Skill Roll Lowdown

Burn Bryte Skill Rolls – what, when and how?

Burn Bryte is Roll 20’s proprietary Role Play Game for their virtual tabletop system. It came out fairly recently and has gained a large following in a short time. Reasons for this are plentiful but perhaps one of the main ones is the way that skill rolls work. How this system operates has been covered by many an article/blog/vlog/stream and on the whole is very intuitive. However, it does seem to catch some seasoned role players out as it is fairly (being diplomatic and conservative in the choice of the word fairly) different from a lot of popular role play systems. Especially those based on a d20/d100 skill roll mechanic, don’t get me wrong, I love and grew up on D&D, RuneQuest, Traveller and Bushido but, for me, Burn Bryte has bought the ‘buzz’ back into running RPGs. 

WHAT 

Skill rolls in Burn Bryte are done when a character or npc need to do something that isn’t straight forward (out the characters comfort zone or the old ‘opposed’ roll situation) or so easy that the chance of it going wrong is insignificant. Which skill (from the eighteen available) the character rolls is not prescriptive in Burn Bryte. Basically, if the player can give a narrative reason as to how they can use a particular skill and it seems reasonable to the GM then they should be able to use that skill. Nevertheless, this is where the first few issues creep in for new players and GMs. 

Firstly, gone is the, “You walk into the city park square bustling with different species going about their business, the playful spray from the fountain wafts onto your body and the smell of fresh coffee from the stall in the corner drifts across the square… all of you make a perception check.”

Obviously, the GM will still describe the setting but it is up to the players to say what they are doing to scope the area out, if they do not say they are doing anything the GM may well not prompt them (I have found that new players need a bit of a, “what are you doing to scope the meeting place to make sure it is secure” to begin with as they will probably be waiting to be told what to roll). Let’s say they are trying to figure out if anyone has one of the PCs under surveillance as they meet an important NPC in the square. Traditionally this would be sorted out by the perception check, make the roll and you spot the shady character pretending to watch the ‘vid-slab’ on one of the benches, fail and you fail to spot them. In Burn Bryte the characters may choose widely differing approaches. The Kith’uk uses his ranged skill (his knowledge of and use of ranged weapons) to see if any of the npc are positioned in a prime sniper spot for the meeting place or shows any signs of ‘packing’ ranged weapons. Meanwhile the Ulran character is using his computer skills to use his modified ‘slab’ to scan the area looking for signatures that may come from electronic surveillance or jamming devices.  Dispersing into a swarm of bugs the Ror’nan actually uses their perception skill to flitter around to spot any suspicious behaviour. Lastly the Ino character uses their disguise badge to change into a park site keeper uniform and uses stealth to blend in and get close to people, snooping on what they are doing. 

Issuing a complexity rating for each person the GM lets all the characters roll, they all narrated their actions and intentions very well. If they pass they will spot the offending shady character and may well find out varying bits of info. Now, this complexity rating may well be different for the different characters. Trying to scan and hack into a very, secure system would be a higher complexity than pretending to be a park site manager and sneaking around the back of the bench to see what the very focussed ulran on the bench is doing. Without going into too much detail this complexity rating is taken from the dice score of the NPC in the appropriate skill set (physical, mental or social) which is found on their character sheet. 

I have seen however that there is a tendency for new players (who take to heart that there is no ‘fixed skill’ to use) and GMs (who take to heart that the players can use any skill they like) to let any roll go – “Oh I will use Skullduggery to shoot the Ino guard!” and off they go rolling the number of dice. This then turns into nova point hunting as the players systematically go through the die types, not even really thinking about what skill they are using – just the die type. In a way this is an easy fix, the GM just has to ask, “How?’ and get the player to narrate what it looks like to use that skill. Using this method, I have found I rarely have to so ‘no’ to using a skill, the player themselves talk themselves out of being able to use it. However, a good strategy for a new GM is to not accept a roll without a good narrative reason right from the start of the campaign. Don’t be draconian about it but don’t let them get away with completely outrageous things either. 

Deciding on a skill complexity rating in open play can be subjective but the rules give you a handy baseline, some equipment (or lack of) will alter the complexity as will terrain and conditions etc. But on the whole you are going to be throwing Complexity 2 and 3 at the characters more often than not in open play. 

I often give my characters a choice of complexity to roll against with differing risks and rewards. For instance, let us say the PC is hacking into the system of their adversary for the session. A complexity 2 roll may give them basic info but not get to the juicy stuff, but failure would just be getting shut out, hitting a firewall…. A complexity 5 roll might give them all the info they need to screw the adversary over, but failure would send a tracer program back, the PC should expect something bad to arrive very soon. 

The last thing to mull over is failure, what happens when the roll fails? Well, the GM has a couple of choices here, either they say what happens (or ask for suggestions from the players even) – handy when it is either obvious what would happen or when the GM doesn’t want to put a big spanner in the works. Something simple or something short lasting is ideal. Giving minor conditions is great for failures, physical, social or mental conditions are easy to think of normally. They last a short while, are easy to mark on the character sheet and the PC can actively work them off. The other choice is the Failure Prompt Table which is random but generic enough to normally be easy to work into the narrative. One of the best things GM wise about the table is that whatever comes up is NOT your fault   But make sure that something BAD does happen as a consequence of failure otherwise you will get players wanting to roll a skill check for incidental stuff just to get a check on the die as they nova point hunt.

WHEN & HOW

Skill rolls happen in two very different sections of the game play. The first is in normal or open play when the character wants to do something that isn’t something that would happen without risk. An easy to see example is putting a key card into a lock to trigger the lock. Doing so as entering one’s room with nothing going on will not need a skill roll. Entering the key into the lock while the room is filling with water (already over a comfy height) while a flesh-eating reptile bears down on one is probably going to be a complexity 3 or 4 roll…

 

Secondly is the so-called combat phase (which may or may not involve actual combat) which is what happens when the PCs get into a confrontational situation. For the traditional RPGers reading this – think of it as the action after the ‘roll initiative’ call! Complexity in this section is set by a number of factors – the main one being how many actions the character has done. It’s a sliding scale, the first action is Complexity 2 and if it doesn’t fail the PC can then try another action at Complexity 3 and so on. Complexity 5 rolls are pushing it, but I have seen a successful Complexity 8 roll (there were a lot of advantages flying around). Again, this is not the place to go into nitty gritty detail but the main thing to remember is just as the PC skills and conditions can have an effect on the rolled complexity (remembering that a C3 roll for instance still means the next action is at C4 even though the actual C3 roll was reduced to only having to roll 2d) the GM can add transient complexity if they want. For instance, hitting an adversary who is practically all behind hard cover with a C2 roll may in some cases be made into a C3 roll by the GM. I use this rarely but it does make sense occasionally. 

PCs are often going to get rerolls from advantages in the combat phases and it is fun to see them push it, in fact as a GM you can encourage them to push it. After all failures are the GMs tool in Burn Bryte to throw spanners in the works. In combat the GM gets another tool to use – Collapse Points. Starting with 2 you can opt to add one with a failure roll from the PCs. Use them or lose them, have fun with them to add levels of threat to the PCs. They thought it was all going well until just before the last PC goes you add two inbound attacks or trigger a special ability. 

Skill rolls in the combat round are used to achieve one of three things for the PCs:

1/ Attack to damage the adversary.

 These rolls can be from any skill the player can narrate but the end result is that they take the health level of the target down if they succeed. Remember Health Levels are holistic health not just physical health. An adversary can be put out of action by reducing them to a quivering wreck of insecurity and not just blasted away. Again, onus is on the narrative to explain the skill used to damage by the PC. The player should expect, and hopefully pre-empt, to be asked, “What does that look like?”. I love teaching writing to kids at my school and a powerful tool is to get them to ‘show not tell’ with their narrative – the same holds true in Burn Bryte. 

2/ An active defence roll 

This is a skill roll to negate one incoming attack to either the PC rolling or to their ally.  Common misinterpretations include that you can combine an attack and defence result into one skill roll. You can roll away and shoot at an attacker, but it is either going to put them off their attack (negate one attack) or harm them, not both. It often takes a bit of reinforcing for a player to realise that, you can shoot at someone and succeed but it is either going to reduce their health or negate one attack (not both, unless obviously reducing their health puts them at 0 and out the picture). Nor can one roll negate all the attacks incoming. It is easy for the PC to say that they dive behind the boulder and when they make the skill check try and argue that non of the shots can now hit them. From playing other games this may even seem logical, so the GM needs to explain that the action is all simultaneous, they got hit by a shot while diving behind the rock which then stopped the second hit etc. With rerolls it is often pretty easy to negate 2 or 3 attacks so as a GM do not worry about piling them onto a character – remember the other PCs can assist as well by rolling active defence rolls when it is their turn. 

3/ Gain an advantage for the group. 

Advantages are huge for the group. To start with the PCs will probably not appreciate how strong having advantages in the bank is. Rerolls are way more powerful than they appear to be. Also, some skills have to be triggered by spending advantages. Doing a skill roll to create an advantage can take many, many forms. I have encountered PCs standing on a bar and shouting out to create a diversion (the reroll from the advantage they earnt being used to enable the other PC to sneak around the back), using computers to interfere with the guidance systems of enemy ships (enabling the pilot to reroll an active defence roll to negate an incoming hit on the ship), giving a rousing speech over the communicators etc etc. Canny groups will let the PCs who are unlikely to get into more serious combat go first and bank a few advantages for the group. 

All the above factors mean that Burn Bryte feels to be (and I suspect is) more reliant on team co-operation, the PCs are encouraged to strategize their turn, hits are way more serious in Burn Bryte – even a tough PC has only around 3 health and 1 or 2 shields, adversaries have between 1 and 3 normally with ‘boss’ characters having 4 or 5. Combat is not going to be a slow grind down from 2oo odd hit points which means that the whole group has enough time to narrate the action in a fun and collaborative way. 

Skill rolls are the heart and soul of Burn Bryte and promote a vivid and collaborative narrative which to me is the most important part of any RPG… For me, on the whole, the only bad thing about the system is that it is making other games harder to run without inadvertently ‘Burn Bryting’ it up!