Dice Rolls and Tests
In the Rogue Trader video game, you will find yourself faced with many challenges that you must overcome with your Lord Captain and their retinue of allies. Each one will put to test your militant, political and economic skills. However, you cannot attempt tests without knowing how tests are made. Thus it is important to know the method by which success, failure and difficulty are measured.
The Rogue Trader video game employs a d100 dice system with the threshold for success being gauged by the value of a given Attribute or Skill. Rather than a d20 system where you are looking to roll high enough to meet or beat a given difficulty class, a d100 system aims to roll at or lower than a given value. For example, if you have a Strength ability score of 45 and need to make a Strength test, then you will only pass if you roll a 45 or lower. These values can be modified by negatives or positives based on the difficulty of the roll, said bonuses and penalties ranging from +60 all the way to -60.
In order to do this, the game simulates a d100 roll and factors in all the modifiers that would be in play. For most instances, this means whoever has the higher chance of succeeding, if in a party, will be the one made to make the test. But if you are alone, then you will be the one to make the tests.
Characteristic tests, such as shooting a gun or parrying a blow, are not the only tests you will be making throughout the game, however. Indeed, it is skill tests which will encompass the mass majority of important rolls. And in order to simulate these, the game relies upon a more intricate method of determining skill success/failure likelihood.
Skill Tests
Your character is about to make a Tech-Use skill test. In dialogue and during exploration, you will often make various skill tests, and their result might determine how successful your character's efforts are, make hidden dialogue options appear, or reveal new information.
The success of this test is determined by rolling a 100-sided die.
Each skill test has a difficulty of up to 100 (including negative values). To succeed, you must roll a value less than the sum of both the stated difficulty and the value of the skill used for the test.
For example, you are attempting a test with difficulty of −10.
Your character's Tech-Use skill score is 40.
40 − 10 = 30
Therefore, to succeed on the Tech-Use skill test, you must roll a 30 or less. Any result above 30 will mean failure. Note that difficulty is calculated from greater to lower values. The greater the difficulty value, the easier it is to pass the test (it is easier to succeed on a difficulty 40 test than on a difficulty 10 test).
The higher a character's skill score, the easier it is for them to succeed on tests. Skill scores depend on the character's respective characteristic scores, skill advancements on level ups, and any bonuses the character's equipment might offer.
To succeed on various tests during gameplay, develop different skills for your character and their companions!
