A long thread in the EotE forums:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/91506-success-but-with-despair-is-it-really-a-fail/

...and I'm hoping the FFG folks can consider revising some wording for AoR. It seems to me Despair shouldn't take away Success, it's simply an additional condition.

RAW says if you fire into a melee with an ally, on Despair you hit your ally instead. But this basically cancels your success. Instead, you should hit your target, but *also* hit your ally, or cause some effect that triggers damage to your ally equivalent to at least the base damage of the weapon, if not the full damage caused.

RAW says if you fire into a melee with an ally, on Despair you hit your ally instead. But this basically cancels your success. Instead, you should hit your target, but *also* hit your ally, or cause some effect that triggers damage to your ally equivalent to at least the base damage of the weapon, if not the full damage caused.

This is the only part of Despair that I have an issue with, since as worded, it pretty much invalidates the character's attack roll.

Generally, the way I've been running and have seen Despair being handled by other GMs is that while it does cancel a single success from the dice pool results, if the player still has enough other successes, they will still succeed (with the one exception of shooting into a melee), but the Despair means that some unfortunate consequence is going to occur as well.

Case in point, in the Skype game I played in yesterday as part of a backer reward from the Order 66 Kickstarter, the adventure required the PCs to sift through a mountain of sensor log data that was stored on a datapad. Upon one player rolling a Despair but still succeeding the skill check, he managed to get a few more bits of info from all the data... but then the datapad was corrupted to such an extent it'd take days, if not weeks, to untangle the data.

I seem to be finding a lot of your threads Whafrog. I sort of agree with you however it makes sense that unless you're a jerk you're not going to fire into such an engagement when you know you may hit a comrade unless you're that certain of your skills. Remember for a despair to be spent you still need to roll more despairs than advantages and unless you're that desperate, cocky, or just don't care who gets in the way you're not going to fire and either pick another target or wait for an initiative after your ally has gotten out of the being engaged with the target. Seriously only a high grade sniper should consider that shot and even then they know that they're more likely to hit an ally so they wait for that moment when all non-targets are out of the way with the above exceptions, the main difference being a sniper almost always has the patience to wait for that moment. Now while rebels may do this imperial commanders may give the order to fire anyway thus cutting down their own men another perfect way to emphasize how callous some of the commanders are especially if the group has ex-imperials who left for such reasons.

Please understand this is just my opinion on a ruling that seems realistic to me and can be used by both players and GMS for good role-play purposes and possibly even considered a tactic by rebels who piss off commanders enough that any sacrifice is worth killing them. I think it's something Wedge or another rebel commander such as Ackbar or Han used to even the odds in the novels but it's been so long I can't remember.

Remember for a despair to be spent you still need to roll more despairs than advantages ...

You're confusing Despairs with Threats. Threats and Advantages cancel each other. Despairs are never cancelled, even by Triumphs.

Remember for a despair to be spent you still need to roll more despairs than advantages ...

You're confusing Despairs with Threats. Threats and Advantages cancel each other. Despairs are never cancelled, even by Triumphs.

They do two things:

1 - Cancel a success (just like a fail symbol)

2 - have an uncancelable despair effect.

You're right I did confuse them, my bad. However a despair is a effectively a crit fail so I still stand by the rest of my statement.

You're right I did confuse them, my bad. However a despair is a effectively a crit fail so I still stand by the rest of my statement.

Except it's not a critical failure; you can easily get a Despair on a roll you otherwise succeed (i.e., not fail) at. The discussion is how to handle that duality in certain situations.

The point I'm getting at is that if you fire into a combat you should expect in all likely-hood the possibility that your shot may be aimed perfectly but that doesn't stop Joey from stepping in the way and making a perfectly aimed shot into a horrible case of friendly fire. The rest of the reason I gave in my first post more than justify that especially with a despair. Maybe if the person also rolled a triumph somehow damage still goes through to the target despite that. But as it stands I normally would not fire into a combat like that especially in a real life situation. How many times have you seen in the movies or shows a character go "I can't get a clear shot!" and not fire because of allies for this very reason.

Nobody is arguing that the despair doesn't kick in and you also hit your ally, just that the despair shouldn't invalidate success. If you failed and also got a despair, you would only hit your ally.

The point I'm getting at is that if you fire into a combat you should expect in all likely-hood the possibility that your shot may be aimed perfectly but that doesn't stop Joey from stepping in the way and making a perfectly aimed shot into a horrible case of friendly fire. The rest of the reason I gave in my first post more than justify that especially with a despair. Maybe if the person also rolled a triumph somehow damage still goes through to the target despite that. But as it stands I normally would not fire into a combat like that especially in a real life situation. How many times have you seen in the movies or shows a character go "I can't get a clear shot!" and not fire because of allies for this very reason.

This.

I think of the opening scene (I think it was opening?) of Skyfall . EPIC moment.

Agreed... You did successfully put your shot where you wanted (the success part of the roll), but your friend moved in front of it first (despair). You were still successful, just with unfortunate consequences

What's the matter with both participants being hit? One attack action does not mean one pull of the trigger.

Also, just because the rules suggest a Despair being used to be friendly fire doesn't mean it has to be. Perhaps the blaster ran out of ammo. Despairs (and Triumphs) can always be more than what is suggested in the rules. They basically mean "Something bad happens"

Sure, I might do that too to mix things up. I was just saying that the I can see the argument for your shot was successful but you didn't hit your target as well.

I'd tend to do both -- the shot hits its intended target...'s spare power pack hidden in a breast pocket, causing it to explode and dealing the shots damage to both targets in melee.

As it stands, though, yes, I think it's a bit bizarre that the despair rules for firing into melee are contradictory to every other usage of despair.

But that's what I'm trying to say, it's not exactly contradictory. You wanted to place a shot so hit hits location X and you do so. It just so happens that someone / something got in the way at the last second - you still hit where you were shooting. Again, I probably wouldn't do that every time but do other things with the despair as suggested in this thread, but I can see the point of view that the despair isn't cancelling out the success of putting your shot(s) where you fired.

I would probably just tweak things a bit. If I have a character succeed on an attack roll, but have a despair there's lots of possibilities.

1) They fire off two blasts in the round, one hits the target, another the ally.

2) They hit the target which causes him to convulsively squeeze the trigger of his own gun and shoot your friend in the face.

3) You hit the target, but your ally has to dive out of the way to avoid your crazy shot and leaps off the bridge you're fighting on (because in Star Wars nobody believes in handrails.)

4) Your shot misses everybody but hits that explosive behind them damaging everybody involved.

5) You hit the target but your gun overloads and damages you.

There are so many things that could be done, don't limit yourself to just the books one suggestion.

I play it that the Despair ALWAYS hits the engaged ally My players know this, and try to use it to their advantage as much as possible. I've dropped quite a few enemies with Despair I've rolled for NPCs

But that's what I'm trying to say, it's not exactly contradictory. You wanted to place a shot so hit hits location X and you do so. It just so happens that someone / something got in the way at the last second - you still hit where you were shooting. Again, I probably wouldn't do that every time but do other things with the despair as suggested in this thread, but I can see the point of view that the despair isn't cancelling out the success of putting your shot(s) where you fired.

This goes to the heart of how skills and checks should be adjudicated -- IE whether a rolled success means that player accomplished what he INTENDED or merely that he hit where he was aiming (or whatever the situation).

I'm tempted to link a series of good articles on the subject, but it would be a bit off-topic on the whole.

A part of my problem with the "Despair always hits an ally" thing is that it by RAW restricts the GM's options. It could be a GM has a bunch of really good ideas of how a Despair could be used, and they've got free reign to do so... except in this one specific interest, where it pretty much mandates how a Despair result is spent.

And while the game text doesn't say the attack failed to hit the intended target, it does seem to imply it, especially if you're coming in from a more tactical-based RPG where attacking into a melee has a very real chance of the attacker injuring their ally.

Maybe the bulk of us are exceptionally smart and creative GMs and can work past those to bits without a problem (I pretty much ignore the "hit your ally" use of Despair in that instance if I've got something better in mind, which I usually do), but there's also going to be GMs that are new to the "indie-style" of gaming, perhaps coming over from D&D or Pathfinder or some other "hard coded" RPG systems. So to them, upon reading that, the easy conclusion to draw is that "the attack automatically fails regardless of what you rolled and you shoot your ally in the arse at the same time." I've had a couple players in my face-to-face groups whose gaming experience has been almost entirely centered on d20 systems that read that bit of text in the book, and came to that exact same conclusion, having the same issue that whafrog mentioned.

Frankly, just a bit of re-wording is all that's truly needed. Perhaps something like this?

"On a Despair, the GM has the option to spend it to have the engaged ally suffer damage equal to the attack's damage, although if the attack was successful the original target still suffers the effects of that attack."

Frankly, just a bit of re-wording is all that's truly needed. Perhaps something like this?

"On a Despair, the GM has the option to spend it to have the engaged ally suffer damage equal to the attack's damage, although if the attack was successful the original target still suffers the effects of that attack."

Yeah, the thing that always hit me the wrong way about the "Despair means you hit an ally" rule was that it was the only place in the book where the secondary roll result was mandated.

Everywhere else in the book, the ways to spend Advantage, Threat, Triumph, and Despair are all suggestions for the GM and players. I think it should definitely be worded that way here, as well (and keep with the idea that Despair can't negate a successful roll).

You're right I did confuse them, my bad. However a despair is a effectively a crit fail so I still stand by the rest of my statement.

Except it's not a critical failure; you can easily get a Despair on a roll you otherwise succeed (i.e., not fail) at. The discussion is how to handle that duality in certain situations.

In the one specific case mentioned in the OP, any despair is in fact a fumble - firing into a melee is the special case, and exception to the normal rules.

In the case of shooting into melee, and ONLY into shooting into melee, despair is a major issue. As well it should be. And a clean miss is preferable to hitting the melee but hitting the wrong member thereof. As well it should be.

Thanks Aramis. Something else worth thinking about, if I remember it correctly it simply says you hit someone else that's engaged with the target meaning it's also possible to simply hit another enemy who's there.

I agree with aramis. It's as it should be.

But no, Gearlocke, the rule in question is specifically pertaining to allies (Ie. people who are on your side, e.g. people you don't want to damage) engaged with your enemy, not other enemies.