Only if you are making unopposed rolls, though. If you are trying to
solve a problem with obscure, undocumented operating system bug (5W2)
then your chance will be greatly reduced...
>
> Basically, any set of numbers can be balanced, providing both sides
>(PCs and NPCs) are of similar levels. Thus whether both sides have
> 17, 5W, or 10W3 as their best skill is irrelevant.
This however s very true. If the challenges you expect the PC's to face are balanced against their abilities it doesn't generally matter what their actual abilities are. The problem comes when you try and compare your characters against numbers from elsewhere, be it another persons game, or "official" figures from Issaries publications - If (orlanthi) all Orlanthi start with a Mastery in Close combat, for instance, then the difference between the fyrd and the Champion with 2W2 is much less than if they start with 13...
Conversly, a challenge intended to be a nuisance can turn into a real problem if your characters are several points lower than expected... (which is why adventures should start by saying "intended for characters with abilities in the range ...)
The other thing this discussion has brought out is the understanding of "Fumble" - It's fine to say that a character with 1 Mastery "Never Fumbles", but without knowing what a fumble is, it is fairly meaningless (Is it, in the cooking example, Inedible food, Dangerous food, or merely unappitizing food? - As a software engineer, is it a fumble if you write a program that fails to do what you intended, or only if it does the opposite of what you wanted it to do? - If you Quit from an edit without saving first, is that a fumble or a failure? Delete the wrong version of a file? Run the wrong program, or the right program on the wrong machine? Copy a file to the wrong directory? I wouldn't say I make these sort of errors 5% of the time, but I don't think I could honestly claim to "never fumble")
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