What frequency would someone with an Investigation Skill make a roll?

For example, let's take a friendly spymaster with Fellowship 47 and the Inquiry skill trying to find out what the local underworld looks like. It's assigned a difficulty of Challenging (+0), with a base time of 72 hours.

How often can he make an Inquiry roll to try and shorten that 72 hour period?

ChibiTatsu said:

Just the one time. He can roll one investigation skill every 72 hours.

Sister Callidia said:

Incorrect. When you are rolling for Investigation, it is treated as an extended test. As the book states, if you succeed, you deduct 1d10+Characteristic Bonus from the time left to find the info, if you fail you don't deduct anything, if you get 3-4 DoF, you add 1d10 to the time it'll take to find out the info, and if you roll 5+DoF, you get reset to zero total successes and it's harder to find the info you're after this time.

Basically, you keep rolling on it until you either screw up monumentally, or you have got the total time needed to find out the info you required to zero.

MILLANDSON said:

Oh my, it seems I spoke to early here. They surely made the rules for investigating things hard. Which brings us back to the original question and a few of my own now.

How often can you roll and how many hours pass by each roll? Can I get the answer to that Labyrinthine question in 1 minute after tossing the dice a lot of dice? The rules say nothing about that. Can I just roll one time like I was thinking? What happens if I do not have the investigative skills? Do I get my answer when I hit that benchmark searching?

Sister Callidia said:

Basically, it seems as though the dice rolls aren't related to time passing, unless you pass your dice rolls. Essentially, it will always take the base level of time (in the example given by the OP, 72 hours) to find out the information, but can increase if you fail your dice rolls by the required amount. If it was a simple question (only take an hour to find out) then yes, if you succeeded on your dice roll the first time, you would just roll the once, as you would have reduced the time required to zero).

Unless it was a basic skill, rather than an advanced skill (which requires training to use), you would not be able to research for that information, because you have no experience in that realm of knowledge.

And yes, once you hit the benchmark (you reduce the base time to zero), you would get the answer you were after.

I tend not to use the rulebook methods for investigation skills. Long-term investigations, and a few other extended challenges, tend to use the following system.

The GM sets a target number. For a moderate challenge, 15-20 is a good target number. Then, the involved PCs make the appropriate tests, at the difficulty given, taking an amount of time determined by the GM (an hour is typical, but some tests may require more or less). Whether the test passed or failed, the PC gains a number of points equal to the characteristic bonus appropriate to the test taken, with an additional +1 per Degree of Success, -1 for failure, and -1 per Degree of Failure (so a minor fail isn't an absolute tragedy; it's simply only very minor progress).

Once the PCs have accumulated sufficient points to reach the Target Number, the extended test is complete with the desired consequences (information, etc) received.

I've used this for investigations mainly, but things like breaking down doors with brute force also work (use the armour value of the door as the target number, and Strength tests as a Full-Round action to break it down; ruling that any character with a Strength bonus of 1/4 or less of the total armour value of the door cannot affect it, so an SB4 or less creature can't kick down an iron door, but an SB 8+ Space Marine can, and an SB24 Carnifex can tear a hole in a plasteel bunker). It's quite a durable little system, and can be used to cover quite a few different situations. It could even be used in pursuits or opposed situations, where one side starts with an advantage and is trying to reach the target number, while the other is trying to accumulate more points than the side they're opposing before the target number is reached.

That's fairly similar to the extended test rules for World of Darkness, and generally I follow the same style. Set numbers of successes with an amount of time per dice roll always made more sense to me.

MILLANDSON said:

Do I understand correctly that you have to roll again and again until the benchmark hits zero? But in the end it will take you 72 hours to gain the information (using the example of the OP?), unless you have a bad dice roll and add a few hours?

If that is the case then I rather just let my players roll once. For each margin of succes reducing the time by 1d10+Characteristic. This seems to me a much more efficient way to handle things.

Actually, I understand the whole process... EXCEPT the issue of "how frequently can you roll".

Let's say, for example, the answer was "once per unit" (hours in the case of the 72-hour question).

So you'd make the first roll - say, you pass and get 9 on the 1d10+Fellowship roll. You've got 62 hours to go.

The second roll is made an hour later - 7. You've got 54 hours to go.

The third roll is a failure, and adds 4 hours to the time. You've got 58 hours to go.

The fourth roll is a phenomenal success, giving you 14 on the time-subtracted roll. You've got 43 hours to go.

The fifth through eighth roll over the next four hours gives you a total of 38 on the rolls. You've got one hour to go.

The sixth roll is unnecessary; by the time you make it you've gotten it. So the question took six hours to answer.

Alternatively, let's say the answer was "when it seems reasonable to roll". Then you'd roll when you're gathering information at a bar, and then when you sneak up on a departing patron that seems to know something and charm the information out of him, and then when you check out his place of work and chat up the boss... and so forth.

Either way, it's rather more rolls than I'm comfortable with... but the other end, having it take 72 hours minus no more than 14 is... a little long.

This is an old topic, but I've recently run into the same question myself and was hoping someone could answer the question. Can you keep rolling to reduce Investigation time or can you only roll the once?