Voluntary negative modifiers

[Deleriad]

An odd thing came up the other day; a player who had been reduced to 5% chance to hit an enemy decided he might as well precise attack because it made no difference to his actual chance to hit. I had assumed this would not be allowed but could see no sign of it being forbidden. I prevented it anyway but perhaps RQ ought to have some sort of rule about voluntary negative modifiers: i.e. you can't voluntarily make a task more difficult if it would end up reducing your chance below zero.

E.g. If you have a 20% attack chance you can't precise attack.
If you have 30% in some skill, you can't try and do it in just half the time (-40%) and so on.

Or have I missed something here?

 

[Deleted_Account]

I'd rather argue "you cannot take a voluntary negative modifier if your chance to succeed is already negative".

So someone with 30% skill can take a -40% and have a 5% chance of succeeding.

They can attempt a precice shot.

They cannot bypass armor (-40%), aim for the head (-40%) and do it in half the time (-40%).

 

[Utgardloki]

I would say you can not voluntarily take a penalty that reduces your effective chance to succeed to below 5%. It's fair.

If your effective chance is only 35% or less, you just either don't have the skill to try a precise attack, or you are in a unfavorable situation that prevents a precise attack. Life sucks, sometimes. 8)

 

[Adept]

I would say you can not voluntarily take a penalty that reduces your effective chance to succeed to below 5%. It's fair.

If your effective chance is only 35% or less, you just either don't have the skill to try a precise attack, or you are in a unfavorable situation that prevents a precise attack. Life sucks, sometimes. 8)

Shouldn't that be 45%?

If your skill is less than 45% and you are using a technique that gives you a -40% to skill use, you are getting some points for free. I'd go with 45, so you are left with the minimum 5%.

 

[Utgardloki]

I just used 35% as an example. By my house rule, if a Precise Attack gives you a -40% penalty (and I intend to make a chart allowing for different penalties for different armor and weapon types), then any effective skill level of 44% or less prevents you from using Precise Attack.

I did not intend to set 35% as a cutoff point, but just an illustrative example. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[weasel_fierce]

Personally, if the modified chance of success is less than 1, the action fails automatically.