Oh, I... guess that having the fighter damaged is still Jim's plan, so he never wanted to outrun it in the first place. That said, he was lucky enough to be able argue how he wanted to interact with the missile. "If I roll low, the attack misses," that would work pretty well as long as the option of "the damage is worse than expected" isn't on the table. If the GM isn't feeling generous, it'd be just as likely to take out the cockpit instead of zipping past harmlessly.

I do have to say I was a bit surprised the missile didn't completely hole the ship given where it exploded before catching myself and remembering that narrative physics are in play. Star Wars ships are likely made out of superstrong materials anyway, and these new TIE fighters have been shown to be a lot better made than the old style.

Of course, now they've traded a potential future problem of believability for a much more immediate problem. The fighter has to still be able to deliver Poe and Finn safely to the ground, so I'm guessing the fighter isn't actually damaged to the point where it can't recover from the hit, but it won't be easy. Poe's probably going to need a few more lucky rolls to slow down and pull out out of this spin, or at least to get below orbital speed. To borrow from another webcomic, the number of safe run away options above Mach 1 are very limited.