Question about Cleansing
 

Page 23 of Exploits.....

Treatment: If a person is cursed, use the procedure for
cleansing, but add the higher of the victim’s ST or Will to the
exorcist’s roll.

If you are adding the victim's ST or Will to the exorcist's roll, then doesn't that pretty much guarantee the Cleansing fails.

Shouldn't the victim's ST or Will be added to the exorcist's Exorcism skill instead? Which would then be the effective skill that the exorcist is attempting to roll versus for success and by how much since this is a Quick Contest skill check per the rules for the main section on Cleansing....

Cleansing: Making a cursed area safe to enter or a cursed
altar safe to pillage requires an Exorcism roll by a cleric or
holy warrior. This is a Quick Contest vs. the often high Will
of the evil force possessing the area. A blessed or high holy
symbol gives +1 or +2, respectively. This takes three hours,
if time matters, and fails automatically if anyone casts any
magic within the exorcist’s sight. The exorcist must win to
prevail; otherwise, that person can’t retry for a week (oth-
ers can). An exorcist who rolls a critical failure suffers
the curse!

Anyhow, any help would be appreciated. :)

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

That’s shorthand, it does add to skill.

Nothing in DFRPG (or GURPS) modifies actual success rolls. You can add or subtract from damage rolls or reaction rolls, by success rolls are always unmodified — the skill (or other target) is the number that gets modified.

If any rule is telling you to modify a success roll (the Bless spell has the same issue), it means to modify the effective skill.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

Thanks, that's how my memories of running GURPs 1st through 3rd edition were telling me, but it's been a long time and memory can be faulty. Plus for all I knew 4th edition could have changed this.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

Does this mean that a curse is fairly easy to remove from a person? Since the Exorcism skill is probably at least 10, and Will or ST is at least 10, you are rolling against at least 20.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

It's a quick contest, and the difficulty starts at 'pretty high' and can go to 'arbitrarily high': spirits at Will-25, curses requiring a QC against 35 or 40, etc.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

To summarize:

Roll a Quick Contest of Exorcism vs. (evil force's Will) to cleanse an area. Roll a Quick Contest of [Exorcism + (victim's ST or Will)] vs. (evil force's Will) to help a person. Neither is a resistance roll, so The Rule of 16 (Exploits, p. 8) isn't in force for either side.

Uncursing a person needn't be easy! The evil force's effective Will is an arbitrarily high number that – to take a page from Turning (Adventurers, p. 21) – might be actual Will + Magery or Power Investiture + Resist Good. This is reinforced by the notes for zombies (Monsters, p. 62): "possession lets the reanimator share up to its own level of Resist Good with its servants."

Something with Will + Magery comparable to a lich (24), and Resist Good on a par with its Magery (6), would be functioning at 30. A cleric with baseline Exorcism-14 is going to need +16 from somewhere to stand a fighting chance. Even with +2 from an awesome holy symbol, they're unlikely to succeed unless the victim "helps." Fortunately, all delver templates have either ST or Will at least a little above average, and many have 14+ in one of those scores.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

Thank you all for clarifying. I don't recall seeing the addition of two skills/attributes together anywhere else, so it got my "I'm making a mistake" alarm up. Somewhat reassuring that the rules are exactly what the text says.

Re: Question about Cleansing
 

It is pretty weird, yeah. There's (ST + IQ) used to determine the cost for Entrap Spirit, and (ST + Will) sees use when breaking through a Pentagram, but that's about it. Generally, these kinds of formulas come up mostly when dealing with evil spirits in some capacity.