Skill checks and Dungeon masters

Your character will encounter certain scenarios in which their skills will be called into question. The server utilizes skill checks similar to those found throughout the Fallout franchise that are designed to help traverse certain grey areas to avoid narrative hang ups, as well as resolve any encounters fairly.

**A Dungeon master code of conduct is listed on the bottom of this page,** along with an example of a roll and its result.

**Click here** **to learn more about dungeon masters and their impact on the world's story.**

# DM role & Skill checks

Dungeon master interactions provide a better level of depth when it comes to roleplaying. Whether you are trying to gamble, beat someone at arm wrestling, win a drinking contest, con a man out of his money, or just win a fire fight – the dungeon master facilitates such interactions with a dice roll and then adding numbers based on your SPECIAL stats to each roll.

**An enemy** will usually have a difficulty number associated with it, documented on the difficulty sheet, pinned to #tabletop. Actions, however, aren't standardized and depend on the player character and their personal experience.

Regardless, the objective is to roll **over** your target number for a successful action. The governing SPECIAL point for the action adds +1 per point to the random roll. **The dungeon master will explain what the roll means.**

*The rest of the information provided below isn’t absolutely pertinent for players, but is information that dungeon masters take into account when performing rolls.*

## Advantages and disadvantages

Some situations may make a skill easier or harder to use, resulting in a bonus or penalty to skill check, or a change to the difficulty of the skill check. The chance of success can be altered in four ways to take into account exceptional circumstances.

* Give the skill user a circumstance bonus to represent conditions that improve performance, such as having the perfect tool for the job, getting help from another character, or possessing unusually accurate information (up to +15).
* Give the skill user a circumstance penalty to represent conditions that hamper performance, such as being forced to use improvised tools, or being taken by surprise (up to -15)
* Reduce the difficulty rating to represent circumstances that make the task easier, such as having a friendly audience or doing work that does not have to be done up to a basic standard.
* Increase the difficulty rating to represent circumstances that make the task harder, such as having an uncooperative audience or doing work that must be flawless.

## Types of rolls

You may have seen different rolls thrown around to determine an outcome or select a random encounter, aside from the typical 100-sided die roll. Here are some other types that we use:

**Coin flip:** Simulated by a two-sided die, a coin flip has a 50/50 chance of landing on either side. It's used to determine yes or no scenarios, or to find out whether an encounter is going to be hostile or friendly.

**Rolling for an encounter:** This is usually determined by the dungeon master first rolling whether the encounter will be hostile or friendly with the coin flip. Once that is clear, usually a four or five-sided die roll will select from a list of possible encounters the DM has made up. Another similar roll will determine the number of enemies present.

**Versus roll:** A player-versus-player roll, or sometimes even a player-versus-NPC roll. Whether or not it's necessary will be determined by the DM. It involves rolling a SPECIAL stat for both parties, with the winner of the engagement having the higher roll. It can be a showdown between two of the same type of stats (strength in the case of arm wrestling) or they can be different (strength for a punch, agility for the opponent to evade or endurance to take the punch).

## Trying again

Did you fail a roll, but want to try again? You can, but it might come with more consequences than you want if you fail a second time.

You can choose to "push the roll" for a chance of success. If you pass, there are still limitations to how well you did, eg. the item you were trying to repair will break after one use, or maybe the person you were trying to convince will give you information, but it comes at a steep cost.

If you fail again, the consequences are determined by the DM based on how far off a successful roll you were.

## Aiding another player

You can help another character achieve success on his skill check by making the same kind of skill check in a co-operative effort. Only a limited number of characters can help at once.

# Roll example

Your character, who wears power armor, wants to use a melee weapon to hit one of two Scorched enemies. The applicable skill for melee weapons is Strength; your strength being 8. You’re wearing power armor, so that gives you an additional advantage. Scorched enemies are difficulty 50 (regular ones), which obviously requires a roll of 50 or more to pass successfully.

Therefore we request the roll as follows in #tabletop:

**SPECIAL stat being used

Target (if more than one)

Brief description (optional, but greatly appreciated)**

*STR 8, wearing power armor

2nd Scorched

Using sledgehammer against Scorched*

The dungeon master performs the roll:

***Sledgehammer hit against Scorched, PA advantage, difficulty 50:** 1d100 (55) + 8 + 10

**Total:** 73*

Where 1d100 represents one game die with 100 sides, and 55 is our initial roll. Our strength of 8, as well as our power armor advantage of 10 have been added onto the initial roll, making a total of 73. Our roll was successful (we successfully hit the Scorched enemy).

A roll of 10 of below would mean critical failure (eg. stumbling when trying to hit the enemy), and a roll over 100 would mean critical success (eg. wounding two Scorched with one blow).

# Dungeon master code of conduct

Dungeon masters are an important factor to your roleplaying experience, therefore they need to adhere the rules. If you believe a dungeon master did not follow these rules, please message a member of the admin team.

**Only dungeon masters can roll for skill checks.** This also means they will interpret what a roll means, unless they give you the liberty to decide. They can also choose to lower the advantage or disadvantage, or not acknowledge it at all if the situation doesn't call for it.

Dungeon masters have to be transparent to ensure fairness. **They are not allowed to delete rolls with wrong stats**, but instead should state the roll is void. They need to elaborate on the options that the roll chose from (eg. present a list with all possible options before rolling for an encounter, unless it's an encounter from their own list), as well as include a difficulty level before or within the roll.

If you forgot to include an obvious advantage in your roll request (such as wearing power armor), and it would change the outcome - the roll doesn't have to be redone. The advantage is just added to the result.

**Dungeon masters are not allowed to roll for themselves,** unless it involves their own NPCs or rolls that do not affect the PCs at all or in any significant way *(eg. an NPC brawl between two fighters in an arena, shooting a tree, etc).*

Dungeon masters must get another DM to roll for their **player characters**, unless an active event is taking place and 15 minutes has passed since the request *(eg. the dungeon master has their own PC in an ongoing event when another DM is not available. Rolls of this nature are subject to closer analysis due to possible bias).*