Most important in-play use terms
From Sagataflwiki
This article briefly defines the most important terms, abbreviations and acronyms pertinent to in-play activities, sorted alphabetically. Note that there are separate articles for more specific terms as well as for important English language words that are not specific to Sagatafl.
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Fumble
A Fumble is when a dice roll, such as a Skill roll, fails badly, so that there are negative consequences for the character (or sometimes an innocent bystander) above and beyond the direct consequences of non-Success. Fumbles range from Minor Fumble, coded F-2, to Disastrous Fumble, coded F-6. Some rolls, such as Sense rolls, are designated Safe Rolls; these can never Fumble. F-2 or worse is treated as f-1 (failure).
RD
Roll Difficulty, the difficulty that any Xd12 roll is made against, e.g. a Skill roll, Sense roll or Attribute roll (almost all rolls in fact; the main exceptions are damage rolls and Overcome rolls). Each dice showing a value equal to or higher than the RD is a Success; if there are no Successes, the RD is used to determine the degree of Fumble. A lower RD means an easier roll. Players need to learn to fear RD 12. A typical adventuring-difficulty task is RD 8, while total routine is RD 4. Note that for RD 6 and lower, the worst kinds of Fumbles cannot occur at all.
Note, this article is still very incomplete.
Success
Abbreviated xS, e.g. 2S for two Successes or 5S for 5 Successes. Successes measure how well a successful activity is performed, whether an active activity (such as most Skill rolls) or a passive activity (most Sense rolls are passive). Any Xd12 roll produces a result of one or more Successes (there's no hard upper limit, but it is impossible to get more Successes than the number of dice rolled, e.g. 14 Successes on a roll of 14d12), or a Fumble (from F-2 to F-6), or a failure (f-1). More Successes are always better on a normal roll, and for Opposed Rolls Successes are compared, often subtracted from each other, e.g. an Attack roll vs a Defence roll in combat (such as Sword skill vs Dodge skill).
Task
A Task is a series of Skill rolls accumulating Progress towards completing a goal, such as picking a lock, casting a Spell, or doing an Invention. Each Successful roll adds a value equal to the number of Successes squared to Progress, e.g. a roll of 4S adds 16 to Progress. A Minor Fumble, F-2, is actually not a true Fumble in the context of a Task, since there are no ill consequences except that all accumulated Progress is lost. Therefore, in the context of Tasks, Fumbles of F-3 and worse are called Abortive Fumbles. Each roll (cycle) of a Task takes an amount of time, sometimes under the character's control (e.g. he can try to hurry, or he can work slowly and methodically), and so part of the purpose of the Task mechanic is to allow more skilled characters to complete some activities faster.
