or 2) I kinda like the idea of applying strain to every failed attempt (maybe even additional strains if Threats are generated). This way, they can attempt as many times as they want before their character is too tired or incapable of continuing and needs rest.

This is okay unless you've got the Heal control upgrade that allows for strain to be healed. 1 light side pip and *poof,* those last 3 or 4 checks' worth of strain are gone.

This is why I am a fan of not limiting it "only 1 check and that's it for the day," or any other houseruled patch, but rather setting a reasonable limit as the GM is supposed to do. Maybe they have 8 hours of downtime, and each skill check they perform represents an hour of work. They can either take a rest and benefit from natural healing, or perform several skill checks with the possibility of losing needed sleep (and now they're going to be making Resilience checks to avoid the effects of sleep deprivation). The possibilities are endless if you just keep it centered in the narrative and don't apply a hard and fast rule in an attempt to "fix" a perceived problem.

Oh yeah, I meant to mention this option too. That even given a lot of time, only *so* many attempts could reasonably be made. So maybe give the player a hard limit up front ("you can try 5 times") or whatever sounds right.

or 2) I kinda like the idea of applying strain to every failed attempt (maybe even additional strains if Threats are generated). This way, they can attempt as many times as they want before their character is too tired or incapable of continuing and needs rest.

This is okay unless you've got the Heal control upgrade that allows for strain to be healed. 1 light side pip and *poof,* those last 3 or 4 checks' worth of strain are gone.

This is why I am a fan of not limiting it "only 1 check and that's it for the day," or any other houseruled patch, but rather setting a reasonable limit as the GM is supposed to do. Maybe they have 8 hours of downtime, and each skill check they perform represents an hour of work. They can either take a rest and benefit from natural healing, or perform several skill checks with the possibility of losing needed sleep (and now they're going to be making Resilience checks to avoid the effects of sleep deprivation). The possibilities are endless if you just keep it centered in the narrative and don't apply a hard and fast rule in an attempt to "fix" a perceived problem.

The only problem I see with this is characters are not paragon's of patience. By this I mean while out of game just having to roll the dice again is no big deal for the player but it is for the character; ie having just asked around numerous people trying to find that new toy you wanted to buy and coming up empty then deciding to just do it again or spending another several hours trying to frustratingly overclock that blaster charger would certainly give the character pause to continue that action right after they had just invested time doing it and failed. On top of this a fail should be just that, a fail, if they're simply allowed to try again they're almost always going to succeed given enough attempts and then it becomes a measure of "how many attempts" making the failure a bit more moot and ranks / talents that help with those checks that much less valuable.

This is why I run with the 1 check per scene (out of combat of course), this doesn't mean that check will eat up the entire scene but rather that a failure means just that, they failed. No matter how much they want that knowledge continuing to grind through the same books they just went through won't help, trying to haggle again with the same merchant won't lower the price as he's already given them his final offer, etc. Instead this gives the players incentive to pick their battles and roleplay a bit more since if they failed one method of accomplishing what they want then they have to think of an alternative action to attempt.

Once they arrive at a new scene, perhaps after some rest or going to the local Catina then their nerves are calmed and they can try again.