I'm noticing that 3 Skill Dice seems to be the tipping point at which players have a very good chance of doing what they wanted to do.

Has anyone else noticed that? This has already led to some discussion to forego advancing higher than 3 ranks in any skill, at least not until much later. The preferred opinion at the moment is to become more well rounded, as it is cheaper and more economical, and Feat Die + 3 Skill Die + careful usage of Hope Pts is generally enough to reach any normal TN.

That seems to be the accepted wisdom amongst my players.

4 dice and up makes a significant difference when Weary or when you want a good chance to succeed a called shot (for combat skills).

But yeah, for common skills, 3 dice is usually enough unless your counting on extraordinary successes (which can be relevant for certain skills such as Awe, Lore, Travel etc). Also at 3 dice, an "eye of Sauron" is oftentimes a failure. At 4 dice and up, you've got a good chance of avoiding those "eye and failed" situations.

There is a marked advantage to having Rank 3 or more in a skill.. Somewhere in one of my posts here is a statistical analysis that another user posted long ago. It's an image of a spreadsheet showing the resulting chance of success.

Unfortunately I cannot locate the file on my system.

I think the chance of successfully attacking was close to 50% at Rank 3 — like 47.2% — and things got better from there. Note this was a test vs TN 14 IIRC.

I remember that, it was in an armour thread IIRC..

edit: The chart you mention is here (15th post down), but that chart over there is more generic and accounts for the weary condition.

Thank you, that was the image I was referring to. Well, one of them is anyway. The 2nd one to be accurate.

Thanks for searching.