Skills & Attribute checks

[kcdusk]

During the course of a gaming session, how many non-combat skill or attribute checks happen in your game (as a player or ref)?

Would less than 20% be non-combat related? 50%?

[Jason]

In my past campaigns I have done my best to make sure at least 50% of skill checks are non-combat. T2K is very centered on firefights, so anytime I can sneak in some hand-to-hand combat I will.

I feel it is important to keep my campaign-sessions from bouncing from shoot-out to shoot-out, as it tends to get boring for all involved.

[Targan]

In my last campaign there was far more time spent in non-combat role playing than combat. A big part of that was the realistic (and therefore dangerous and deadly) combat system we were using. In general, the PCs only engaged in combat when they were forced to (ambush etc), when they had planned things out to give themselves every possible advantage, or when the potential rewards/benefits exceeded the risks to their lives.

Also the number of stats and skills in the rules system we were using were huge so you could simulate just about anything with a roll against a skill or a stat. I reckon at least 90% of all rolls made during our game sesions were non combat related.

[DigTw0Grav3s]

Similarly, how does everyone handle scene structure? If one PC is the star of a given scene, based on skills, how do you keep the players with more limited capabilities involved?

[kcdusk]

Originally Posted by DigTw0Grav3s

Similarly, how does everyone handle scene structure? If one PC is the star of a given scene, based on skills, how do you keep the players with more limited capabilities involved?

Everyone should have a role to play, i think.

Its true that sometimes a single player will be the "star" of a scene. I think all the PCs should be involved in almost any scene though, I'm thinking about smaller wins and loses.

Something along the lines of theres a 20% chance of some small good outcome happening, 60% chance of no result and 20% chance of a small bad outcome for each peripheral PC.

Examples
While "star player" defuses the nuclear bomb thats on a count down timer, the mechanic could be trying to fix the truck, which the baddies sabotaged the engine to prevent the PCs escape or tracking the baddies down. Success means the truck becomes mobile, failure might mean they use up some precious diesel or broken some tools in the attempt and the truck remains broken down (none of this matters of course, if the atom bomb in the next room goes off!).

The expert scrounger could take one last look around, failure means nothing is found, success (or success on a difficult level) could mean finding food/ammo/large caliber weapon.

A medic could use some down time while a star PC is off doing something else to a medic check, failure means the patient gets worse while a success might mean a wounded PCs condition improves better than expected.

So i would try and keep all PCs involved. Even if they are not the star of a particular scene, there could be some nice little wins that accumulate to make a difference, or some losses that dont seem significant now but maybe come back to bite the PCs or use up some valuable resource or makes the next task harder in some way (opposition, less time, etc).

[kcdusk]

Even if a PC is left right out of the action, back at camp for instance. I'd have him try and distil some fuel.

Roll D20 and if the result would have been a success on a difficult task, he made 150% of the target amount.

If the roll was a fail at an easy task then no fuel was made and equipment might have been damaged.

Anything in between is 90% of the target amount of fuel is made.

Little odd jobs like this keep everyone involved, the small wins or looses really accumulate over time, involve non-combat tasks, and improve PC skill levels.