I have been playing a few weeks now and admit that I do not have a copy of the book, I am running on knowledge from previous games.

The core question is how are opposed checks rolled? My example is stealth Versus Perception. Lets say we have 2 characters with 3 cunning and 3 agility for simplicity sake, without any skills.

one is hiding from the other and will roll 3 green die (his agility) versus the unaware opponents 3 purple die (his cunning). Because there are more sucesses on a green die than failures on a purple die, the one hiding is more likeley to remain hidden than to be seen. However if the other player on his turn decides to activley search for people he would be rolling his 3 green cunning versus the 3 purple of the opposed stealth. Since green die have more sucesses than purple have failures, he would be more likeley to find the person hiding than not.

With the above example it seems that the sucess and or failure of the task are based more on who is performing the action than the relevant skill sets of those involved.

Also with perception and stealth being opposed, should the GM not be publicly asking for perception rolls when he has hidden advesary? Should he then be rolling their stealth versus the highest perception in the party? Otherwise this gives a handicapped advantage to the group, both in number of rolls and who is making the check. (this also seems unfair as the "difficulty dice" represents the skill of the one hiding and it seems unfair to have the person hiding have 4 chances to really botch their roll)

I REALLY like the dice system in this game, but this confounds me. (and has recently become a point of interest as my character just spent a lot of EXP on the stealth skill) Let me know if I am on to something or if my group is rolling inappropriatly

In a nutshell - instead of assigning a "difficulty" to your check, the opponent's dice pool suddenly become your difficulty/challenge dice. For example:

Let's say you're trying to Stealth past a guard who's using Perception to locate you. Simple opposed check. Your Agility is 2, and your Stealth 3. So you have a starting pool of 2 yellows and 1 green. The guard has a Cunning of 2 and a Perception of 1. So his starting pool for Perception is 1 yellow and 1 green. His dice convert to difficulty/challenge dice on the difficulty of your check. :-) His 1 yellow and 1 green become 1 red and 1 purple, which are added to your dice pool as the difficulty. So your opposed Stealth check dice pool would be: 2 yellow (Proficiency), 1 green (Ability), 1 red (Challenge), and 1 purple (Difficulty). (Then setback and boost come into play, naturally.)

Sounds like you've got that down, though.

So to your condundrum… assuming both dice pools are the same, it's mechanically BETTER for the person trying to achieve the effect? The answer is… YES. It is. Slightly.

So then it comes down to WHO is trying to achieve the effect? Who is the one rolling? The Stealthy guy or Perciever?

My answer is: The PC is the one who does the rolling. If a foe is trying to sneak past a PC guard - then it's a PERCEPTION check that's rolled (opposed by the enemy's Stealth). If it's the PC who's trying to be sneaky, it's a STEALTH check that gets rolled (opposed by the enemy's Perception).

This means that the PC will have a slightly better chance of success. And this is how it should be . The PCs are the big **** heroes of the story, and they have the edge. (If the GM really wants to make it hard on them, he can always spend a destiny point to enhance the difficulty of that opposed check.)

But yeah.

This is fair, however to clarify when attempting something against another player, the green and yellow dice are rolled by the one attempting the action, regaurdless of what it is, opposed by the non-acting characters now purple and red dice. So in player VS player it is down to whose turn it is, But in Player vs GM or Non-player, their dice are used as green and yellow even if they are not acting(Ie: a passive perception check vs the bounty hunters sneaking up)

This does clarify some things, it does however seem a little unbalanced as in a party of 4, the bounty hunter has a chance to screw up 4 times (represented by rolling his "skill" 4 times as the opposed purple and red dice).

Just to be clear, i am okay with 4 rolls to see if the bounty hunter is found, as there are 4 players, just not the 4 individual representations of the bounty hunters skill. It just seems that there will be almost no scenarios where the bounty hunter will not be seen based on probability alone. Yes this is a massive advantage to the group, and yes i am nit picking, but it still does seem unfair. Although this issue may come down clever actions on the part of the GM.

Sounds like a prime example of an assisted check for the party.

There are two types of assisted check, skilled and unskilled. For skilled assisted checks, one of the characters needs to have one or more ranks in the skill. One character contributes the characteristic while the other contributes skill ranks. Say one character has 3 cunning, but no perception ranks, and another character is perceptive (2 ranks) but not cunning (2). Take the 2 perception ranks from player B and the Cun 3 from player A, and you now have a 1 green, 2 yellow dice pool.

For unskilled assistance, or skilled assistance where the second character provides no benefits, they just add a boost die.

The rules assume only two people can cooperate on any given check, but the GM can allow more than 1 assistant. Each additional character adds 1 boost die to the rolling players dice pool.

For those with books, the full rules for assisted checks are on the top of page 22.

-EF