In RBF, characters have skills which are attributes that symbolize their knowledge and ability with a certain vocation, craft, trade, field of study, or school of magic.
Skilled characters are competent.
They are able to accomplish standard tasks commensurate with their skill level under safe and relaxed conditions, without any roll needed.
Actions which can be done safely without a roll in unpressured time, commensurate with skill level, include:
Operating a vehicle in casual conditions or riding a well-trained animal
Taking an afternoon to carefully search business documents for irregularities
Programming a normal data processing system over the course of a week, given documentation
Sketching an illustration
Roll When It's Interesting
When the potential consequences of both success and failure are interesting, or when conditions are stressed, risky, or pressured, the GM may call for the player to roll dice to make a skill check to see roughly how well that task goes.
The basic concept of a skill roll is:
The player says what they intend to do.
The GM might say this calls for a roll, and explains the difficulty and stakes.
The player rolls 2d8 + skill.
In some cases 3d6, 1d20, or other sized dice may be used.
After comparing the result to the difficulty, the GM improvises and explains what happens.
The result of the roll should change the situation in an interesting way, as much as possible.
A result of "Nothing happens" should be avoided unless it's increasing the tension in a dramatic situation.
Skill Check Procedure
Declare Intent:
One active player declares an intended action with an intended approach to this action. Examples:
"I want to jump off the ground all the way to the moon."
"Officer Jones wants to use her laser cutter to try to open the hatch on the crashed vehicle."
"I want to try to intimidate the club's security guard with my strength."
"Jim wants to try to get the giant squid to calm down so it doesn't bite him."
"I search the edge of the pit."
Clarify Approach:
The GM may ask the player to add more details of exactly how they are approaching the action, in order to help contextualize the potential risks and rewards.
"Are you just trying to jump normally or with telekinesis?"
"How are you intimidiating the guard exactly? Bending or breaking some object, threatening him, shoving him, shouting at him, or something else?
"Are you trying to carefully cut open the door so that it can be repaired later, or just burn through as fast as possible?"
"Are you trying to calm the squid by offering it food, or by hiding yourself or pretending to be a rock, or something else?"
"Are you feeling around the pit with your hands or just looking down?"
Set Stakes and Difficulty:
The GM improvises and declares whether or not a roll is needed for this intended attempt, what that roll can be, what the player is risking, and usually what the target number is. Examples:
"No, you cannot jump to the moon without some ultra-tech ion boots, or max-level telekinesis, or something similar."
"Sure, you can roll Brawl or Athletics to try to intimidate the guard by crushing his hand. Difficulty...14. You're risking drawing a lot of negative attention if this doesn't work smoothly."
"Since you've worked with these tools in your background, the water is shallow and calm, and you're not under pressure right now, no need to roll. You easily and cleanly cut off the hatch with your welding tools, though it drains the battery 50%."
"You are 2000 meters under an ocean of liquid methane, with a damaged diving suit, level two exhaustion, and you want to try to offer a snack to this giant monster? Roll Animals with disadvantage, TN 20, and it's likely you'll be bitten on a failure."
"No need to roll perception if you're willing to risk your sticking your fingers into a dark crevice."
Helping:
The game already assumes that everyone who wants to help the active player does. If you want to aid more directly, then use one of these abilities:
Leadership skill and talents
Expert and Elite Sophist talents
Elite Athletics talents
Roll:
The acting player rolls dice, usually 2d8, and adds their relevant Skill Level and any other modifiers.
If the player does not posess the skill at least level 1, then a -2 penalty modifier is applied to the roll.
Some features may modify a skill check roll in a way other than simply adding to the result.
Some features may allow you to roll a skill check with a different die set. If they do, you can either roll normally (2d8+skill) or the specified dice + skill. These do not stack.
If a feature says to add an advantage die, then you roll 3 dice and take the highest 2. This can stack, i.e., rolling 4 and taking the highest 2, or net with disadvantage.
If a feature says you have a disadvantage die, then you roll 3 dice and take the lowest 2. This can stack, i.e., rolling 4 and taking the lowest 2, or net with advantage.
Common sources of these features include paths, talents, exhaustion, bad weather, particularly effective approaches, divine disfavor, cursed ground, etc.
Result:
Based on the result, and the context, the GM improvises and explains the result along these degrees of success:
The following are the general categories of results on skill checks:
Type
Numeric
Professional Skill
Combat Skill
Arcane Skill
Defense Skill
Critical Success
6+ over TN, or, max roll.
Achievement with an additional feasible effect of player's choice.
Player's choice: double damage or an additional feasible effect.
Player's choice of doubling one aspect of the spell.
You take no damage (attack) or minimum damage (hazard).
Success
Result => TN
Reasonable achievement.
Hit: Deal damage, add on-hit effects
Spell behaves as described.
Dodge halves damage, Med. halves damage and takes it to EP, Res. doubles armor.
Fail
Result < TN
You cannot accomplish this in this context.
Miss, no damage. Hit an object nearby.
Partial miscast, GM rolls 1d6 or improvises.
You take standard damage from the enemy, reduced by armor if appropriate.
Critical Failure
-6 below TN, or minimum roll value
This skill cannot be used to solve this problem, ever. Roll 1d4 for penalty by skill.
Complete miss. Roll 1d4 for penalty by skill.
Arcane catastrophe, GM rolls 1d4 or improvises.
You take maximum damage, ignoring armor, and GM's choice of: double damage, break armor, shove, stun, etc
Examples:
"You rolled a 13 athletics...Ok, you're able to jump, grab the edge of the roof, and climb up."
"Wow! You rolled a crit! The guy yelps in pain and jumps back, dropping his ID card on the floor at your feet. The other patrons laugh at him--apparently they like your style."
"It's not easy to use a welding torch underwater during a hurricane. You cut halfway through the door over 30 minutes but your battery dies. You guys will have to try something else to get this door open."
"With merely a 10 on your animals roll, this isn't looking good. The squid is rapidly approaching, and you have a terrible headache. You think the squid might be distracted if you threw a signal flare, but it might cause an implosion if you do. Do you want to try it, or simply run away?"
"You grope around beneath the stone rim of the pit. Your fingers touch something slimy in the darkness, then something brittle like a dead insect, but nearby you think you feel a switch."
7. But remember, you are a mere mortal among perilous cosmic forces.
Despite all this, remember that circumstances are unpredictable and unknowable. Special circumstances could cause changes in difficulty, problems even on a high success, or simply rolling a skill might not be an option when dealing with psychic storms, angry gods, or bleeding gashes in space-time.
Below are common skill Target Numbers (TNs) for standard difficulty levels. Principles to note:
A range of difficulties exist to support a world where players can go from ordinary human to minor heroic skills, while still maintaining numeric space for terror.
The difficulties for a given mission's main tasks should be chosen generally such that there is a good chance for some success and many interesting costs and failures.
For this reason, when unsure, lean high (14+) on your main task difficulties as you can always allow some minor progress at a cost, a choice of advances/costs, or alternative routes to the goal, when a low result is rolled.
The 10-13 range is generally challenging only for people who are not focused in a certain skill.
The 14-16 range of difficulty is a good region for challenging players who are focused in that skill.
Difficulties 16+ are risky even for advanced and focused players.
Target Number (TN):
Description
Automatic
No roll is required for skilled players to perform basic tasks: Driving slowly down an empty street, finding public service information, asking for extra pillows at a hotel.
10
Tasks beneath a professional: distracting a lazy policeman, stabbing a goblin or rabid dog, climbing an icy snowbank, tying up a unintelligent prisoner.
12
Basic professional assignments: Negotiating a discount on a purchase, repairing a damaged machine, fighting pirates, climbing down a short rock cliff.
14
Advanced projects: Diving in a shallow sea cave, embedding an arcane gem into armor, negotiating a mining contract, fighting an ogre or security robot.
16
Expert Feats: daring vehicle jumps, crafting a sword from demon bones, out-shooting an assault robot, leaping across rooftops.
18
Expert Ambitions: Fighting a dragon, tricking a crime lord to confess, sneaking into an emperor's palace, deciphering an alien computer system.
20
Cosmic Peril: Dealing with extradimensional horrors, magically turning back time, navigating a hyperspace storm, calming an angry god.
Impossible
Don't roll to attempt impossible tasks. Examples include magic for which you are unskilled, or actions for which you cannot meet the target number; these are not possible even on a maximum roll.
Casting magic and psionic spells is similar to a normal skill check, but with the following differences:
Spells can only be attempted by people with arcane skills.
Only those with "the gift" and years of formal arcane training may attempt spells.
In the Blue Flame sector, a small minority of people posess "the gift" and may be aware or unaware of it. They can be identified with use of the Metaphysics skill.
People who have "the gift" but are not formally trained risk permanent brain damage or violent extradimensional posession by attempting to cast.
The Mage path represents both The Gift AND years of formal training. Core and Advanced mages mitigate dangerous casting outcomes to a more reasonable level (Specifically, when casting low-level spells.).
You are able to attempt all spells listed for the level of skill you posess and below.
Casting is always dangerous and rolls cannot be skipped even if the situation is calm.
Level 4, 5, and 6 spells are increasingly exponentially dangerous. High level spells are fair game for unexpectedly punishing costs or unintended consequences even on a success roll.
Professional and combat skills have many ways to improve the odds of a roll, but these benefits are much less common for spells.
This is because magic originates in other dimensions that mortals can never fully understand.
Some medium and all heavy armor is disadvantageous to spellcasting.
When you have a fail or crit-fail in casting a spell, the situation is changed, even for seemingly mild magic.
Check the arcane skill description for the typical 1d4 outcomes.
Costs might twist the spell's effect, target or cost, disable casting for a time, drain your health, make future spells more difficult, alert enemies magically, or more.
On a critical failure, the spell may turn against you, drain, poison or proliferate the environment, cause your wand to explode, become useless for a day, cause you to bleed profusely, temporarily rupture dimensions, or far worse.
Countless different complications are possible, and the play-group should try to always keep it unique and interesting, this keeps magic feeling mysterious. Check the table below for more ideas.
To cast, a caster must first spend Energy Points (EP) commensurate to the spell's level, before knowing the outcome.
Check the Mage paths for how to calculate your maximum EP.
All casters can regenerate Energy Points at a base rate of 1 + Meditation skill per 4 hours of meditation or rest.
Particularly successful or unsuccessful castings may provide Energy Point discounts or surcharges.
If you have no EP, then you can spend your HP as EP, but at a 4x premium -- for example, casting a level 2 spell would cost 8 HP.
There may be other ways to refresh Energy Points as well, notably via mana potions, or making pacts with powerful spirits. Explore and discover.
Casting magic requires a visible gesture.
The sign of casting is a glowing flash of your eyes with the color of your aura, and the extension of your palm, staff or wand towards the target. This can't be done while you are restrained.
Some ongoing spells require maintenance of concentration.
The typical caster has a maximum concentration of 1.
If subjected to any distraction during concentration, a binary Meditation check must be rolled immediately vs. the threat's TN.
If the check is failed by any amount, all active concentrations are dropped immediately.
The caster must be conscious to maintain concentration.
Concentration may also be occupied by non-magical activities such as computer programming, complex scientific mathematics, vehicle piloting, intense athletics, etc
You can end concentration with no action cost, but to do so risk-free may require more care.
Rituals
Ritual means that the caster chooses to invest significant time as well as some combination of physical movements and spoken words, and potentially other valuable components, in the casting of one spell.
All spells can be cast as rituals, but some spells have a minimum ritual requirement.
Rituals require a spacious, clean, quiet and safe workspace, and your full actions and concentration. If disrupted, a ritual will automatically fail in most cases.
The success chance of all spells, shown below, may sometimes be improved with inclusion performance of art or music, sacrifices of high value, promises to or favors from spirits, gods or demons, and other factors in the ritual.
Arcane Spell Levels
Energy Point Cost
Casting Target Number
Chance for success with +X
Chance for success with +8
1
1
10
+1: 56%
+8: 100%
2
2
12
+2: 44%
+8: 95%
3
3
14
+3: 33%
+8: 84%
4
4
16
+4: 23%
+8: 67%
5
5
18
+5: 16%
+8: 44%
6
6
20
+6: 9%
+8: 23%
Like the rest of the system, hacking in RBF is handled in a simple and low-power way, with improvisation used for finer details.
To hack a system, you must do the following:
Find a local sub-network terminal.
Typically, the following systems are divided into separate networks, which will need to be hacked separately and locally:
Security // Maintenance // Engineering // Robots // Operations // Personnel // Life Support // Central AI // Database etc.
You must find a local terminal, ON THE SITE of your goal; in the future, electronic security protocols are highly developed and easily shut down most cross-internet cracking attempts.
The purpose of this is to ensure that an adventure and journey actually takes place instead of leaving the player character in bed all day.
Log in.
This usually requires credentials, an access card, or a 20-minute crack attempt with a hard-wired or hot-wired connection vs the system TN.
As an example, to open a certain locked auto-door, you could steal an officer access card, hack the central security processor, steal a worker access card and reprogram it, or hot-wire your rig to the door lock with Crafting and try to crack that.
Some systems may have layers of access. For example, you may have the dictator's control room passcode but there may be a separate override key-code for the automated killbots or missile silo launch codes.
If your attempt fails, you may get feedback damage, your equipment fried, your data lost, raise the alarm level, hard-lock the terminal, raise all TNs for this area, or trigger traps or turrets.
Use normal system functions. With unfettered access to a system, you can perform normal functions at this point, with a TN of 0-20 based on the simplicity of the interface.
For example, if you have full access to the maintenance system, and it is simple to use, you could shut off the lights or redirect ventilation in the officers' room with one click - no skill required.
But if you wanted to reprogam the replicators to make bullets instead of candy bars, that would require a hack.
Some actions with unlocked computers may use other skills: social skills for chats, investigate for obscure data, crafting for CAD/CAM and fabricators, etc
Adventurers and criminals often want to break in to secure areas; for this reason the central security computer is usually well defended. Once down, the enemy cannot confidently rely on patrol bots but may still have a few emergency backup auto-defense systems that are self-powered.
If you intend to destroy or alter the system:
Prepare to make a Computers check. Declare the intent of your hack, commit to spending an hour or more of in-game time to work on it, and roll Computers skill vs the system TN.
Destroying or altering a system might include actions such as:
Completely shutting down a self-checking security network
Corrupting or un-braking an AI persona core
Reprogramming an automated factory's work order flow system from one faction to another
Inserting a virus that fries all data in an office building
System TNs vary from 10-20 from obsolete models to corporate security to self-checking divine AIs.
Modifiers can be applied to your roll:
Trying to complete the job faster increases TN significantly.
Earthquakes, bombardment, or other distractions increase TN significantly and may prompt meditation checks to stay focused.
Trying to hack via a remote controlled drone increases TN due to packet loss and interference.
Using powerful virus software can reduce your TN but is generally a one-time consumable use as adaptive systems learn from it.
Similar to other skills, the effect or magnitude of your success or failure will determine the consequences.
High successes allow a greater effect, a longer time before system auto-reset, etc.
Near misses allow an extremely short time window for the hack or allow it but raise the alarm level (i.e., from yellow to orange alert).
Failures may give you feedback damage, fry your equipment, raise a high alert, lock out your terminal, raise all TNs for the area, or trigger more traps and turrets to activate.
Like the rest of the system, crafting & science in RBF is handled in a simple and low-power way, leaning on improvisation.
The three main crafting actions are to build, repair, or modify items. In all cases, your skill check result will affect how fast and/or how well you produce results.
Similar to spells and hacking, the greater your ambition (higher TN), the greater risk you have on a subpar roll. Near-miss rolls may give you a choice of costs or a success with a complication.
Generally you will only roll when crafting/brewing in a rush or on a very risky project. Instead of rolling, you can commit to take extra time and/or ingredients to ensure a success without a roll that is commensurate to your skill level.
Keep in mind that both crafting and brewing require the necessary ingredients, tools, and workspace.
Electricity, engines and gun technology is not learned via this skill, but is learned via in-game events, if at all. The GM may ban those things from a setting, but all settings should include drinkable/injectable potions and throwable bombs. For example:
Fantasy settings generally do not allow guns, electric power plants or combustion engines to preserve a theme and feel, but may include alchemical explosives.
Modern or Hard sci-fi settings allow those things but do not allow faster-than-light (FTL) engines, to preserve a realistic technology feel, while soft sci-fi usually allows FTL.
Settings that bridge genres (sci-fantasy, or hard sci-fi into soft sci-fi) will allow players to craft those things only once they acquire blueprints for them.
Item Modifications: Each piece of gear can have a maximum of 1 modification upon it, which gives +1 to 1 statistic. For example, you can inset a demon skull into a sword to give it +1 accuracy or +1 life steal. Or, you could add a filtration system to a starship FTL drive to reduce fuel consumption per jump by 1.
The ultimate success of all crafting attempts always depends upon four factors:
Anti-toxin drugs, disinfectant, soap, distillation of flammable oil or alcohol
10
1 hour
2
Crossbows, bolts or pistol bullets, throwing knives/axes, chain or ceramic insert armor, simple electronics such as timers and alarms, dinghies, simple weapon +1 damage or accuracy modifications
1d4 healing and mana drugs, small acid or fire bombs, smoke and napalm bombs
12
3 hours
3
Large-clip crossbows, ballistas, handguns, rifle and sniper bullets, extraordinary swords, unpowered carts, small sailboats, weapon effect modifications
1d8 healing and mana drugs, medium acid or fire or freeze bombs, small batteries, cures for paralysis, blindness, disease, etc
14
6 hours
4
Long guns, heavy weapon ammunition, elemental weapon modifications, small powered ground vehicles, hang-gliders
3d4 healing and mana drugs, large acid/fire/freeze/EMP bombs, power cells, minor temporary mutagens
16
12 hours
5
Magical runic swords and bows, heavy cannons, all possible weapon modifications (GM's discretion), construct all ground vehicles, air/water/space vehicle repairs
4d4 healing and mana drugs, large aerial bombs of any type with city-block explosions, major temporary mutagens
18
1 week
6
Legendary weapons, special ammunition, construct any vehicle, experimental magi-tech
Healing and mana elixirs, weapons of mass destruction, permanent mutagens, experimental mad science that is effectively arcane