Mass Combat: Failing Strategy Roll with a bigger Margin of Success than the Winner

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

So weird conundrum.
Basic set and lite say:

Fine, so let's say:
Sean has Strategy-20
Anna has Strategy-15
Sean Rolls a 17; Anna rolls a 15.
Anna succeeded because "The winner is ***obvious.*** (Is it?)"
But her Margin of Victory is... -3?
Where does that fit on the Mass Combat's Combat Results table (p.47)?

Do Quick Contests have a minimum Margin of Victory? Should a margin of victory be floored at 1? Also, can I get a generalized ruling for all Quick Contests?

I am, of course, possibly confused, but

Sean: Skill-20, Roll-17, margin of success 3
Anna: Skill-15, Roll-15, margin of success 0

Sean should win here, "obviously?"

Ah. I see. Roll 17 is notionally auto-fail. Gotcha.


[Another Edit]: And yet, from p. B222: "unless another person with this skill leads them. In that case, the GM rolls a Quick Contest of Strategy."

This suggests two things to me (not having read PK's post):

1) If the bad guys' IQ is 8 or lower, don't roll. You roll strategy and if you succeed, you know stuff about their plans, fail and you get false info. The bad guys don't get a roll; they just do whatever they're going to do making plans without a good guess as to the "good guys'" intentions.

2) If the bad guys' IQ is 9+ or if they specifically have Strategy, then it's a Quick Contest for which the auto-fail rule doesn't apply. So in the example, Sean makes his roll by 3, Anna by 0, Sean wins. As it is written, so it shall be, etc.