The Guardians of the Abyss Tablet Chaos Token information is : "-2: Ignore all bonuses to your skill for this skill test."

Notably "bonus" is not an officially defined term. The rules simply refer to "modifications."

I'm reading this to include all positive modifications to your base skill, including permanent mods from assets, mods from triggered effects on assets, mods from investigator cards, skill icons, events (like lucky), and other chaos tokens . They are all included in the same boat in the skill test timing rules. They all combine to yield the modified skill value .

So, for example, if someone was using Olive McBride and pulled a +1, a cultist, and a -5, and selected the +1 and cultist tokens, the +1 token would be negated as it is a positive modifier to the skill value. Also, Calvin Wright would have a skill of 0.

Is this how other people read it?

"Bonus" isn't a keyword in the RRG, but the term is used in the "Modifiers" section of the RRG on page 15.

In general I'd read it the same way as you, though I'm newer to this game specifically so my figurative $.02 is worth close to a literal $.02. 😛

It's not explicitly defined, but there are examples in both the RR and the Learn to Play that use it in context as "positive modifier".

Thats brutal. So it's only your base stat vs the test value at that point?

1 hour ago, Donel said:

Thats brutal. So it's only your base stat vs the test value at that point?

Pretty much. It might as well be another tentacle.

Would a flashlight ability be a 'bonus' even though it's a negative modifier to the shroud and not a modifier at all to the skill test?

I think flashlight would work normally. As you say, it is not affecting your skill value, it's actually changing the target value of the test.

1 hour ago, jaqenZann said:

I think flashlight would work normally. As you say, it is not affecting your skill value, it's actually changing the target value of the test.

Indeed. Modifying the difficulty is not the same as modifying the skill value.

So things like Winging it and Improvised weapon and Anatomical Diagrams could be useful.

On 1/22/2019 at 4:55 PM, Buhallin said:

Pretty much. It might as well be another tentacle.

Yep... actually it is even worse if you are playing Hard: your base stat -2 versus difficulty.

I have managed to succeed on a couple of these, like the "Slumber" test, which only has a difficulty of 2.

But still, it seemed so rough that I was wondering if I was missing something...