I am uncertain about the final value of a failed skill test, and that becomes relevant for things like the shotgun, or grasping hands

The FAQ on the flashlight basically states that a difficulty of 0 for a test means that I always succeed at a test (except for the auto-fail token). This means that any end result of a test that is negative is counted as being 0. For example, I have a skill value of 3 and draw a -6 token. The test result is considered to be 0.

However, I fail to find the relevant place in the rules, where that is written? In the reference p 26 at the bottom it says:

"If the investigator’s skill value is less than the difficulty for this test, the investigator fails at the test.

• If an investigator automatically fails at a test via a card ability or revealing the [tentacle] symbol, his or her total skill value for that test is considered 0."

This, to me, does not explicitly say that the result for the test with a modified value of, say, -3 (from above example) is considered 0. It just states that for auto-failed tests, the result is considered 0 but a normal modification to a skill value is not an auto-fail as far as I understand. Anyone know where this is made clear?

RR p.15, under "Modifiers".

A quantity on a card (such as a stat, an icon, a number of instances of a trait or keyword) cannot be reduced so that it functions with a value below zero. Negative modifiers in excess of a value’s current quantity can be applied, but, after all active modifiers have been applied, any resultant value below zero is treated as zero.

Ahhhh perfect! Thanks for the clarification.

I have the feeling that is one rule that should be put in the "learn to play" or in some more obvious place. If I hadn't read the FAQ on Flashlight, I would not have noticed this rule. In the learn to play it says, "read the reference when you are getting stuck or have a question". I would argue it is easy to never wonder about negative modifiers and never wanting to look them up.