Tasks in Cairn 2e: Cost and Risk Instead of Difficulty

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Intro

I come from a d20 background. Most of you likely do, too. The resolution mechanic in those games is simple, elegant, and easy to understand. Roll a d20, add some sort of modifier representing character skill, compare to a target number representing task difficulty. If you exceed the target number, you succeed on whatever you were trying to do. If you don't, you fail.

Roll-under games like Cairn cut out one third of that process. There's no need to tally up a raft of tiny modifiers, just roll and compare to your attribute.

This simplicity comes at a cost, however. Your roll-under target is your attribute. It represents character skill. There's no representation of task difficulty at all.

Some roll-under systems get around this with a blackjack system, where you're supposed to roll over a difficulty value and under your attribute. Not Cairn, though. Cairn remains stubbornly mute on the subject of task difficulty. Why is that? How are we supposed to make our tasks distinct and interesting?

I'd argue this is because Cairn wants us to think about tasks in a different way than most other RPGs: it wants us to stop thinking about difficulty, and start thinking about cost and risk.

Cairn's Task Levers

It can be useful to think about three different "levers" with which to tune your tasks: the Risk of Failure, the Risk of Cost, and the Type and Magnitude of Cost.

In many other RPGs the risk of failure is given a lot of mechanical detail. Many feats, character options, and equipment options contribute towards making success more likely. The second two levers are present, but are often de-emphasized comparatively.

In contrast, if you want to create interesting tasks in Cairn, you need to consider all three equally.

The First Lever: Risk of Failure

This lever has three settings:

• Certain Success: If the player chooses to attempt the task, they succeed without needing to roll anything. This doesn't mean that there isn't a cost, however (see The Second Lever).
  
• Uncertain Success: If the player chooses to attempt the task, they succeed if they succeed a save.
  
• Certain Failure: The player could theoretically choose to attempt the task, but why would they? They can't succeed and no save can change that.
  

The Second Lever: Risk of Cost

This lever also has three settings:

• Free: There's no cost for attempting the task or even failing a save related to it.
  
• Uncertain Cost: If the player chooses to attempt the task, they suffer a cost if they fail a save.
  
• Certain Cost: The player must suffer a cost if they wish to attempt the task at all. They can often walk away without attempting the task if they find the cost too harsh, however.
  

The Third Lever: Cost Type and Magnitude 

This lever has lots of potential settings, depending on how debilitating the cost should be. Here is a list of potential costs for your tasks, though an inventive Warden could certainly come up with more:

• Time (i.e. roll on this location's events table)
  
• Fatigue
• Deprivation
• Attribute Damage
• Equipment Damage or Loss

Many costs can also be adjusted in magnitude. For example, a long fall might deal more attribute damage than a short one.

Task Lever Combinations 

If you've already started trying this approach out, you'll probably notice that some combinations of task levers are fairly... trivial.

Certain failure almost always makes the other levers irrelevant. Why would you care about cost if you can't succeed?

Similarly, free tasks are trivial in the other direction. The player could just attempt the task over and over until they succeed, assuming the task isn't a certain failure. Since this isn't exactly thrilling gameplay, I would advise Wardens to treat uncertain success/free tasks exactly the same as certain success/free tasks. Just let the player succeed without rolling.

There are some combinations of levers that are a bit less trivial, though, and probably merit some examples:

Certain Success/Uncertain Cost: The floor collapses out from under your character. You're close enough that you will certainly be able to grab the ledge and save yourself from death, but if you fail a DEX save, you will be forced to drop a random item in order to manage it.

Certain Success/Certain Cost: Raising this iron portcullis isn't hard, the crank is right there. But it will take some time and make some noise. Something might come investigate (i.e. there will be a roll on the event table). Do you want to go ahead?

Uncertain Success/Uncertain Cost: The rock wall looms before you. This isn't exactly a staircase, you'll have to make a STR save to make it to the top safely. If you fail, you'll fall off partway through and take a d6 STR damage. Are you going to make the climb?

Uncertain Success/Certain Cost: The lock looks pretty complicated. It's going to take time to pick, during which the party will be stuck standing in the corridors where anything might happen by (i.e. an event table roll). If you fail a DEX save, you'll break a pick and have to start over. Do you get to picking?

Adjusting Tasks

 So, what's the point of the Certain Failure and Free lever positions if they make tasks so boring? Why not just not mention them in the first place?

The answer is that your players will be clever.

Players will bring boatloads of equipment and come up with clever schemes to make their tasks easier. This is good! Reward them by making their tasks more likely to succeed and less risky.

Take the example of the rock wall from earlier. If a player brings pitons and rope, that reduces the risk of falling and taking STR damage to nothing, turning the task into an Uncertain Success/Free. Now the player doesn't even have to roll to succeed.

Or what if your players were trying to scale a sheer castle wall instead of a rocky cliff? Normally this task would be a Certain Failure, but if they bring climbing equipment it becomes at least possible. I would rule that the task becomes Certain Success/Uncertain Cost. With spikes driven into the wall, they aren't going to fall off, but if they take too long (by failing a STR save) a patrol of guards will catch them red-handed.

A Note on Player Knowledge

I'm sure opinions will differ on this, but I'm of the opinion that the exact position of these levers should usually be player-facing information. Players need to know their approximate odds of success and consequences for failure in order to make informed decisions.

I look at giving players all of this information as bridging the player-character gap. The characters can see the height of the cliff ahead of them; they know how much it would hurt if they fell off. The players should as well.

Conclusion

With these three task levers, hopefully you are more equipped to make tasks more interesting and strategic for your players.

This approach can also be generalized to other RPGs. It works particularly well for those that also de-emphasize task difficulty, but can also be used in systems that have a more d20 sensibility. I think considering consequence in addition to chance of success will almost always liven up your tasks.

Let me know if you end up using this and what you think!