Tasks
Tasks are personal projects that each individual Trainer works on in their spare time - often while training their Pokemon in the morning and feeding them at the end of the day. There are inherently open-ended and each player should decide what their Trainer is doing to better themselves. This can range from refining a Weapon Move into a new version with extra utility to honing one's hunting skill and the relationship with their Pokemon to anything the player can think of (within reason). The intention behind this system is to allow for personalized horizontal character development, rather than the simplistic vertical development of gaining levels and having your numbers get bigger: Tasks should be about widening the player's options and let them come up with some homebrew material of their own to make their character really feel like theirs.
Mechanically, Tasks are simple: Up to 2 times per day, with at least 8 hours between them, a Trainer can spend about an hour to work on their personal Task. The GM and the player should come to an agreement on what the Task does and how much it costs to achieve. To help you with this are the following guidelines:
- You should set the Skill DC according to the difficulty of the task and the Trainer's skill in it - due to the way Skills work in PTU, Expert or Master-level skills will average a 17.5 or 21 every time they're rolled, and doing it twice per day will blaze through easy Tasks. But, if the player wants to do something easy and simple, let them. It'll feel nice to show off their mastery.
- If the player wants to create an item, they should be spending something when making a check, whether it be a resource or cash money. However, the GM should throw the player a bone and make a way to get more of that resource, which can open up opportunities - such as returning to a cave for gems, only to find that new pokemon have moved in, or have dug out a new home for themselves.
- Tasks that do not expend any resources should generally have a higher DC. Tasks that do expend resources should have a lower DC depending on the rarity of the resource. After all, it's easier to find raw iron than magical jade.
- If one player comes up with a cool Task and another player wants to do it too, let them! The roleplaying potential is obvious.
Average Rolls
| Skill Rank | Average Roll | Per Day |
|---|---|---|
| Pathetic | 3.5 | 7 |
| Untrained | 7 | 14 |
| Novice | 10.5 | 21 |
| Adept | 14 | 28 |
| Expert | 17.5 | 35 |
| Master | 21 | 42 |
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Interesting. I don't know if I would be able to apply this, since been so open ended would give me a headache about what can be achieved and how hard it should be. Nevertheless, it has huge roleplaying and immersion potential, I like it
Well, I'd like to write something up that makes it easier to figure out what the difficulty for a given Task should be. What parts do you have difficulty with? It really comes down to how your campaign is paced. In mine, we play out each and every day. We don't have to, that's just how my party rolls. So, at Expert Rank, doing something with 350 DC would take about 10 in-game days, which can be anywhere from 2-5 sessions of play. If you have lots of downtime, then you should adjust your DC accordingly - think about how long you want it to take OUT OF GAME, too.
I'm thinking on things like changing a weapon's attack. That's a whole new mechanic by itslef, but you place it as just an example of things to do during dowtime. Don't you think things could get out of hand if players can just suggest things at that level? At one point you will allow something stronger than expected
It may help to look at the Player Created stuff page - there's an upgraded version of Bullseye in there that's more likely to crit, but harder to hit with. It's arguable as to whether that's a straight-up upgrade, but it's another option in combat. Skewering Launch is quite powerful, but requires weapon modifications to even be usable in the first place. You should always be careful and make sure you're not giving away free power.
I'm still relatively new to the game, so for now I'll pass until I feel surer of not breaking the power level. It still seems like a really fun mechanic nevertheless
Yeah, we didn't start doing this until about a year after we started playing, it takes a while to get a feel for how strong various things are within the system.