Basically as long as you don't fail the roll is it considered a success? i ask this because normally like for attacks successes add additional damage so if you roll up blank on your check is it still a success? this has been perplexing me.

Need a success showing or it's a failure.

If you get 1 success you land a hit. If you get zero successes you don't. Same as 2P51 said.

so then do you count the 1st success to the additional damage or is it just each one after that?

All uncancelled successes count towards damage.

so basically no weapon will ever do base damage.

Correct. Your Blaster Pistol will do, at the very least, 7 damage before the target applies their Soak. However, there are some instances which allow one to hit with a weapon, without rolling dice & dealing their base damage only. An instance of this can be seen with the Improved Parry talent in some of the Force & Destiny Spec trees.

25 minutes ago, MamoruK said:

so basically no weapon will ever do base damage.

A grenade on a failed check but with 3 Advantages or a Triumph can activate its base blast damage.

22 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

A grenade on a failed check but with 3 Advantages or a Triumph can activate its base blast damage.

Blast isn't base weapon damage, it's damage applied by a Weapon Quality. Same as the Stun Quality of a pair of shock gloves...

But yeah, outside of those talents and situations mentioned that specify "weapon damage" - basically any time you're rolling an attack - weapons deal n+1 damage at minimum. Kinda weird, I agree. And wash rolls are weird too. You might think "there are no failures showing, so it's not a failure." But, as was said above, there are also no successes showing, so it's no success. It's just... nothing.

58 minutes ago, Kestin said:

But yeah, outside of those talents and situations mentioned that specify "weapon damage" - basically any time you're rolling an attack - weapons deal n+1 damage at minimum. Kinda weird, I agree.

If it's weird, it's a good kind of weird; like raw cookie dough in your ice cream weird. Calculating damage is far easier and more intuitive that way.

Wait a second, so you mean if I roll for my light saber (base 6) as long as I land 1 success the damage is 7?

51 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

Wait a second, so you mean if I roll for my light saber (base 6) as long as I land 1 success the damage is 7?

Correct.

How the crap did I miss this??

Back in the day our house rule was one success was base damage, any extra success added extra damage, Our problem lay with we'd just started, we're good now but stick to this house rule as it worked well when learning the system. Ho Hum

1 hour ago, ASCI Blue said:

How the crap did I miss this??

Lotsa people did/do. Dunno know why, it's like the dancing bear video I spose....

How do you all handle a wash on a skill check? Do you just treat it as a lesser failure?

1 minute ago, Lukey84 said:

How do you all handle a wash on a skill check? Do you just treat it as a lesser failure?

Unless the rules explicitly say that each failure symbol makes the situation worse somehow, there is no difference between rolling all blanks and rolling 10 failures. At least, that is the way I think it works.

I don't think most skills really have a multiple failure option. The results are typically centered around Success, Advantage, Triumph, Threat and Despair. There might be some applications I can't think of but a fail is a fail.

Just now, 2P51 said:

I don't think most skills really have a multiple failure option. The results are typically centered around Success, Advantage, Triumph, Threat and Despair. There might be some applications I can't think of but a fail is a fail.

I think some poisons cause Wounds equal to the number of failures, but otherwise, no.

I've always given higher failures or successes an increased effect.

If you want to house rule it, you can say that if it was a complete wash, so everything cancelled out, they can try the skill check again without penalties next turn (as they didnt make anything worse than before they tried, even though they didnt succeed).

20 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Lotsa people did/do. Dunno know why, it's like the dancing bear video I spose....

Most people missed it because it changed from the Beta.

In Beta, damage was base + (successes - 1), at least for a while.

Making success or failure more significant per value kinda takes away the value of threat/advantage.

4 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Making success or failure more significant per value kinda takes away the value of threat/advantage.

I guess I never thought of that. I always made it worse and then threats were even more worse, or better. Thanks!

Keep what the dice symbols mean in mind even if you're making failures granular (namely that success/failure directly effect the task at hand, not the consequences). What I mean is, extra successes sometimes have value outside of simply making a check successful; it could be the case that failures do too. Just remember to not step on the toes of threat and you should be good.