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That sounds a lot like just giving everyone one a free stunt. (I'm ok with that. I'm actually going to do it in my fate star wars game. since almost all stunts in my campaign are action relayed I'm going to make everyone take a knowledge stunt)
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# ? Dec 12, 2015 07:24 |
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# ? May 18, 2024 13:05 |
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Krysmphoenix posted:A nice simple hack a few people did for an Atomic Robo game that wasn't science-based was to just allow a 0-cost specific application of Science to a Mode that was relevant. In this particular game, a Noble Mode got Heraldry (technically not a science, but it was just Overcome and Advantage). For a GI Joe game, I could imagine someone getting something akin to Survival for being an army ranger Hell, maybe even Architecture for a former firefighter. You knock down enough burning walls, you're sure to use building codes to your advantage. And a Requisition variant to Inventions.
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# ? Dec 12, 2015 21:13 |
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Speaking of doing an afterschool cartoon in Fate... Awhile back when reading Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye, I was inspired to do a Fate conversion. One of my key goals was to try and make it as painless to convert characters from the old Tech Specs and the Transformers Universe writeups, where they provide all your stats (specs) and most of your aspects. It's far from perfect and somewhat unfinished, but has more than enough to use for a game. Since I'm not certain I'll put more work into it, I thought I'd just share it and see what people think. Transformers in Fate Enjoy! Or don't, that's cool too.
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# ? Dec 12, 2015 22:35 |
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deadly_pudding posted:I'd make it a megastunt that depends on an aspect along the lines of "Legendary Super Saiyan", and like a Weird Mode for Ki Manipulation. Probably like Absolute Defense against "Lesser Beings" (it's up to you to word that better), and some stuff where you can burn Mental Stress/Consequences in order to perform various feats of ridiculous might. Oh. Well, that's a better idea than what I wrote up. I think this fun little fan aside got away from me at some point, if you want to take a look. Edit: Forgot to mention this in the document, but I borrowed some ideas from that Three Rockteers Worlds of Fate supplement. Probably should mention that. Covok fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Dec 14, 2015 |
# ? Dec 14, 2015 07:00 |
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I know this is probably pretty passe, but I need something to do between studying for my finals so I also wrote up an Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korra hack for Atomic Robo. Probably, it's more than a little shoddy, but I do want to learn how to hack FATE so I suppose posting it for critique is best.
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# ? Dec 17, 2015 03:45 |
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I feel we are missing something. We keep running into a variety of blockers that make the game feel off. Every single time we fight we end up with a situation where we dither over if something is an attack or an advantage and every time it ends up with a slightly disappointed player realising the cool thing they wanted to do isn't really going to work like that. "Hit him hard enough and you could get the advantage you wanted as a consequence" is a pretty mushy compromise. Also the whole thing with tougher bads really wanting multiple advantages to set up a big hit feels really weird sometimes. I had a player who had gotten into a good position to shoot at the thing they were battling, only to pause and reason they needed another advantage to do enough damage to win the fight without another set of advantages and attacks, so he kind of arbitrarily did something to get his team the extra advantage and while this worked mechanically it wasn't very fun. I had been encouraging them to just narrate their intentions and we would work out the dice as it came up. This was fine in my early adventures where I was generally setting the difficulty a bit low. As I ramped it up to encourage fate point use they started to understand advantages a bit more and unfortunately I think it's exposed the systems underneath a bit much. Sometimes, often even, the narratively sensible thing to do is blast away but with a tougher bad that's just going to be a slog, so advantages just end up going in to make sure the fights don't drag on. I don't think it's working for us as intended - it's quite artificial. I feel like I'd like a way to make interesting attacks rather than a split between do something interesting or attack. Many systems give you your interesting action separately to your attack and I do kinda feel like fates "single action and that's your lot" is quite restrictive for a game that should be really loose. (Some of it comes down to the slightly weird issues we find right sizing. Fate combats seem to swing quickly between mowing down hordes of idiots in a single roll to huge assholes that take a lot of work to defeat with very little needed to go from poo poo to something that requires a lot of setup to drop.) I dunno. There's so much to this system I really like but as I run it I just feel it's not living up to what I hoped and I'm ending sessions feeling kind of disappointed and frustrated. Is it just not for us or do you think im missing something obvious? I really want to make it work.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 04:03 |
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Why is it narratively sensible to just blast away? Don't think simulation, think cinematic. Howe often do heroes win by blasting away? If the villain is tough, endless punches or bullets do nothing. Instead they must set up some action set piece. When the sniper is lining up his shot the dude keeps walking behind intervening cover. There's a crane and metal pipes and construction equipment in the way. Buddies need to lure the dude into the open. Stun him a second to clear a shot at the weak spot. I'm actually having trouble thinking of a cinematic moment where the solution was blast away. Be sure to explicitly state WHY the dude is tough enough that they need an edge to win. Narrate the problems that make the shot tougher. Explain the rocky hide of the alien slaughter machine. Master Chief has to get behind the brute and lob a sticky under its carapace. He needs a distraction to even get behind it, then he needs agility to get close without getting smashed. Only then will the grenade get in under the armor. The laser fast ninja warrior must be tricked into fighting too close to the edge of the roof. The they must be distracted enough not to notice your tricks. Then several dudes need to pin his weapons. Then there's a feint, then the final chest kick to send the ninja off the roof. Lunatic Pathos fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Dec 21, 2015 |
# ? Dec 21, 2015 08:11 |
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I think it's in part the kind of all or nothing nature of tougher characters. You don't want to be chipping away at their stress, you want to hit them hard enough they can't soak it up. If you fail it goes around again so it ends up feeling like a kind of waste of time? Theres also the fact that the illusion ended up quite broken and that you can see it's actually a fairly mechanical system. In the fiction of the situation I'm describing they had an advantage already created, a character had turned the weight of the big gribbly space cat against it and flipped it over onto it's back. That felt like a good time to shoot the drat thing, to everyone involved untill they realised they weren't going to kill it and did something else instead "I'll distract it with blaster fire! instead of just shooting it with my blaster. Uh". It felt really clumsy and artificial but frankly it stopped the fight dragging on. I suppose what the player ideally should have said was maybe more like, "It's too wriggly for me to hit but maybe I can force it into a corner with my gunfire" but I dunno, in the moment it just felt like they should have shot it. It was also a pretty clear case of letting the mechanics drive the action which I was hoping to avoid too much.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 12:58 |
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You want your bad guys, especially the big bads, to fight dirty and have at least "one weird trick." Remember, an Aspect is Always True. A good villain is going to spend the couple rounds during which the heroes are dealing with his traps or minions to gear up for one or both of these: Some kind of real motherfucker of a deterrent: a human shield, an unfair weapon or vehicle, a debilitating environment that doesn't affect them (darkness while they have nightvision, poison gas spouts while they have a gas mask, and so on). or Some kind of incredible dick move: The players will find out what's in all these crates when the villain Detonates the Aspect of "illegal explosives stockpile" by shooting one of the crates with his gun, allowing him to attack that zone with a bonus. This creates a new global aspect for the warehouse, Structurally Unsound, which does 2 things: Now anybody can invoke or compel this effect to to wreck the place in advantageous ways (the badguy gets a free invoke because he made it), and also by GM fiat the building itself now has 4 stress boxes and no consequence slots; it will get a little closer to collapsing completely on top of everybody every time somebody causes damage to the building either by using the Aspect or simply by making explosive-type attacks. ShineDog posted:In the fiction of the situation I'm describing they had an advantage already created, a character had turned the weight of the big gribbly space cat against it and flipped it over onto it's back. That felt like a good time to shoot the drat thing, to everyone involved untill they realised they weren't going to kill it and did something else instead "I'll distract it with blaster fire! instead of just shooting it with my blaster. Uh". I think they probably should have been able to kill or defeat it at that point. They had it on its back, so they had access to a free invoke on that situation. In addition, according to the rules for teamwork, players can combine their actions to just give the highest-skilled character +1 per additional helper. If the cat isn't like a major character, then they shouldn't have the full compliment of of stress boxes and 3 Consequences. They should have the appropriate number of stress boxes plus like 1 consequence, or maybe 2 if it's like a "mid boss". A full party alpha strike where everybody involved invokes something appropriate (including a possible double-invoke on that "knocked prone" situation the cat is in), should be something like a single 15 + dice attack, which is going to be around 11 or more Shifts of damage after defense. Even if the cat were to take 2 consequences, it would still be defeated by its remaining 5 shifts of damage. If that cat is like kind of a throwaway "hazard", I would have just let them coup de grace it once they were at the point of knocking it over and clowning it. If it was meant to be like a boss encounter, then weigh your options: if you have FATE Tokens left, then the cat has defensive options available to at least try and survive another round to get back on its feet. If you're out of tokens for the cat and it's still somehow alive, make it clear that it's on its last legs and can be finished off. Describe its ragged breathing and wary pacing, for example. If the PCs keep dicking around, concede the fight and have that cat come back to haunt them during a later encounter. Or not! One use of conceding as the GM is getting it out there that the fight is dragging on for both sides. Anyway, the point is that the PCs should always have the ability to really gently caress somebody or something up if they've got them dead to rights like that. A combined alpha strike from the whole party against a target with no prepared defenses, as described above, can only really be survived by a "major character", and at great cost. The thing deterring the party from just doing that every time is that, if the fight isn't over after that alpha strike, then the whole party just used all their actions to do one thing, and are also probably out of Fate Tokens for while.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 18:09 |
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Did anyone ever find/write a guide on how to make good stunts that are more interesting then a +2 bonus. I'm pretty new to fate and really struggle with stunt creation.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 20:44 |
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Demon_Corsair posted:Did anyone ever find/write a guide on how to make good stunts that are more interesting then a +2 bonus. The thing about good Stunts is that they're really context-dependent, namely related to the setting or themes of the game you're playing. That's why the "generic" stunts from FATE come off as so bland and mostly stick with flat bonuses. A cool stunt for a high-action superhero setting could be very different from stunts for a dark conspiracy-horror game.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 21:01 |
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deadly_pudding posted:You want your bad guys, especially the big bads, to fight dirty and have at least "one weird trick." Don't forget the ultimate trick; conceding. If the badguys have no way out and a leg wound, they can propose a surrender and gain fatepoints = 1+consequences taken.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 22:08 |
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deadly_pudding posted:You want your bad guys, especially the big bads, to fight dirty and have at least "one weird trick." Let me check this because I haven't gotten it from the rules at all. Teamwork is a +1 which I understand, but the person teaming up can invoke for another +2 too? huhhh. That's a pretty big thing.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 22:20 |
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ShineDog posted:Let me check this because I haven't gotten it from the rules at all. Teamwork is a +1 which I understand, but the person teaming up can invoke for another +2 too? huhhh. That's a pretty big thing. They can invoke their own stuff. If the main attacker already invoked "Cat is knocked over", his buddies can't double dip that. They can, however, invoke their own "Fastest Gun in the Sector" or "I'll die on my own terms" or other poo poo to add to the check. It's like in Persona, when the party does that pile-on attack to an enemy that's stunned.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 22:32 |
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You can't invoke your own aspects during teamwork (you give up your action for a no-roll +1); you can spend a FP on the person you're HELPING's aspects.
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# ? Dec 21, 2015 22:37 |
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ShineDog posted:Theres also the fact that the illusion ended up quite broken and that you can see it's actually a fairly mechanical system. I get where you're coming from. Once my players had a better understanding of Aspects, most rounds would be some form of discussion like "Okay, so Player A will spend their turn to shoot the rubble down onto Big Bad, something like [Watch For Falling Rocks]. Player B should Create an Advantage with their gun. Call it [Chink in the Armor]. Player C, you're kinda stealthy, right? Throw a smoke grenade so he can't see where the attack is coming from so that we can Invoke to counter whatever Invoke Big Bad will use. Then I'll just snipe him from back here." It's so very mechanical. Everything really comes down to stacking bonuses. What we wound up doing is forcing everyone to spend more than a sentence narrating. No "Okay I Create an Advantage called [Watch for Falling Rocks] by blasting the building with Combat.". When they set it up and when they invoke it you gotta really sell the cinematic and get everyone into it. Then it winds up being more like: Player A: I roll out of the dumpster and open fire on the building beside Big Bad. Full throttle, I want as much collateral damage as possible. I intend to drop the bitch right on his head. The brickwork is chewed up, spraying debris everywhere. Bystanders are screaming and running, some are watching in fascination, and I just mow down the load bearing walls with a maniacal laugh to the heavens. Then, when it comes time to Invoke on the final shot: Player D: Player A shot out the building, right? So there's all that falling debris? I'm watching all those pieces to get a feel for how they're landing, and right as one's about to clip him and knock Big Bad forward a bit, I take my shot where he's going to stumble to and invoke Watch For Falling Rocks. Smoke from Player C's grenade curls around the bullet at it cuts through the raining debris. I'm going to Invoke that - Big Bad is so caught up in the cloud he can't see my shot coming, right at Player B's perfectly placed Chink in the Armor. I whisper a prayer and squeeze the trigger. It slows down gameplay a lot, and does nothing to cover the fact that most of the time Invoking is a mechanical +2, but if you accept that everything's just a flat bonus and bump up the flourishes on describing how that +2 works, the game gets a lot better. Players tend to get more enthusiastic when they can describe how badass they are. With Big Bads, think outside the box. Give them a way to soak damage straight up. We had one climactic battle where the Big Bad was surrounded by mind controlled minions, and had a Stunt that was something like "Big Bad can spend a fate point and command one of her minions to leap in front of a physical attack, negating any damage that would have been dealt. The minion is Taken out when this happens.". Thematically fun, but also gave the players a moment of pause as they realized they might be mowing down innocents. The combat switched into trying to negate the minions rather than direct confrontation and was a lot funner than "I shoot Big Bad; Big Bad takes damage". Sadly, two of my players were so die-hard D20 players they just couldn't wrap around the idea that they couldn't do stuff like kick people off the roof to their deaths or that their "spells" were all just the same skill roll with narration differences ("No, my ice spell should slow them and my fire spell should apply a DOT"). While it's all able to be rendered under Fate, sometimes the added complication just isn't worth it, and my these players just couldn't work under the "I narrate it and stuff happens" mentality - if there's not a crapton of charts detailing every action they might take, they don't want it. So we had to go back to Pathfinder. drat I miss Fate.
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 21:15 |
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Mortanis posted:
Have you checked out the Fate Freeport Companion? It's basically a Fate variation for playing D&D style games. Specifically, it has a spellcasting system that includes D&D inspired spells, with more specific effects. That might satisfy your players more?
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 23:03 |
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Would diminishing returns on bonus stacking do more harm than good?
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# ? Dec 22, 2015 23:55 |
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oriongates posted:The thing about good Stunts is that they're really context-dependent, namely related to the setting or themes of the game you're playing. That's why the "generic" stunts from FATE come off as so bland and mostly stick with flat bonuses. A cool stunt for a high-action superhero setting could be very different from stunts for a dark conspiracy-horror game. That makes sense. Are there any games that have great stunts to get a feel for what I should be aiming for? Edit: more specifically, how are the stunts in atomic robo? I recently picked it up but haven't really given it a good read yet. Demon_Corsair fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Dec 24, 2015 |
# ? Dec 24, 2015 17:26 |
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I am planning to play a Junior professor in maths in our next Dresden File game, and I thought of using the following stunt: "sign error": Once per session you can decide to switch the + and - on a roll. A result of -4 becomes +4, -3 becomes +3 and so on... Is this sensibly balanced? Should it cost a fate point in addition? Should it be possible to use it on someone else's dice roll?
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# ? Jan 17, 2016 11:14 |
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BabyFur Denny posted:I am planning to play a Junior professor in maths in our next Dresden File game, and I thought of using the following stunt: Inverse World Accelerated has this as a special option you can do once per scene when you invoke your Drive aspect. You can only apply the inversion to your own roll, because in that game it's meant to represent using your inner resolve to get poo poo done when things are going horribly wrong. In my experience it was fine because it was really only worth using on a roll of -3 or -4, otherwise the flat +2 was usually the better option. As a stunt, I'd say either do it free once per session or spending a fate point to use it with no session limits would be fine as long as it only applies to your own rolls.
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# ? Jan 17, 2016 16:56 |
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BabyFur Denny posted:I am planning to play a Junior professor in maths in our next Dresden File game, and I thought of using the following stunt: This equivalent to either a perfect reroll or a +8. Plus, it doesn't make sense IC; your character doesn't know they're rolling dice.
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# ? Jan 17, 2016 18:07 |
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It's only going to come into play in 5/81 rolls (the odds of rolling a -3 or -4) otherwise the reroll or straight +2 from an invoke or another stunt is likely to be better. It might actually be under powered at only one use per session. I'd say run with it on a probationary basis and see how powerful it feels before finalizing it. If you never seem to get to use it, buff it a bit. If it's always pulling your rear end out of the fire, maybe nix it. Golden Bee posted:This equivalent to either a perfect reroll or a +8. Plus, it doesn't make sense IC; your character doesn't know they're rolling dice. It's not the equivalent of a +8, though. You don't get to decide on any roll that you want to auto-succeed. It relies on unlikely circumstances to mean anything. Also, it's a great move, flavor-wise. Your character doesn't know he is represented by a FATE character, sure; that doesn't mean he shouldn't have a flavorful stunt name, c'mon. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Jan 18, 2016 |
# ? Jan 18, 2016 16:48 |
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Flipping a -4 to a +4 is pretty much a +8. -2 to +2 is a +4. Strictly better than rerolling because you get a pretty reliable huge bonus.
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# ? Jan 18, 2016 17:54 |
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Kaja Rainbow posted:Flipping a -4 to a +4 is pretty much a +8. -2 to +2 is a +4. Strictly better than rerolling because you get a pretty reliable huge bonus. When you roll a -4, it's absolutely a +8. You roll a -4 one out of every 81 rolls. Four more out of that 81, it's only worth a +6; ten out of 81 it's a +4; sixteen out of 81 it's worth exactly a +2; and the remaining fifty (50!) times out of 81, it's worth less than a +2. That means it's worse-than a +2 61% of the time. And it's still not adjusting your maximum total at all. Your maximum doesn't get any higher, like it would with an actual bonus. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jan 18, 2016 |
# ? Jan 18, 2016 18:10 |
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For real yall, I played like eight months with that being a thing every character could do once a scene for a fate point. It's fine.
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# ? Jan 18, 2016 19:50 |
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Blasphemeral posted:It's only going to come into play in 5/81 rolls (the odds of rolling a -3 or -4) otherwise the reroll or straight +2 from an invoke or another stunt is likely to be better.
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# ? Jan 18, 2016 21:00 |
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Blasphemeral posted:When you roll a -4, it's absolutely a +8. It's not a +2, it's a +4. A reroll averages you out to 0. Using a flip gives you a +2 or higher. It'd take you two FP expenditures to take a -2 and make it a +2, for example, and it only comes up on rolls where it's needed so it's super valuable. It's a very good, strong stunt.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 02:30 |
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Transient People posted:It's not a +2, it's a +4. A reroll averages you out to 0. Using a flip gives you a +2 or higher. It'd take you two FP expenditures to take a -2 and make it a +2, for example... Yeah, that's what I said. The issue is you can't always flip. You can only flip a small percentage of the time: If you roll -4, it's a +8. That happens 1.2% of the time (1/81). If you roll a -3, it's worth a +6. That happens 4.9% of the time (4/81). If you roll a -2, it's worth a +4. That happens 12.3% of the time (10/81). If you roll a -1, it's worth exactly +2. That hapens 19.7% of the time (16/81). The remaining 61% of times (50/81), it's strictly worse than a +2. So it's unreliable. Most of the time (61% of the time) it's worse than a +2 stunt. Transient People posted:It's a very good, strong stunt. [edit] for clarifying bolds [edit2] moved bolds slightly Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jan 19, 2016 |
# ? Jan 19, 2016 16:30 |
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If you like it, you like it, but you asked for our opinions and we don't.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 17:40 |
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Blasphemeral posted:Yeah, that's what I said. The issue is you can't always flip. You can only flip a small percentage of the time: Except odds are if you roll a +1 or higher, you wouldn't spend a fate point anyway since you probably succeeded, so in a large portion of times when you would actually spend an FP it's a bunch better.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 19:14 |
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Piell posted:Except odds are if you roll a +1 or higher, you wouldn't spend a fate point anyway since you probably succeeded, This is highly questionable, but let's move ahead... Piell posted:... so in a large portion of times when you would actually spend an FP it's a bunch better. Right, but in all those situations where you roll a 0 or better, a static +2 stunt would be better for you. And that +2 stunt is still good in a bad-roll scenario, too, albeit less so. [Edit] Alright, look, you guys all hate it. Fine. That's cool. It's still not world breaking. That's all I'll say about it. Even if I were a player at a table where this stunt were allowed, I probably wouldn't even take it. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 19, 2016 |
# ? Jan 19, 2016 19:23 |
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Blasphemeral posted:Yeah, that's what I said. The issue is you can't always flip. You can only flip a small percentage of the time: Something you are missing here is that if you roll a -1 it is still potentially an advantage because you might not have an appropriate aspect that you can invoke.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 19:24 |
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Odd request, I know, but, outside FATE Core and the Fate System Toolkit, anyone know a good people that gives advice on how to hack and play with the mechanics of the Fate engine?
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 19:30 |
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Covok posted:Odd request, I know, but, outside FATE Core and the Fate System Toolkit, anyone know a good people that gives advice on how to hack and play with the mechanics of the Fate engine? Check out Mike Olson's Spirit of the Blank and John Till's Fate SF.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 20:04 |
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Covok posted:Odd request, I know, but, outside FATE Core and the Fate System Toolkit, anyone know a good people that gives advice on how to hack and play with the mechanics of the Fate engine? I definitely recommend reading the Atomic Robo RPG sourcebook. It is itself a hacked version of FATE, and generally regarded as the "best" version for action-adventure. It's got a system for "Megastunts" that can do things beyond normal stunts, and may contain elements of multiple stunts, but at the cost of requiring some extra real estate among your skills and aspects. It also has some good poo poo to say about skills, and clarification and examples of like appropriate ways to use core systems.
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# ? Jan 19, 2016 21:06 |
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I've played DnD for 6 years, Shadowrun for 5, and Dungeonworld for like 3. I still to this day can not Understand FATE, it feels wrong and against everything I've learned as a DM. I'm looking through the SRD and the book, and my players expressed interest in it, but I just have a real hard time figuring out how am I going to do this. One of the big things is world building together, I have always felt like DMing is like bing the yogi on a Safari Hunt, I'm there because I speak the language and am willing to let them poke all the bears. With FATE it's hard to feel it that way, I feel like there's no mystery when everyone builds the world together. (This is probably 100% wrong, but it's all tummy feels at this point.) That being said, no-one else wants to run it, and I said I would, so how do I melt FATE down in a way that it makes sense to my d20 brain?
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# ? Feb 17, 2016 05:08 |
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Well, for starters, you don't define every single detail of a setting together. You let people create either broad strokes ("There's a kingdom called Whateverville here") or in narrow specifics ("I was trained by Sir Oswald, the head of the Order Of Somethingorother"). As the GM you're still expected to create things to fill in the gaps.
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# ? Feb 17, 2016 05:22 |
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Also you might want to look through this thread: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?774384-What-do-people-commonly-not-get-about-Fate
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# ? Feb 17, 2016 05:50 |
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# ? May 18, 2024 13:05 |
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Yeah, when I do the worldbuilding segment with players, it's very broad strokes stuff. Stuff like genre themes, aesthetics, and that sort of thing. I also have every player define at least one location and NPC that is relevant to their player specifically. There's still plenty of room to add your own plot stuff and other unknowns as GM.
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# ? Feb 17, 2016 13:20 |