The EotE core indicates players are not obligated to roll a dice pool, that once they are "aware" of their chances of success they can choose to not roll the dice.

Let's say, as GM, I flip a dark Destiny token to upgrade a check, and the player then decides to not roll the dice pool...does that token get flipped back to dark? Not that my players have done this (or even thought of doing it), but it seems a workaround to getting more light Destiny tokens stacked in the players' favor, particularly because the intent to do so would be practically impossible to prove, especially in the case of canny players.

What are your thoughts? Flip the token back, or no?

Definitely only flipped once the dice are rolled, if there is a change of mind then it stays a Dark Side pip

Page 34 of AoR, 27 in EotE, has the phrase "Conversion takes place at the end of the action for which the Destiny Point was use.."

My answer would be No, the Destiny Point doesn't flip if the Player chooses not to make the roll.

The EotE core indicates players are not obligated to roll a dice pool, that once they are "aware" of their chances of success they can choose to not roll the dice.

Where exactly does it say this? Not that I advocate keeping difficulty secret. In almost all cases (and games) it's better to let players know roughly what kind of difficulty they're facing, but it seems to me that you don't use Destiny until the player is committed. Basically, I would make the player aware of some of his options, such as jumping the chasm at 3 purple, shooting the Stormtrooper at 2 purple, or brawling with the Bounty Hunter at one purple, one red. Once he decides, he's committed. I can spend my Destiny and we're good to go. Now, this isn't to be obnoxious, the trouble is that indecision is a killer. Your turn comes up, you act.

I'd say PC decides first, then you flip the DP. They don't get to decide post imo. Plus you flip a DP to upgrade a dice pool, if they choose not to roll, there's no dice pool to modify.

If there are destiny points for the GM to flip, then the player is aware the GM can flip a destiny point (The destiny pool should be in view of all players). The GM flips it after the decision is to roll is made.

I personally got tired of the back and forth crap with some players, so I actually take decision making here a bit further: I only allow one destiny point use per roll. period. Not one per party per roll. After the player decides to roll, they can flip a destiny point to upgrade the roll, in which can't I as the GM can't/won't use a destiny point. If they chose not to use the destiny point, then I can use to upgrade the difficulty roll, and they can't back-track and use one in response. Similarly, the players can activate a destiny point after the GM has chosen not to use one.

I personally got tired of the back and forth crap with some players, so I actually take decision making here a bit further: I only allow one destiny point use per roll. period. Not one per party per roll. After the player decides to roll, they can flip a destiny point to upgrade the roll, in which can't I as the GM can't/won't use a destiny point. If they chose not to use the destiny point, then I can use to upgrade the difficulty roll, and they can't back-track and use one in response. Similarly, the players can activate a destiny point after the GM has chosen not to use one.

Wait. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

Anyway, to the OP, this is how I do it:

1. I announce the difficulty (the number of purple dice and the number of setback dice due to obvious circumstance, but NOT upgraded difficulty due to "unforeseen complications", because, well, unforeseen.)
2. Players decide to take it or leave it, also decide to flip destiny or not.
3. I decide to flip destiny or not.
4. Dicepool is assembled. Players have to roll at this point.

When we start the ...'back and forth...' flipping of DPs for any roll, we flip them, then we place them in the space on the sheet between the light/dark side pool on the group sheet - then all of us, GM & players, can see how many DPs are left on each side. When that encounter/action is over the points are moved into their respective pools...to start it all over again for the next roll

If the PC's make me flip a pip, and decide not to roll; then I will reflip the pip as there are no checks to roll in addition to automatically failing the check/succeeding the check. To me the decision to roll comes before any spending of destiny pips and I wouldn't accept that kind of switcharoo on my table.

To be honest we loosely use the DP system, sometimes the players spend after the DM because really it doesn't make a huge difference to spend them on rolls. More likely to triumph, more likely to despair. Those results are interesting

Solution: Don't flip the pip until those dice are actually spent.

*pc* - I roll for computers.
*gm* - I flip a DS point to add difficulty dice to the roll.
*pc* - Then I don't roll.
*gm* - Then the DS point isn't used since I didn't roll the dice.

*pc* - You can't do that!

*gm* - Of course I can. The die was never used, thus the DS point was never used. See?

I agree with the many folks here who are suggesting that, in the OP's example, the GM should be able to regain that DP.

But I've also seen a few folks in this thread who have said they always tell their players the difficulty of checks. I definitely do NOT do this, and I'm wondering why some folks seem to be saying that they do. Especially when a dealing with an unknown NPC, where the check may be opposed by the NPC's skill ranks and talents, I almost never tell my players the precise difficulty. I give them clues, both in- and out-of-game, but stealth-related checks, Coercion, even in combat, sometimes the NPCs' relative badassery (or lack thereof) needs to be a mystery in order for some suspense to drive the story farther forward.

The EotE core indicates players are not obligated to roll a dice pool, that once they are "aware" of their chances of success they can choose to not roll the dice.

That may be RAW, but I generally don't allow it. The characters don't always know what they're getting into, so the players shouldn't have the luxury of meta-gaming. That's not to say I won't provide hints...eg: "that's an MGX-1000 safe, famous for its traps", or "she looks like she knows what she's doing with those vibro-knives"...but I don't give the final dice pool until they commit to a course of action.

I personally got tired of the back and forth crap with some players, so I actually take decision making here a bit further: I only allow one destiny point use per roll. period. Not one per party per roll. After the player decides to roll, they can flip a destiny point to upgrade the roll, in which can't I as the GM can't/won't use a destiny point. If they chose not to use the destiny point, then I can use to upgrade the difficulty roll, and they can't back-track and use one in response. Similarly, the players can activate a destiny point after the GM has chosen not to use one.

Wait. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

The RAW allows the player to use a destiny point and the GM to use a destiny point on a single roll; 2 total points on a single roll, one to upgrade skill, one to upgrade difficulty.

In contrast, I only allow one point in total to be used on a roll. Either the player or GM can use a destiny point. The roller has priority, but if they decline to use the point, the other party can use one, and the roller can't change their mind in response.

I agree with the many folks here who are suggesting that, in the OP's example, the GM should be able to regain that DP.

But I've also seen a few folks in this thread who have said they always tell their players the difficulty of checks. I definitely do NOT do this, and I'm wondering why some folks seem to be saying that they do. Especially when a dealing with an unknown NPC, where the check may be opposed by the NPC's skill ranks and talents, I almost never tell my players the precise difficulty. I give them clues, both in- and out-of-game, but stealth-related checks, Coercion, even in combat, sometimes the NPCs' relative badassery (or lack thereof) needs to be a mystery in order for some suspense to drive the story farther forward.

Much of the reason is the idea of the Social Contract in gaming. This has been discussed by Jay Little (the man who initially developed this game) at length. In his method, he likes to describe the situation and the potential hazards, pushing forward difficulty dice as he does so. Once the difficulty pool is assembled, he allows the player to review the pool, weigh their options, and decide if the risk is worth the gain.

The idea is, once the player has seen the difficulty, scoops up the dice, and thus has made the decision to roll, that player has entered an unspoken contract to accept the results, good or bad.

I personally got tired of the back and forth crap with some players, so I actually take decision making here a bit further: I only allow one destiny point use per roll. period. Not one per party per roll. After the player decides to roll, they can flip a destiny point to upgrade the roll, in which can't I as the GM can't/won't use a destiny point. If they chose not to use the destiny point, then I can use to upgrade the difficulty roll, and they can't back-track and use one in response. Similarly, the players can activate a destiny point after the GM has chosen not to use one.

Wait. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

The RAW allows the player to use a destiny point and the GM to use a destiny point on a single roll; 2 total points on a single roll, one to upgrade skill, one to upgrade difficulty.

In contrast, I only allow one point in total to be used on a roll. Either the player or GM can use a destiny point. The roller has priority, but if they decline to use the point, the other party can use one, and the roller can't change their mind in response.

Edit: the talent I intended as the example was Anatomy Lessons, my brain just decided to change to Lethal Blows without asking, it's now fixed

I don't have the page cites, but look over the Destiny pool section again. There is no RAW "back and forth" when deciding Destiny. The person making the roll decides to flip or not, then the other side decides to flip or not. If the person about to roll doesn't flip, then the other side is flipped, then the person about to roll does not RAW get a take back to decide to flip. Moral of the story: Be a patient GMs! Set the difficulty, ask the player if they're going to flip, then flip after they've said yes or no. (Obv this works in reverse: when making a check for an NPC tell the players if you're upgrading or not, and ask if they want to upgrade your difficulty.)

Slightly more on topic, IMO if you're at the flipping of destiny point stage you're committed to the roll. By that point you've considered both the base roll -and- whether you want to flip a DP or not. I can understand backing out of an action when the difficulty is determined (especially if they forgot/didn't think about setbacks), but the GM upgrading doesn't change the odds -that- much.

Edit: Richard, minor point, but Lethal Blows is passive and doesn't require a DP. Generally you're right though, there are a bunch of damage talents (Anatomy Lessons, etc) and some other ones (coordination dodge, etc) which could be shut down if only 1 DP per roll was a rule.

I haven't had a player yet who wanted to cancel a roll because I spent a DP. I have had some decide not to when they realize how hard the base difficulty is. For example, 1 time they wanted to climb a cliff, I said it was a sheer rock face and would be 4 purple difficulty. They looked at the cliff, and then started looking around for an alternative, because most of them wouldn't make it.

I don't have the page cites, but look over the Destiny pool section again. There is no RAW "back and forth" when deciding Destiny. The person making the roll decides to flip or not, then the other side decides to flip or not. If the person about to roll doesn't flip, then the other side is flipped, then the person about to roll does not RAW get a take back to decide to flip.

Where is this written? The rules I've read (EotE CRB, pg 27) provide absolutely zero information or restriction on regarding the order of declaration for destiny use. If they did, this wouldn't be an issue. The problem we kept having was the following scenario:

GM: Okay, that's your pool?

Player: Yep.

GM: Okay, I'm spending a destiny point to upgrade the difficulty.

Player: Okay, well then I'm spending a destiny point after all to upgrade my skill.

And this just happened over, and over, and over.

And over.

This is the back-and-forth I'm talking about, and invariably the result are a destiny pool filled with dark side points save one light side point and the players keep that point in reserve to 'counter' any upgrades the GM. The destiny pool never moves, it's static, it's boring, it's contrary to how RAW indicates the pool should work (EotE CRB pg 28 'Destiny Point Economy in Gameplay & pp 315-6 'Adjudicating Destiny Points') and we got f*cking tired of it.

So we fixed it.

Seriously, though, if what you claim is RAW is actually RAW and you can support that, then I don't need this rule. I would srsly love to see what you cite to support it, though, because I would love to not need this rule, and I may have missed something.

I'm not saying everyone should use this rule, it just works for us. Regardless, this will be the part of the thread where I'm harassed and told that my players are bad and we should go back to D&D 3.5 because clearly we can't handle a game like this. The good news we really don't give 2 piles of Bantha poodoo what you think. This works for us.

How do you work that house rule in regards to Talents that require the user to flip their one DP after the roll instead of using it to upgrade? For instance the talent Lethal Blows requires the Character to hold their Destiny Point flip until after the dice are rolled, if they upgrade the dice pool with a DP they are no longer able to activate Lethal Blows. With you slight change the GM could prevent the character from using their talent, or do you ignore it for this situation?

This has never been an issue, for several reasons:

• Despite what the forum thinks, I'm not a **** to my players. I don't use this house-rule with the intent of shutting down their abilities.
• Allowing the use of a destiny point to activate an ability is a perfectly fine, so if I needed to make an exception to this house-rule enacted for a completely different reason I have no problem doing it.
• In my interpretation of the rules, the talents that I've seen that require destiny point expenditures after the roll are separate actions. For example, Dead to Rights is listed as an incidental, so as far as I'm concerned, it's separate from the attack action (though obviously the damage is combined).

I don't own every supplement, I don't have every talent in the books I do own memorized, and I don't have the time to go through them to figure out if there are any places where this interpretation would problematic. However, I just can't be bothered to give a $#!t. It's usually pretty clear how the talents are supposed to work, and I have no problem allowing them to work as intended.

I agree with the many folks here who are suggesting that, in the OP's example, the GM should be able to regain that DP.

But I've also seen a few folks in this thread who have said they always tell their players the difficulty of checks. I definitely do NOT do this, and I'm wondering why some folks seem to be saying that they do. Especially when a dealing with an unknown NPC, where the check may be opposed by the NPC's skill ranks and talents, I almost never tell my players the precise difficulty. I give them clues, both in- and out-of-game, but stealth-related checks, Coercion, even in combat, sometimes the NPCs' relative badassery (or lack thereof) needs to be a mystery in order for some suspense to drive the story farther forward.

Much of the reason is the idea of the Social Contract in gaming. This has been discussed by Jay Little (the man who initially developed this game) at length. In his method, he likes to describe the situation and the potential hazards, pushing forward difficulty dice as he does so. Once the difficulty pool is assembled, he allows the player to review the pool, weigh their options, and decide if the risk is worth the gain.

The idea is, once the player has seen the difficulty, scoops up the dice, and thus has made the decision to roll, that player has entered an unspoken contract to accept the results, good or bad.

And that is where I think that DS/LS flips come in.

AFTER the players have agreed to the roll, since these always represent "unforseen" events (either good or bad) and thus shouldn't be possible to take into consideration when deciding whether to roll or not.

Never really been an issue in any game I've been involved in, but it seems to me that a decent middle ground that I'd use would be:

• Players are not committed to roll dice without knowing exactly the pool they're rolling. That is, as in kaosoe's example, the GM shows the player exactly what dice they'll be rolling, and the player picks them up and rolls them. So no surprise flip that compels a player to roll something they don't want to roll.
• Only one flip per "side" of the dice pool in any given roll. While it's not a direct cancellation, these two measures approximately offset one another.
• This gives both sides reasonable agency with a series of phases: first, the GM shows the player the base pool, at this point the player can accept, reject and choose a different course, or flip. If they reject, we just move on. If they accept or flip, the GM has the opportunity to flip. If the GM doesn't flip, the player rolls. If the GM *does* flip, this changes the pool and the player may once again decide to accept and roll, reject and find another action, or flip if they have not already done so. If they have already chosen to flip, their options are simply roll or don't.

If it turns out that the roll doesn't happen, naturally all flips for the roll also never happened, and the current destiny pool continues unchanged from before the roll was arranged.

I'm okay with Players changing their minds when they find out the difficulty of their Action but in FFGSW because the GM and the Player can both flip DPs to change that Difficulty after it's been determined, you're committed once that dice pool is created. As a GM I'm not going to tell a Player to not bother if they Upgrade a roll I expect the same from the rest of the group, and as it happens I've never had one of my player complain.

This sounds more like the Player/GM relationship outside this individual roll is somewhat adversarial already or it wouldn't be an issue.

Maybe a little off topic, but I've always felt I'm missing something on the force pool. Other than one side flipping all the tokens over to the other side, having more than two tokens seems unneccessary. I almost think burned tokens should be unavailable to the start of a new round, just to eliminate every roll from being modified. Am I missing something in the RAW that regulates the frequency with which the tokens can be flipped (other than the limit of one of each side per roll?) Perhaps if you could modify numerous dice per roll, then managing your allotment of tokens would be more important. If the force gets too unbalanced you're going to be lookin at a very spectacular / nasty roll in the near future...

Maybe a little off topic, but I've always felt I'm missing something on the force pool. Other than one side flipping all the tokens over to the other side, having more than two tokens seems unneccessary. I almost think burned tokens should be unavailable to the start of a new round, just to eliminate every roll from being modified. Am I missing something in the RAW that regulates the frequency with which the tokens can be flipped (other than the limit of one of each side per roll?) Perhaps if you could modify numerous dice per roll, then managing your allotment of tokens would be more important. If the force gets too unbalanced you're going to be lookin at a very spectacular / nasty roll in the near future...

Destiny can also be used by certain Talents. So, while a given player might not flip to upgrade the roll, they might flip later to activate the ability. If it was just 2 destiny tokens, then the GM could just lock them away as soon as both were Dark Side to prevent players from having those nice shiny talents. With more tokens, there is more of an ebb/flow to the sides as various points only one or the other side chooses to flip, slowly changing the pool from one to the other.

I don't have the page cites, but look over the Destiny pool section again. There is no RAW "back and forth" when deciding Destiny. The person making the roll decides to flip or not, then the other side decides to flip or not. If the person about to roll doesn't flip, then the other side is flipped, then the person about to roll does not RAW get a take back to decide to flip. Moral of the story: Be a patient GMs! Set the difficulty, ask the player if they're going to flip, then flip after they've said yes or no. (Obv this works in reverse: when making a check for an NPC tell the players if you're upgrading or not, and ask if they want to upgrade your difficulty.)

Slightly more on topic, IMO if you're at the flipping of destiny point stage you're committed to the roll. By that point you've considered both the base roll -and- whether you want to flip a DP or not. I can understand backing out of an action when the difficulty is determined (especially if they forgot/didn't think about setbacks), but the GM upgrading doesn't change the odds -that- much.

Edit: Richard, minor point, but Lethal Blows is passive and doesn't require a DP. Generally you're right though, there are a bunch of damage talents (Anatomy Lessons, etc) and some other ones (coordination dodge, etc) which could be shut down if only 1 DP per roll was a rule.

Apologies there, my brain completely shut off while typing. Anatomy Lessons is absolutely the talent I had intended to type in as my example. If a player upgraded the dice pool with a Destiny Point they are no longer able to use Anatomy Lessons (and others like it) when resolving the action.

Maybe a little off topic, but I've always felt I'm missing something on the force pool. Other than one side flipping all the tokens over to the other side, having more than two tokens seems unneccessary. I almost think burned tokens should be unavailable to the start of a new round, just to eliminate every roll from being modified. Am I missing something in the RAW that regulates the frequency with which the tokens can be flipped (other than the limit of one of each side per roll?) Perhaps if you could modify numerous dice per roll, then managing your allotment of tokens would be more important. If the force gets too unbalanced you're going to be lookin at a very spectacular / nasty roll in the near future...

An important thing for GM's to remember is that Destiny Points are not your only way of upgrading the difficulty. Some actions are inherently dangerous and warrant automatic Upgrades. As an example alking a tightrope over a bottomless pit has much higher risks than walking the same tightrope over a practice net, the difficulty is exactly the same but the bottomless pit provides at least 1 automatic Upgrade to the difficulty.

As GM set the difficulty of a task so that you don't need to Upgrade, then only upgrade with DP's the easier ones to bring the chance of Despair (which can't be cancelled out) into what should be an easy task.

Use DP's for more than dice Upgrades. Want the overwhelmed BBEG to get away? Flip a DP for them to disappear. Want to derail the PC's day? Flip a DP for that. It's a currency that you can use to "buy" the chance to be a hindrance to the Party.

PC's should also be using them for more than just dice Upgrades. Creative use can be a lot more helpful to the Party; perhaps they are getting overwhelmed by a large force charging into the hanger they are in - flip a DP to have there be a huge blast door they can close for safety.

I just think it's a mindset that should be avoided of "You Upgraded so I'm going to as well, it's unnecessary. Doing it occasionally on an important roll can be a great way to add tension to a scene, but not every roll.