Double Upgrade Success Results?

An enemy cast a spell on my champion. I failed the Will save against it. However, it was an incapacitation effect, so it gets upgraded from a Failure to a Success.

I also have Divine Will, so the GM ruled that the Success was further upgraded to a Critical Success for no effect.

Is that right?

I'm thinking it shouldn't have been a Critical Success because I didn't ROLL a Success, I rolled a failure. Getting it upgraded is not the same thing in my mind.

Also, I remember seeing a general rule saying you can't double up on roll result upgrades like that, but for the life of us we can't seem to find it anywhere.

Actually I think you can because of the wording in "Some other abilities can change the degree of success for rolls you get. When resolving the effect of an ability that changes your degree of success, always apply the adjustment from a natural 20 or natural 1 before anything else."

But you are right that you did not roll a success.

Thanks. :)

Would you mind citing your source? Not being able to find any appropriate rules for result upgrades was part of our problem.

Thanks. :)

Would you mind citing your source? Not being able to find any appropriate rules for result upgrades was part of our problem.

Sorry about that. I found it on AoN.

Chapter 9: Playing the Game / General Rules / Checks
Step 4: Determine the Degree of Success
Source Core Rulebook pg. 445

Degree of Success rule.

From what I see, that rule is changing the result of the roll in step 2 than being applied in step 4. And it only applies to nat-1 and nat-20 rolls on the die.

So I don't see that as allowing abilities that turn success into critical success to be combined with abilities that turn failure into success.

Basically, the result of the roll itself is still going to be a fail even if there is some ability that lets you use the result of success instead. So an ability that lets you treat a result of success as a critical success won't trigger because the result of the roll is still a fail.

That said, I do think that Incapacitation is one possible exception. It does feel like it is something that should be changing the roll results directly and independently of other abilities that adjust the outcome of the result later - much like the nat-1/nat-20 rule does.

Personally, I always put incapacitate modifications last.

There is this from the errata:
All three of these abilities grant a two-tier benefit on a failed saving throw of the specified type, but (as always) no ability will ever change your degree of success by more than one step. To clarify, we’re making the following clarification to all three abilities. Change the beginning of the last sentence from “When you fail” a given saving throw to “When you roll a failure on” a giving saving throw.

And the text of incapacitate:
if a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better

Divine Will specifies that it triggers from the role, and incapacitate triggers from the result of the check.

According to Logan Bonner, the intent is that you can only adjust the degree of success by only one step. I don't know why this was never added to the FAQ, so they might have changed their mind.