How do you handle that? Some of the people GM and players in my group can't really get a grip on that.

In many cases in the book it appears that Success with Despair is actually a failure.

For example firing into melee if you get Despair you hit an ally, instead of the intended target (pg 210).

Other examples are in the skills section...

Medicine you are treating someone for an injury and roll a success but get Despair and the book suggests that you then actually inflict an injury.

Deception the threat and Despair suggestions seem to conflict with the success result, Despair particularly says the target realizes they are being lied to.

Resilience is another example you can use it to resist the damaging effects of toxins, and be successful but the Despair result suggests you suffer a critical injury.

Shooting, you hit but the target is also the son of a Black Sun viggo.

Coordination, you run across the narrow beam, but then it falls, trapping your friends on the other side.

Deception, you succeed in convincing the Moff that you are the couriers for the plans, but after he gives them to you the real couriers come in.

Resilience, you fight off the deadly poison, but you temporarily lose your memory.

Medicine, you heal some wounds, but it's a hack job that results in a critical injury.

Stealth, you get past the guard, but then the head of security arrives for a surprise full inspection.

Negotiation, you seal the deal, but Darth Vader alters the terms.

Happened last night, my son's character was trying to find a sniper he saw on another building, the other building being one of those massive monads on Coruscant. He said he wanted to find her after she left her post. Well, it was another building over and he didn't know which floor she was headed to...so I made it a Formidable challenge and flipped a DP. Most of the purples came up blank, so he netted a success and a Despair. He "found" her all right, when she put her blaster rifle to the back of his head...

Negotiation, you seal the deal, but Darth Vader alters the terms.

Pray he doesn't alter it any further.

IMO, if the text in the book doesn't jive with what you think should happen, don't do it. Grimmshade has some great examples of how to handle Despair. Last night during my group's game, the characters were chasing a death stick dealer through a cantina. One of the characters shot at the dealer with a stun blast – and was successful, but generated Despair. My decision was that though the attack hit, but did not take the dealer down. A crony of the dealer's made himself known and waylaid the attacking character – one more enemy to deal with, and the dealer had a better chance of getting away.

My rule of thumb in these situations – do what adds drama, cinematic action or fun, and you can't go wrong.

Negotiation, you seal the deal, but Darth Vader alters the terms.

Pray he doesn't alter it any further.

This is a Unicycle, you will ride it...

Anyway, it seems to me that you succeed in your immidiate task, but in doing so, you cause something worse to happen. Maybe while doing medicine, your patient screams so loud that it attracts the unwanted attention of some guards/stormtroopers/a Krayt Dragon...

Speaking of rolling Despair while succeeding on a Medicine check, my character (a doctor) was fixing up the group's wookiee after a shoot out. I jokingly told my fellow player, I might have given you mange... which is more or less what our GM went with. That in tending to the wookiee's blaster wounds, I had to apply a topical cream to remove his fur in order to adequately to perform first aid. Unfortunately I used the wrong cream, which causes permanent fur loss in wookiees...

It hasn't happened yet, but do you think it would be fine if say. A player was shooting at someone, rolled a dispair that I could say that they so ackwardly fired their weapon that they burned their hand and dropped the weapon after the shot?

It hasn't happened yet, but do you think it would be fine if say. A player was shooting at someone, rolled a dispair that I could say that they so ackwardly fired their weapon that they burned their hand and dropped the weapon after the shot?

That sounds good. It gives a consequence without negating the success.

Taking hints from Indiana Jones, you punch the guy with the huge diamond you need, but he drops it into a bucket of ice that then spills. You get the antidote from the villains hands, but it falls to the floor and someone kicks it into a crowd of people.

You escape from the Black Sun minions chasing you, but the transport you board is owned by the Black Sun viggo you just screwed over.

Happened for the first time with a wookiee character fighting off a swarm of Chiru wasps. In his description the player had just triggered wookiee rage and described ripping the wasps bodily from his fur, tearing them in half, swatting them in front of him and even biting the heads off of others in his rage.

When the dice came up triumph and despair, he had perfectly provided both results in his description of his character's action prior his roll. With his extra successes and triumphs he killed 3 of the four swarms surrounding him (the triumph being used as a critical hit on a minion destroying it instantly), and the despair was used to force a resilience check for biting into the body of the venomous creature. He failed the resilience check, suffered some of the effect of the wasp's venom and had to speak (in character) with a lisp for the rest of the encounter to simulate the swollen lips, tongue and gums from the venom.

I'm finding it easier to adjudicate the dice results when the players adequately describe their character's actions. This particularly player is great, because he always goes into just the right amount of detail (not too long to hog the limelight and bore everyone and not too short to be mostly useless) ... he definitely makes my life as the GM easier as he's painted a picture with his words, where the consequences of threat, advantage, despair and triumph are obvious.

I provide a boost die to any player who provides an awesome or clever description of their action. Which I award about a third to a half of the time.

You can also do it the other way around.

Failure but with a triumph.

Like you are using a stealthy approach on a guardpost.

You roll and fail but you have a triumph.

So you don't manage to arrive quietly but thank god the guard was out to get some food.

I agree that it's a bad mechanic with firing into Melee if a Despair can basically negate the whole success.

I think a better way of doing it is on a Despair result, an ally takes base damage of the weapon (no successes) regardless of whether you hit the original target or not.

No it is a success, but with negative consequences.

What we do for firing into me lee is it hits the target and goes through hitting an ally.

Anther example you negotiate the deal for the Droid at the price you wanted, but the droid later breaks down.

There are some skills that do seem like success and despair is a failure pretty much all the ones you listed, but there are other skills were it makes more sense.

That's kind of the fun of the narrative system

The key thing is that success with a despair should read as a "yes (good), but (bad)."

The way shooting into melee is handled in RAW is "no (bad), and (bad)." Did I hit my target? no (bad) ... and you hit an ally (more bad). That doesn't fit in with how the base system works.

I also don't think a Despair should "effectively" cancel a success. If I make a roll to find and purchase a droid, having it break soon thereafter just negates the earlier action (less some cash). Now, if it needs some repairs, or has an odd quirk (that rears its head at an inconvenient time) then that adds a fun complication without making the last roll a waste of time.

I agree. The only time despair should mean potentially hitting your engaged ally is when you miss with despair.

An example from the movies is Han succeeding at intimidating the Stormtroopers and chasing them away so Luke and Leia can make it to the ship, but then running into a room full of them.

Just to point out thst RAW a despair does mean you hit someone else engaged with the target. Im fine with thst to be honest, because that is the reason the upgrade occurs in the first place, it is increasing the risk of despair at the choice of the player who shoots at someone engaged with someone else. In this instance the target is actually the melee, not the speceific individual.

Example 2 people talking/engaged in melee etc , you take a shot, however the person you are shooting notices and spins the other person round and your shot hits them in the back. How often have you seen this move in films. Its still a success for the hit. However despair and miss would mean your aim is off and you hit the other person (or you could rule that it was just a normal miss, however this is not rules as written.

Yeah, it's RAW but it's still lame. It's punishing success, or at least taking away success. It's like saying "you leap the chasm and make it to the other side, but the cliff breaks off and you die anyway."

The upgrade gives more chance to fail already, so my homerule is going to be miss plus despair means you hit an engaged friendly, hit plus despair means you hit your target but something else bad happens.

Actually it isnt the same, in the second instance the despair was brought about naturally, if you want to call it that. However the upgrade to the die roll was brought about because the player choose to do something.ie they choose to fire into a group of people, they know the risk of taking the shot, before the shot is taken. So it isn't punishing success it is punishing risk taking.if you look at it like this then itmakes sense.

Every time you roll the dice you are risk taking. When you leap a chasm you are risking falling, that doesn't mean despair should mean falling on a success.

I just personally don't like turning a success to a fail on the action that was being taken. You still have a chance to shoot your friend in the despair with a miss houserule, and a chance for other interesting things on a despair with a hit.

I'm not saying the RAW is wrong, I just don't like it in this instance.

Here's a few examples from the test game we ran:

Mechanics: The Jawa was trying to pump power for non-essential systems into the deflector shields. She rolled a success, but a despair and a threat. The deflectors got the boost, but it shocked her (the threat used for one strain) as well as overloading one of the guns another party member was using (one strain and a setback die until repairs).

Combat: Once again, the Jawa was in action? She snuck up on the Imperial barking orders and threats via a megaphone, and wanted to short it out with her Ion Blaster. She succeeded, but with a despair. She shut down the megaphone, but her Ion Blaster shorted out, becoming useless until repairs could be done. . .which was sad, because the guy had a commlink and a blaster still on his person. . .

Our Smuggler also rolled a despair with success in combat. While he hit the minion he was aiming for, the mook fell into another PC and smacked him in the head with a blaster rifle.

Negotiation: The Smuggler was negotiating for a better price on the contraband he was transporting/selling and rolled a despair with success. While they it well and he was able to get that better price, some thugs the buyer owed money to crashed the conversation and started a bar room brawl, while another of their number reported it all to the local Imperials.

Sneak: The Doctor was trying to sneak through the woods, at night, to ambush some of the minions that supposedly had them surrounded. Again, despair and success. In this case, he cracked a twig at the last possible moment, bringing the attention of one of the guards to him. He was able to force them to use Vigilance instead of Cool, but at least one of them already had a weapon drawn and aimed.

I was tempted to have him accidentally sneak in and cause a hornet's nest to drop, but we were running out of time for the session and we needed the last combat scene to go quickly.

I'm not saying the RAW is wrong, I just don't like it in this instance.

It hadn't really occurred to me until the night before this thread started, but after that game and seeing the comments in this thread, it seems to me that RAW is in fact wrong here. Whoever wrote it wasn't properly separating all the possibilities. If you succeed in your shot, you shoot the target. If you also get a Despair, the shot lurches the target into your ally causing a full strike on your ally with the target's weapon...or a fully connected knockdown-worthy punch, or...any number of ways to resolve it. The important thing is that a success is still a success.

I just got the AoR beta, I think it's worth bringing up there, maybe it can be addressed in the new rules.

Actually imactually all for it, if you set it that a success always hits the aimed at target , then an ace shot will never be disadvantaged by firing into a group (at least from the point of view of hitting the wrong target, they just get a normal despair). While I see where people are coming from about other situations being ruled differently, and I can certainly understand anyone ruling it differently I can also understand the reasoning behind the rules as they are.

Anyone firing into a group of people is certainly taking a big risk, a risk big enough that would give you second thoughts about firing in the first place, I don't know if any talents allow you to downgrade difficulty, but to me that would be a good idea for a sharpshooter to combat situations like this.

Actually imactually all for it, if you set it that a success always hits the aimed at target , then an ace shot will never be disadvantaged by firing into a group (at least from the point of view of hitting the wrong target, they just get a normal despair). While I see where people are coming from about other situations being ruled differently, and I can certainly understand anyone ruling it differently I can also understand the reasoning behind the rules as they are.

The thing is that the Despair can still represent hitting an ally (see my suggested change above) and still allow a successful roll to be successful.

Yes a success is a success even with threat and/or despair. Some skills are much harder to narrate like social skills you get 2 success but a Despair looking at the examples the book makes it look like a failure and it can be very hard to cone up with a success and a despair especially in social encounters is they'll never interact with that NPC again.

A few we had last night:

Negotiation vs. Hutt I said they succeeded and got what they want. However, they don't know yet, the Hutt realizes they cheated him later and will send a BH after them.

Jumping into a freighter as the ramp was closing. His success got him inside the ship but the door closed on his leg giving him a critical injury.

So yes the way the book is written it can make it very hard to use the examples, but with some work you can make it work. Bounce ideas off the players or player involved.