So, this is a little silly, but I couldn’t find anything definite in the book and it’s come up a few times.
Say I’m rolling a versus test against an opponent and I’ve got a +1 to my ob. How does that work out?
If my ob is the number of successes my opponent rolls, it becomes possible for both sides to fail. This isn’t strictly covered in the rules, I don’t believe, but I can see it.
The situations I’ve seen it come up in the most are versus tests during Firefights, where one side is penalized for some reason (suppressive fire, often enough) and the number of successes the victor scores is important.
In a Versus test, the number of successes your opponent rolls is considered your obstacle (for advancement and everything else). Therefore, when suffering a +1 Ob penalty in a versus test, you increase the number of successes you need to win by one. So if you’re at +1 Ob and the dice tie, your opponent wins by one.
Hmm… They way I’ve always interpreted this is that when you are doing a versus test that involves an Ob penalty, each +1 Ob eats one success rolled on the dice. For example, if I have a +2 Ob and roll 4 successes, I has 2 successes left over for purposes of comparing to my opponent.
Alas, I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. It’s always at least 1 Ob, so 1 Ob + 2 Ob penalties = 3 Ob total. On four successes, you take two successes away for the 2 Ob penalty and one for the base 1 Ob difficulty, leaving you with but 1 excess success.
For a versus test, the obstacle is equal to your opponent’s successes. So if your opponent gets no successes, and you get 1, you got one success over your obstacle – you have a margin of success of 1.
Wilhelm’s interpretation is correct – it’s just another way of saying it. Mike’s interpretation is correct in the case of independent tests, not versus tests.