DailyRich said:

Yeah, its all on Page 11.  This particular point is [nearly verbatim] in the second paragraph under triumph.

-WJL

 I feel like, because of the placement of advantages and threats on the dice, and how dice either have facings with advantages/threats or successes/failures or a combination in equal numbers, most of the time a check with an equal chance of success (say, two difficulty vs two ability as your base dice) leaves you with either a failure with advantages or a success with threats.

Members of our group have played both WFRP and Edge now, and so I can't help but compare since there is a similarity in the proprietary dice.  

For something like Warhammer FRP, where the setting is gritty and there's this feeling that what matters is that the world is doing things to you rather than heroes doing something to change the world, diluting success with extenuating circumstances makes sense.  For heroic space opera it feels a little more weird.  I feel like success and failure should be a little less ambiguous.

And we kind of feel like the existince of reckless and conservative dice in WFRP did a great deal to ameliorate that feeling that plot is doing things to you rather than you doing things with the plot.  You could set how extreme you wanted the successes and failures to be.  I feel like an opportunity was missed in not bringing those dice over.  It would be a great fit for Star Wars, where aggression and recklessness are specifically called out as bad ideas by Jedi in the canon and  the overall storyline, and the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker shows that these dramatic swings that recklessness cause can lead to darkness, but conversely, sitting around and debating what is happening and being conservative can cause weakness.  Having players balance aggressive and defensive stances on dice rolls could have brought that theme of balance out in the mechanics of the game a lot more. 

The smaller dice pools (WFRP had additive dice rather than upgrades) and larger size of the stepped up dice (from d8 to d12 instead of d8 to d10) might also make things shake out a bit more strangely.  

Overall, I think we need to play more in order to really get a feel for it but it definitely feels strange, and may not feel appropriately heroic for Star Wars.  There's certainly less of a feel of unambiguous accomplishment and agency in the ability checks.      

Illya Mar said:

I'm also pretty surprised that FFG decided not to bring these dice across from WFRP. As you say, them seem like a very good fit (perhaps for dark side/light side destiny points, rather than a simple upgrade, tjavascript:f_valida_respuesta();o represent channelling the aggression of the dark side and the tranquility of the light side)…

bbarlowglamdring said:

Keep in mind that if u reduce the number of advantages and disadvantages u impact a number of things:

*  With a 'straight roll' w/ roughly half good & bad dice …despite advantages & disadvantages cancelling each other out -  the variance is still reduced, thus decreasing the chance of outlyer results such as 3 advantages for a crit or 3 threats for a out-of-ammo

* Often the acting player will have the advantage in dice, thus reducing the number of advantages/disadvantages will reduce teh overall expected amount of advantages thus impacting all abilities derived from such (leadership from Politico, Healing, Crits, autofire etc).

IMO somtimes just outsource the narrative a bit or fall back on simple mechanics like gain or loss of strain or bonus/penalty of dice on next roll ;)

So, I've been reading up this thread again, needed that it seemed.

My question might fit into the skill thread too, but I think this is the most appropriate place.

Since advantages apply, even if the check (combat or skill) was not successful - which I had assumed as is now confirmed by reading through this thread I wonder. Spending threats and advantages in combat is all good and well, even computers and mechanics seems to go swell, but social skills…

Last session, with my second group of beta-testers, the politico wanted to deceive a customs desk clerk to gain access to some stuff (long story) on Cloud City… So she rolls deceit against his discipline - which he hasn't got… so only willpower then. She does not succeed, but rolls a ton of advantages… now, in combat its more or less easy to throw around setbacks and boost dice, and similar stuff… there's crates, dust, shrapnel flying about, running, falling and hiding behind bodies, screaming, aiming, balance, over reaching, insults… you know, a lot… but across a counter, talking to a person… how do you spend advantages?

My ruling, since she was new and didn't really get the idea, and because she's not that familiar with star wars, was that she by accident mentioned GalEx or something (you know, DHL FedEx thingy in SW ) and the desk clerk reacted to this (which she could see and rewarded herself with a boost die) - the whole conversation wasn't roleplayed properly due to late hours, long day and her lack familiarity with star wars and roleplaying, but would that be a fair use of advantage expenditure in a non-successful attempt to deceive someone? The result of failures and successes were exactly 0, there was no cancelling of successes, only a advantage or two cancelled… so the advantages stirred a reaction in the clerk, due to some new deal or lots of traffic for those delivery guys these last few week, new faces, lots of stuff - hence boost die on next attempt/round - since she realises this - which is the advantage… even if he doesn't really believe her on her first try…

Makes sense? How would you do it?

 Do you remember that scene in The Incredibles where Mr . Incredible was helping the old lady with her insurance claim? "I would not advise you to talk to Norma Wilcox…"

That's how I'd take handle your situation. The person your talkin to cant help, but knows someone who can. Adv and Threat spent on the first interaction roll modifies your first roll with the new person.

-EF