Hi, all first post in this forum, thanks for having me in the SWEetE galaxy.

I'm getting into playing this game for the first time, and a friend is GMing (so glad cause I have GM'd exclusively for the last 12 years using other systems) and I'm looking at the dice pool etc, and I can't figure out if I want a billion more successes, or a billion more advantages?

Here's what I see.

• At base, a single Advantage (assume no threats) is a good thing period. It's like being successful whether or not you were successful.
• At base, a single Success (assume no failures) is a GREAT thing, because you succeeded.

Fine.

But what about MULTIPLE?

Once I've got 1 success and 1 Advantage (assume no bad things), do I then want....

• ...+3 successes? ... because I already succeeded, right? There's only so far I can succeed. Like... I did or I didn't, right? I mean, I can only really really really 'unlock the bay door' so much.
• OR
• ...+3 advantages? ... because I only needed 1 success to succeed, done and done, but now I just get a crapton of bonuses too right? Like I unlocked the bay door (no "very"s... it's simply unlocked) but I also unlocked the armory, short circuited the master control panel in the next room, and found access to the droid comlink system. ...right?

Generally,

Successes seem to only affect the stated goal.

Advantages seem to be able to affect everything else around it. (and of course also cause CRITS! *ahem ahem*)

I guess the question stems from the idea that "Success" is a far more powerful word than "Advantage", but Advantages seem to do more. (... even if you fail .)

SO... which do I want more extra of: Successes or Advantages?

John

p.s. I acknowledge the point is moot cause I can't really control it, but the answer will effect when we all cheer louder. : )

The dreaded answer: it depends.

Many/most actions and abilities either succeed or fail; extra successes don't matter. In those cases, extra advantages are always going to be better.

Some of them do have effects that scale with the number of successes, mostly those related to attacks/damage and healing/recovery. With those, more successes will be better some of the time and more advantages will be better some of the time, because the successes and advantages will do or allow different things.

Welcome John!

What Garran said. It really depends on the action being performed. Some tasks are naturally a pass/fail check where more Advantage is better. But as GM I will often look to see how much success was rolled when describing the outcome.

In a Social situation the amount of success may determine just how convincing your argument is, while the amount of advantage would indicate if any beneficial but unrelated information was garnered.

Perhaps the situation is a Stealth check, more success putting the character closer to the target, while advantage allows them to get their friends closer as well. Or the amount of Success could determine how long it takes; "you only just managed to successfully get past the guards, it took 10 minutes of waiting in shadows and crawling behind fences to get there"

I look at successes as somewhat exchangeable for advantages. If having extra success has no mechanical advantage (such as shorter time, extra damage, etc), I let them act as an advantage (if a cool effect comes up, not just for extra strain recovery). Also, if a player asks for a specific cool effect in combat, I would allow them to trade success for advantage (but not the reverse). I hope that encourages them to look for the cool narrative add-on, rather than just maxing damage.

As above, it depends. Additionally, extra successes should (in theory, and hopefully your GM has times where it'll be relevant in practice) lower the time or resources to do the main action. For example: You seek information about something from the rumor mill in bars. You roll Streetwise and get 5 successes. Now instead of taking all night, it only takes half an hour because the first place you went to had what you were looking for.

For narrative effects, maybe, depends on the level of mechanical effect in what's being 'narrated'. For tangible mechanical stuff like piling on multiple weapon effect activations, crit stacking, or for use in crafting, not on your life. Also to super buff the already broken Double or Nothing Talent, no way, no how.

Put me in the "it depends" crowd.

Just using one example of one kind of action on one character...

My PC has a modded blaster pistol rigged to get a crit on a single Advantage. He's an assassin type so I like the idea of making clean, quick kills, which to me means a single big crit.

So if I am going after the big Rival/Nemesis, I want to roll a half dozen Advantage to incapacitate him swiftly. As long as I roll enough Successes to hit him and do enough damage to overcome Soak, I'm happy.

On the other hand, if I'm attacking a group of minions I want as many Successes as I can get. I can only take out one with a crit, and stacking on the Advantages isn't a help. I want as many Successes as I can get to take out as many Minions as possible.

Same PC, same weapon, same skill, all that's different is the nature of my enemy. That's enough to change what I want to do.

This is a surprisingly tricky question, which I'm sure you've already learned by reading the answers. And there are, surprisingly, a lot of situations where you can manipulate the final dice pool. The most common of these is through Force talents and powers, which often let Force Points be cashed in for either Success or Advantages, but there are a number of other choices that involve your question: do you prioritize expensive, high damage weapons and mods that essentially add successes for Setback and such, or do you spend most of your money on mods that stack on free advantage? You're playing a Zabrak, and those get free Advantage on Coercion checks. Do you buy a rank in Coercion hoping for more success, or is that enough?

Granted, none of these but the Force trickery really allow you ultimate impact over the dice results, but the might impact the overall dice pool. And, each of these choices can change the answer to your question... which is why "it depends".

Now, as those fine fellows above have said, there are a lot of checks that succeed or don't succeed. Degree of success beyond that binary distinction is pointless, so Advantages are what you're hoping for - you can notice fun things, pass boost die around, and gain other narrative boons. In many of these situations, though, it might pay to have a healthy look at the Skills chapter of your chosen CRB. Yes , you already know what Mechanics ought to do, and you're pretty sure Piloting is self-explanatory. However, each skill has a guide for how other successes, advantages, and triumphs can be spent. These are really informative, and they don't always apply - some checks really are just pass/fail - but they're good to know.

On the other hand, there are a rare few checks where advantages just seem useless. The big one, for me, is the post-encounter strain recovery. You can, perhaps, notice something critical in the aftermath, but for the most part your advantages are garbage. The action is mostly done, you're out of structured time, and you can't spend them to recover strain. In cases such as these, you'll really want successes, and heaps of them. Even the humble Medicine check really prefers success to advantage. Yeah, that advantage has a purpose, but the reason you're rolling the check to to take care of those Wounds, so it's an easy assumption that those are your priority.

Other checks are a little more complex. These are checks that don't offer an immediate guide to resolution - for me, these are often Knowledge checks. For example, I just recently started a very details play-by-post that begins with Onslaught at Arda I. I offered the players an opportunity to roll three different Knowledge checks to learn more about the Arda system, the Rebels there, and the Imperial presence in the area. As you can imagine, with three rolls and six potential rolling characters, I saw the whole range of results, and this heavily impacted what information I gave them:

As a general rule, I used successes to dictate the broadness of my response - the more successes, the more topics they got to learn about. Advantages, on the other hand, indicated depth. One success and a lot of advantage led to an in depth response on a single topic, with lots of nuance and useful detail. The opposite nets a broad-strokes, general overview - you have a lot of surface knowledge, but don't have those tantalizing details that might hint at future developments.

In short, there are a lot of complicated answers to that simple question, and they all revolve around: what check are you rolling, and in what situation?

The easiest to analyze - and most common - checks are Combat Checks, however. In this case, the answer is still "it depends", but that gray area is slimmer, and more clearly defined. Suffice it to say, more successes is generally better. This is predicated on two things: 1) enough successes kills whoever you're shooting at, severely limiting the opposing forces, 2) most useful applications of copious advantages require a successful check - furthermore, Crits require enough successes to deal damage in excess of soak. That means even a successful attack might not Crit. And, at the end of the day, I'd rather down an enemy permanently than Disorient them for a bit.

Still, the dreaded "it depends" pervades here. Your choice of weapon, talents, and fighting style heavily impact whether you want advantages or successes. A high damage weapon with a solid Pierce rank or Breach benefits more from advantages, especially against Nemesis and Rival opponents. Weapons with extremely beneficial qualities, like Blast and Burn, are more effective with advantages, especially as many of these qualities can be leveraged without great success. If, like my Warden, you prefer Shock Gauntlets, you need a healthy mix of both, plus a high chance of Triumph. I won't likely Crit with advantage, but when I do, I need enough damage to bypass Soak. With base damage 3, this is sometimes difficult, so I need a handful of successes or lots of advantages. Overall, though, it's still more resource effective to spend 2 advantage on Stun to get 3 damage than 3 successes for the same effect, but those two advantages are all I really want, since pure damage is often better than Disorient or Knockdown against, say, stormtroopers. Sometimes, you just need a mix. Characters with poor combat ability and lower quality weapons, on the other hand, usually want advantage. They want to either just barely hit and spend 3 advantage to force an opponent to drop a weapon/etc, or are there to notice critical things or pass boosts along on (inevitably) failed checks.

We can all agree, though, that whatever our skills, our talents, our weapons, and our powers might be... we don't want Despairs.

In general more advantages mean less success as that is how your positive dice roll, so while it really depends on the situation you never want to many advantages as this usually ends up with a failure on the check itself, 14 advantages and zero success on a pilot check is not something you want to see. And this applies especially to hard or daunting checks and doubles up with the symbol distribution on negative die. Getting a lot of advantages means that there were not a lot of threats on the roll, which makes it likely that there were tons of failures on the roll …

… basically you want balanced rolls. In which direction you want a little bit of a swing depends than again on the situation and check, sometimes one success and tons of advantages is really desirable. For example if you have a crit build, use a disrupter and the target has not enough soak to negate your base damage, all you care is than to proc as many crits as you can for that one shot crit kill. If the target as tons of soak at the other hand you might need a good amount of successes to push the damage first through their soak to successful 'disarm' it afterwards. And so on, it really depends, but in general extreme rolls on either side are rarely good.

On a normal skill check: Definitely advantage. One nett success will do the job (the rest will only speed you up, basically); but, advantage will make the cool things happen.

On an attack: Successes, most of the time. Against minions you ca only profit from one crit, and, against one-encounter-NPCs they're pretty useless, compared to damage.

Thanks so much to everyone for welcoming me and for your thoughts.
I really see all your points and really appreciate your time to read my post and comment each in your own way.

Great thoughts, and I think you're all right on: "Depends - with specifics".