New GM, New Game...

[Hellcat]

I only get poor resolution before I enlarge the map.
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FLUFFY for President!!!!

Wanted Poster

[Kytross]

It sounds to me that your group learned the hard way not to mess with Stormtroopers. They're waking up in bacta tanks, hopefully a little wiser.

Hopefully you're a bit wiser as a GM and have learned a bit about what a good combat level is for your players.

As a rule of thumb when my players roll a 1 on the wild die I have them tell me and then I have them subtract their highest and lowest dice from the dice total. It doesn't necessarily make them fail, but if they're having a bad run of the dice it's a fair way to show their character is haveing a bad day without killing them off.

The reason I have them tell me is so I can decide if I want to do something else with it. For example, sometimes my players have a weapon they've self modified and if they hit the 1 on the wild I have the weapon explode or malfunction.

I had a player in an X-wing once who rolled a one on the wild while firing his laser cannons and I let him keep the roll. He was a little surprised but happy. Aimed up his proton torpedoes, got a good lock, pressed the firing button and nothing happened.

It was a good time and he was pissed, but thought his way out of it. That happened close to a decade ago and it still gets brought up from time to time when we game together. So it was a memorable moment.

Rolling a one on the wild die is a chance for you to be creative and give the players an unexpected challenge to overcome.

Good luck with your game.

[Critias]

Ah, the wild die. One of the best, and potentially one of the worst, things about this great game.

Some GMs seem to just live for that moment a player gets a '1' on the wild die. I've played in games where they were, quite simply, just too plain harsh for my liking.

It's important to remember that, statistically, the wild die will -- of course -- come up a '1' one roll in every six. If you're running a game with a group of six players, that means that just about every time the whole gang is making die rolls, someone's gonna get screwed by the wild die.

Every combat round, for instance, the odds are that one player's gonna get a '1' and you're gonna, as GM, have to make a call on how bad it is for them. Particularly for players with high die pools, rolling for something they're very good at -- Luke swinging a lightsaber, Han with his pistol, Wedge in an X-Wing, whatever -- it's a little silly for a wild die alone to cause some catastrophic failure. If Luke gets a 932 total on his Lightsaber attack roll, but a '1' on the wild die, it's silly and cruel to say he cuts off his leg or something.

If real-life carried with it an automatic failure one out of every six times you attempt something, and the world would be a ridiculously dangerous and failure-riddled place. You think traffic is bad now? Imagine if one out of every six things you did behind the wheel, your brakes gave out, your engine died, a wheel flew off your car, or you started to accelerate wildly!

Remember that the wild die is supposed to be there for dramatic effect, and to provide complications and challenges. It's not meant to be a "you lose" button.

Personally, I'm a fan of totaling up the roll as normal and seeing what would've happened. Let the character succeed or fail based on how good they are and how the character was built, then take the fickle, fickle, wild die into account.

As an example off the top of my head: if your player should've hit the Stormtrooper (and if the fight was going in such a way that the party as a whole could really USE that success), I'd say the shot still hits, but that shot empties the rest of the blaster pack. That way the player still has to deal with an empty blaster next turn, but he doesn't get "robbed" of his good roll, and still gets to feel like his character is good at his job and has accomplished something. Heck, it even happens in real life sometimes -- semi automatic guns can, very occasionally, "cook off" a whole magazine of ammo with just one pull of the trigger.

So your player's cocky smuggler snaps off a shot with his BlasTech DL-44, hits the Stormtrooper square in the chest...and then is as surprised as everyone else when suddenly the muzzle jerks skyward, there's a series of terrific flashes, and the next thing he knows he's got an empty pistol and there's a bunch of holes in the ceiling. He still gets the satisfaction of hitting the bad guy, he still gets to feel like all those points in Blaster still paid off...but he's still got an issue to deal with next round, and a good story to tell when the fight's over.

Compare that to the same character's pistol blowing up in his hand (especially if he's worked and invested on customizing it), or on the shot hitting another PC (I had one GM at a convention that gave us three "friendly fire" incidents in a single four hour game, all due to the wild die!), or something.

To me, the number one goal of any game is to have fun. Don't be a pushover GM because of that -- provide a challenge, tell a good story -- but it's a motto I try to keep in mind every time I'm about to run something. In Star Wars especially, I try not to let the dice get in the way of a good, cinematic, time. I'm a bit more cutthroat in my Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, or Vampire/Werewolf type games.

[garhkal]

I agree. Wild die ones shold not ALWAYS be a complication, but having it happen as few times as some would lke, is also making it defunct.

Case and point. Last year (beginning of this) at verncon, in one module i had 3 straight combat rolls where i got a 1 on the wild. First 1, the gm had me add up as normal (meaning take the wild and the highest out). Second he did the same... third he had me add up everything, then promptly told me the gun jammed up (firearm). Took a round to clear.
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[Esoomian]

I've played it where if the wild die is a one you roll again. If you get anything but a one then you just subtract the wild die and the highest dice (murder if your dicepool is 2-3 dice) but if you roll a one then the wild die adds into your roll as normal but there is a complication.
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[ZzaphodD]

[Kytross]

also, players can use Character points to negate thee dreaded 1 on the wild die. My players tend to blow through character points.

[ZzaphodD]

[Kytross]

But you only have a limited supply of CPs. And CPs are also how you increase your skills. It's a balance. Characters have to choose how to use them.

I suggest sparingly.

My players don't listen though. Which is why they take forever to improve their skills.

I tend to play in the other direction, rarely using CPs and increasing my skills faster. You take more lumps from the wild die that way, but that tends toward making a more memorable adventure.