I recently read the entire message archives of the TML, and noticed that there
was a discussion that was never really brought to a satisfactory conclusion
regarding the handling of the JOAT skill. As you may recall, the skill
"allows one free retry at a failed skill roll per level of the skill" or
something like that. A review of the rules convinces me that this is supposed
to be "free" in the sense of "free from needing to make a determination check
to avoid having the difficulty increase" as opposed to "free" in the sense of
"pick up the dice and try again--if you've got JOAT-8 you can roll eight times
and one of them is sure to be a hit".
The distinction that was apparently lost while this discussion was going on was
that failed rolls still took time and still might damage equipment, at least
in my interpretation. As long as you were dealing with safe skills, or
situations that were not time restricted there would be little difference.
Example of the latter: Dr. Bertran Ode is attempting to access a database to
discover who the legendary figure Georgewashington really was:
Formidable, History, Comp, 10 minutes
Since he has JOAT-6, he can try up to six times without checking to see whether
or not the task becomes "Impossible", but each attempt takes 30-180 minutes.
Since Ode is sitting around in the University for two weeks waiting for his
buddies' starship to have annual maintenance work done on it, this won't be
a problem, and the referee might as well let him make his six die rolls without
worrying about time. (Unless he is about to be interrupted by a Vargr corsair
raid or the like...(-: )
Example of the former: Toban Dreer, pilot and owner of the Free Trader "Lucky
Dog" has just had a bomb disable his maneuver drive before achieving orbital
speed on a liftoff from war-torn Timbucktoo. He has JOAT-12, but regrettably
his ballistic trajectory will intersect the the surface of Timbucktoo in seven
minutes if some maneuvering capability is not restored. He quickly looks over
the boards and the sadistic referee informs him that repairing the maneuver
drive looks to be:
Routine, Engineering, Dexterity, 2 minutes
With a minimum performance time of 6 minutes per attempt, Dreer had better
finish the repairs in one try, because his ability to remain determined is
not going to help him much one minute into his second attempt (even assuming
that he was so fortunate as to use the minimum time in the first failed
attempt).
First---is this how people are playing it?
Second--does it make sense this way?
Rob Dean