What is Mythras? - How the skills work

[@RikThunder33]

I am heads over heels in love with this system and I've not even tried it yet! So much reading...and it's pretty much all I've been looking for.

[@inwils]

That's great - it really is a fantastic system and so many different settings available. Don't forget there is the monthly podcast - Mythras Matters, and the discord if you want more information. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you for your comment - all the best!

[@LawrenceWhitaker]

An excellent summation of how the skills work, Inwils. You've done a very good job of explaining the mechanics and some of their nuances. Great job!

[@inwils]

Thanks so much - looking forward to making a lot more :)

[@tavinho443]

Awesome job

[@inwils]

Thank you 😁😁

[@nrais76]

I'm finding these really useful, thank you very much. I think I'm picking this up. I'm comparing to Call of Cthulhu 5th, the recent big yellow Basic Roleplaying book, and OpenQuest second edtion and refreshed edition.

[@inwils]

Glad I could help! - Remember there is also a monthly podcast which I do all about Mythras - www.inwils.co.uk/MythrasMatters

[@jamesmks]

How do you think this style does vs Call of Cthulhus normal/hard/extreme succeses and advantage/disadvantage dice? This seems like a lot of math on the fly

[@inwils]

Hey James, yes I agree there is more maths on the go. But, there is a similar method given in the CRB plus we play on @roll20 so the character sheet there does all the maths for us :) Think there is a similar sheet on Foundry. I know the experts in the game can do it on the fly.

[@dracopticon7788]

It's a good summation alright, you are pedagogic in your explanations! Just one thing I find confusing: what is the difference between "always succeeding" when rolling between 01-05 within your skill and "succeeding" when rolling equal to or under your skill? Isn't both instances just succeding, why point out a difference between them when they both succeed? Or do you mean that circumstancial modifiers can play a role in the "rolling equal or under" instance and not in the "01-05" instance and therefore there's a difference?

[@inwils]

Thank you for taking the time to reply - really appreciate it. A roll of 01-05 will always succeed despite anything else rather this be situational modifiers or skills modifiers from the other person's combat skill. I think it is there so that there is always hope or a chance :) Of course, the GM would have final say on this :) Hope this helps with your confusion.

[@dracopticon7788]

@@inwils Thanks for your reply! OK so because of the situational modifiers the chance for "success" (or fail) is always up for interpretation within the 06-95 range. But within the 01-05 range one doesn't take situational modifiers into consideration. That is what I guess you mean. Or?

[@inwils]

@@dracopticon7788 With skills there would be an overall difficulty grade - e.g. Standard, Hard, formidable. However - quoting from the CRB p37 - "There are certain special cases concerning success and failure that should be noted. Any roll of 01-05 is always a success and any roll of 96-00 is always a failure, irrespective of how high the skill value is - hope this clarifies things for you. :)

[@RudeAlert]

hhmmm, I have to say I'm not a fan of the difficulty modifiers being fractional instead of a set percentage. The side-effect of that approach is that on a hard roll (1/3 penalty), a character with a 30% Skill rating is only penalized by 10%, whereas a character with a 60% Skill rating is penalized by 20%, and a character with a 90% Skill rating is penalized by a whopping 30%! So, the more skilled a character is, the greater the effective penalty, which is kind of ass-backwards.

[@inwils]

Thank you for your comment - appreciate you taking the time to post. One of the best things about Mythras is the ability to take what you like and change or discard what you don't. As Loz is always saying, make Mythras, your Mythras :)

[@RudeAlert]

@@inwils So it wouldn't cause any major headaches to just replace the fractional modifiers with a set of static predetermined percentage?

[@inwils]

@@RudeAlert Thanks for your reply. If I am changing anything in the CRB for my campaign, I always check with my players first and then agree a period of 'assessment' with a feedback session at the end of it. I have found that this is a brilliant way forward with any adaptations I wish to make :) Hope this helps :)

[@davidsmart41]

The way I look at it is the fractional difficulty modifiersare for indicating that the specific character considers the task more difficult at that character's skill level. So the difficulty percentage is proportionate to the character's skill level. A task that is "Hard" for a character with a 20% skill level would have the same penalty *proportionate to* his/her skill that a character with a 70% skill level would have.

[@shishkabobby]

I'll argue that is a feature, not a bug. The rules as written do give a set of flat skill percentages. (Simplified Dificulty Grades, p 38) If you give a flat -20%, then you will find that lower skill players (which is most players for most skills they are not optimzied to do) will essentially have a 0% chance of success. (sum to two attributes as a percent is about 20%) At that point, you are counting on 0-5% always succeed, not on your skills. Even on a hard task, your 1/3 penalty gives you 2/3 of your skill award. I do understand your complaint - training should be helpful for the hard skills, and the rules as written basically mean that hard skills will have a significant challenge, since traing above 100% becomes more difficult. I'll further argue that if you want realism, a game should track the odds of success, not the proability of success. If you have a 20% chance of success, the odds are 1:4. If a hard task has a pentalty of 1:2, you have a net odds of 1:8, or about 11%. If you have a high skill, the odds might be 4:1 for success for a standard task. The odds for the hard task still gets the same 1:2 penalty, so the odds for that become 2:1, or about 67%. This quickly becomes 'web app' or 'spreadsheet' territory for calculations of the percent of success. The calculations are not hard, but gaming should not resemble middle school math class) There are very strong statistucal arguements using Bayesian methods that this is how skills should be modeled, but making that practical would take some effort to rewite rules as written.

[@melkorthe3rd]

Not doing this to be critical, more of just informing, the iqauri(the bird people) are able to choose mystics professional skill from their culture. How ever they cant choose the mystic career based upon their culture.

[@inwils]

+melkorthe3rd thanks for letting me know. We have a human character campaign so haven’t gone any further than the core rules. Plenty of room to develop though. Thanks for taking the time to comment. Appreciate it.

[@BladesandBlasters]

@@inwils Yeah, some source books allow magical skills as cultural skills. For instances, Shores of Korantia allows everyone to take "Rites", which is the renamed version of Folk Magic.