Is there a way to prevent a build step from failing the overall build?
I have one (sbt) build step that if the tests fail I would like to fail the build, and then another that might exit with a non zero status code, and should only run if the first step was successful, but should not have an impact on the overall build status. Is that at possible?
No, TeamCity developers still nto introduced editable conditions for build steps. You can use PowerShell script to run and outbounding status control for you step.