This came up in my game last week. One of my players made a roll and missed by one Degree of Failure. He pointed out that by spending a Fate Point, a player may, among other things, add one Degree of Success to a roll (this may be chosen after the roll is made). By doing so, he argued, the DoS would "cancel out" the DoF and the roll would pass the test.

My question is this: can Degrees of Success be used to "negate" Degrees of Failure? And if so, does that render the option to add +10 to a test before rolling extraneous?

ddunkelmeister said:

I'm going to have to say that, no, you may not use the Degrees of Success option to negate Degrees of Failure; you may only use the Degrees of Success option to add to existing Successes . In other words, the player must have succeeded on the test beforehand before exercising this option. Otherwise, as noted, there would be little point in being able to add +10 before you roll.

The only option for dealing with a failed test is to re-roll, and the second result stands.

-Kirov