Question on Skills, How to handle multiple people Options

[Moonstone Spider]

Here's a thought that's occured to me, if you have two people with the same applicable skill working on the same project, how do you handle it?

Two plausible scenarios:

Dr. Vigg is working on a cure for Morten's Syndrome, a hideous disease which causes it's sufferers to believe all Cabbages are Telepathic and sending them secret messages. As one of the top Doctors on the continent, he has a Medicine skill of 10. His lovely Asistant Skeletoria the Ghoul is helping him on this project, and has her own Medicine skill of 6.

The existing rules have nothing I can find on adding their skills. Should we act as if Dr. Vigg has a skill of 16, or make Skeletoria's skill complimentary?

And on a B/R project what if three gunsmiths work on building the same gun? They should actually be able to work faster than even their skills combined suggest, using a simple assembly line system.

[TinkerGnome]

I'd probably just handle it in a fashion similar to surgery where assistants give a TN modifier.

[Dashifen]

I usually have one person designated as the "primary" skill user (usually the person with the most dice). Then, all others can roll as complimentary skills to the primary.

[Abstruse]

Probably covered already, but how I'd do it. Pick a primary person (highest skill or chosen between the two). Other is assistant. Assistant makes a roll, any successes apply a -1 modifier to the TN for the main roll. Either that, or they add one die. I can't remember off the top of my head how complimentary skills work if that would work better...

The Abstruse One

[Zazen]

I do complimentary-style. It's nice n' easy.

[Lilt]

I'd probably come-up with a different system depending on how paralelliseable the task is. The rules for Programming teams look interesting, but having done courses on software engineering I'm not really convinced that the (base time)/(# of people)+1 relationship holds. Perhaps without the +1?

I'd apply a system similar to this to the gunsmiths example where the 3 gunsmiths are probably going to have it complete in around 1/3rd of the time but the 3 working together in such a way aren't going to have any higher a chance of doing something hideously complex than a single gunsmith working on it solo so 1/3rd the base time with the average of the skills seems appropriate.

In the doctors example: I'd apply 1/2 the extra worker's skills as bonus dice if I had to use a simple system.

[arbitrary rules]
If I was allowed to do complex stuff I'd have different people doing different jobs that had different effects. IE: having A lab hand will speed the research up significantly but not have much of an effect on wether or not there is a breakthrough at the end of the day. Some people would be worthy of joining the research team, some people would not be much of a help to someone with such a shining mind as Dr. Vigg's (but they could still work as a lab hand). I'd say the assistant'skill would need to be greater than half the skill of the master, and a master can lead a group of researchers with a size up-to 1/2 skill + leadership. Assistants add the difference between their skill and 1/2 of the master's skill to the master's final test. Lab-hands would not count towards this total and instead would be delegated tasks by the people in the research team. The tasks for lab hands have varying effects on how long the total project takes (depending on what tasks are available and how well they do them). Lab hands could even be split into subteams with leaders as above.
[/arbitrary rules]

Does that seem reasonable?

[RedmondLarry]

For complicated things, we have given one extra die to the main worker for each skilled person that can reasonably help. If someone with Electronics 9 can't do it by himself, adding 3 people with electronics 4 isn't likely to make much difference and thus we give only that one die for each additional person.

I like the idea given above to treat it as Complementary dice. It might speed things up, but isn't got to make a success where there wasn't one already. I think we'll start doing this tomorrow.

[Siege]

Don't forget -- too many cooks and all that.

-Siege

[tisoz]

I'd take the base time to accomplish the project and allocate time to each participant. They roll and reduce the base time.

Example:
Skill 8 Expert
Skill 4 Assisstant

Project has a base time of 80 hours. Expert will tackle 60 hours of base time while assisstant does the remaining 20 hours of base time.

Expert gets 4 successes, does it in 15 hours.
Assisstant gets 2 successes, does it in 10 hours.
Total time 15 hours, if they don't share equipment. 25 hours if working in shifts.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Depends on the task, really. The creation of wards and programming teams, and surgical teams all allow multiple people to work on the same project, and each one uses a different style of rule.

Ward creation allows everyone to apply their successes to the test, and working together greatly increases the size of the ward. Programming Teams (if I'm remembering correctly) basically function as a Complimentary Skills to the lead programmer. Surgical teams give target modifiers to the main surgeon.

Pick one that fits the theme of what's going on the best, and cobble something together with it. This is one of the many reasons real RPGs beat out computer games -- we have a living, breathing, thinking individual as the GM who can come up with rules on the spur. :)

[Moon-Hawk]

Lilt-I like the programming team rules, but without the +1 as well. That +1 is just odd.
I guess the justification is that one person can double check the other and that the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, but I still don't buy it.

[LaughingTiger]

What I have done in the past is come up with the results of a certain number of successes, including the ammount needed to finish the project. Then both would roll, and add successes together to reach the target number. If there is no "target" number, the number of successes generated from each would be added together to determine and effect.