So, one of my biggest fail points on grasping the rules of a system with its own dice is how these two kinds play a part. I sort of get it that purple dice are difficulty dice, and most or all pools should have some. If I'm swinging a lightsaber, there will be 2 purples, while shooting from a bit further off will be 3 purples. If I'm swinging the same saber at the enemy commander, and he has Adversary 3, it will become 2 red and a purple, as each rank of Adversary upgrades a purple to red, and the third rank, not wanting to be left out, upgrades air to a purple. What about skills, though? Does the GM just add them in, as they see fit? Does each task have an average difficulty? My book doesn't totally say (Edge, Age, or the beta of this), in a way my brain is getting, anyway. I want to hack the computer, while dodging the sentries. Is it based on a bunch of their abilities, set values of the skills, or what?

In the critical table, it has a severity column, filled with purple dice, but I don't know why. Do you keep track of how high on that table the character is, and add them as Diff dice to their pools, till they get better, or is it part of healing from them?

Last one. I know that the Difficulty dice can be upgraded to Challenge dice, just to rain on someone's day, but when? I know a few things that will do it, like Adversary, but what else? As a strange example, I know that some modding can get up to 7 Difficulty dice, if you aren't using special ways to get around it. These dice aren't cheap-cheap, I've rarely seen them in my stores, and each set only comes with two or so Diff dice, and one Challenge die. if I don't have a dice app on my phone, can I upgrade the purples into reds, to get around limited numbers? It's introducing potential Despair that wasn't there, which sucks, but when I'm keeping track of assets, rather than numbers, I don't always want to have to remember what was gotten, and then have to roll more dice, to finish the pool. Assuming the good answer, and you DON'T do this, when else do those red dice work in?

Sorry for all the ________, but after decades of d20, pool d10, and the like, the dice in this system just throw me for a loop, with what gets used when, when you can alter it with blue and black d6s (boost and setback?), and what all the symbols can actually do, and NOT do, in various results (you got LOTS of Advantage, but no Successes? Sorry about that.) Any assistance on getting a firmer grasp on this system would be great, as I'd have to be the person in my group to run it, and I've already admitted here just houw daunting an idea that probably is, right now.

1. Getting an intuitive feel for the dice is the steepest part of the learning curve, so don't be discouraged.

2. The purple dice next to the criticals is the difficulty to recover (either healing on your own with Resilience, or getting patched up with Medicine).

3. A Destiny point can be spent to upgrade a purple to a red arbitrarily.

4. The GM has total discretion over setting difficulty for any activity, including challenge dice.

5. An "average" difficulty is 2 purples...for any task deemed "average" by the GM. Yes, it's just that simple.

6. There's a chart in the book if you have standard d6's, d8's and d12's you need more dice at the table, but don't want to buy more FFG dice. There's also a graphic somewhere around here that you can print out on sticker-paper.

There's also a Star Wars Dice app that is not too terribly expensive and can be handy to provide you as many dice as you might need. Another things FFG has purposefully done is try to limit the size of dice pools so, in general, you shouldn't need more than the one dice set per player. I am somewhat mixed on this.. it does help speed things up somewhat as the dice pools are fairly small and you toss them down, determine your totals and then get to the fun part of telling everyone how it works out in the end... on the other hand, there were some fun times with rolling 15d6 damage for some spells in D&D the amount of damage that put out some times was just hilarious fun.

Between the three beginner sets and and extra pack I got along the way, I'll end up with 4 sets, which is plenty for a table. I'd use the app, but my stupid phone has a stupid short battery life.

Yes, we have 3 sets of dice (from the beginner sets) and use it as a common pool in the centre of the table. We have absolutely no problem, except once, when we ALL rolled double pips in the destiny generation and were short of markers for combat initiative. But this is only a problem if you want it to be a problem, really...

My rule of thumb for Challenge (red) dice is simple. Is there a chance for something to go horribly wrong? If you're on the rooftops jumping a 2 meter alley in Mos Eisley, it might be 2 Difficulty (purple dice). The same jump on Coruscant, with the chance of plummeting to death (or landing in the wrong speeder at the wrong time), should be using Challenge dice instead of Difficulty.

Usually, there isn't a need to pull out the Challenge dice without an Adversary or an opposed test. So for static tests (not against another being) I mix them in to emphasize to my players that they are flirting with disaster.

What about skills, though? Does the GM just add them in, as they see fit? Does each task have an average difficulty? My book doesn't totally say (Edge, Age, or the beta of this), in a way my brain is getting, anyway. I want to hack the computer, while dodging the sentries. Is it based on a bunch of their abilities, set values of the skills, or what?

I haven't seen this addressed yet so:

Just like any other system the GM assigns a difficulty to a skill check. If this is a raw skill check (hacking a computer with no defences), then the GM decides the difficulty of the lock, with PP being "Average". The PC probably isn't going to do any hacking while dodging sentries, but other things might get in the way. This is when you add the setback dice. The computer might be a well known piece of junk, Average to hack. But it might be raining (+1 setback), and it's dark and the PC has no flashlight (+1 setback). So the pool is PPSS.

Contested rolls are against the skill of an opponent. There might be another hacker on the system that the PC is trying to hack, either actively trying to prevent the PC from succeeding, or having set up defences previously. That hacker might have a skill of YGG, so the contested difficulty might be RPP. Again, it might be raining and dark, so the final difficulty is RPPSS.

Hope that helps.

My rule of thumb for Challenge (red) dice is simple. Is there a chance for something to go horribly wrong? If you're on the rooftops jumping a 2 meter alley in Mos Eisley, it might be 2 Difficulty (purple dice). The same jump on Coruscant, with the chance of plummeting to death (or landing in the wrong speeder at the wrong time), should be using Challenge dice instead of Difficulty.

I'm generally not that vicious with challenge dice But I do use the same rule of thumb: If I deem that a check could have dire consequences associated with it, I'll generally upgrade the difficulty without using a DP. I've only ever upgraded once, but I leave open the option to upgrade multiple times if I think it's warranted

For instance, say the PCs are trying to splice an Imperial network in the middle of a break-in/rescue mission into an Imperial base. The last thing they'd want to happen is for the Empire to find out what they're trying to do, or where they're located. Which means that there needs to be a chance a despair can be rolled so evil me can have this happen I'll set an appropriate difficulty (Hard, maybe, or Formidable, depending on what they're trying to do), then upgrade once so there's a chance that despair will be rolled, setting off alarms and bringing an armed attachment right to them.

Mac's example is also good. Basically, the GM doesn't need to be constrained to only using DP to upgrade, if he thinks an upgrade is needed for the action being performed. Of course, these are usually special cases, and 90% of the time (or more), I give a task a normal, non-upgraded difficulty. You want the upgrade to drive home the danger to your players, so it shouldn't be overused.

One thing to take into account is the Destiny Pool. It has to flow between Dark and Light, thus sometimes the GM has to upgrade difficulties in order to prevent an allblack pool from happening, and so should the players also. This, in my mind, leaves very small room for upgrading without using Destiny (I, as a player, would feel a bit cheated for having my difficulty upgraded without the reward of flipping a DP to Light, unless of course there is other reward the GM has planned).

Given that there are only really four options (five in extreme cases) for how many Difficulty Dice to add in most cases, it may not be as complex as it seems.

2 purple dice is an "Average" difficulty. In most cases if you don't have a better idea, that's what you can use. 3 purple dice is "Hard", and 4 is "Daunting". In most cases if you'd use those words to describe the difficulty then it's a dice pool that will probably work.

Skulduggery:

Easy: Picking the lock to a farmer's house

Average: Picking the lock to a business or warehouse with moderate security

Hard: Picking the lock to a small Imperial outpost

Daunting: Picking the lock to an Imperial command center

As others said, add Challenge dice when you have something in mind that can happen if the Despair comes up. It's also a good way to keep the Destiny Pool flowing back and forth. If you have an idea for a Despair outcome, flip a DP and upgrade a purple die to red. And cackle knowingly

Maybe the farmer is home and he's paranoid, so if the Despair comes up while you're picking the lock to his house, he might come out and start shooting at you.

The business or warehouse might have security droids who could pop up on a Despair and cause you trouble.

etc...

Finally:

Picking a lock in the rain, at night, while under fire from an enemy: 3 Setback dice.

progressions put a superb explanation of the difficulty progression (pun intended) et al.

So, how about opposed stuff? My players want to sneak past some Stormtroopers to get into a bunker. Do they do sneaking, I set the diff, and the shell heads do perception, I set the diff? Do the players do their bit, and I adjust their diff for the troopers? It would seem weird if the Stormtroopers failed to spot them, but the players succeeded, and still somehow gave themselves away (a lot of Threats, or something). In my brain, d20 makes sense, as an opposed roll, where the one who did better wins, but this has dice with "you did great, but crap still happened", or "you failed, but they were apparently not really paying attention". How do these scenarios work?

The difficulty for Stealth checks is the Perception skill of the opposition of the check. Since the Stormtrooper minion doesn't have Perception as a skill, you would use the Cunning trait of which the Stormtrooper has two. That gives you two Difficulty. If you were going against two minions that had Perception as a skill, you would then upgrade one Difficulty to a Challenge die.

In my experience, d20 is usually strictly pass or fail. With this system you need to think narratively along with the pass or fail. Rolling a Successful Stealth check with one uncanceled Threat, you could narrate it that the group or player in question slipped or had an unusually hard time following the person in front of him/her. That player suffers 1 Strain.

Just keep in mind, a Successful roll with a lot of Threat is still a success so don't completely negate the Success when spending the Threat. 3 Threat can still be spent causing 3 Strain to a PC.

Thank you very much, that is very helpful. Also, thanks for not just saying "if you had looked at p.### of the book, you would've read..."; sometimes it really helps to have someone walk one through, and in a way the book's example, if there is one, might not have, especially with related stuff, like the Threats --> Strain bit.

Here is a fun scenario. Han is trying to sneak up on a Scout trooper. The GM adds a Challenge(red) die by flipping a destiny point. Han fails, with a despair and 3 advantage *snap*! The despair is that the scout trooper had a friend that is now going for help. The advantage is that this scout trooper's speeder bike is sitting there ready to go. Han finishes his round with a brawl attack and Luke and Leia hop aboard the speeder to chase after the "despair" scout trooper.

Another good one tip with for the infamous stealth check, is to consider the full goal. If the player's goal is "I want to sneak past the stormtrooper" failure doesn't have to mean they have been seen, particularly if they have advantage. It could mean they were about to go and noticed the trooper turn to face the opening, so they stayed put. Or they got stuck behind a potted plant halfway across the hallway.

Another good one tip with for the infamous stealth check, is to consider the full goal. If the player's goal is "I want to sneak past the stormtrooper" failure doesn't have to mean they have been seen, particularly if they have advantage. It could mean they were about to go and noticed the trooper turn to face the opening, so they stayed put. Or they got stuck behind a potted plant halfway across the hallway.

yes, this. failure is not necessarily that you got nowhere with the task you where trying to do, but that it took a lot longer to accomplish than you would have liked, this prevents the "Roll for the story to proceed" conundrum.

Try to think of the dice roll happening in the middle of the players action:

1. the Player declares what they intend to do, i a broader sense "I'm sneaking past the guard into the compound"
2. the Player and gm help to build the dice pool; positive dice from the players skills etc, boost dice from anything that the gm and player agree is helping the situation (perhaps the guard is engaged in a conversation on his com link) the negative dice represent the situation, if its opposed then what is the skill and characteristic of the NPC, these become the red and purple, blacks come from the environment (its very quiet, PC is trying to move quickly)
3. the Player rolls and asses the results.
4. the player describes how the positive dice results affect the action (such as the speeder bike being very close buy) at the same time the Gm describes what the negative effects will be (the squamate being alerted and speeding off)

On the topic of when to use what dice i follow these general guidelines:

• how difficult is the task being performed in ideal conditions (others have covered this well in previous comments)
• are there any environmental or situational effects on this task (poor light, raining, in a hurry, wrong tools for the job) this will set how many setback dice i add (i also keep in mind some players have spent xp to get talents that remove setback, I DO NOT let this influence how many setback dice i add, im not adding an extra because i know they will remove 1.
• what skills/tallents do the opposing PC/NPC have, will this upgrade or downgrade the difficulty?
• is there anything that obviously will cause a disaster if it was to occur (jumping a bottomless pit...), if yes then ill upgrade a difficulty to a challenge without flipping a destiny point.
• if I'm rolling for an NPC and i feel a triumph would be especially useful (perhaps for reinforcements or cool narrative) then ill flip a destiny point to upgrade the NPC's dice pool.
• If a PC is rolling and there is no risk in the task that the PC is aware of, but none the less a despair could trigger an interesting narrative, then i flip a destiny point to upgrade the difficulty pool.

Basically i build the encounters to have interesting things happening, so setback and boost come into play more. i also try to spend destiny points quickly, and Players should buy into this (there is often a DP flipped every round during structured play). i also encourage use of the DP's for things other than dice pool modification; did i need the BBEG to escape instead of being knocked out in the encounter then i flip a DP and describe the bad guy using their escape plan.

• the Player rolls and asses the results.

I believe the technical term for this is "mooning"...

One thing. Vigilance would be what is used to notice someone trying to stealth by you. Not perception. Perception is for noticing something already there. Vigilance is for noticing something changes.