In my brief solo run-through of “The Olde Island Fortress“, played using the Basic Fantasy game system, I was faced with one of the things about Old-School games that bugs me: competing subsystems to resolve the same question.
While searching for traps with my Fighter and my Thief, the two characters’ ability to detect such with a GM-rolled test:
Roll to Detect Traps, requiring a 1 in 6 for Elias while Goriel can test his Remove Traps thief ability. Rolls 1d6 for Elias, scoring 6; rolls 20% or less for Goriel, scoring 16
Most characters test for traps using a 1d6 roll while the Thief makes a percentile roll against their Remove Traps ability. It’s fiddley and it bugs me – why not just have a single resolution system? Why not just give the Thief a 2-in-3 chance?
Naturally, this leads me to consider also why the Thief…
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