I'll admit, I wasn't prepared for Mathus to fail the easy check. 4 Int with a rank in astro shouldn't fail an easy check. But he did, with 5 advantage. I let them get to Ryloth a few hours later than expected and dropped the enemy fighter on them immediately, but they rolled great initiative and deleted the fighter in one turn.

I feel like I coulda done better with a failure...

Posting at 3am with a bit of gamer's high from an otherwise great session. Just wish I'd come up with a better way of handling failed astrogation. The problem is, the scenario says they are low on fuel and HAVE to go there. hard to improvise this early in a campaign.

Like a number of things, failing an astrogation check amounts to 'do it again until you get it', which is really only meaningful when there's an active hazard or hostile.

When something like this happen I'm increasingly inclined to borrow 'succeed at a cost' from other systems - you succeed anyway (as if you had 1 success) but generate 3 extra threat.

Failed astronavigation's aren't hugely interesting. The ship failed to go to where they intended to go or it didn't go anywhere, or the ship failed to reach the destination before X thing happened, which might create a more complicated situation upon arrival. e.c.t Nothing really exciting.

Rolling a despair on a failed astronavigation check? or a T? That is the stuff that while adventures are born out of. It's useful to have a couple unusual locations in your pocket at any given tme that they might/might not explore. Or drop them right outside a black hole.

For issues like this I would have them exit out of hyper-drive into space debris and have them make immediate piloting checks to avoid colliding.

Exit too close to the planet, exit in an asteroid belt, exit close to the star, exit far away from the planet, or even a misjump into a complete wrong system.

While technically these are all things that would better fit to threat or despair, I would still use them on a failed check. Because simply "You don't get a valid calculation, try it again" is boring as ****. Well, at least if you don't do it while dodging blaster bolts from a star destroyer

1 hour ago, MasterZelgadis said:

Exit too close to the planet, exit in an asteroid belt, exit close to the star, exit far away from the planet, or even a misjump into a complete wrong system.

While technically these are all things that would better fit to threat or despair, I would still use them on a failed check. Because simply "You don't get a valid calculation, try it again" is boring as ****. Well, at least if you don't do it while dodging blaster bolts from a star destroyer

I generally require the ship to actually go somewhere through hyperspace before they realize they've failed the roll. Failing with three Advantages or a Triumph allows a "wait--this can't be right" before actually going to hyperspace (and thus is a "try again").

A failed astrogation check means the destination isn't reached. With 3 advantages or a triumph a retry is allowed. With 1 or 2 advantages means if the destination wasn't reached the PCs aren't lost in deep space and will have 1 or 2 blue dices for the next check. WIth 3 threats or a despair, the PCs are lost in deep space with no clue where they are. With only 1 or 2 threats they'ce just made an hyperjump in the wrong direction and earned 1 o 2 black dices for the next check.

3 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

WIth 3 threats or a despair, the PCs are lost in deep space with no clue where they are.

Well, maybe no clue until after they've allowed their navicomputer to re-calibrate to the surrounding stars. It's not like being lost deep in the woods. In space, your reference points (i.e, stars) are almost certain to be detectable. Now if you don't have a navicomputer (perhaps you're just using a pre-programmed astromech droid) then you're going to have some issues.

With a despair a few checks must be made to understand where they are. A navicomputer just makes those checks less difficult or easier. Then failing, with a despair, the 1st astrogation check while having a navicomputer might be seen as a sign that the original destination shouldn't be reached.

The old d6 module Otherspace?