When crafting, would you allow a player who FAILED the "Step 3: Construction" roll with ADVANTAGE to still spend that advantage to gain benefits on the next crafting attempt? (I'm thinking specifically of Tables 3-3, 3-6, and 3-8 in Special Modifications .)

See, I was playing around with some test rolls because a player of mine is itching to craft some new gear, and I realized that even at 2PURPLE diffifulty to her 3YELLOW 1GREEN dice pool, there was a halfway reasonable chance of failing to successfully construct an item.

But I reckon I would allow her to spend that Advantage, so long as she only spent that Advantage on the items like "Practice Makes Perfect" or "Lessons Learned". How many of us, when cooking or fixing a computer or putting together furniture, have had something fail, but in a way that let us finally figure out what we should be doing correctly? I'd wager it's a lot of us, and I'd wager I will be really entertained by the image of my player having a piece of gear fall apart like a Jenga tower, only to shout, "Eureka! The flamdoodle goes INSIDE the wingjobber!"

What do you all think?

I allow it. I figure you can use Advantages and Triumphs on 'failed' combat checks. I don't see why a crafting check, or any skill check, should be more restrictive.

I thought "Practice Makes Perfect" and "Lessons Learned" were designed for failure, to be honest. I could see "Schematic" being used, on... like, a Triumph or something?

I agree with 2P51 and Kestin. As long as the Advantage and Triumph were spent on things that fit with the failed check to actually produce an armour (or weapon or whatever) then sure.

yep for lesson learned or practice makes perfect.

not for the schematics... since it would look strange in my eye if the PC is not able to construct something but then for some reason he is able to construct a shematic for a perfect suit that will make him life so much easier but has no clue how he came to this conclusion...

I disagree on excluding schematics - so you hammer out the prototype, learn of the obvious flaws in the design and can easily compensate for the errors on the next version. It's that much easier because you know exactly where you went wrong.

Yeah that really; like the armour might be mostly alight up to a particular component that completely fries out the powdered design; good thing one took notes on it's design process so far and what not to do.

The lessons learned is a more broad learning; you like how that went, so you can apply the techniques to something else to streamline the process, hence why the lessons learned applies to any crafting check's made next.

Well a failure means that you produceed nothing at all, but just a load of crap that fills the floor of your room and becomes a deathtrap to your household droid.

While I see perfectly that you get an idea what went wrong (lesson learned/ practice makes perfect) I personaly wouldn´t allow the shematics since that would implify that you now not just know what went wrong but also that you know how to do it like a mastersmith without even testing it out (since your experiment lies broken on the ground)

but well that´s as always everyones own taste, and every GM has to see what works best on his/her table.

Where does it say failure means that you produce nothing at all? Explicitly, it states: "If the character fails on the check, the product that comes out of the attempt is unusable and the materials are lost." That's the default failure, with no advantages spent to gain something from the failure.

I will give you that Schematics on a failure is a stretch, but if my player fails and ends up with the 4 advantage required ( especially if it was a Triumph instead/in addition), I'd be willing to listen to the case for a stretch. It could be that one minor thing went wrong, and that blaster exploded when the player tested it, so they know how to construct 98% of the object and even figured out from the smoking wreckage what went wrong. Maybe they perfectly crafted the vibro-sword, but a slip-up at the last minute shattered the deadly-thin blade into enough pieces that it wasn't salvageable. Perhaps they measured out a template that would have worked to craft the armor, had they not set the temperature too high on one of their tools and ruined their materials... but that template isn't going anywhere.

It is a stretch, but GMing failed checks with 4+ advantage is difficult enough - and we're given so few options to do so that limiting them seems like a poor choice. It's even gotten to the point where I once had a player fail with a net 0 success/failure and 7 advantage, and I said "you know what, the thing happens, just less than you'd like". It's lazy GMing, yes, but brought on by the fact that we don't have good examples of options, and that kind of result can put both players and GM on edge. Clearly something went very right, but you have nothing to show for it. It's painful, and saying "here's 3 boost die and a reduced difficulty next time" isn't always what the player needs to hear to make up for what can feel like a serious waste, especially with talents designed for crafting or a destiny point flip.

That said... I'd require the player to make a case for it. I'd be more than happy to hand out the boost and the reduced difficulty of "practice makes perfect" and "lessons learned" and tell them "try again", especially because they're likely to end up with enough advantage on that check to craft a unique and personal piece of gear, with the right qualities to feel special. But if the player is really upset, and we're stunned enough by the results - or, again, if there's a Triumph - I say go for it.

Having a friend who is a blacksmith, I can give you a real world example of schematic being perfectly fine with a failure.

Schematic (at least in Armor Crafting) permanently decreases the difficulty of checks to create the armor of the given template by 1.

My friend was making a blade, and he wanted to make it using a Demascus steel. To do it, he initially layered the steel and twisted it. He wound up not welding it pure, and so the end splayed out and got really hard to work with. After getting frustrated, he wound up noticing that the piece he was working with looked like steel cable, so he took a length of it and spot welded the ends. He then heated and worked that piece and it wound up shaving a huge amount of effort and time off of the process. In the end, though, when he went to quench it for the hardening he heard the telltale "ping" of a bad hardening because he went to the water too fast after the oil. The blade was unusable, having fractures in the spine, but for the next attempt he had not only a time saving method with the material choice, but also learned to give more time on the quench to better harden the blade, both making the process far quicker and easier.

Depending on the situation, I allow a high advantage (3, usually more) to be a small success, if it's trivial stuff that don't hold much story. In crafting I would rule it just took too long and the item is very plain, if the player agrees of course, they can always take the advantages as Boost dice for next attempt, etc.

Having a friend who is a blacksmith, I can give you a real world example of schematic being perfectly fine with a failure.

Okay, confession time. Reading that, I had this badassness playing in my head. . . .

A little off-topic, but potentially if you're going to convert 3+ advantage to minor success, do "1 uncancelled succes with 1:1 or 2:1 conversion of advantage to threat" at player's option... then you can spend it on the stuff that forces you to sell for less, etc.

LOL Desslok, my friend is in love with the original Conan movie - he named his second son Conlan (because his wife wouldn't let him straight up name him Conan, lol). He taught both his kids to recite the answer to, "What is good in life?"

He's currently GMing my game so I can get a chance to play, too, and the NPC I'm playing as a character is an Armorer, so this actually came up in game.

Why not get the schematic with a failure? The blade forging above is a great real world example. Another could be the sitting down, planning and prototyping hit all the usual snags along the way and it was just quicker and easier to start again with fresh material than try and savage the recycle bin. Another could be a vital part bought on spec did not make the grade (or the dealer passed off crap as top shelf). Something like a power supply or surge protector for the computer systems of the device being faulty and burning out the printed circuit. Bin it and start again.