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Murray Lewis
United Kingdom
Cheltenham
Gloucestershire
Good at learning, useless at playing
No secret message here
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I'm still a little unsure on one aspect of the ToC rules; any help would be appreciated!
If someone has no rating in a skill, can they still test it (but have no points to spend)?
For example; a cultist creeps up on a PC. The PC has no rating in Sense Trouble, but can they still roll an unmodified D6 to detect the danger?
I know you can use Weapons/Firearms without having a rating (as that is explicitly mentioned in a sidebar in the rulebook), but I'd like to be sure the same applies for other skills.
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Mario Perez
United States
Worland
WY
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You absolutely can. You apply a -1 penalty and, as you say correctly, you are unable to make a spend.
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Nope, you can not.
If you have no rating in a general ability, you can't make any rolls (exception for Weapons, Firearms and Scuffling at a higher difficulty, like mentioned above). The common advice is to get at least 1 point in each general ability.
No rating doesn't necessarily stop you from using an ability though. You could for instance drive a car even with no rating in Driving. You would however fail as soon as you had to make a test. So stay out of car chases.
If given enough time, someone without Athletics could climb a high fence. If they had to climb it quickly while being chased tough, they would fail.
Or, to use your example; Investigators without Sense Trouble shouldn't be used to stand watch when those pesky cultists are around...
On the other hand, if you have a rating but have emptied your pool, you are still allowed to roll.
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Older Nick wrote: Nope, you can not.
If you have no rating in a general ability, you can't make any rolls (exception for Weapons, Firearms and Scuffling at a higher difficulty, like mentioned above). The common advice is to get at least 1 point in each general ability.
No rating doesn't necessarily stop you from using an ability though. You could for instance drive a car even with no rating in Driving. You would however fail as soon as you had to make a test. So stay out of car chases.
If given enough time, someone without Athletics could climb a high fence. If they had to climb it quickly while being chased tough, they would fail.
Or, to use your example; Investigators without Sense Trouble shouldn't be used to stand watch when those pesky cultists are around...
On the other hand, if you have a rating but have emptied your pool, you are still allowed to roll.
This is completely wrong. Edit: Apparently not!
First off, you do not have to have points in a General skill to make a test - if you have points you can spend them on a test, but there is no need to have any points in it (pg 57). If you have no points, you just have to go with the luck of the die.
The rules specifically recommend not putting at least one point in each skill - instead it recommends concentrating your points in specific skills (pg 26).
Making a test in which you do not have any points in a skill does not result in an automatic failure. Again, luck of the die. In most cases a 4 or higher will still succeed. There also is no -1 penalty as suggested in the first reply.
Investigative skills work differently - you must have a point in the skill to get a particular clue tied to that skill. However, for General skills it's a different set of rules.
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This got me flipping through the rulebook like crazy, and I couldn't find a single piece of text supporting my claims. God damnit! Have I been doing it wrong? Where did this come from? I KNOW I have read it somewhere...
Searched through the ToC forum at Yog-Sothoth and found what I was looking for:
Quote: A rules clarification across all versions of GUMSHOE. It's an official rule which missed the final edit of Esoterrorists and therefore other GUMSHOE games.
If you have no rating in a General ability, that is you have put no build points into it, you cannot make a test on that ability. For example, if your Athletics is 0, you cannot make a roll to climb a wall.
That is not to say you can't do the thing at all; it's only if you want to attempt something requiring a roll that you will not succeed. To give an example, your character might be able to drive, but with a zero rating you will not be able to deal with a car chase or potential crash.
The only exception to this is that in Trail of Cthulhu, people with no combat skills can fight at a considerable disadvantage (see p. 60)
Just a single point in an ability means you can always roll.
So, unless you deliberately want to be hopeless in certain core General abilities, your should take points in all of the following (or their equivalent).
Essential:
Health
Stability
Sanity
Core:
At least one combat skill
Athletics or Fleeing
Stealth
Sense Trouble
Stealth
Shadowing
Characters with a zero rating can still piggyback with others - this is covered in the rules.
For example, Prof Layton lost the use of his legs during the Great War, but his friends can lift him and his chair over the wall into the cultists' compound. Let's say he has zero rating in Athletics. The usual Difficulty for the group would be 4, but because of Layton's zero rating, it increases by 2 to 6.
(Note, If you have a rating, but currently no pool in a General ability, you can roll, but you have no points to spend)
So I am in fact exactly right (apart from the +1 diff, perhaps), though non of the stuff I mentioned is in the rulebook 
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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That's weird because I've never seen that clarification anywhere official and it's not like that in Ashen Stars where it's explicitly says you can always make a test of any general ability. Then again, Ashen Stars is what I've read most recently so that's freshest in my mind and so I made the assumption that it was consistent. Do you happen to know who posted the clarification? I wonder why they have differing rules.
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It was Simon who posted it actually, quite a while ago. It's quite weird that it isn't fixed in Ashen Stars. Maybe they changed their mind on the subject...
Here's a link to the thread:
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/threads/14516-Trail-Rules-Clarifi...
Perhaps some forum necromancy could be a good idea, to see if either Simon or Robin could respond
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Thanks. I just checked and in AS they actually have a couple sentences, including one that starts off "Unlike other Gumshoe games..." so apparently it's either unique to AS or something that doesn't appear in all of the games.
In any event, having run quite a bit of ToC, I've always just let people make an attempt even without a point in the skill. The alternative is spending a lot of time telling people "No, you can't do that" which leads to a lot of inane situations like someone having no chance of spotting someone sneaking up on them or having zero chance of every shadowing someone. I've never had it "unbalance" a game. YMMV.
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At Pelgrane's seminar at Dragonmeet, Robin Laws told us why there (most likelly) won't be a Gumshoe Companion: Each version of Gumshoe is designed to fit the genre it works within, so a set of "generic" extra rules won't have a purpose.
So I guess this could explain why Ashen Stars allows you to roll even with no rating, when previous games don't; it fits in AS. I couldn't find anything in Night's Black Agents about not rolling if you had no rating either...
It could also be that they simply forgot, or changed their minds. Simons post is three years old after all. I guess we'll see when Esoterrorist 2.0 arrives 
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