Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[islan]

From what I can gather, before anyone rolls anything, it is determined who it is that is attempting the action and who it is assisting in the action. They then both roll the same skill with the same modifiers and the acting person gets a +1 bonus for every success and Raise the assistant makes.

Now, the problem with that is for the acting person to get any bonus at all, the assistant must at least make a success; but if that's the case, the assistant would have succeeded at the action had they been acting on their own instead of assisting! And if the assistant doesn't make a success anyway, the acting character might as well had performed on their own.

I started thinking about making it so that whoever rolls the highest becomes the "acting" character, with everyone else becoming assistants. But honestly, the only help that would be is in, at most, getting an extra Raise on the attempt (and in most cooperative roll situations, I can only see that as being rarely useful).

So, is my interpretation mistaken? Or does cooperative rolls need to be reworked?

[Cutter XXIII]

I think you're missing a bit. There are times when it's not so useful, but there are also times when cooperation is just about the only way to get things done.

Recently, in my Deadlands game, we had a guy with 3 wounds, and the doctor had 2 wounds as he tried to heal him. The other characters didn't have the Healing skill (so, with d4-2 couldn't do anything by themselves). Only the doctor was qualified to be the "acting character." Under the doctor's direction, they started gathering gauze, boiling water, making the patient comfortable, etc., while making rolls to assist and spending bennies to make sure they got at least a success.

In the end they managed to turn that -5 modifier into a -1, and the patient was healed of all but one wound. Without that cooperation, the failed Healing roll probably would have Incapacitated him.
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Matthew Cutter
Deadlands Big Bug (Brand Manager)
Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.

[mac40k]

The key phrase is time sensitive. Sure, one guy could complete the task on his own, but it might take all day and then some. By cooperating, the time to successfully complete the activity is reduced. It's up to the GM to decide by how much.

[Tavis]

The uses I have found for co-operative rolls are as follows:

1) In situations where either a number of successes are required to achieve the ends desired (four successes needed to make it across the icy lake)

2) In cases where time is of the essence and a raise will cut that time down

3) In cases where a raise will provide increased success (Notice rolls for searching a room, for example)

4) In situations where a Skilled character is aiding an unskilled character to do something (In which case the unskilled character - who would be the leading character in this case would have an additional -2 to the roll, for being unskilled, but the assisting character can help the unskilled one achieve a success ... perhaps where both characters are climbing a cliff)
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[Clint]

[islan]

[darkpaladin45]

How I explain it to my players is that the character that is assisting is only making the roll for the assist, not the actual action. Because of that, the roles have to be defined before the action is taken. This typically plays out in-game as the character with the strongest skill takes the action, and the characters with the weaker skill assist. Yes, there are going to be times when the acting character will fail, but it happens.

If you were going to use your "everyone rolls, and highest takes the action" rule, I would consider adding a penalty of -1 for those assisting that do not succeed on the roll. Otherwise, it could degenerate into every character at the table rolling on the off chance that they get lucky on the dice. You could also limit those being able to assist to only those that have a die in the skill.

Just my two cents.

-Chris
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Pathfinder - Dragonmech (GM)

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[Cutter XXIII]

[Snate56]

I see where he's comming from, though.
He's not talking about how many people you can cram around a doorknob, but the very mechanics of the roll. If I roll a d4-2 and get several aces, then the job's done already and the skilled guy doesn't even have to roll.
And the explanation of being unskilled only works if you can't make unskilled skill rolls, whereas in Savage Worlds, you can.


SteveN
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"We've got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster." <The Shoveller>

[Clint]

[Clint]

[islan]

[Tavis]

[Cutter XXIII]

[ferret]

[Lord Inar]

A compromise (culled from Star Wars) is to make the assist roll a flat TN=4, under the idea that it is easier to successfully take direction to help the act than it is to do the act itself.
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Lord Inar
Sherwood and Gaslight
Rocky Mountain Savages
SharkBytes

[Jordan Peacock]

I've modified Cooperative Rolls a lot for my own games, but I've found the general mechanic to be useful. If the purpose of the skill is to get a simple "4" for success, it doesn't seem to make as much sense. However, a goodly portion of the time, my players are trying to do things above and beyond a "simple" application of their skills, so the objective is not merely to succeed, but to get one or more raises (because it's that "extra benefit" of the raise that they really want).

At times, I will allow a player to help with a skill that's different than the primary, applicable skill. Someone is trying to hastily build a mold to make a physical copy of an artifact for some sort of crazy scheme the heroes dreamt up, and Mr. Eagle-Eyes is using his Notice skill to watch for resin that might be leaking out through the plasticene seal, or whatever. I like to encourage my players to think up ways to support each other, so that if there's a critical task, it doesn't just fall to the one person to make a lucky roll; everyone can feel like he's contributed in some concrete way.

I have sometimes bent the mechanic of the Cooperative Roll to allow for cases where a player has two skills that apply to a given task, and one might supplement the other. I'll let him roll one skill as the primary skill, and roll some supporting skill (for instance, a Knowledge area he hardly gets any use out of otherwise, but is especially relevant to his Repair task) to assist the main roll. It's not "as written," but the basic mechanic is something I can work with.

If it's a case of multiple people trying to push a rock, I try to remind myself not to resort to die rolls all the time to see IF the rock gets pushed, the door gets shoved open, etc. Rather, X people with Strength d6 can push the rock ... and if you've got someone with Strength d10, well, he can do the work of two. I might however have them make Vigor tests afterward to see whether or not they're Fatigued from the effort and in need of a short break to recover (which might not be an option if this action is an immediate prelude to combat).
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[SlasherEpoch]

I rule that cooperative rolls take the time of a single action. Multiple rolls take the time of multiple actions. That's the impetus for my players.
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[Ron Blessing]

[islan]

I'm starting to think I am going to with the houserule that assistants don't roll at all, but give an automatic +1 to the leader, +2 if their Trait is d8+. That would keep from having the Student Besting the Master situation, and certainly works well for the Doctor example, but I also plan to be loose with it. Such as in the case of the Investigation example, I would actually have both characters roll, but give them both a +1 bonus as they help one another.