Skills Checks

A player character must sometimes perform a skill check whenever they want to use a Skill or Combat Skill (Influence is different; see Influence Skill Checks). This is when the player rolls dice to see if they succeeded or failed, and to what degree. All skills checks are pit against a task of varying Difficulty Rating. The higher the skill score, the better the chance of pulling off that particular skill. There are three things one needs to know in order to perform a skills check:

Difficulty - how difficult is the task, on a scale of 1-10 (sometimes the Gamemaster may opt to keep this a secret).
Number of Dice - the skill's parent Trait determines how many dice a player can roll.
What Number is a Success - the skill score determines what the dice must meet or roll under to count as a success.

Number of Dice to Roll

To figure out how many dice to roll, check the skill against the Trait score. That score tells you how many dice to roll. It will be a number between 1 and 10. Player will roll that many d10 dice.

Successes

The skill point for the skill being used indicates what a player must roll under to achieve success. The more difficult the challenge, the more dice must be under the skill point. Every dice that rolls under the skill score is counted as a success. If the successes equal or exceed the task's Difficulty Rating, the attempt is a success.

Luck

If a player has any + bonuses tied to the skill, they can use these to "help" achieve successes on individual or multiple dice. For example, a +1 bonus to a skill can change one die by one increment (changing a 5 to a 6, for example). A +3 bonus would allow a player to change 1 die by three increments, or they can break it up into 1 increment and 2 increments, or 3 individual increments (changing a 4 to a 7, changing a 1 to a 3 and a 7 to an 8, or changing three fives to three sixes, etc.) The same applies if the player wants to spend any Luck Points on the roll.

Increments of Success

Some things, such as Damage, incorporate something called Increment of Success (IoS). This simply means the number of successes compared to the DR of the task. Meeting the DR exact is an IoS of 1. Rolling 5 successes for a DR of 4 gives you an IoS of 2, and so on.

Degrees of Success

A player can also achieve varying "degrees" of success:

Critical Success - the Increment of Success is a 3 or higher. This is a slam dunk, and the skill was executed perfectly!
Basic Success - the Increment of Success is a 1. The desired effect is produced, but nothing spectacular.
Barely Succeeding - the number of success dice does not meet the task's difficulty rating unless bonus points are used.
Disaster - the Increment of Success was a -3 more lower. Disasters have adverse effects.
Flubbed - this happens if a character has a Trait score of 10 and a Skill score of 10. Mathematically, this would make every attempt a success, but if that player rolls 3 or more 10s on the dice, the attempt was flubbed, or fumbled.

Example Skill Rolls

A player character is attempting to pick a lock that has a difficulty of 4. Lockpicking falls under the Dexterity trait. Dice in blue indicate a success (7 or under in accordance with the Lockpicking Skill).

Dexterity	Lockpicking	Dice Rolled	Success	IoS
1	7	task is too difficult	N	n/a
2	7	task is too difficult	N	n/a
3	7	task is too difficult	N	n/a
4	7		N	-1
5	7		Y	1
6	7		Y	1
7	7		Y	2
8	7		N	-1
9	7		Y	2
10	7		Y	3

Swift Edition Rules

If you are using swift edition rules, only 2d10 are rolled for any skills check. To determine the target roll, add the Trait and Skill scores together to get the target roll. Roll 2 d10 dice. If the target is matched or rolled under, it is a success.

Example Rolls

Trait Score	Skill Score	Target Roll	Success	IoS
4	4	8	Y	2
7	5	12	N	-2
6	8	14	Y	4
9	6	15	Y	1