I don't think so. At least not an actual printed rule. Though normally that comes up for saving throws, not skill checks.
A common houserule that comes from Violent Healing from the Gliminal creature - used even in PFS - is that you can voluntarily lower your roll result by one degree of success.
And if you are wanting someone to believe that you failed at a skill check despite your best efforts, that would require a successful deception check.
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According to Logan Bonner (in a youtube interview with Dave), you can't by RAW. But depending on the situation he suggests that the GM allow you to choose to suffer a worse degree of success (you still roll the check). However, he himself warns that he would not allow this in situations that seemed like a way to exploit a rule, only in situations where it makes sense in terms of role-play.
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You can always choose not to attempt a skill check, which would generally carry similar results as "failing said check."
Like "I am not bothering to be stealthy" or "I am not attempting to be diplomatic" seem reasonable.
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You can always choose not to attempt a skill check, which would generally carry similar results as "failing said check."
Like "I am not bothering to be stealthy" or "I am not attempting to be diplomatic" seem reasonable.
I am pretty sure good roleplay can even get you the well-deserved result of a critical failure in such cases.
Under what circumstances would you want to fail the check anyways?
Like a competition to let someone else appear to be better than you?
I think as a GM what I would do is make you roll a deception check to feign doing poorly, rather than have you make a skill check of the thing you're trying to pretend to do.
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Not a great example, but if a character has no weapons, but has access to tools (perhaps being used as slave labor), a critical failure on repair checks does 2d6 damage to whatever object they were working on. That might be used as a way to break their chains.
No, that is a terrible example.
Because the character is not trying to do something badly. They are trying to do something well and the player is trying to cheese a way of doing something well by deliberately failing at doing something else.
What they are actually trying to do is a Thievery(Disable a Device) check.
Not a great example, but if a character has no weapons, but has access to tools (perhaps being used as slave labor), a critical failure on repair checks does 2d6 damage to whatever object they were working on. That might be used as a way to break their chains.
And you could do Battle Medicine to wound enemies.
It's only 1d8, but automatic if you can choose a crit failure and only one action, which at 1st level is kinda useful. :-)(Of course, just the fact you can target enemies is wonky.)
A more reasonable example that I would propose:
A minor king is holding a competition for a new royal jester position. The top three contestants will have an audience with the king and a private performance where the king will pick one of them to fill the full-time position.
The party needs to get information from/to this king, so they have their party's Bard enter the competition. They want to succeed fantastically during the first stages of the competition so that they can be in the top three, but during that final performance, they want to deliberately fail the performance so that one of the other two contestants ends up getting the job.
I might ask for a deception check if the party is trying to do something badly without appearing to be doing so on purpose.
Like point shaving in basketball is less effective if people paying attention think you're refusing to score points on purpose.
A more reasonable example that I would propose:
A minor king is holding a competition for a new royal jester position. The top three contestants will have an audience with the king and a private performance where the king will pick one of them to fill the full-time position.
The party needs to get information from/to this king, so they have their party's Bard enter the competition. They want to succeed fantastically during the first stages of the competition so that they can be in the top three, but during that final performance, they want to deliberately fail the performance so that one of the other two contestants ends up getting the job.
This I can see. As noted, Deception-style rolls might be needed. Maybe Performance too depending on the scenario.
It'd heavily depend on what you were intending from failing the check. Not performing the check can be effective ... unless you're being told to do something you don't want to do, Or Else. Some of this might be just various Deception checks to hide that you're really sharpening the sword the wrong way, others might be a big elaborate heist setup for you to utterly fail in the royal tournament.
The gliminal ruling isn't the only example of voluntary failure now - Life Shot allows willing targets of an attack roll to make themselves flat-footed to that attack. I think I prefer the degree of success bump to the flat-footed rule, personally.
This is probably to prevent the Life Shot round to compete and be used as a complete workaround to Healing Bomb feat.