Maybe for a house rule, on a Success + Despair while shooting at enemy engaged with your ally, your attack hits BOTH parties.

With the danger that the RAW presents on this, it's very much in the interest of characters to wait for an open shot before taking it so I do like that about it. I do agree that it doesn't quite jibe with the concept of a "successful" check, but then it could be said that your shot was dead on...it just turned out that your ally was in the way.

In any case, the attack hitting both parties might be a good way to resolve this.

I like the idea of a combat oriented feat that allows you to reduce the difficulty of a check, sort of like how true aim upgrades it. This could allow a combat oriented sharpshooter to be able to take the shot knowing that they are good enough to make the shot, although I would say that a talent like that would require a destiny point.

The closest is natural marksman, since it would mean the chance of getting the shot hitting the other person would be 1 in 144 instead of 1 in 12. To be honest I quite like this talent when you think about this situation.

Here's an example from a game I was running:

Computers; the Jawa was attempting to subvert the crimelord's security by slicing into the network to shut down the alarm system. Failure with a Triumph – the network sensed the slice attempt and locked him out for a while, however the Jawa had learned enough about the system that on his next attempt, the difficulty was reduced by one die.

WOW. The depsair turned into a crushed leg crit that's harsh lol

I probably would have said he tripped, landed hard and suffered a few wounds.

Since an action is roughly one minite of time in combat i would probably rule that if a despair was rolled both the original target and the engaged ally were hit. Something like "you fire a spray of blaster bolts into the swirling mass of combatants, you smile as one of bolts strikes your target, unfortunately one of the bolts also strikea your ally damaging him"

Hi people!

There is another post talking about "Failure but with Triumph" with some samples in another place?

Thank you and thanks for the ideas to interpretate dice results!

I hope this Thread is not to old to dig it out, but I have to say something regarding the quoted example:

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.

I don't agree with this.

Given this example we shoot into a melee fight.

In case we roll just netto successes: We hit the Target.

If we roll netto succs but a dispair: We hit the Target but something bad happens.

syrath says, that an ally should be hit now. But that seems too harsh for me.

I just wondered what would happen in the next worse case:

We roll NO successes AND a dispair!

That would be the worst case, but how to top the example above? Hitting two allies? Krit the ally? hit the ally and brake the weapon?

Personally I think that the example given by syrath, should only happen in this worst case. We do NOT hit our intended target AND something bad happens. In this case I have the described scene before my eyes: I hit an ally.

But when I roll successfull for firing at en enemy, then I should Hit that enemy, because that is, what I rolled for. I do not roll for firing blind into a melee and hoping for a lucky shot. That would mean, I have to roll a success AND a Triumph to successfully hit an enemy while shooting blind into a melee.

Back to our example: I aim at an enemy that is in a melee with an ally. I roll successfully and therefore hit my target, the enemy.

But something bad happens, and I think there must be a better conclusion that saying, you succeed in hitting your aimed target, but because of the despair-result, I alter the target, that you successfully aimed for.

Why not let the enemy targets armor be higher than thought at first sight? So you still hit the intended target....

Or your ally pushes the enemy away just in the moment, he would have been hit? So he gets a smaller amount of damage. But without that unforseen action you would have hit him. You hit the point at wich you aimed, only the target is not there anymore

The point is, that there is a possible much worse situation: I could MISS and DESPAIR. And for that case I think hitting the ally should be reserved for.

what do you think?

sorry for possible bad writing, english is not my native language

I hope this Thread is not to old to dig it out, but I have to say something regarding the quoted example:

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.

I don't agree with this.

Given this example we shoot into a melee fight.

In case we roll just netto successes: We hit the Target.

If we roll netto succs but a dispair: We hit the Target but something bad happens.

syrath says, that an ally should be hit now. But that seems too harsh for me.

I just wondered what would happen in the next worse case:

We roll NO successes AND a dispair!

That would be the worst case, but how to top the example above? Hitting two allies? Krit the ally? hit the ally and brake the weapon?

Personally I think that the example given by syrath, should only happen in this worst case.

Im not saying how anyone shouldrule it, thats entirely up to the peopleplaying, Im telling you how the rules are.

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.

How about 'you leap the chasm and make it, but turn your ankle on the landing' - you take some strain/wound/critical/whatever

Here's how I interpret "Success with Despair". It's basically an ironic result, similar to the way things turn out in the short story "The Monkey's Paw". Good phrases to use when thinking about such results are "be careful what you wish for", "a double-edged sword" and "a pyrrhic victory". A desired outcome is achieved, but in an undesirable way or with undesirable consequences. In "The Monkey's Paw" for instance, the protagonist wishes for wealth and the wish is indeed fulfilled but only through the untimely death of his parents, who have left him a large sum of money.

So, if the skill check is to shoot a stormtrooper using a blaster, you need to think of ways you could fulfil that outcome with undesirable consequences. Maybe he is spun by the blast and knocks an ally off a ledge, or rakes them with fire as he dies, or maybe a grenade he is carrying is hit by the shot, which explodes to injure nearby allies. If there are no allies around, maybe he falls backwards, raking the roof with fire and causing it to cave in, thus blocking the only exit. Every situation is different but in all cases the result should be a success tainted by unintended consequences.

So my experience with this. Our Halloween game was designed to play on my characters addiction to glitterstim. We had just jumped into hyperspace from the wheel and were traveling to our destination. To make a long story short we woke up in a bad trip on the ISD Horizon. A pre- Civil War Imperial Star Destroyer lost while testing ancient Infinite Empire tech. After suffering quite a bit of strain and combat from demonic Sith forces, imperial zombies, etc. We got to the bridge. My Both a slicer thought it would be agood idea to try and download the plans for the experimental hyperdrive.... Yeah.... Ruled a daunting task with a couple of upgrades. I rolled failure with a triumph and a couple of disadvantage. Because I really want the information for the Bothan Spynet I chose to exercise my ability to reroll a computers check... Yeah... And I get a bunch of blanks two successes and .... A despair... O crap!... So we are still talking about the full repercussions of the roll. I got my ancient dark side technological plans for the hyperdrive. But I also gained a new motivation/obligation. Obsession: dark side tech. My evil tech plans will cause me to desire more and become ever more in tune with the dark side. So yeah we all woke up from my bad trip in hyperspace. I got a Iecture, I told them to keep out of my stash, and a new little voice in my head telling me that I need to find more dark side tech.

I found this to be a fine solution to my insistence to download ever thing I think is important tech from every terminal I slice. Especially in places my Sense of preservation instinct should have been blaring stop while i was ahead.

Success with despair in combat:

You shoot and kill the Trandoshan bounty hunter whose ship you are trying to take. While searching his body and the ship you realize that upon killing him it set off a timed self destruct for the ship. Now that you are in space you have no where to run before the ship detonates. Guess its time to try and find the bomb to disarm it. This is what our GM did when we kill the the bounty hunter in the beginner game, having rolled a despair.

Failure with triumph

The Hired Gun with a disruptor rifle shoots at a storm trooper and misses badly. So badly that he hits the arch way 20 feet above the storm trooper squad causing it to fall on them,

Triumph and despair

You throw a stun grenade into the room and close the door. Your target wakes up when you slam the door gets tangled in his blankets trying to get out of the bed and falls on top of the grenade. The building is made poorly and the blast has destabilized it. Congratulations your target is unconscious however the building is starting to collapse and you have yet to find the information you are looking for.

This last one was from a night where we rolled alot of triumphs and a few despairs alot of dramatic things took place and we all loved it. The big thing we have noticed and have used is that triumph means a good thing happens if I fail a good thing still happens I just don't suceed at what I was doing. Despair is a bad thing happens if I suceed I still suceed just now there is a bad thing. In our games if you suceed and triumph it generally though not always means that you did it amazingly same with failure and despair you just failed spectacularly, however if you triumph but fail or succeed but despair you still fail or suceed but now there is an added boon or misfortune.

I would make sure to balance the scale of Despair results with Triumph. If you are dishing out Despair results that ruin someone's entire day or destroy their chance of fulfilling their ultimate goal, but limit Triumphs to comparatively tiny benefits then that's just the GM being sadistic.