How can a PC who successfully performs a Hard Headed action use his advantage? The full talent description says to decrease their strain to one below their threshold, but could he use advantages to reduce it further, as long as it's successful?

Unless otherwise specified, you discard the Advantage from talent checks. In the case of Improved Hard Headed, it is simply a pass-fail, so you do not spend any advantage.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Unless otherwise specified, you discard the Advantage from talent checks. In the case of Improved Hard Headed, it is simply a pass-fail, so you do not spend any advantage.

Awesome, I never knew that.

11 minutes ago, StriderZessei said:

Awesome, I never knew that.

I'd suggest getting a page reference for that because I've never heard it before.

I've never heard it before either. Personally I'd let them be spent as per the skill the player used. so in this case, spend it as you would otherwise spent from a Discipline check. Sometimes the talent itself gives you new options to spend it, but otherwise I don't think the game would encourage discarding advantages...

I don't have a page reference for it, but it is simply logical. For talents, you must activate them. Generally, that is something you can do with an Action, Maneuver, Incidental, or Strain. Sometimes it requires a check. Usually, this is pass-fail and does not reference what to do with excess Success or Advantage, as is the case with Hard Headed and Improved Hard Headed. Sometimes, as is the case with Scathing Tirade, there are specific options for additional Success or for spending Advantage, but by-and-large, they are strictly pass-fail. Additionally, in the case of Known Schematic, it says that the GM may use Advantage, additional Success, and Triumph to provide additional information, which suggests to me that usually those would be discarded.
Furthermore, talents like Field Commander become Strain recovery tools as if you have a high Presence and/or Leadership, you make an Average check and recover Strain equal to Advantage.

Considering that most talents either activate without a check, or have stated expenditures for Advantage or additional Success, my conclusion is that the pass-fail checks have no intention of you spending Advantage, Triumph, or additional Success.

That said, I can see a GM allowing the player to do something cool and situationally appropriate with Triumph (like with Hard Headed for example, reducing an additional 3 Strain).

48 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I don't have a page reference for it, but it is simply logical. For talents, you must activate them. Generally, that is something you can do with an Action, Maneuver, Incidental, or Strain. Sometimes it requires a check. Usually, this is pass-fail and does not reference what to do with excess Success or Advantage, as is the case with Hard Headed and Improved Hard Headed. Sometimes, as is the case with Scathing Tirade, there are specific options for additional Success or for spending Advantage, but by-and-large, they are strictly pass-fail. Additionally, in the case of Known Schematic, it says that the GM may use Advantage, additional Success, and Triumph to provide additional information, which suggests to me that usually those would be discarded.
Furthermore, talents like Field Commander become Strain recovery tools as if you have a high Presence and/or Leadership, you make an Average check and recover Strain equal to Advantage.

Considering that most talents either activate without a check, or have stated expenditures for Advantage or additional Success, my conclusion is that the pass-fail checks have no intention of you spending Advantage, Triumph, or additional Success.

That said, I can see a GM allowing the player to do something cool and situationally appropriate with Triumph (like with Hard Headed for example, reducing an additional 3 Strain).

I can see what you are saying, but I disagree.

The way I see most of the talents that require skill check, the talent is just a specified use of the skill. Something extra you can do with it beyond the base skill, but a skill check none the less. Therefore spending advantage/threat and triumph/despair are part of it as normal.

But, if that works for your table, 👍 .

On 12/23/2019 at 3:16 AM, Rimsen said:

I've never heard it before either. Personally I'd let them be spent as per the skill the player used. so in this case, spend it as you would otherwise spent from a Discipline check. Sometimes the talent itself gives you new options to spend it, but otherwise I don't think the game would encourage discarding advantages...

On 12/23/2019 at 11:55 AM, Jareth Valar said:

I can see what you are saying, but I disagree.

The way I see most of the talents that require skill check, the talent is just a specified use of the skill. Something extra you can do with it beyond the base skill, but a skill check none the less. Therefore spending advantage/threat and triumph/despair are part of it as normal.

But, if that works for your table, 👍 .

To revisit this (I know, bit of a necro, but I didn't want to leave this unsaid), I get what you're saying now, and have changed my mind on this somewhat. When I came across this topic again, the bolded part in particular stuck out to me and I realized my disconnect.

When I was originally thinking about spending Advantage etc. on Talent checks, I was thinking about the spending narrative results table for Combat. Pass on a Boost, recover a Strain, etc. However, I can see spending narrative results as suggested in the skill description as it is a [insert skill] check. It gets a bit more dicey when it's a Maneuver, but as long as it isn't throwing in Advantage results from the combat tables it should be fine.

However, I'm a bit more leery of it when it comes to reducing the penalties of some talents like Stim Application or increasing their benefits, especially as there are Improved/Supreme versions of some of these talents that add expenditures for Triumph or reduce the penalties associated with the talent.