Me and my usual AH chums recently got into our first rules argument in quite a while. I'm not expecting anyone to have a definitive answer for this, I'm just interested to see what everything thinks.

The skill "Library Use" says "When you make any Lore check, add +1 to each die you roll for the purposes of checking for successes (i.e., a roll of 3 becomes a 4, etc.)."

The spell "Storm of Spirits" says "Cast and exhaust to gain +3 to Combat checks and to use Lore instead of Fight on your Combat checks until the end of this combat."

So do your dice rolled when using Storm of Spirits benefit from the +1 from Library Use? I think they don't, because you're not making a Lore check - you're making a Combat Check using Lore, whcih is not the same thing.

Here's where it gets really pedantic:

The AH rules do make a slight distinction between "type of skill check" and "what skill you're rolling it with" - but only because of the four special Skill checks. What the rulebook says (on p13 and again on the back cover) is this:

"There are four types of special skill checks that players should be aware of: Evade checks, Horror checks, Combat checks, and Spell checks. Each of these special skill checks are based on one of the six skills listed above and are described later in this rulebook. If an investigator receives a bonus to a skill, any special checks based on that skill also receive this bonus. However, if an investigator receives a bonus only to a special check, that bonus does not apply to any other checks based on the same skill. For example, Evade checks are a special type of Sneak check. A Skill card that gives +1 Sneak is useful both for Sneak and Evade checks. However, an item that gives +2 to Evade checks is only useful when making Evade checks. That bonus cannot be used on a normal Sneak check."

That paragraph mentions bonuses to skills, which is explained as meaning the +1 and +2 stuff which gives you more dice. Adding +1 to dice results for the purposes of checking for successes is NOT the same thing... it's a different game mechanism which isn't mentioned in the Special Skill Check rule.

My friends and I used to think that Grapple was pretty much the game's best Skill (although there are others that are close behind it). The way me and my friends use it, Grapple's bonus applies to Combat checks, so when you're fighting a monster, you get +1 to all your dice. Have I been doing this differently to all you guys? And if not, is it possible that we've all been doing it wrong?

This came up over on BGG (and later here) in a SoS + Revelation of Script combo related question. ColtsFan said:

"Under normal circumstances, the Combat check is a "special" Fight check so anything that affects Fight would also add to the Combat check. Now, because of SoS, anything you have that adds to a Lore check would add to the Combat check as well, since in this case, Combat is a special Lore check."

I use grapple the same way you do, and i think it's right. What way do you think it might be used instead? where is the confusion?

I thnk those skills that add 1 to each die rather than adding dice to the pool were first added as part of Dunwich weren't they so those skills won't specifically be clarified in the rule section you quote

I guess library use helping in "combat" doesn't ring true on the surface of it, but only because of the title of the skill (which implies book learning). However, if lore could be considered as the power of the mind and library use already adds to any rolls using the power of the mind (and not just those involving the perusal of books), then there is no reason why it wouldn't help with combat rolls when you are using you mind to combat the monster (psychic combat if you like)....

library use is a skill out of the CoC RPG and i guess many lore rolls are related to books in the AH game, so it made sense for FFG to use that as a skill name, but it would add to any lore related roll, not just those that are book related, wouldn't it?

Uhh...we were always under the impression that grapple WASN'T used for combat. A combat check and fight check are two different things. A fight check is used for gate closing and specific encounters. A combat check is a skill check that uses your fight stat plus other modifiers like weapons. You cannot use weapons to help close gates because those add dice to combat checks, not fight checks. You can't use Marksmen to reroll basic fight checks like gate closing, why would you be able to use grapple on a combat check? The rulebook passage you quoted sums it up.

Is the confusion coming from the card saying "any" lore check? Storm of Souls isn't a lore check by any consideration, it's a combat check that just happens to use your lore stat instead of your fight.

While we're on skills though, blarg to those "2 clues for one automatic success" ones. Stastically that saves you no clue tokens then if you had just used them to add dice normally. Maybe a cursed player could use it but other than that it's pointless.

GrooveChamp said:

Because something that affects your combat checks (Marksman Skill) can't be used on Fight checks, but anything that affects your Fight checks, affects your combat checks as well. Combat check being sub-category of the Fight check.

"If an investigator receives a bonus to a skill, any special
checks based on that skill also receive this bonus.
However, if an investigator receives a bonus only to a
special check, that bonus does not apply to any other
checks based on the same skill." (p. 13)

(emphasis added)

Combat checks *are* fight checks, whereas fight checks are not combat checks. Rectangles and squares.

Avi_dreader said:

I believe that Combat checks are neither squares nor rectangles.

This thread seems to be veering close to "All cats have four legs. My dog has four legs, therefore my dog is a cat." :-)

It might help to look on Combat Checks as a subset of Fight Checks. You have a big circle of all Checks that are a Fight Check, inside that cirlce you have another circle of all Checks that are Combat Checks. Anything inside the circle of Combat Checks is also inside the circle of Fight Checks BUT it is not the case that anyting inside the circle of Fight Checks is also in the circle of Combat Checks.

Does that help at all or have I just made things worse? :-)

Tibs said:

Are you implying that combat checks are determined by non-euclidean geometry?

GrooveChamp said:

Woah! What sort of Bolshie talk is this?

These types of skill mean that your two clue tokens will never generate fewer than the expected number of successes. (They'll never generate more than the expected number either, of course). So statistically, this skill type will get you fewer successes across the course of a whole game than if you just used the clues to roll dice - because two random dice can get you two successes, whereas two clues can only buy one auto success. But (and here's the crucial point) most AH skill checks only require one success anyway, so extra successes will very often be wasted.

That's not what makes the real difference though. Tthese two-for-a-success skills really shine because not all skill checks have equal rewards, and using the 'automatic success' skill type, you have much more control over when the successes occur. The "success buyer" can guarantee success on high-stakes skill checks, and resign himself to failure only on those skill checks which don't have much of a penalty. The "random roller" can do something similar, but he can never be absolutely certain of success; if you keep up the strategy for long enough, there are sure to be a few 'flubs'. Exactly how much less efficient this makes it depends heavily on the combinations of encounters and what the risks/rewards are.

That said, there's not much in it either way. Obviously the Fight/combat one is more useful because combat checks are much more likely to require multiple successes.

Avi_dreader said:

Back on topic....I don't think anyone is disputing that Combat checks are a subtype of Fight checks. (Except maybe GrooveChamp, but I agree with Dam about how that all works). If we each went through all our AH cards and replaced the words "Combat checks" with the words "Fight checks against monsters and Ancient Ones" (which means almost the same thing), there wouldn't be any confusion about how bonuses should be applied - it would be completely obvious in each case.

There's a slightly more subtle problem with the definition of a "bonus to a skill". (This is probably a cross-expansion problem, caused by the new skill cards from Dunwich Horror). In the original AH the only way to seriously affect the outcome of a skill check was to add dice or to take them away. Even blessings and curses didn't modify the results of die rolls; they just adjusted which numbers counted as successes.

Adding +1 to the result of each die rolled isn't a "bonus to a skill"; you haven't increased your skill in any meaningful sense. The main AH rulebook explains the relationship between Fight/Combat, Lore/Spell (etc) in terms of bonuses to those skills, and doesn't mention anything about other types of advantage you can get. So while "bonuses to Lore" also affect Spell checks, there's no mention of whether "adding to the results of die rolls on Lore checks" also affects spell checks. There was no reason for that provision to be made in the original AH rulebook, since there weren't any cards which would let you do that anyway.

...actually, now that I write it out like that, it seems pretty obvious to me that it should work. Never mind!

Avi_dreader said:

Are... you implying that they're not?

Tibs said:

Good point ;')

Is Coltsfan Kevin Wilson? I guess if he said it it must be true (official answers thread?).

But just reading the base rulebook that wouldn't be the case. It says any bonus to that skill, not skill check. It'd be less confusing if it said "stat" instead of "skill", but it's clearly referring to the investigator's Fight, Lore, Luck, Sneak, Speed, and Will values, not a skill check. It uses the example of skills that add +1 to the skill value. Without the clarification, it reads like saying that only bonuses that add to the value carry over to both kinds of skill checks, but since the base set didn't have the expansion clues to show examples of, it was left up in the air whether or not it extended to skill check bonuses as well.

Live and learn. Grapple will be received with much more enthusiasm in the future. I still stand on the "2 clues" skills being close to worthless.

I'm pretty sure that Kevin Wilson is just called 'Kevin_Wilson' (or something similar). He does turn up on the boards every so often.

I agree that the rulebook only gives its explanations/examples in terms of "bonuses to skills", but that doesn't matter anyway, because the way that special skill checks are defined is (now that I look at it) fairly clear. My previous post didn't mention the crucial bit with Grapple etc., which is slightly further down on p13, where it says "For example, Evade checks are a special type of Sneak check".

The same presumably goes for the other special skills, so a Combat check is a type of Fight check. So unless the term "Fight checks" is qualified in some way, it refers to all types of Fight checks - which includes Combat checks, plus any other types of crazy special Fight check that someone has dreamed up. So Grapple works for Combat checks. Library Use still doesn't work for Storm of Spirits though.

My biggest objection to the "2 clues auto success" skills isn't that they're worthless - it's that they're dull. "Woohoo, I drew a skill which supports a cautious, conservative playing style!" Bulwarks to that.

Here's a question: has anyone ever made any custom content (fan expansions or whatever) which introduces other types of special skill check? It seems like Speed already does something extra (by providing movement points) but there's clearly room for a subtype of Luck checks - something like "Instinct" I guess. I'm not saying it would add much to the game, I just wondered if anyone had thought to do it.

thecorinthian said:

More like something that you will use, at most, once or twice in an entire game, draining you almost an entire seal's worth of tokens in the meantime. The base skills that provide an extra bonus die for clues pretty much give the same benefit (4 dice is a pretty safe bet you'll get a success) in addition to giving you +1 to a stat.

thecorinthian said:

Wait so you're saying that you think that if you use have Grapple and use Storm of Spirits, you get the +1 to die roll bonus?

It seems a bit counter-intuitive, but I suppose if you're being consistent, it doesn't matter.

Personally I think Library Use with Storm of Spirits would give the +1 bonus. It just makes the most sense for some reason. I mean, YES it's a combat check, but you're using Lore as the base stat instead of Fight. If you're using Lore, you get to use Library Use.

GrooveChamp said:

A safe bet, but not a guarantee. The benefit that the "2 clue" skills have is that they add guaranteed successes. Against the Dunwich Horror, this could be quite helpful. However, I concede that these are indeed the worst of all the skills. Note that the base game +1 skills work on base AND special checks; the 2 clues only work on special checks.

Is "Mystic Gift" the Spell one? Blarf.

johnwatersfan said:

Yeah, I reckon Grapple certainly would work with Storm of Spirits. You're still making a Combat check, aren't you? A Combat check is a type of Fight check, and Grapple increases the results of all dice rolled on Fight checks. And a Combat check isn't a Lore check just because you're using the Lore stat; the "types" of skill checks are determined independently by context.

Although, on the other hand, it's a bit more thematically appropriate to have Library Use work, so it's hard to get worked up about it either way. I think having both work on the Storm of Spirits check would be a bit much.

As for those "auto success" skills, GrooveChamp might be right - I don't know, I haven't worked out the statistical side all that much. Spending two clue tokens to roll two dice would sometimes be wasteful (even if you succeeded), but on the other hand you'd only roll one dice first and one third of the time you wouldn't need to spend the second clue at all.... Maybe it does save you more in the long run.

They're especially bad in light of the skills that exhaust to give one automatic success. The 2 clues ones say they can be used as often as you want, but who's going to throw away that many clues? I can't really think of any instances off the top of my head where you'd need that many successes in a round that'd be worth that many clues. Yeah fighting the Dunwich horror is all I can come up with too.

The way I look at it, you have a 33% chance of getting one success with one less clue token than the skill would give you, a 33% chance of using one more clue token to get one success, and a 33% chance of using the same amount so really you're not gaining anything with the skill. I know 3 dices doesn't give you a 100% chance of success, but then you also figure there's the chance you'd get more than one success with 2-3 clue tokens so it all evens out with fuzzy math.

I believe Storm of Spirits takes up two hands does it not? The spell itself is your weapon. You use your Lore +3 with no other weapons or combat bonuses - no Grapple, no .45 Revolver, no Brass Knuckles. You're casting a nasty spell at someone.

Library Use would certainly give you a bonus to the values on your dice for the Spell check to cast Storm of Spirits, and personally I think it would also apply to the Lore check for the combat. You're especially skilled at researching and comprehending what you're reading, and you've mastered the spell more quickly and with more knowledge about how to use it to cut deepest.

If my memory fails me and the spell only takes up one hand, and I am wrong about the above, then even assuming you're using a gun or sword, using Lore in combat represents using your knowledge of the monster to defeat it instead of your prowess in combat (I like this explanation far less than the previous "you're killing it with a deadly spell" but hey), so Library Use would certainly help your previous research to find the monster's weak spot.

Either way, I'd allow the use of Library Use.

jeffszusz said:

Skills and handless weapons (Brass Knucks/Alien Device) can be combined with SoS. What's the point of handless weapons if you can only use them when you have 1+ hand free?

using lore instead of fight seems clear to me. Library Use would duplicate, but replace, the effects of Grapple in this situation (in other words, Library Use works, Grapple doesn't). I don't see how you could interpret this any other way.

awp832 said:

Because Library Use gives bonuses to the results of dice rolled on lore checks. The check you're making isn't a lore check. It's a combat check which uses lore, which is not necessarily the same thing.

I'm not saying I agree with this, but that is a valid interpretation. The rulebook simply doesn't address the issue of whether a check can be two types at the same time, or whether the 'type' of the skill check is determined solely by the skill used to make it. But this isn't just pedantry for the sake of it. This comes from an honest-to-god rules argument my friends and I had during a game... maybe we are all just wrong in the brain.

A Combat check that uses Lore is a Lore check. If it's a check that refers to a specific stat, it is a check based on that specific stat. In these odd cases of using Storm of Spirits or fighting the Dark Pharaoh, you simply substitute the word "Lore" for any value, effect, or ability that would otherwise affect "Fight."

Examples:

Grapple will not work; Library use will. Spending clues with the Fight skill will not get you +2 dice, but spending them for this combat with your Lore skill will.

Marksman, Endurance, and Fisticuffs will help you in such a combat. Expert Occultist, Mystic Gift, and Ancient Language won't help you harm the monster, but they may still help you cast Storm of Spirits or any other spell you need.

If you get a Revelation of Script spell, you can increase your combat bonus by 3 without reserving a hand!

In summary: anything that grants a bonus to Combat will help you in your battle (including Brass Knuckles and Martial Arts). Anything that grants a bonus to Fight will not. This is one of those rare circumstances where the special check has to be considered independent of the base check it's ordinarily dependent on. Makeup Kit and Telescope do something like this as well.

Storm of Spirits, I've found, is a great spell for helping you pass a horror check, as you can keep both your Will and your combat stat (in this case Lore), maxed without diametrically opposing one another.

Tibs said: