In order to help people who may be familiar with other RPG systems, I have done a little comparison between some of the more popular systems and FS3 to show how the dice work. This research was inspired by a nice article comparing D20 and 3D6.

Background

The systems compared were D20, new World of Darkness (nWoD), FUDGE and FS3. In my examples, I’ve used four people and the Firearms skill:

  • Nate the Newbie - Nate has just started out and he’s still got a lot to learn. He’s probably taken a basic firearms course or gone to the range a few times.
  • Pete the Professional - Pete is a professional soldier who is thoroughly competent with his rifle.
  • Victor the Veteran - Vic is a highly skilled marksman.
  • Maria the Master - Maria is an amazing marksman, an elite sniper or a world-class Olympic shooting competitor.

Skill Level Equivalents

As it turns out, the skill descriptions printed in the rulebook don’t really match up with the dice results across skill systems. A so-called “professional” in D20 has a 50% chance of success at a routine task, but in World of Darkness that same “professional” has an 83% chance of success.

So.. if you go solely by chance of success rather than the textual skill descriptions, ratings in FS3 are roughly equivalent to the following skill ratings in other systems:

  FS3 Skill Level   D20 Equivalent   nWoD Equivalent   FUDGE Equivalent  
  Rookie (1-3)   skill rating 4-7 (char level 1-3)   skill 1 + stat 2 (3 dice)   Good (+1)  
  Professional (4-6)   skill rating 8-12 (char level 5-9)   skill 3 + stat 2 (5 dice)   Great (+2)  
  Veteran (7-9)   skill rating 13+ (char level 10+)   skill 4 + stat 2 (6 dice)   Superb (+3)  
  Expert (10-12)   not calculated - higher than veteran obviously   skill 5 + stat 2 (7 dice)   Higher than Superb  

Conclusions

Some conclusions from the numbers:

  • FS3 and nWoD are roughly comparable in success chance. In other words, a ‘professional’ in FS3 is roughly equivalent to a ‘professional’ in nWoD.
  • In D20, even an expert has an unusually high (5%) chance of utterly botching an easy or routine task.
  • D20 and FUDGE have rather awful success chances - especially for low level characters. Even a veteran in D20 only has a 70% chance of success at a routine task!
  • Hard things in FUDGE are really hard.
  • Hard things in D20 are really hard at low levels.

Detailed Results

Here are the detailed percentages for FS3.

Unopposed Rolls

The following table shows the chance of success at various difficulty levels. For example, a newbie doing a routine task has a 57% chance of success.

  Rating   Easy   Routine   Hard  
  Nate the Newbie   82%   57%   25%  
  Pete the Professional   94%   86%   67%  
  Victor the Veteran   98%   94%   86%  
  Maria the Master   98%   98%   94%  

Opposed Rolls

The following table shows the attacker’s chance of success when attacking someone of various skill levels. For example, a professional attacking a newbie will hit about 84% of the time.

Note: The “Firearms” column shows how well the attacker would do when shooting a ranged personal weapon. This is special because defenders use a flat skill rating of “3” rather than their actual skill.

  Attacker v Defender –>   Nate   Pete   Victor   Maria   Firearms  
  Nate the Newbie   67%   36%   21%   11%   69%  
  Pete the Professional   84%   64%   44%   31%   86%  
  Victor the Veteran   95%   76%   61%   48%   93%  
  Maria the Master   96%   83%   72%   61%   96%