So iterations of this question have been asked before, but parsing through search results didn't find what I was looking for.

Assume an autofire attack is rolled against an Inquisitor with improved reflect and enough advantage is present to trigger three shots. If a singe despair is rolled on this attack, is that all that's necessary to allow the Inquisitor to reflect all three shots back at targets of his choice if he spends 9 (3x3) strain to do so?

Well he can reflect one back and block the other two. The threats or despair have to be there to be able to reflect it back multiple times. If I was you though just use the despair to have him run out of ammo. That will mess up his day, also means he will not be able to hit you the with the other two shots and most likely not the first one (this depends on the GM) because when he tried to shoot you with the first shot the despair made him run out of ammo. Auto fire is probably the most broken offense in the game except an Ataru specialist who has 4+ force. But going against a big defense character like the one I have he is rolling against 4+ red die and 3 black die so its rare he will have the successes and advantages to use on auto fire to begin with.

Making an opponent run out of ammo with a Despair does not happen on any particular hit. If he scored three hits, those all have to be dealt with and the Despair used to make the ammo run out takes effect after resolving the entire attack (all three hits in this case).

Like I said that's up to the GM but all the games I have been in they have it run out of ammo on the first hit with that hit to the point when they try to fire it fails to shoot cause they ran out of ammo. Anyways if they were dumb enough to fight an inquisitor then I don't feel sorry for them. I'll look it up and see what the developers posted but not all groups go exactly by what the developers said how the game should be run. That will be up to you and your GM or if your the GM it would be up to you. I would have it to where the first hit does go out and that's where it runs out of ammo because you use the despair on the first shot. I'm just a player and my GM's have had it to where the first hit doesn't happen for that reason.

3 hours ago, Smoothjedi said:

So iterations of this question have been asked before, but parsing through search results didn't find what I was looking for.

Assume an autofire attack is rolled against an Inquisitor with improved reflect and enough advantage is present to trigger three shots. If a singe despair is rolled on this attack, is that all that's necessary to allow the Inquisitor to reflect all three shots back at targets of his choice if he spends 9 (3x3) strain to do so?

You'd need a Despair or 3 Threat per hit that you wanted to use Improved Reflect on, as that talent cites that when the user "suffers a hit" from a ranged attack using one of the three ranged combat skills.

Now if your PC happened to roll two or three Despairs on the attack check, then the Inquisitor could use those to fuel their Improved Reflect talent and make three separate attacks, one for each autofire hit.

This was kinda clarified by developers Max Brooke and Sam Stewart on their respective twitter feeds back during the F&D Beta, when it got mentioned during a combat encounter in one of their in-office game sessions that Improved Parry got used multiple times in between two combat checks between two duelists. Since Improved Parry uses similar rules language to Improved Reflect, the inference there is that as long as you've got the Despairs/Threats to trigger the talents (and don't pass out from strain loss from using Parry/Reflect all those times), then you can trigger more than one retaliatory attack with Improved Parry/Reflect.

Plus, being able to used Improved Reflect on multiple hits for only one Despair, be the character a PC or an NPC, is pretty darn powerful, especially once you start factoring in talents and abilities that upgrade the difficulty on combat checks several times, and falls into the realm of "if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is."

So I have not seen any dev direction on this. But since its a despair and he is using it on the first shot I would make it happen on the first shot preventing him from hitting him with more shots since it made his ammo run out on the first shot. If not then you really just make it pointless because on his next turn on his maneuver he can just reload if he has a spare clip making the despair absolutely useless to use. Seems like a GM that would allow all the shots to hit would be a GM that lacks experience using the system. But if he is just using improved reflect then he must use a despair/ 3 threat per shot to reflect it back like Donavan said above. You are much better off using that despair to have him run out of ammo which pretty much nullifying his attack in the first place.

Also remember it is an Inquisitor they are fighting who is on the level of a jedi knight from the clone wars era so it should be an extreamly hard fight thats a little less difficult than fighting vader (They are all trained by Lord Vader). Unless they are on the level of ashoka from the rebels series then they should just run. So having his ammo run out from a despair should give him a hint that he probably will not last the fight unless you make the inquisitor weak in which they are supposed to be really strong.

Our group who everyone is around 800xp and been playing for 1 1/2 years fully understand not to mess with an inquisitor. We have all survived so far by being very careful on the fights we pick, and trying very hard to lay low and stay low.

33 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Making an opponent run out of ammo with a Despair does not happen on any particular hit. If he scored three hits, those all have to be dealt with and the Despair used to make the ammo run out takes effect after resolving the entire attack (all three hits in this case).

You need to post where it says in the book on this or that is just your opinion, in which in this game everyone has plenty of them. Now if this is how your group plays and how your GM prefers then yes that fine its his game but you can't just say that is how it is without showing the rule from the book or the developer answering this by his own mouth. In doing this your trying to dictate how other people should run their game and that isnt right.

4 hours ago, Smoothjedi said:

So iterations of this question have been asked before, but parsing through search results didn't find what I was looking for.

Assume an autofire attack is rolled against an Inquisitor with improved reflect and enough advantage is present to trigger three shots. If a singe despair is rolled on this attack, is that all that's necessary to allow the Inquisitor to reflect all three shots back at targets of his choice if he spends 9 (3x3) strain to do so?

If you decide to use the despair to have that person run out of ammo here is what the book says. It does not say on the first shot or the third shot of the auto fire you will have to decide that yourself like the other GM's that I have run with. But it does say they cannot use the weapon anymore for the rest of the encounter, and it immediately runs out of ammunition. I guess my GM's have agree'd that the attack from the beginning is not successful and all 3 hits do not happen because it say's immediately and not after the shot is fire.

Remember a despair is a bad thing it is not something that should be brushed off. Attacking an enemy that upgrades the difficulty is something the players really need to think about doing before they decide to do it because of the negative affects. Like a few games ago the ataru specialist in our group attacked with his lightsaber that had a cracked crystal, and he rolled a despair. The gm decided that his crystal broke which can happen on a despair on a cracked crystal. He is unable to use it again without it getting repaired with a mechanics check. Its been two games later and he still has not been able to get it fixed because of our current situation.

49 minutes ago, Metalghost said:

You need to post where it says in the book on this or that is just your opinion, in which in this game everyone has plenty of them. Now if this is how your group plays and how your GM prefers then yes that fine its his game but you can't just say that is how it is without showing the rule from the book or the developer answering this by his own mouth. In doing this your trying to dictate how other people should run their game and that isnt right.

Hey, you're wrong.

1 hour ago, Metalghost said:

So I have not seen any dev direction on this. But since its a despair and he is using it on the first shot I would make it happen on the first shot preventing him from hitting him with more shots since it made his ammo run out on the first shot. If not then you really just make it pointless because on his next turn on his maneuver he can just reload if he has a spare clip making the despair absolutely useless to use. ...

40 minutes ago, Metalghost said:

... But it does say they cannot use the weapon anymore for the rest of the encounter , and it immediately runs out of ammunition. I guess my GM's have agree'd that the attack from the beginning is not successful and all 3 hits do not happen because it say's immediately and not after the shot is fire.

I agree with HappyDaze on this one. They rolled 3 hits and should deal 3 hits. The Despair to run out of ammo does not prohibit the hits you have already earned on this initial check. You also just countered yourself in these two post. Using the despair to run out of ammo, means you can't use that weapon for the remainder of the encounter. You can't just reload and continue firing.

Back to the OP's question, I think Donavan and Happy are correct. You would need a 3 threats or a despair per hit you want to reflect back so as thematically pleasing as reflecting all three shots back at the shooter would be it probably won't happen unless it's a severely bad roll that still ended on success.

Threats would only be usable in this case if those extra hits came from Triumphs, because it's generally impossible to spend both Advantages and Threat on the same roll.

Good point

5 hours ago, Metalghost said:

Well he can reflect one back and block the other two. The threats or despair have to be there to be able to reflect it back multiple times. If I was you though just use the despair to have him run out of ammo. That will mess up his day, also means he will not be able to hit you the with the other two shots and most likely not the first one (this depends on the GM) because when he tried to shoot you with the first shot the despair made him run out of ammo. Auto fire is probably the most broken offense in the game except an Ataru specialist who has 4+ force. But going against a big defense character like the one I have he is rolling against 4+ red die and 3 black die so its rare he will have the successes and advantages to use on auto fire to begin with.

This is a good idea, however the character in question does have the spare clip talent. Although technically this is a hypothetical question, it's a very possible scenario in our next session.

4 hours ago, Varlie said:

I agree with HappyDaze on this one. They rolled 3 hits and should deal 3 hits. The Despair to run out of ammo does not prohibit the hits you have already earned on this initial check. You also just countered yourself in these two post. Using the despair to run out of ammo, means you can't use that weapon for the remainder of the encounter. You can't just reload and continue firing.

Sorry but immediately means immediately, not after the shot or after the first shot or whatever. Despair = sucky thing happens.

And yes you can reload the weapon with a Maneuver if you have Extra Reloads (F&D pg189) or the right Talent.

Feel free to run the games as you see it. My personal interpretation is if they already rolled the successes and advantages I won't penalize the player on this action. I focus on the portion of the text that says "may not be used for the rest of the encounter" unless they have Extra Reloads.

If you rule that he immediately runs out of ammo and none of the shots hit then this whole discussion it moot as there will then be no hit to use Improved Reflect on anyways.

25 minutes ago, Varlie said:

Feel free to run the games as you see it. My personal interpretation is if they already rolled the successes and advantages I won't penalize the player on this action. I focus on the portion of the text that says "may not be used for the rest of the encounter" unless they have Extra Reloads.  

I agree that I would think the attack hits and does damage before the weapon runs out of ammo. Just a point of clarification, it actually doesn't say "unless they have extra reloads". So as written out means out.

This brings me to my next thought which is that I don't think these tables are meant to be treated as "rules". I look at the tables as guides that give you an idea about how strong a given result is. So the despair could be used to overheat the weapon making it unusable for one full round. Not on the table, but totally valid. If your player invested in a talent that allows them to reload, maybe it's worth spending the despair to run out of ammo just so they get a chance to use the cool talent they purchased. Basically, I'm just saying that these tables are probably best used a guides not RAW.

So regarding the "Despair as out of ammo = no autofire hits" tangent this thread has gone on...

So looking at the Perform a Combat Check section of the core rulebook, starting on page 210:

Step 1 - Declare an Attack and Select Targets
Step 2 - Assemble the Dice Pool
Step 3 - Pool Results and Deal Damage
Step 4 - Resolve Advantage and Triumph
Step 5 - Resolve Threat and Despair
Step 6 - Reduce Damage, Apply to Wound Threshold, and Apply Critical Injuries

So going by the order of operations as laid out in the core rulebook, the spending/results of the Despair would come after the damage of the original attack has been dealt and the advantages spent to activate the autofire quality for the additional hits. So while the Despair could be used to have the weapon run out of ammo, per RAW those three hits would still take place.

It's even said in the book that a Despair should not in and of itself automatically invalidate the effects of a successful roll (even though the rules subvert this with rolling a Despair when shooting into melee where you have an ally present).

There you go bringing logic into a forum fight. Bad Donovan!

3 hours ago, Varlie said:

There you go bringing logic into a forum fight. Bad Donovan!

Hey, if it keeps a thread on topic and not devolving into a glorified poo fight, so be it.

37 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Hey, if it keeps a thread on topic and not devolving into a glorified poo fight, so be it.

Well, technically we did go way off topic Although I do find it interesting discussing running out of ammo on a despair, the specific question was using that despair for improved reflect. On top of that, as I said earlier, that argument is moot anyway as the shooter has the spare clip talent, forbidding despair from even being used that way anyway.

Getting back on track, let's try a different, more specific example of how I think this should work. Assume 3 successes, 2 net advantage, 3 triumphs and 2 despairs are rolled using a crit 3, 10 damage auto fire weapon. If both advantages and one triumph are used to trigger auto fire, then we'll have 3 shots. All these shots would be 16 damage: 10 +3 successes +3 triumphs. The remaining two triumphs could be spent to make two of those three shots crit. Therefore, unlike successes, they are not applied to each automatically or the optimal set up would be shooting 4 shots and having the one triumph left to crit on all 4. My guess here is that despairs would be spent similarly to the critical triumphs in the above scenario rather than working like the successes; they would be spent per shot to reflect damage back. Does this sound right you?

5 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

So regarding the "Despair as out of ammo = no autofire hits" tangent this thread has gone on...

So looking at the Perform a Combat Check section of the core rulebook, starting on page 210:

Step 1 - Declare an Attack and Select Targets
Step 2 - Assemble the Dice Pool
Step 3 - Pool Results and Deal Damage
Step 4 - Resolve Advantage and Triumph
Step 5 - Resolve Threat and Despair
Step 6 - Reduce Damage, Apply to Wound Threshold, and Apply Critical Injuries

So going by the order of operations as laid out in the core rulebook, the spending/results of the Despair would come after the damage of the original attack has been dealt and the advantages spent to activate the autofire quality for the additional hits. So while the Despair could be used to have the weapon run out of ammo, per RAW those three hits would still take place.

It's even said in the book that a Despair should not in and of itself automatically invalidate the effects of a successful roll (even though the rules subvert this with rolling a Despair when shooting into melee where you have an ally present).

Yes Donavan you are right and we know how to handle threats and despair's in the order its supposed to happen. The book makes this very clear and usually all despair's and threats are handled in this matter. The problem is with using a despair to have it run out of ammo cause the skill says immediately and the GM's I play with and other's interpret this as right when they fire the weapon it takes affect then right when the trigger is pulled. I kind of feel like you purposely decided to skip the part were it was discussed above that we have said multiple GM's have handled this specific despair differently and decided to apply it right when they shoot instead of following the book letter by letter to a tee. The GM's fill this is more realistic on how it should be handled based on what spending this specific despair in combat.

On Pg. 219 Age of Rebellion core book where I got the image and posted it above it says " The Character's ranged weapon immediately runs out of ammunition and may not be used for the remainder of the encounter." Doing it your way I think is best because the player gets all three of his shots off, but only the GM knows his weapon has run out of ammo because if the GM is smart and runs a good game he would not tell the player right away. The players next turn tries to shoot his weapon again if he is even still alive, and the weapon does not fire hence the despair. Now he knows what the despair was used for, it makes a game more fun and interesting for the players and the GM.

For instance my GM handles despairs two different ways. Earlier in the game when we were buying our first ship on a rebel fleet the player rolled a despair when he was negotiating the price. The GM didn't tell us what the despair was used for. So the next time we met up as a group he had us wake up the next morning to find our ship missing from the hanger. We spent half the session trying to locate it, and eventually found it on the other side of the station thinking it was stolen. We had one of our character's use the seek force power to locate it. Once we found it and confronted the group, They jumped out and said "Sir we are almost done retrofitting your ship with the new stuff that the commander ordered us to put in it." We were confused and found out that the despair was used as that we miss read the email missing the part that the commander who sent it said the ship will be moved to the other side of the station for upgrades for your mission.

The other way he handled a despair was when I was pulled aside by two security guards who were fake on one of the planets we were on and their whole purpose was to attack and kill me in one of the back rooms. Once they got me in one of the back rooms the npc pulled out his pistol and tried to fire at me. He would have succeeded and shot me in the back had he not rolled a despair. I chose as a player to have him run out of ammo and the GM decided that when the guy fired his pistol nothing happened cause the weapon was out of ammo. The GM decided to do it this way because he felt that this specific despair should come into effect right when he pulled the trigger.

Now the ataru guy who was using a lightsaber with a cracked crystal rolled a despair and since its a melee fight he had the despair take affect right when his lightsaber hit the alien. So he did have the alien take damage but the lightsaber shorted out at the same time cause the crystal broke. Now after 2 more sessions he is still walking around with a broken crystal cause we haven't been able to do a mechanics check to fix it cause we havent had any downtime as a group to do so. We have been running and fighting up to the point were we are at and its taken 2-3 game sessions from when that happened to get to where we are now, surviving and fighting the whole time.

So how you want to handle this specific despair is up to you as a GM. Doing it your way is fine and justified, The way my GM handles it if fine and justified cause well he is the GM and we have been playing for over a year together and he knows the rules.

13 minutes ago, Smoothjedi said:

My guess here is that despairs would be spent similarly to the critical triumphs in the above scenario rather than working like the successes; they would be spent per shot to reflect damage back. Does this sound right you?

Correct, each Despair effect is spent separately, and each one's effect takes place after determining the effects of the advantages and triumphs.

10 minutes ago, Metalghost said:

So how you want to handle this specific despair is up to you as a GM. Doing it your way is fine and justified, The way my GM handles it if fine and justified cause well he is the GM and we have been playing for over a year together and he knows the rules.

Going strictly by RAW, your GM is wrong in using Despairs to ultimately negate the effects of an otherwise successful check. As for the chart in question, it's still beholden to the order of operations that I posted and you quoted, namely that spending Despairs are one of the last things done in resolving a combat check, and the "out of ammo" effect would occur after it'd been determined if the autofire attack hit and how many hits were scored.

But as you said, it's up to the individual GM to determine how they run their game. To me, it honestly feels like your GM is screwing over the players by having them do things that ultimately negate the effect of a successful check, but that's just an outsider's take on it. Again, I can only note comments over the years by both Jay Little and Sam Stewart (i.e. the guys that created and wrote the game) about how a Despair is how something narratively goes wrong, but in general should not result in overriding the effects of succeeding on the skill check (apart from negating one of the rolled successes as per the general rules on Despairs).

@Metalghost , to add to what @Donovan Morningfire said, as someone who was in the military, and has fired assault weapons (namely the M-16, M-60, M-203) I can tell you that anyone firing a weapon will immediately know that he is out of ammunition once the last shot fires. In the case of the M-16, for instance, once that last bullet leaves the chamber, and the gas pressure pushes the bolt back, if there are no more rounds in the magazine, the bolt locks in the open position immediately. As such, there is no question that you’re out of ammunition and need to reload.

44 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

@Metalghost , to add to what @Donovan Morningfire said, as someone who was in the military, and has fired assault weapons (namely the M-16, M-60, M-203) I can tell you that anyone firing a weapon will immediately know that he is out of ammunition once the last shot fires. In the case of the M-16, for instance, once that last bullet leaves the chamber, and the gas pressure pushes the bolt back, if there are no more rounds in the magazine, the bolt locks in the open position immediately. As such, there is no question that you’re out of ammunition and need to reload.

Although not all of these mechanics are relevant as most of these are energy weapons, I can't imagine there isn't a similar, obvious notification of some sort.