Could you spend 1 point of edge to add edge dice in a test (subject to exploding 6's). And then spend another point of edge to either reroll misses (unclear then how the dice rolled due to exploding 6's would work) or roll edge more exploding dice?

Similarly this could be applied up to edge times, so the basic question is can you spend more than 1 edge on a single test?

So no, barring two unusual circumstances, and both involve qualities. One's a Paragon for Technomancers that requires you two spend two points to downgrade a critical glitch to a glitch, and a Mentor Spirit for mages and mystics that does the same.

Now I have to ask why you would spend 2 edge to get a "glitch" rather than spending 1 to reroll.

Because you can't "reroll" a critical glitch only down-grade it to a glitch and the mentor (paragon) negative aspect is you have to spend two points to down-grade instead of one.

Of course you can.

You just can't be sure it won't be a critical glitch, again – which then is good to stay, since you can only spend Edge on a single Test once.

No, you can't reroll a critical glitch; you may only downgrade it to a glitch. You may reroll a glitch or a non-glitch roll to get more successes
Now I don't have my books with me so you will need to wait a few hours till I am at home for a page reference.
I do remember it on the pages describing Edge and its uses though. (Just before character creation IIRC)

You're going to have to quote a rule passage on that, as the way I read it I can "reroll failed dice" on any test. "Can not be used on a critical glitch" is not specified.

You will need to wait till I get home but if you have the book handy look under the effects/rules of critical glitches. I believe it was there and not under the standard "this is what edge does" rules.

(emphasis mine)
The state of 'having rolled a glitch' is determined by the dice pool. If a number of 1's equal to half or more of the dice pool are rolled, then it doesn't matter how many rerolls you make, the critical limit of half the dice pool has been reached, and a Glitch exists.

As far as negating a Critical Glitch, rerolling the dice will not eliminate the state of having Glitched, but it may, possibly, remove the state of having no hits, and so this would be one way of reducing a Critical Glitch to a Glitch.. except that using a point of Edge to do it directly does not risk further failure.

One thing that is not clear is that if you use a point of Edge to directly reduce a Critical Glitch to a Glitch (which is defined as having rolled the critical number of 1's, but with at least one hit), then how many hits are you assumed to have achieved? I would guess 1 hit.

Yes, you can – you can reroll any die on a test that wasn't a hit.

Nope, you can get additional dice from edge as well.

You'll be hardpessed to come up with reference then, because that page doesn't say so, and neither do the glitch rules.

That's pretty dubios, as you can

No. The use of Edge means that the outcome of the roll is determined by the result after the use of edge, and that includes glitches. Otherwise, you would suffer any consequences of the test before the use of edge.

Not 'any consequences', only the existence of a Glitch. The criterion for achieving a Glitch is not based on the total number of dice you roll after rerolls, it is based on your dice pool. If you have a dice pool of 10 and roll 5 "1"s, you have a Glitch, no matter how many more dice you reroll afterwards by spending a point of Edge. That includes rerolling the "1"s. They don't go away because you reroll the dice. They still exist in the total result, and still count for half or more of the dice pool. The only way you can turn a Glitch into a non-Glitch is to use a point of Edge to directly negate the Glitch. That is perfectly clear from the text on page 62 of SR4A.

This same issue applies to dealing with a Critical Glitch. the number of "1"s is compared to the dice pool, and rerolling the "1"s does not make them go away. Since a Critical Glitch is a Glitch with no hits, I argued previously, rerolling can affect the "Critical" part, by getting at least one hit in the rerolls. This still does not affect the Glitch part.

Rereading the text on page 62, it says:

"Note that characters may spend Edge to downgrade a critical glitch to a regular non-catastrophic glitch (p. 74; note that the character still fails)." (emphasis mine)

"Still fails" causes concern here, as it is up for interpretation, especially since the note implies that using Edge this way makes the roll equivalent to a Glitch, which is not a failure, as it has at least one hit.

Any consequences, as the whole point about your argument is that a roll can have an effect before it's final. Glitches are just one of them.

No, it's based on the number of 1s you come up with. That number will change after a reroll.
Of course, changing the dicepool size trough edge is possible, too.

They go away in fact as soon as you pick up the dice – then you check again after the reroll.

In fact, what you claim would require you to note the 1s prior to rerolling even if it's no glitch, because the reroll might generate additional 1s to quailify for a glitch. That is clearly not the case with the rules.

Does a 1 rerolled into a 1 count as one 1 or two?

Assuming pbangarth's rationale, it would count as two, as somehow, the 1s carry over.

Of course, no rule like that exists.

What if my dice pool is 6, and before rolling I add my 4 edge:

Do I need three 1s for a glitch, or five?

The real fun there is that you'll only know your dice pool size after the roll, since 6es explode.

Dubious... Exploding Sixes provide the opportunity for a more robust success (and would be part of the dice pool if you spent Edge prior to the roll, thus increasing your dice pool), However, using the Edge to Reroll already rolled dice does not work quite that way, as it is not an inclusion of a "greater" dicepool... On a single roll, the chances of a Critical Glitch is generally not very great, unless your dice pool is very small... now, when rolling Extended Actions (and using the reducing dicepool option) it becomes increasingly more likely that you will suffer a Critical Glitch on any single roll as your dicepool reduces for each successive roll... it becomes a matter of how far do you wish to push your luck, as eacah roll is a seperate entity to the accumulating sucesses of the Extended Roll.

If you only have a couple of dice (say 3) and you obtain 2 1's and no success, it is a Critical Glitch... you can attempt to reroll all the dice (reroll Failures) but even so, your Critical Glitch will still be there regardless of the roll, as you used edge to try to obtain a success after the fact... whether or not hte reroll comes up with any successes or not, you have still Critically Glitched... the Edge expenditure does not negate The Critical Glitch (as pbangarth pointed out from the text on page 74, regarding Failure), and since you did not spend the Edge point to actually move from Critical Glitch to Glitch, it is a Catastrophic Failure... Much worse than that Glitch roll would have been had you just spent the edge to move down to a normal Glitch... Works best in relation to Extended Rolls Obviously...

And if you sepnt Edge prior to the Roll for the Exploding Successes and still generate a Critical Success, well your Luck has run out, as you will not be able to negate the Catastrophe at all...

How I have always read it anyways... other wise the Critical Glitch rules mean absolutely nothing...

Keep the Faith

That is not the case.

No, spending Edge to reroll negates als the Non-Hits, including 1s and replaces the result with the one after the reroll. Only then you check for a Glitch. So it may negate the Glitch, or it may not.

Which is just plain wrong, as it neither says what it think it says, nor does it on p. 74.

If you use any other rationale, then Critical Glitches have absolutely no use in the game... if you can just reroll, rather than downgrade for the same expenditure (wiping away the Crit Glitch in the process), then your Edge rules lose cohesiveness... Show me where that interpretation is WRONG... otherwise why have Critical Glitches at all?

Though I will Admit, I did not reference pbangarth's reference... and after doing so, it is missing the additional emphasized sentence in his post... However, I would agree with the intention that pbangarth is emphasizing... otherwise, that use of Edge for downgrading a Critical Glitch is utterly useless... and several rules that rely upon such rules actually working are no longer useful (See the Mentor previously mentioned for one example)...

Of course, this may be a moot point anyways, dependipng upon how often your edge pool refreshes... some things are just not worth the effort of negating... take what you roll, which I admit is my usual tactic unless it REALLY Matters, which most things do not (at least in my opinion) in the grand scheme of things, within the game...

Had a long and arduous night of gaming last night... maybe I am still just a touched shell-shocked... or Maybe I am just losing it all toghether...

In the end, you just may be right Rotbart Van Dainig...

Keep the Faith

If your dice pool is small, and you don't have a high Edge attribute either, rerolling or adding Edge is quite a risk to get stuck with a critical glitch again. So you should just spend Edge to negate the glitch and just fail.

If you have a large dicepool or high Edge, you can try. Just don't whine when it doesn't work out.

Here is the definition of "Dice Pool":

Here is the definition of "modifier":

Here is the one and only way Edge changes the Dice Pool:
(emphasis mine)
Nowhere else in the discussion of Edge does it say the dice pool is modified by rerolls. In fact what is said is that after rerolls the extra hits are added to the test's total hits. Not add all the dice. Add the hits. The dice pool is not changed by rerolls, only the count of hits.

So, you cannot create a Glitch or a critical Glitch with rerolls. If the Glitch (Critical or not) did not exist before the reroll, it will not exist after the reroll. Vice versa, if the Glitch existed before the reroll, it remains after the reroll. Since hits are added by rerolls, the possibility exists for an interpretation that allows a Critical Glitch to be turned into a regular Glitch through rerolling dice that did not hit, as the reroll may create hits where they did not exist before. I don't believe this fits the spirit of the rules, but the wording is loose enough on this point to be interpreted more than one way.

I'm inclined to go with you on this one. When you re-roll you failed die, you don't have any 1's any more, you DON'T have any 1's, which means no glitch.

Can you cite a page reference for this, cause this seems rather counter intuitive to me, and I would disagree with you on this point. When rolling dice one should only be concerned with the final result. If there are no 1's in the final result because they were rerolled into 2+'s then there is no glitch, critical or otherwise in the result.

Which is neither relevant, nor what I was talking about.

Rerolls don't add hits, they reroll the dice not showing any:


Sure you can. After the reroll, you check if the result qualifies for a Glitch or Critical Glitch.

So this is just plain wrong.

First: You may only re-roll the dice in a test if ALL of the dice fail to generate any hits.
Second: You may negate the EFFECTS of a glitch or critical glitch.
Notice that it does not say you re-roll the dice when you are negating a glitch; you just get to ignore the dice that come up as ones.

For the negation of a critical glitch:

Now, I will agree that there is nothing that I see so far to stop someone from just spending a edge to re-roll a critical glitch since it is a test that has not generated any hits. However, I believe there was something about that in old SR4 book (non-anniversary) about a glitch or critical glitch take president over any other expenditure of edge. I will need to keep looking.

That is an entirely separate thread. Most people do not play that way.

And even if they did a critical glitch could still be nullified by that rule.



Or you can throw more dice, thus altering the size of the pool (if you add edge) or reduce the number of 1s by rerolling them. Voila.

Yeah... No arguments there...

Keep the Faith

5 or else using edge will screw you, which is likely not the intent.

Because not everyone has infinite edge to spend, and you might willingly accept a critical glitch some a noncritical roll, as opposed to spend edge to fix it.

ie) I crit glitch my egg cooking roll, I have burned the eggs and possibly even set off the smoke alarm in my house. This may not be worth spending edge to negate, especially if you are about to go on a run and could use that edge to avoid eating bullets.

Agreed... In a world of limited Edge, some things are just not that important at all...

Keep the Faith

So if I roll the six dice first, then add 4 edge, do I need three 1s or five?

Simply gainsaying is not an argument. It's just being obstinate. Here is the quote, from page 74, again:

In this case,you may roll a number of extra dice equal to your full Edge attribute and add
their hits to the test’s total.

You may very well physically pick up the dice to use them again, but that does not obviate the fact that you are rolling "extra dice", and not making your old roll go away. From those extra dice, you get to "add their hits". Just adding hits cannot in any way shape or form eliminate a Glitch.

It would however turn a critical glitch into a regular glitch (and a regular glitch with successes to boot! Unlike "spend edge to reduce a critical glitch to a glitch and sill fail")

This is exactly the interpretation to which I alluded earlier. I can't find anything in the text that says one can't do this, though it does seem to circumvent the spirit of the explicit rule.

This is were it gets murky rules wise. SR4 says edge adds to you dice pool when used at the start of a roll. It does however not say this for adding edge after you have rolled dice.

For the former you would certainly need 5 1's. For the latter I can only say "I hope" you need 5 1's, because if not, you could get boned very easily.

Again I disagree with this point, as I don't think it would still count as a glitch if you use the reroll failed dice option, if after you were done, you didn't have the requisite number of 1's to count.

I think it was a rule made without real thought to its implementation. There is nothing I can see which says the glitch, or critical glitch still applies if the dice after the reroll would not count for a glitch, in and of themselves.

I think it was a rule made without real thought to its implementation. There is nothing I can see which says the glitch, or critical glitch still applies if the dice after the reroll would not count for a glitch, in and of themselves.

False. As worded, the modifier "did not score a hit" can technically be applied to either "dice" or "test". It is by far most often read to modify "dice". Regardless of the possibility of it modifying "test" as per literary rules, it cannot do so within the definitions given by the game, as a "test" cannot ever score a "hit"; thus, it can only modify "dice".

The correct reading, in a more precise format, would be:
"You may reroll all dice that did not score a hit on a single test"
or
"On a single test, you may reroll all dice that did not score a hit"



@pbangarth
You are incorrect. When rerolling dice, by Rules as Written, they do not retain their previous state in any way. The previous roll is discarded and replaced with the new roll, and any effects of the roll are determined by the latter.

Thus, if the former roll was a Glitch or a Critical Glitch, that state (including the [Critical] Glitch) is discarded
If the latter roll is a Glitch or a Critical Glitch, the roll is treated as such. And because Edge has already been used to make the reroll, it cannot be again used to negate the [Critical] Glitch.

The rule for using Edge to negate a Glitch or Critical Glitch is in place as a guarantee. Doing so will not improve your roll, but it will remove the effects of a glitch with no chance of failure. Using Edge to add dice or force a reroll can negate a [Critical] Glitch, but it does not guarantee it, and it is entirely possible of creating a glitch where there was none previously.

Wrong quote, nothing to do with rerolls.

My post was under the assumption that the number of 1s rolled didn't change, but by adding edge and getting hits where there were none (even if the edge doesn't make the pool bigger, so the status of "glitch" remains) you turn a critical glitch into a normal glitch and succeed as opposed to spending edge to get a normal glitch and still fail.

I disagree with this assessment as well but I was following a line of reasoning set up before hand, that while I do not agree with, didn't follow its own logic.

So the third option for use of Edge, which deals with rerolls:

"You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score a hit"

... does not refer to 'extra dice'. Re-rolling is in effect changing the dice. So, it would appear this option is a viable but riskier way to try to reverse a Glitch.

OK, I'm convinced.

I think the argument is partially which of the following is the correct interpretation:
You may re-roll all of the dice (on a single test) that did not score a hit.
You may re-roll all of the dice on a single test (that did not score a hit).

I'm for the first, personally. Your mileage may vary.

I can't believe people still argue about that one.

You may re-roll all of the dice on a test if it did not score any hits.

That's pretty simple to word, isn't it? Don't you think they would have written that, if that's what they meant.


Anyway... The rule is to cancel a glitch. There's only one kind of glitch - something bad happens. Critical or otherwise, just means you also fail or succeed at what you were trying to do. So if you spend an edge to cancel a critglit, you're left with a simple failure. So if you spend an edge to cancel a regular glitch, you're left with a success. (Somewhat obvious, no?)

Glitches are theatrical events. In my opinion, if you roll a glitch you're stuck with it, even if you reroll your failures. A regular glitch can't be removed by simply rerolling your failures - you just get more hits. On a critical glitch, if you come up with successes on the reroll, IMO, you still have a glitch. Since you can only spend edge once on a single test, with a regular glitch you have a choice, keep the glitch and go for more hits, or keep the hits and cancel the glitch. On a critglit, keep the glitch and try to succeed, or keep the failure and cancel the glitch.

This makes sense to me in all kinds of ways.

Edit:

I have no idea which freaking side you're taking here. You point out how it could easily have been averted, but then go on to defend that wording as if it WAS worded that way.

I know how it *is* worded. It's worded badly. But if they meant it like how I wrote it, they could easily have written it that way. But wording it like how most of us believe it is meant, is a little trickier. Therefore it is far less likely that they meant the rule to be "You may re-roll all of the dice on a test if it did not score any hits."

And the other half of your post, which goes into excruciating detail on how you believe that you still have a glitch, even if you reroll failed dice?

What about it?

You roll six dice and get three ones, so you have a glitch. I say you can spend Edge and try for more successes if you want, but you still have a glitch. Or you can cancel the glitch. Seems simple to me.

I'll try one more time to explain myself.

The wording is "you may re-roll all of the dice on a single test that did not score a hit."

Some people think that it means you can only spend edge in this way if all the dice did not score a single hit. I think that's insane. I think that if the writers had meant it that way, they could very easily have written the rule to say so in clear language. But they didn't mean it that way. And for the way they did mean, there is not a way to write the rule in such a clear and concise way.

wind_in_the_stones, I agree with both your points, though an argument has been made that the issue of negating a Glitch is more complicated than either you or I would like. The "reroll misses" issue has been beaten to death. I don't see any argument that works for proving there have to be no hits before you get a reroll.

As far as the Glitch thing goes, there is some semantic jiggery-pokery that cannot be immediately discarded that argues that the extra dice that are rolled actually are 'new' dice, and therefore add to the dice pool. If that is the case, then rerolling dice could remove a Glitch by increasing the dice pool without increasing the number of 1s sufficiently to maintain the Glitch.

I think this is contrary to the spirit of the rules, but I cannot find a sufficiently convincing argument to beat down the letter of the law. Primarily because of the imprecise wording. If spacecraft had to survive or fail based on a manual written this way, we'd be having shooting stars every other night.