Checks
CHECKS
Abilities and skills are how your Legend navigates through the world. You decide what your Legend attempts to do; the Monitor determines what skill and/or ability to use. There are two primary ways to use abilities and skills: checks and tests.
A check is used whenever a Legend’s knowledge, skills, or abilities are called into question in a low-pressure environment. The Monitor looks at a Legends’ skill rating or ability score to determine if the number is high enough to accomplish what your Legend intends to do.
Evaluating financial reports for discrepancies with Business
Maintaining small arms for an upcoming battle with Shooting
Piecing together the events of a murder scene with Criminology
Sometimes using a skill requires a roll of dice. This is called a test.
Monitors should take care to call for a skill test only when the following conditions are met:
- The outcome of an action is in question
- There’s an interesting or meaningful consequence for failure
- The situation is unpredictable or affected by outside factors, time pressures, or other constraints
The most important rule about checks and tests is this: The Monitor determines if, when, and what you roll for a test. If the Monitor says a test isn’t needed, the skill rating itself determines success or failure through the use of a skill check; don’t go rolling dice without the Monitor agreeing that a test is needed.
CHECKS: RESOLVING OUTCOMES WITHOUT DICE
If the Monitor decides you don’t need to roll dice to know the outcome of an action, this is called a check. Checks are resolved by comparing your Legend’s skill or ability score rating versus a set number. Ability scores can be used on checks, but it is more common to use skill checks.
The skill ratings table below shows how a skill’s rating can be understood.
SKILL RATINGS TABLE | ||
| Skill Rating | What the Rating Represents | What a Check Earns |
| 01% to 29% | Common skills or knowledge, Only a little training; a hobbyist | -Common Information -Ability to detect observable information |
| 30% to 39% | Basic training, practice, a college minor | -Basic information -Ability to predict potential problems |
| 40% to 59% | Proficient and capable enough to earn a living; Years of experience or a college major | -Professional Information -Ability to detect hidden information -Ability to generate solutions to problems |
| 60% to 79% | Decades of experience or graduate degree | -Expert Opinion -Ability to detect the possibility of hidden information -Ability to prevent problems |
| 80% to 89% | A lifetime’s mastery | -Subject Matter Expert Opinion -Ability to detect the possibility of secret information -Ability to theorize new problems |
| 90%+ | The stuff of legend. | -Legendary Opinion -Ability to detect hidden and secret information -Ability to generate solutions for problems that do not exist yet |
CHECKS: SKILL RATINGS AND SPECIALTIES
A further way that a skill check can be guaranteed to be successful is if it involves a skill with a Specialty in an area of that skill. Every skill has Specialties, a highlight or subdivision of a skill to denote a sort of focus or expertise. Specialties are explained in greater detail under SKILLS AND SPECIALTIES.
For example, if a skill check to discern facts about a bomb would require the Engineering skill to have a rating of 80%, but a Legend has Engineering at 20% but with a Specialty in Explosive Ordnance Disposal, that Legend can automatically pass the skill check despite having a much lower skill rating.
CHECKS: BLENDED SKILL RATINGS
If a Legend’s skill rating is not high enough for a skill check to be successful, sometimes a combination of skills can overcome a lack in one.
For example, while conducting the Research activity, a source might require a skill rating in Science with a specialty in Biology at 60% to be understood. However, an alternate way to succeed at the check is possible if the Legend has a Science score of only 40% combined with another relevant skills such as Medicine at 20%.
When in doubt, talk to the Monitor about what your Legend is trying to accomplish or understand.