OK, heres another one for you....

How do you deal with Null Rolls?

By that I mean, once you have rolled the dice, and ALL Successes have been cancelled, and ALL Advantage have been cancelled, and there are not outstanding Failures or Threats, and no Triumph and Despair show.

Basically, a zero result.

Clearly, you haven't succeeded, as you have no successes.

But you haven't failed, (Or have you? By dint of Not succeeding?)

Do you let your players reroll?

How does it effect things when you need to know if there is a benefit? (Eg: Medical Checks... your target didnt benefit at all (No Wounds, No Strain recovery.... does the medic get another go? As the book says you can only BENEFIT from one attempt? (For that matter, if the player fails their medic roll, so you allow another, as they have no BENEFITED yet?)

Thoughts?

We've always played that a non-success is a failure. So null rolls have no effect, positive or negative, and, worse, they expend the opportunity for the roll.

You *have* failed.

Success means 1 or more success symbol is uncancelled. A 'null' roll contains zero uncancelled success symbols.

(Some folks have house rules that allow rerolls or something, but RAW, the roll fails the check)

A single Success is needed to succeed at a roll.

No successes= failure.

A net zero roll is just a plain ordinary boring failure. You don't succeed and there's nothing else worth mentioning.

So how do you stand on the Benefiting From a Medical Check?

The attempt is a failure therefore no medical recuperation. They already made the attempt so another attempt may not be made.

If you have a specific question, the best thing to do is click the customer service link on the website and ask the developers. They are usually really good about answering quickly.

So how do you stand on the Benefiting From a Medical Check?

If the roll fails, it failed... I'm not sure what more there is to it?

Although the "benefiting" from is an interesting point--I haven't read the books on the subject in a while.

It would seem to me that for someone to 'benefit' from a medical check, the check would have to be successful. That would imply that someone could try again until they succeed, and after that point the character has benefited from a check.

So how do you stand on the Benefiting From a Medical Check?

Failure is failure.

You didn't heal them any (no successes) you didn't make them feel any better (no advantage to recover strain), you didn't do anything especially noteworthy (triumph), but you also didn't cause any additional pain (Threat) or worsen the injury (Despair).

If you heal WT literally, his injury is just such that you can't do anything more then bandage him up and hope it heals. If you track it narratively then his plot armor is wearing thin.

I generally find a middle ground between failure and success. An example would be one of my Drall players wanted to sneak onto a landing pad that was guarded. He got a null roll and instead of him successfully hiding from them, or them just spotting them, the null roll caused them to hear a disturbance in his area and so moved to investigate, however they weren't at alert since it could have been vermin (which is what they eventually wrote it off as when the player performed a move to escape detection).

When a player ends up with a "null roll," they rip a hole in spacetime that pulls them into another universe. The first one is always Star Trek.

The characters continue to play in the Star Trek universe until another null roll, which takes them to yet another universe.

It continues like this over and over again, each time the players hoping that this next null will be the one that takes them home.

ECRB p. 23: "Remember, a dice pool must have at least one Success symbol remaining for a skill check to succeed."

Some may treat a null roll as a "less than qualified success" allowing them to succeed with some drawback. To me, no successes=failure. Success with Threat or Despair is that "less than qualified success."

ECRB p. 219: "Each character may only receive one Medicine check each encounter, as there is only so much that good first aid can do to help a character."

I can't find in the book where it mentions 'benefitting" from one attempt, so it seems pretty cut and dry...one attempt, no reroll on Medical checks.

Re-rolling checks depends on the type of check attempted, whether or not the PCs would receive feedback that would indicate failure, or if it is critical to the story. For example:

• I wouldn't allow re-rolls on Knowledge checks to recall information (you either remember it or not), but I would allow re-rolls on Knowledge checks to research information after a period of game time has passed.
• I would not allow a PC attempting to hide his speeder in alley to re-roll his Skulduggery check since he has no idea if he failed or not. The poor attempt is what the PC thought was adequate, and that is why it failed.
• I may allow a re-roll to slice an important computer, but increase (or upgrade) the subsequent difficulty since the system may be alerted to the intrusion.

I always allow my players to re-roll a check. If it is a null check, then did they really roll the dice? If they fail the check, why not, it's not like they knew they were going to fail the check, so re-rolling it again makes sense.

Thanks Domingo! I'm pretty sure the language about 'benefiting' is in there somewhere, but I'm glad there's a specific rule that is clear.

Thanks Domingo! I'm pretty sure the language about 'benefiting' is in there somewhere, but I'm glad there's a specific rule that is clear.

If I remember correctly, the language is something to the effect of "a character can only BENEFIT from one medicine roll per set of wounds." Of course, I could be mis-remembering from Shadowrun, though.

To be clear, the re-roll examples I mentioned above are my opinion, not RAW.

I am sure it mentioned Benefitting somewhere, But i cant find it now.

On another note... when it says about criticals, you may make one check, per week, per critical... can you make 2 rolls in the same week, to heal 2 different Criticals?

"A character may attempt one Medicine check per week per Critical Injury."

I interpret this as if you have 2 Critical Injuries, you make 2 rolls (each with the appropriate difficulty) per week.

If you have a bacta tank, I think you can still only attempt to remove one Critical Injury per 24 hour period.

"At the end of each twenty-four-hour period, the character may attempt one Resilience check to remove one Critical Injury."

"A character may attempt one Medicine check per week per Critical Injury."

I interpret this as if you have 2 Critical Injuries, you make 2 rolls (each with the appropriate difficulty) per week.

Thanks for highlighting this one too! I think I've been a bit too strict on crit healing in my games.

Where does it say every 24 hours you can make a check to recover a Critical?

I can only find it says that you can do that once a week.

Nevermind, its the next page under Bacta

"A character may attempt one Medicine check per week per Critical Injury."

I interpret this as if you have 2 Critical Injuries, you make 2 rolls (each with the appropriate difficulty) per week.

Thanks for highlighting this one too! I think I've been a bit too strict on crit healing in my games.

Uhm, really?

I also did the 1 critical per week thing; having 5 crits means you will not be really ok for another 5 weeks mininum.

So we are wrong RAW?

"A character may attempt one Medicine check per week per Critical Injury."

I interpret this as if you have 2 Critical Injuries, you make 2 rolls (each with the appropriate difficulty) per week.

Thanks for highlighting this one too! I think I've been a bit too strict on crit healing in my games.

Uhm, really?

I also did the 1 critical per week thing; having 5 crits means you will not be really ok for another 5 weeks mininum.

So we are wrong RAW?

Yep, pg 219, top of the right column.

You can roll medicine once per week, per crit. So 5 crits = 5 rolls that week. Enjoy your improved medical services!

One per week per injury means you can attempt to heal more than one per week. If it had said "one per week" then it would take 5 weeks.

Since skill checks are made in the context that the character is attempting to achieve a specific goal, a result with no successes simply means the character does not accomplish the result they were trying to achieve. This is fundamentally true regardless of the task: climb a cliff, find a key, persuade a bouncer, heal a wound, and so on. Further Failures and Threats can call for complications and punishing backfires like lost time, strain, or unwanted attention. But not succeeding in passing your check simply means not getting the result you were looking for.

With that in mind, in my experience it is crucial to *not* allow for immediate re-rolls, especially not without expending resources like time or a substantial change in the situation. Rolling until success is functionally identical to automatic success, and is better treated as a trivial non-skill check. This is an important distinction to make to maintain a sense of risk and challenge when it is needed and to keep the pace moving when it is not.

In the case of Healing by the rules, the re-roll is allowed once time has passed (which is a resource being spent) and the character has been able to incur some natural healing (a change in the situation), which is good enough justification.