I thought I'd look at this as a simple contest, since it is unlikely to be a single roll.
The task is to bring the sheep down from the hills. A Complete or Major Victory will achieve this faster than "normal". A Minor or marginal victory will do it in "normal" time. A Marginal defeat will take longer than expected (you miss your tea...) but you get them back, A minor defeat will fail to bring them all back, (but you may be able to rescue them tomorrow) and a Major or Complete defeat will loose sheep permanently.
(I'd distinguish between Complete and Major results by the time or number of sheep lost)
What follows is a lot of numbers - Sorry.
Against a "default" resistance of 14:-
A character with no appropriate skill (default: 6) will get the sheep
back 48% of the time, and permanently loose sheep 7% of the time
A character with a "starting" skill of 12 will get the sheep back 68% of the time and permanently lose sheep 5.5% of the time - compared to 71% and 5.25 for a character with a 13 (cultural default).
A character with a "Professional" skill of 17 will get the sheep back 84% and permanently loose some 4.25% of the time
A character with a single mastery (1W) only permanently looses sheep once in every 400 times (so less than once per year). He has a 92% chance of bringing all the sheep home and a 6% chance of getting them back early.
A starting character who uses his best skill for sheep herding (5W) mostly increases his chance of finishing early (up to 11). He has the same chance of loosing sheep permanently, and a 93% chance of getting them all home.
Finally the Voirof Devotee Master shepherd with 8W2 never looses sheep permanently (under these conditions) - in fact it is only 1 time in 400 he fails to bring them all home. 29% of the time he has his sheep home early.
Now I'm not really sure what this proves (other than if you want your sheep well looked after, get an 8W2 shepherd...) - Obviously throughout the years the resistance will change , and you may be able to augment your herding with other skills, affinities or followers/friends (herding Alynx, young sons, Wind Child allies, Vingan Trollkin....) in some circumstances (If you make the followers roll...)
-- Tim Ellis
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