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Old 12-09-2015, 06:45 PM   #1
Tinman
 
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Default Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

I'm GM for a Dungeon Fantasy Game. A PC's Hound Ally was bitten by a Crushroom (DF-2 p22) The following turn the Crushroom uses a constriction attack vs the Hound.

* I'm unclear on what the actual number the margin is calculated from. *

The Crushroom has a ST 40 vs The Hound's effective ST 15.
Crushroom rolls: 14 & Hound Rolls: 8
The hound's Margin is 8. The Crushroom's Margin is either 27 or 2.

Calculated from it's ST it's a 27. However a roll of 17+ is always a fail.
What do I calculate the Crushroom's margin from?

Thanks for the help.
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Old 12-09-2015, 08:32 PM   #2
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

I think the rule of 16 doesn't apply during a contest, so I believe it is based on the 40, not min(16,40) = 16.
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Old 12-09-2015, 09:26 PM   #3
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinman View Post
I'm GM for a Dungeon Fantasy Game. A PC's Hound Ally was bitten by a Crushroom (DF-2 p22) The following turn the Crushroom uses a constriction attack vs the Hound.

* I'm unclear on what the actual number the margin is calculated from. *

The Crushroom has a ST 40 vs The Hound's effective ST 15.
Crushroom rolls: 14 & Hound Rolls: 8
The hound's Margin is 8. The Crushroom's Margin is either 27 or 2.

Calculated from it's ST it's a 27. However a roll of 17+ is always a fail.
What do I calculate the Crushroom's margin from?

Thanks for the help.
Basically for Constriction, the Crushroom makes a ST roll vs. the better of ST or HT. Since the hound's ST is a 13 and its HT is 14, you roll HT. Since the Crushroom rolled a 14 and has a ST of 40, his margin is 26. The hound rolled an 8, so his margin is 4, thus 26 (the Crushroom's margin) - 4 (the hound's margin) = 22 - so the Crushroom succeeded. Since the Crushroom won, the hound takes 22 points of crushing damage.
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Old 12-10-2015, 11:24 AM   #4
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

The Rule of 16 is irrelevant here . . . this isn't a resistance roll against a supernatural attack but simply an ordinary Quick Contest. I'm not sure how you're figuring margins of success, though. Margin of success is simply target number minus dice roll. Thus, a roll of 14 against a 40 gives a margin of success of 40 - 14 = 26 (not 27) and a roll of 8 against a 15 gives margin of success of 15 - 8 = 7 (not 8). This makes the margin of victory 26 - 7 = 19.
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Old 12-10-2015, 02:52 PM   #5
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kromm View Post
The Rule of 16 is irrelevant here . . . this isn't a resistance roll against a supernatural attack but simply an ordinary Quick Contest. I'm not sure how you're figuring margins of success, though. Margin of success is simply target number minus dice roll. Thus, a roll of 14 against a 40 gives a margin of success of 40 - 14 = 26 (not 27) and a roll of 8 against a 15 gives margin of success of 15 - 8 = 7 (not 8). This makes the margin of victory 26 - 7 = 19.
Thanks to all the replies.
Kromm: I was not thinking of "rule of 16" I was thinking that a 17+ fails automaticly. Also for Margin if the target is a 14 & I roll a 14 doesn't that count as pass by 1?

A quick follow-up to the original question:
If the hound succeeds on it's roll but the Crushroom rolls a 17 or 18 does it not do damage or does it do whatever the margin is?
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Old 12-10-2015, 02:54 PM   #6
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

If something rolled a 17 vs 40 then it has a margin of success of 23, but it has failed the roll so it is not successful in it's intended action.
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Old 12-10-2015, 02:56 PM   #7
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

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Originally Posted by Mathulhu View Post
If something rolled a 17 vs 40 then it has a margin of success of 23, but it has failed the roll so it is not successful in it's intended action.
No, a 17 is automatically a failure by 1 as the best possible result
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Old 12-10-2015, 03:21 PM   #8
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinman View Post

I was thinking that a 17+ fails automaticly.
Concepts such as critical success, critical failure, and automatic failure normally matter only for straight, uncontested success rolls. Reread Margin of Victory (p. B348) and you'll see that Quick Contests are purely quantitative and do not care about qualitative degrees of success. Notably, "The winner's 'margin of victory' is . . . the difference between the loser's margin of failure and his margin of failure if both failed." You can fail and still win! All that matters is margin, found from each party's dice roll and full score.

Resistance rolls are special and unusual because you must succeed to win. But that rule applies only when a Contest is specifically called out as a resistance roll. Choke or Strangle (pp. B370-371) is a Quick Contest, not a resistance roll.

Feints are also special and unusual because you must succeed to win and margin of victory is worked out according to rules that don't add your foe's margin of failure to your margin of victory. See p. B365.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinman View Post

Also for Margin if the target is a 14 & I roll a 14 doesn't that count as pass by 1?
No, that counts as success by 0. It's still enough to win if your opponent fails by 1+. But for anything that depends purely on margin of success, your margin is 0, not 1. A few rules do assign a minimum margin of 1 to any uncontested success, but those are special cases. Strangling, resistance rolls, feints . . . none of those are among those special cases. Mostly, those special cases arise when margin of success is used to calculate duration or a similar parameter.
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Old 12-11-2015, 03:58 AM   #9
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Default Re: Help with Margin of sucsess & Constriction Attack

Kromm: that clears up a lot of things for me. Thank You!
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