I do not see a rule that specifically forbids a player from spending edge to get extra dice or rerolling failures to negate a glitch or critical glitch, but given this text of this rule... Is the only things you can do with a critical glitch is either suffer the consequences or spend an edge to downgrade it to a normal glitch? Or can you simply spend an edge to reroll failures or buy more dice, etc and probably negate that glitch through attrition?

I would allow a character to spend Edge to reroll all the dice which were not hits. When this has happened in the past, I simply called the dice being rerolled as a bonus set of dice and kept the number of 1s rolled for purposes of determining a glitch.

Example: Carter is sneaking up on the Vory scum that is about to ambush his friend. I roll 8 dice and get 4,3,2,1,1,1,1,1. (Five 1s on Eight dice.) Rather than reducing the critical glitch to a normal glitch, I choose to re-roll the dice which were not hits. On the re-roll I get 6,5,4,3,2,1,1,1. The test yields 2 hits, with eight 1s on sixteen dice. This automatically reduces to a normal glitch due to having hits, and if a single 1 had been another number, there would be no glitch at all.

I do this whenever the player rolls more dice. By expanding the number of dice rolled, a glitch or critical glitch becomes harder because of the number of 1s needed to cause a glitch expands. Occasionally it works in the players benefit, other times they glitch where it hadn't existed before.

That sounds reasonable.
Thanks.

Yet another area where the book fully supports two seperate interpretations...

If I were ever to run a game, I would rule it that rolling additional dice after the test, or rerolling failed dice, does not affect the glitch or critical glitch. You must use edge specifically to negate the glitch, burn edge for a critical success, or suffer the effects of the glitch.

Are critical glitches a subset of glitches, subject to rules that would affect normal glitches? Or are they a seperate category altogether?

Critical Glitches are in a way, a subset. They are what happens if you glitch on a test and do not have any hits. Rather than being a minor inconvenience, this can pose substantial problems to the runner.

A glitch on a firearms test may result in a misfire, causing the runner to spend an action to clear the chamber. A critical glitch, the runner may need to soak damage as if shot by his firearm.

It's a matter of how the GM interprets the rules, but keep in mind that Edge can only be spent once on a dice test. So if the GM lets you buy more dice or re-roll the failures, and it doesn't negate the glitch or critical glitch, then you are stuck with it. So maybe it's a choice between potentially getting more successes vs. being sure that you will negate that glitch.

I'll second that.

The thing I've noticed in my games is that a lot of glitches and critical glitches gets rolled. When they roll for the skills that they are good at, they tend not to get glitches except on rare occasions. But for athletics tests, perception, infiltration tests etc. glitches tend to happen way too much. I've become quite liberal in letting them re roll misses and at the same time negating that glitch. The way I see it these unfortunate things happen when the characters run out of luck.

The RAW wording isn't clear on this point. If critical glitches are a subset of glitches, then when sometime applies to a glitch, does it also apply to a critical glitch? In my old school math texts, a subset is often represented by an area within the set - ie that that subset is affected by whatever affects the set. But in the case of critical glitch and glitches, I am not so sure. Because if critical glitches are truly a subset of glitches, then it would mean that mages and to a lesser extent, technomancers can be very much immune to critical glitches.

I handle this as followed:

critical glitch + Edge (negate glitch) --> normal failure
glitch + Edge (negate glitch) --> normal success

critical glitch + Edge (reroll) --> no improvement
glitch + Edge (reroll) --> eventually more hits, but still the glitch effect (regardless of the number of ones)

i don't think that the downgrade from a crit glitch to a normal glitch make sense, because a critical glitch is a failure but a glitch is a success with some negative side effects. So if you would downgrade a critical glitch to a glitch, you make the failure to a success, which I think is not intended.

cya
Tycho

This is incorrect. While a roll may result in a glitch and succeed at the same time, it does not mean that a glitch is a success. In some cases, a glitch may be a failure - that is the roll had more ones than or equal to half the dice pool and scored 1 hit or more but less than the threshold required for a success. A glitch simply means that you rolled 1s equal to or more than your dice pool, that's all - whether it was a success or not doesn't matter.

Way too much thought going into this. We've been playing 4th since came out now and I can count number of glitches I've seen on one hand and as far as I can remember only ever seen one crit glitch. Unless defaulting to attribute most dice pools are high enough to keep it from happening and spending edge to stop it really does just negate any real effect on game from glitches.

Let me just say that I've seen a few more and this post was in response to one.

We don't see a ton, but it is a rare session that goes by without at least one glitch. Crit glitches are more like once every 5 sessions. Then again a lot of our players max or come close to maxing a couple of dice pools and have very small dice pools in other things. Also, two of our players never take an edge above 2, so they have to save it for desperate times and not blow it on a random test with a DP of 4.

Chris

We play light on the dice-rolling side, and important pools are usually build for "reliability". So critical glitches are rare. One happend that could not be averted at all, because the player in question had already spend his edge at mid-run.

We have always played it the way that rerolling misses requires at least one hit. So gritical glitches can only be bought away, no re-rolling.