SFRPG is based on a
d% type system, meaning that all crucial rolls are made on two ten-sided dice, with one of them designated as “1d10x10”. Specifically, when a situation comes up where a character’s failure may affect the outcome of the game, a die roll is required against a certain
failure threshold, also known as a
difficulty class (DC) or
hit difficulty (HD) in combat situations. Skills and attributes may add to the result of the roll. If the final result is higher than the DC, the action succeeds. If not, it fails. The amount by which a roll exceeds the DC is its
degree of success; conversely, the amount by which a roll falls short of the DC is its
degree of failure.
The DC for many actions is often pre-determined, based on how hard it was to accomplish something in the original games. In the original games for example, only a navigator with a skill level of at least 200 could detect fluxes in open space. DC works in a similar way, on a scale from 0 (representing a task anyone could do) to 225 (a task even someone highly trained would find near impossible to do). DC for actions can also be referred to by a difficulty category, which is a range of values on this 225 point DC scale. The categories and thresholds are as follows:
Difficulty Class Thresholds| Extremely Easy (XE): | 0-35 |
| Very Easy (VE): | 35-65 |
| Easy (E): | 65-95 |
| Moderate (M): | 95-135 |
| Difficult (D): | 135-165 |
| Very Difficult (VD): | 165-195 |
| Extremely Difficult (XD): | 195-225 |
| Impossible (I): | 226+ |
Sometimes a player can effectively ignore a DC by rolling exceptionally well (or exceptionally poorly) on the dice. When rolling d% for a Skill Check (
see Chapter 3), certain rolls have what's known as
critical potential. Critical potential awards or punishes die results above or below certain
critical threshholds. High resulting rolls may result in a
critical success, denoting a particularly good outcome. In combat, a critical success is more commonly known as a
critical hit. A player's critical success threshhold equals 99 minus one for every ten points the character has in the given Skill's score; a roll of 99 is always a critical success. Conversely, very low roles may result in
critical failure, known as a
critical miss in combat; critical failures often have very nasty effects. The critical failure threshhold on a roll is 10 minus one for every ten points in the character's given Skill score, and a roll of 00 is always a critical failure. Only certain rolls have critical potential; some have outcomes for just critical success, some for just critical failure, and some have both. A roll that has critical potential will be noted in the rules, along with the effects of critical results. If the player's roll falls within the bounds of a critical threshhold, the critical result occurs, whether or not the player succeeded against the Check's DC or not.
SFRPG commonly uses variants on the standard d% roll. The most common variants are as follows:
- xd10: This indicates a roll of x ten-sided dice is needed, where x is a set number. For example, a roll calling for 3d10 needs three ten-sided dice. The player rolls the indicated number of dice and sums up the result. NOTE: There is a distinction between 2d10 and d%; 2d10 is an xd10 roll. Be careful not to confuse the two.
- xd5: This is similar to an xd10 roll, except that the ten-sided dice are treated as five-sided dice. To achieve this effect, take the result of an individual die, halve it, and round up (for example, a result of 7 becomes a result of 4). Zeroes count as 10 (a final result of 5) in this case.
- xd2: d2 rolls are rare in the game, but sometimes occur. Roll the indicated number of ten-sided dice; treat all odd results as 1, all even results as 2.
For rolls of d% or xd10, unless the situation specifically states otherwise, a result of 0 on a die counts as zero, not 10.
For example, in a 3d10 roll, the die results are 2, 5, and 0. The result of the roll is 7, not 17.
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