I consider the Hidden Storage talent to be badly written. The way it interacts with the size of the container and the ranks of the talent is poorly explained. I am using the following house rule in my game:

Hidden Storage allows the character increased proficiency in concealing items. It applies whether the objects are stored on the character's person, in his vehicle, or simply in an unattended object (like a desk or a crate). For each rank of Hidden Storage, the Difficulty to find objects that the character has hidden is upgraded by one, Finding hidden objects is usually a Perception check against the character's Stealth (for objects hidden on a character's body) or Skulduggery (for objects hidden in vehicles or objects), and the relative sizes of the objects can apply modifiers to the test as per Concealing Gear, page 153

Examples:

A thief with Agility 3, Stealth 2, and Hidden Storage 2 is hiding a blaster pistol on his person (within his heavy clothing). The difficulty to detect the hidden weapon would be RRP upgraded to RRRP because of Hidden Storage 2. If it were a heavy blaster pistol, the searcher would gain a Blue die, but if it were a holdout blaster, the searcher would instead suffer a Black die.

A scoundrel with Cunning 3, Skulduggery 2, and Hidden Storage 2 is hiding contraband on his ship. The difficulty to detect the hidden contraband would be RRP upgraded to RRRP because of Hidden Storage 2. The same scoundrel hiding an object on a ship with smuggling compartments (+2 Difficulty) would result in a difficulty of RRPPP upgraded to RRRRP with Hidden Storage 2. Needless to say, smugglers can benefit greatly from smuggling compartments, but skilled smugglers don't necessarily need such compartments to hide contraband.

Note that I think that Skulduggery (a Cunning-linked skill) makes more sense here than Stealth (an Agility-linked skill) for hiding objects in relatively static positions. Hiding contraband has far more to do with cunning and criminal thinking than it does with any form of bodily motion (exception: hiding items on your body).

This all makes perfect sense to me. I agree that Hidden Storage is pretty vaugley writte, and its static difficulty is is a bit confusing given the other rules surrounding hiding items (using Skulduggery to hide stuff that isn't on your person is an extrapolation of the RAW, but also a completely reasonable one). So far, I only have one player using it to hide a blaster pistol inside of a pit droid they usually leave on the ship, so I haven't worried about it too much. That said, as it's written I forsaw a house rule of some kind; I think I'll just lift these. Thanks!

On further review, I'm only going to have Hidden Storage work with hiding things off of a character's body (i.e., storage). That means that this is a talent for hiding things in your vehicle, your desk, stashed quickly in a trash can, hiding your stash in a tree, etc. It will not help with concealing objects on a character's person (like a hidden gun in a waistband). Thus, in all cases of using this talent, it will be working with Skulduggery rather than Stealth using the logic I outlined in the first post.

Why not setback dice per rank instead of upgrades? Upgrades increase the possibility of despair but unless the hiding contains traps of some kind I don't see how despair figures into it.

A Despair could change the custom's agent attitude toward the character, perhaps? Something like;

"Sorry about that, just doing my job. Say, is that a X-30 Lancer on your belt? Fine enough weapon on its own, but you should visit my friend Flix Gnar's shop over in the Transport District. He used to work the SoroSuub corporation over on Sullust, so I'm he'll definitely has plenty of upgrades in stock. Drop my name and he'll probably even give you a discount."

If the PC decides to visit Flix Gnar's shop, they can choose to drop the custom agent's name in order to upgrade any one Charm, Coercion, Deception, Negotiation, or Streetwise check regarding Flix once.

A good example, and I wasn't saying Despair shouldn't come into it at all, I'm just not sure that the application of the talent should increase the odds of Despair.

Why not setback dice per rank instead of upgrades? Upgrades increase the possibility of despair but unless the hiding contains traps of some kind I don't see how despair figures into it.

Despair can also represent misleading/false placements, such that the searching character thinks they've found what was trying to hide, but they've instead found something that distracts them from the real prize.

If after searching, they've only found a small bag of avabush spice, Despairs might have them thinking that this was what you were trying to hide and they stop looking before finding the Rebel agent hidden behind a wall panel.

On 1/3/2014 at 12:34 PM, HappyDaze said:

On further review, I'm only going to have Hidden Storage work with hiding things off of a character's body (i.e., storage). That means that this is a talent for hiding things in your vehicle, your desk, stashed quickly in a trash can, hiding your stash in a tree, etc. It will not help with concealing objects on a character's person (like a hidden gun in a waistband). Thus, in all cases of using this talent, it will be working with Skulduggery rather than Stealth using the logic I outlined in the first post.

I know this is a highgrade Necro, but I'm currently also looking into maybe house-ruling this talent and really liked this solution.

Using Hidden Storage to hide stuff off of your body works great, especially since then there's a clear improvement through Improved Hidden Storage which then would enable you to be even better at hiding stuff so you can hide stuff on your person (be it in a cyber cavity like the original talent requires or simply inside your coat).

Nonetheless I'd be interested to hear if there have been other house-rulings of this Talent (I know there are different rulings for scaling the Encumbrance of the Hidden Storage, I am using such a ruling already myself).

18 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

I know this is a highgrade Necro

That's OK. There's a lot of dead stuff on these boards.