Precisely. That is the point.
A modifier that causes an expert to be somewhat less likely to succeed will cause a novice to be completely unsuccessful and a skilled practioner to have a good chance of failure.
In addition it allows for better covering of fluke events. For example, the 5% chance of automatic sucess or failure in Pendragon becomes 0.5% in a 3d6 system with 3 a success and 18 a failure. A D20 does not allow for really low probablity events.
I'm not saying that % based systems are bad, but they have a tendency to be skewed towards over-represnting low probability events. It is difficult to design the generic modifiers so that they can be applied to the entire range with the effect intended. (I also have found that people have difficulty dealing with skills above 100%. It does not really make sense to most people, but they eventually learn to deal with it.)
A problem that you can see with this system is hit locations in combat. RQ has no system that seems even roughly correct to do this. The approach in champions is that head shots are a minus 8. This means tha average people fighting average people can make a called head shot work one out of 200 times. If you are really good (skill is 5 better than opponent) the chance of success is much higher, like 20-30%.
To attempt to replicate this in RQ would need to apply a -45% modifyer to a head shot. This allows 50% skill characters to hit rarely, but results in skilled people hitting 50% plus. Or you could apply a -75% chance, but then it becomes totally impossible for "average" people to pull off.
The sort of system I particulary dislike is one like 1St edition shadow run, where the designers did not understand statistics. In Shadow Run there is no difference between a target number of 6 and 7, as a roll of six is an open ended roll that results in at least a 7. A random person with a skill of one will succeed at a "nearly impossible" task 8% of the time. However, if you have a skill of 6 (the normal maximum) and are shooting at somone at short range who is behind a waist high wall you have a 40% chance of missing. If he is not standing behind the wall you have a less than 1% chance of missing. (Shadow Run, with it's target numbers, dice pools, open ended rolls and use of D6 is a really bad combination of linear and non-linear effects. Modifiers tend to have gross effects that the designers do not seem to have though about.)
I happen to like the non-linear system as used in Champions and Gurps, but I'm hardly saying that that is the way to go. RQ is a rather good game, after all. But simple linear systems have a tendency to break when modifyers start being applied. The simple crit rules in Pendragon break when people end up with skills in combat of 31 (21 plus impassioned) or 41 (impassioned and berserk). When you oppenent is doing double damage 50% or 100% of the time and always hits it gets very gross very fast.
Kevin
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