What to do with Phantom Skills?

[Pierce Inverarity]

According to book 1, p.123, tasks which are not readily associated with a skill can be resolved by adding a phantom skill at a value value of 3 to the characteristic.

To lift a large object into position
Difficult (3D) < Str + 3

Oddly enough, another, very similar task is resolved without a phantom skill on p.124.

To Force Open a Stuck Hatch
Average (2D) < Str

Why add a phantom skill in the first case but not in the second? The rules don't tell us.

My hunch is the answer boils down to "To generate an interesting probability."

For a character with Str 9, the first task would be a bit too hard without phantom skill, and the second would be too easy with a phantom skill.

So, the phantom skills rule seems to be a quick-and-dirty fix to the coarse probability grain that emerges when the target number is based on C only rather than C&S. The problem is not solved but shunted off to the referee.

But what do you tell a player whose character just lifted a crate onto a shelf (using a phantom skill), and now fails his attempt to force open the hatch because you denied him the phantom skill?

Should phantom skills just be ignored?

I'm not even mentioning phantom characteristics, because I will definitely ignore those.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

That's ... weird. In so many ways.
I can see giving a mod to make something easier : 'it's between average and difficult, so 3D and +3 mod" ... except a 3 mod is pretty close to the average of one die, so why not just go 2D at that point?

What I'd tell the player is "you had enough room to get under the crate and whole body lift, but the angle of the hatch is awkward, and you can't get the bonus" .... but that's just rationale, not a truly good answer.

 

[ThornPlutonius]

According to book 1, p.123, tasks which are not readily associated with a skill can be resolved by adding a phantom skill at a value value of 3 to the characteristic.

To lift a large object into position
Difficult (3D) < Str + 3

Oddly enough, another, very similar task is resolved without a phantom skill on p.124.

To Force Open a Stuck Hatch
Average (2D) < Str

Why add a phantom skill in the first case but not in the second? The rules don't tell us.

My hunch is the answer boils down to "To generate an interesting probability."

For a character with Str 9, the first task would be a bit too hard without phantom skill, and the second would be too easy with a phantom skill.

So, the phantom skills rule seems to be a quick-and-dirty fix to the coarse probability grain that emerges when the target number is based on C only rather than C&S. The problem is not solved but shunted off to the referee.

But what do you tell a player whose character just lifted a crate onto a shelf (using a phantom skill), and now fails his attempt to force open the hatch because you denied him the phantom skill?

Should phantom skills just be ignored?

I'm not even mentioning phantom characteristics, because I will definitely ignore those.

I am looking at page 124, Book 1. The example of forcing a hatch open appears to be tied to the image as a caption. I suspect the image with caption is a hold-over from T5.0 and was not edited when T5.1 was finalized. I would go with the text on P. 123 and ignore the example that you note as being problematic.

OK. I just looked at the T5.0 book and find the Skills use in Task Resolution on pp. 132-133. The illustration for the example of forcing a hatch open is different from the one in T5.1, but the task description under the image is the same. The phantom skill discussion looks to be pretty much the same in both editions.

I will stick with my suggestion to go with the main text and ignore the example about opening a hatch in the image caption. Add the +3 "phantom skill" when no related skill exists.

 

[ThornPlutonius]

But you have chosen to ignore the phantom characteristics and (probably) the phantom skill. I got lost in the discrepancy between the two examples. I'd just remove my last post, but it seems we cannot edit our posts in this version of COTI. Bummer.

[Edit] So, it seems the edit feature has a time limit. I can edit this just-posted text, but not that which I posted earlier in the day. Bummer.

 

[RogerD]

There are enough task resolution systems in T5 that I would say it is reasonable to pick any of them that make sense on the fly, roll the dice and move on. The intent behind the default values might be so that you can just think in terms of a consistent difficulty scale and not worry about reducing dice based on lack of impact of stat or skill. If that doesn't help you, pick one of the other systems and go.

 

[Pierce Inverarity]

What other task resolution systems are you talking about?

In T5.10 all tasks are resolved by rolling nD< C(+S)(+Mods).

 

[RogerD]

What other task resolution systems are you talking about?

I don't know any examples where the goal is not to roll nD ≤ target number, but the way the number of dice are decided on and the target numbers vary quite a bit.

Check <Characteristic> (BBB1 p. 48)
Check <Skill> (BBB1 p. 135)
Check Double <Skill> (BBB1 p. 135)
Tasks (BBB1 p. 121)
Personals (BBB1 p. 181) have dice based on the type of interaction - essentially a different difficulty system
Flux is used rather than tasks to resolve QREBS related things.

Many tasks specify alternate ways to determine the number of dice (examples: using range, space range or number of parsecs). When checking characteristics you throw the same number of dice as used in stat generation (BBB1 p.49) Sometimes Flux gets added to the target number (which mathematically could be treated as two extra dice with an adjustment of +7 to the target number).

I feel like the difficulty scale of the tasks in space combat got amped up so that tech level could be baked into the target number directly. That has implications for the This Is Hard rule and for the Spectacular Success/Spectacular Failure rules.

There are also automatic results for some tasks - sensor tasks allow you to do the "quick scan" without mods and the Survey skill gives automatic results (map 1 hex plus one adjacent hex per level of Survey skill) as two examples.

These are just examples - there's certainly a "roll dice for low" theme to how to resolve things, but it feels to me that the classic traveller "make something up" approach is present too.

 

[Pierce Inverarity]

All that is true, but this is not CT but T5.10, the final outcome of 5D6 years of playtesting and revisions.

One wants to cling to the belief that underlying the RAW is something like a single unified task resolution system with minor variations, as opposed to a sequence of arbitrary fixes devised to generate halfway plausible target numbers.

It may be too much to ask. Part of the brilliance of the game is that it covers so many bases, all of which require their own charts and tables...