Page 17 of the Player's Handbook states that:
However, the Mission Book on page 6 states, on the topic of negative skills:Some things also take dice away, negative skills[...].
The Mission Book also states, on page 14:Ignoring the minus sign, add the Stat + Skill together[...].
Player's handbook always suggests that negative skills are subtracted from the NODE (with a negative NODE then counting all non-successes as failures). Mission book always suggests that negative skills are added to the NODE as if positive (and then the NODE is treated as above with regards to failures).[A]dd the two numbers as if they were both positive[...].
Was there ever any clarification published on this, or should it be treated like the Gamemaster's Handbook treats armor, where the GM can just change the rule session to session to keep players on their toes?