[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Then you don't automagically get a critical failure on a roll of 17? I sit corrected, then!

0.5% is still very bad, but obviously and inarguably it is much less bad than 2%. It's just odd that everybody always talks about the threshold value of 15. Clearly saving the energy is very worthwhile, but it seems to me that hitting 16 is even more worthwhile because you redudce your miscast probability by 75%.

Remember though, that degrees of success or failure are based on effective skill rather than base skill.