Resistance Table - rulebook example

[Steve]

Please forgive me if this has already been covered (I looked through the now-closed corrections thread, and couldn't see it in there). Or perhaps I'm just misunderstanding?

On p.146 of RQ:G there's an example of play using the resistance table, with Sorala trying to resist some poison gas. The example says that Sorala is taken to be the active party, with the poison the passive one, which makes sense. But the example shows a 35% chance of success. Shouldn't it be 65% (CON 11 vs POT 8), and then when the player rolls a 76 for a failure that means she succumbs to the poison (or change the example to have the player rolling less than 65)? A minor point really, but could be rather confusing to newcomers.

[Psullie]

You are right, its confusing. The Gas does have a 35% chance of causing harm but is the passive actor. Otherwise the GM should roll (aiming for 35%), as the active contestant Sorala needed a 65 or less to AVOID the effects of the Gas, and as she rolled a 76 and failed she should have been effected. It seems that the GM had the Player roll for the Gas as the active agent. 

[Atgxtg]

No, the poison is the active factor and CON is the resisting factor. The character is trying to resist the poison. So it should be POT vs. CON on the resistance table.  The following is from the posion rules from RQ2, but since RQG is compatible with RQ2 it should be the same: 

 

If the poison successfully overcomes the CON of the victim, the victim takes as many points CON damage as the poison has
potency. This damage cannot be healed by ordinary Healing spells. The effects heal naturally at a rate of 1 point of damage
per game week.
If the character resists the poison, he takes as damage to his CON ½ of the poison’s potency and, if survives the fight, heals
at the usual rate for poison, 1 point per game week. Again, a Healing spell will not heal this damage

[styopa]

I think it would be clearer if the ACTIVE actor is always the one rolling.  That's what we use.

Poison 8 vs CON 11?  The poison is rolling vs a 35% success, instead of her rolling to resist at 65%.

[PhilHibbs]

31 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No, the poison is the active factor and CON is the resisting factor. The character is trying to resist the poison. So it should be POT vs. CON on the resistance table.  The following is from the posion rules from RQ2, but since RQG is compatible with RQ2 it should be the same: 

The RQG rules specifically state that the CON is the active factor and the poison is the passive. It doesn't make intuitive sense to me either. Not that it matters, as crit/special/fumble don't mean anything and the chances remain the same.

[Atgxtg]

3 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

The RQG rules specifically state that the CON is the active factor and the poison is the passive. It doesn't make intuitive sense to me either. Not that it matters, as crit/special/fumble don't mean anything and the chances remain the same.

And that is the exact opposite of how the RQ2 rules work. So much for backwards compatibility with RQ2. 

[PhilHibbs]

49 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

And that is the exact opposite of how the RQ2 rules work. So much for backwards compatibility with RQ2. 

As I said, it makes literally no difference. And I don't know why they extended the chance of success for the "active" side past 100, as it's entirely arbitrary who is active and passive, and it's unfair that one side's chance to get a critical or special goes up and the other doesn't. Personally I'd have just said to match the higher number on the "active" side and the lower on the "passive". That way you only need to use half as much ink. You could commission a triangular piece of art, such as an arm wrestle contest, to fill the remaining space.

Edited July 9, 2018 by PhilHibbs

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

As I said, it makes literally no difference.

Yes it does. It's just one more example of how RQG isn't all that backwards compatible. 

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

And I don't know why they extended the chance of success for the "active" side past 100, as it's entirely arbitrary who is active and passive, and it's unfair that one side's chance to get a critical or special goes up and the other doesn't.

It is now. It wasn't arbitrary before. The side that initiated things and was trying to change something was the active side. As far as the % going up over 100%, who knows? I get the impression that whoever wrote it probably thought that it did make a difference.

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Personally I'd have just said to match the higher number on the "active" side and the lower on the "passive". That way you only need to use half as much ink. You could commission a triangular piece of art, such as an arm wrestle contest, to fill the remaining space.

Personally, if I already was putting in an another opposed roll mechanic, like the did with Spirit Combat, I'd have used that mechanic for all opposed rolls  instead of having multiple game mechanics for doing the same thing. But then all those ties would probably mess that up (although take a point of damage, roll again next round could actually work out better for  poison). 

[PhilHibbs]

14 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes it does. It's just one more example of how RQG isn't all that backwards compatible. 

Have any RQ2 publications contained anything that made a difference which side was active and which was passive in a resistance roll? No. This is not a compatibility issue.

[Steve]

Putting aside the comparison with RQ2, the RQ:G rules on p.145 say that "Generally, it is best to have let (sic) an adventurer's characteristic be the active one ...".

The example on p.146 start off in that vein, saying that Sorala's CON is the active characteristic. So far, so good. But the second paragraph of the example is where it goes wrong, and is written as if the poison's POT is the active characteristic, and (bizarrely IMHO) has Sorala's player rolling on behalf of the poison and hoping to get a failure.

To me it reads as if there's been a change of mind of how this should work, and the example has only been partially edited to the new method of doing things. It would seem a lot more sensible to me, if the CON is the active party, to have Sorala's player rolling on that 65% chance and trying to succeed, not rolling on a 35% chance and hoping to fail.

 

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

To me it reads as if there's been a change of mind of how this should work, and the example has only been partially edited to the new method of doing things. It would seem a lot more sensible to me, if the CON is the active party, to have Sorala's player rolling on that 65% chance and trying to succeed, not rolling on a 35% chance and hoping to fail.

The example on page 159 is consistent with the rules, in that Nathem's CON of 18 is matched against the poison's POT of 15 for a chance of 65%. Clearly the p145 example is out of date.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Steve said:

Putting aside the comparison with RQ2, the RQ:G rules on p.145 say that "Generally, it is best to have let (sic) an adventurer's characteristic be the active one ...".

That is the thing with RQG. It pretty much doesn't do things like RQ, but takes a PC centric view. Same with the new rounding mechanic. IMO, both do more harm than good.

1 hour ago, Steve said:

The example on p.146 start off in that vein, saying that Sorala's CON is the active characteristic. So far, so good. But the second paragraph of the example is where it goes wrong, and is written as if the poison's POT is the active characteristic, and (bizarrely IMHO) has Sorala's player rolling on behalf of the poison and hoping to get a failure.

To me it reads as if there's been a change of mind of how this should work, and the example has only been partially edited to the new method of doing things.

 

To me it reads like we have multiple authors coming at this from multiple viewpoints, and, I suspect, most of those viewpoints are non-RQish. 

1 hour ago, Steve said:

 It would seem a lot more sensible to me, if the CON is the active party, to have Sorala's player rolling on that 65% chance and trying to succeed, not rolling on a 35% chance and hoping to fail.

You mean like a D&D saving throw? 

Oh, and it should be the GM rolling for poison, not the PC victim. 

To me, it seems a lot more sensible to just do it the way RQ had been doing it for 35 years. It seems like all the problems that people are having with RQG are because the authors changed things that then conflicted with text elsewhere in the rules that was written before (probably long long before) the changes. 

 

[soltakss]

It all depends on whteher you prefer the GM (poison) to roll against the player (CON) or the player (CON) to roll against the GM (Poison).

Either way is fine by me, but I marginally prefer Poison to be Active and CON to be Passive,