Skill Test Pig-Piles

[Glorelendil]

Sometimes, players have to work together.

For example, a Woodman with a healing of 3 and my Noldor with a healing of 2 are trying to cure the effects of a Nazgul's black breath. Without the Noldor, the Woodman can't even roll, as the Noldor has to fight the infection on the spiritual plane with his fea. With the Noldor engaging the spiritual part of the infection, the Woodman's free to fight the physical effects, and together they save the victim.

The question is how to design the mechanics such that there's an incentive to collaborate that is not about:
- Defeating the purpose of TNs and dice rolls by making it too easy.
- AP-whoring

I like your example, because ideally you want to create an incentive to tell a story.

One option, suggested about, is to tie it to traits: if you can invoke a trait to describe how you help, you get to roll. But we still need mechanics to determine what that roll means.

And maybe a viable system needs to address both parallel (cooperative) and serial ("he failed so I'll try") situations. Or two different systems. I've been thinking of those two situations as essentially similar, but maybe they need different mechanics.

For cooperative systems I would ideally like everybody participating to roll at once, perhaps with the possibility that an Eye of Sauron (or other bad roll) screws up the whole thing. If it's supposed to be cooperative...if your character is sticking his nose in things...then it doesn't make sense to wait to see if the guy with the highest skill succeeds before you roll.

[Angelalex242]

Well, my Noldor did have 'Enemy of Sauron' and 'Elven Lore.' For features. Enemy of Sauron, the special Feature of the Noldor, is I suppose the trait to be invoked to go in against the Black Breath like I did. Although I was more thinking about 'against the Unseen' at the time.