So a necklace that would normally cost 2 dots in Resources requires 1 dot in Resources worth of raw materiel (a bar of metal, etc).
C) How nice does he want the craftsmanship to be?
- This is super easy. Just imagine a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being 'okay' and 5 being intricate and beautiful (master craftsmanship). Whatever you want that to be is your Difficulty Penalty on the roll.
D) How difficult is it to make a necklace?
- You and your ST are kind of shooting from the hip on this. Let's say it's going to take 8 Successes.
Now, if A and B = YES :
Attribute + Skill + A - B is rolled.
- This is an extended task with multiple rolls, each roll usually signifies an hour
- The maximum number of rolls for an extended task is equal to Att + Skill (Roll Limitation, nwod p.128)
- A failure on any roll does notincur a -1, simply no progress is made
- The number of rolls it takes to accumulate the successes determines if the task was done done and how long it took
So, using the Example above:
A) Edwin has purchased nice tools with his Resources and gains a +1 to the roll
B) Edwin is making a necklace of silver which he could buy for Resources 3; he has Resources 2, and buy a bar of silver stock
C) Edwin luffles Ashley. A lot. True fact, yo. He wants this to be awesome. He's going for the full -5, and this is going to be beautiful and intricate and just zomg. She'll have to go to Tiffany & Co. to see something like this.
D) We already guesstimated 8 Successes.
Edwin has Intelligence 2 and Crafts 4
Intelligence 2 + Crafts 4 + Tools 1 - Fang Dropping Quality 5 = Dice pool of 2 (omg poor edwin)
- He can roll six times (his Att + Crafts total)
Edwin only accumulates 5 Successes: failure. He's made a mess and wasted six hours and a bar of silver stock.
Had Edwin accumulated 8 Successes (determined in D), he would have succeeded and had a gorgeous necklace.
Draft this Post
Yamiyo
