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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, in SotC you had to come up with two aspects per phase, so you had to have two for your story and two for each guest spot. That's on top of your two for high concept and...whatever the second phase was. Yeah, I poached some of the ship-building stuff from Bulldogs for a couple Star Wars one-shots I ran, but I deliberately used a different Aspect setup, because man oh man do we not need that many Aspects.
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May 24, 2014 18:40
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Having played a lot of FATE Accelerated I don't think 3 or 4 aspects was any worse than 5 or 7 or 10 (SotC lol), and in many many many cases was much better in terms of getting gameplay to flow smoothly and players, especially those new to FATE, understanding their own character sheets.
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May 24, 2014 20:11
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TheDemon posted:Having played a lot of FATE Accelerated I don't think 3 or 4 aspects was any worse than 5 or 7 or 10 (SotC lol), and in many many many cases was much better in terms of getting gameplay to flow smoothly and players, especially those new to FATE, understanding their own character sheets. Accelerated has five Aspects though...
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May 24, 2014 22:36
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Transient People posted:Accelerated has five Aspects though... Yeah, but you generally only come up with a couple at chargen and then figure out the rest in play. I'm guessing that's what TheDemon is talking about.
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May 24, 2014 22:51
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My point is the characters are complete with 3 aspects and the play as complete with only 3 as well. You can have as many as 5, but FAE makes those explicitly optional and neither the characters nor the game suffers for no matter if you have 3 or 4 or 5.
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May 24, 2014 23:46
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Evil Mastermind posted:Believe it or not, Bulldogs is even worse. Meep! My rule of thumb for designing a list of factors that at some level appear interchangeable is a maximum of seven plus or minus two - and go for the bottom end (i.e. five). Which fits Fate Core/FAE 
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May 25, 2014 00:29
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What are the goon opinions on Jadepunk/Tianxia? I like my wuxia a bit crunchy, but FATE is just so easy that I might try one of the two.
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May 27, 2014 10:46
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Hugoon Chavez posted:What are the goon opinions on Jadepunk/Tianxia? I like my wuxia a bit crunchy, but FATE is just so easy that I might try one of the two. I haven't gone through Jadepunk, but Tianxia is really solid. It's a little bit crunchier than pure Core Fate, but without making the mistake of older Fate implementations by layering a bunch of subsystems that don't work with the rest of the system.
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May 27, 2014 14:07
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So our group is trying FATE. None of us is super-knowledgable, but we're doing our best. Question came up, though, that doesn't seem to have a good answer. Player Adam shoots Bad Guy Nancy. Adam gets 3 on their roll to hit, Nancy gets 3 on her roll to dodge. So, a tie. Obviously no damage is dealt, but how is a tie different than a miss? Does that create a one-time aspect the players can use on followup attacks on Nancy? Can Nancy use it when firing back at Adam?
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May 27, 2014 18:12
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Everblight posted:So our group is trying FATE. None of us is super-knowledgable, but we're doing our best. Question came up, though, that doesn't seem to have a good answer. It means Adam's team gets a one time +2 bonus that can be used on another move, depending on the attack. For instance, if Adam was shooting at Nancy, he might take the one time boost "Suppressed!" that player Barbara can use on her move, or that Adam can use when the turn order goes back around.
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May 27, 2014 18:16
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In that case the Attacker gets the boost (one-time aspect with free invoke) to use whatever circumstances apply to the aspect. Generally it's a boost against the Defender for future attacks, but it's the GMs call where that aspect goes if you want to get a little creative with it. That said, it's just a boost, and isn't meant to be anything too interesting.
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May 27, 2014 18:18
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To clarify: A Boost is supposed to be like a baby aspect that can only be used once, and might just disappear if circumstances change even a little. Davin Valkri's "Suppressed", above, is a pretty good one for that situation. Other good Boosts include things like "Distracted", "Spooked", and "Staggered". The wording is sort of important for the sake of the Fiction (eg: "Spooked" could be capitalized on by a mental Attack or Advantage, too), but the Boost will be destroyed by Invocation, or if the defender simply stops doing that thing on their next action. I would go as far as to say that a Boost doesn't even require an Overcome action to get rid of. It's just a brief moment of weakness for the defender.
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May 27, 2014 19:20
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After buying and reading (in that order) the Atomic Robo book, I have been thinking a little about Modes and I am thinking that they are a good solution to one of the minor problems I was having with my 10KW project. However rather than having a Mode with a related Aspect, I'm cutting down on the character sheet real estate by making the name of the Mode into the Aspect. I'm also going to scrap the skill list in favour of allowing the players to invent their own skills, subject to GM approval. Still wish that stunts weren't so dang nebulous, though. They are very hard to pin down.
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May 27, 2014 21:57
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Fiasco relationships are good for the phase trio, especially if you're in a semi-competitive game like Kriegzeppelin. And there's likely a Fiasco setting for every type of Fate you could play, from Cthuluoid to Supers to Gangster.
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May 28, 2014 17:44
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Golden Bee posted:Fiasco relationships are good for the phase trio, especially if you're in a semi-competitive game like Kriegzeppelin. And there's likely a Fiasco setting for every type of Fate you could play, from Cthuluoid to Supers to Gangster. Hah, yes. We did character/world gen last night for our Persona game, and the phase trio ended up being very Fiasco-like, down to a couple of key locations that bind everybody's backstories together. If I were to make it a playset, it would be like, "Coffee House, High School, Record Store; Stolen Guitar Parts, Subversive Lyrics, Trophy From Two Years Ago". One PC is an anti-authority punk type with "Deceive" as his Apex, and another is a genius kleptomaniac with a "Fueled By Coffee" aspect, and those two interacted about how you might imagine. The third is a likable high school sports star with daddy issues, so basically Andrew from the Breakfast Club, but with a strong altruistic streak. Probably he will end up functioning as the beacon of sanity that nobody listens to. Stand-out results include: "Accidental Hero": Alex, the klepto, found a bomb while she was rifling through a kid's backpack to find something worth stealing, and disarmed it right there. Torero, "Quick to Act", tackled the would-be bomber when he made a break for it after Alex called him on it. Now the school has metal detectors  "Poker Face": K, the punk, works for his adopted Uncle's record store. He was ordered to catch Alex shoplifting, because a lot of random parts were going missing, and she never seems to actually buy anything. K ended up befriending the highly unusual girl, though, and lied to his Uncle to cover her. "Needs To Win": Torero feels his only real accomplishment in life was making varsity soccer as a freshman. It's literally the only time his dad ever said he was proud of him, and meant it. So, I've already got some hooks I can throw into the mix. I can call on the specter of K's betrayal to his Uncle. I can create trouble with Torero's extremely strict father. Both of these can be a good source of friction and complication once we're into the part of the campaign where the PCs are constantly slipping out to do magical detective poo poo at night.
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May 28, 2014 19:26
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Golden Bee posted:Fiasco relationships are good for the phase trio, especially if you're in a semi-competitive game like Kriegzeppelin. And there's likely a Fiasco setting for every type of Fate you could play, from Cthuluoid to Supers to Gangster. Holy poo poo that's brilliant.
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May 28, 2014 19:58
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Am I the only one who doesn't really like Modes in the Atomic Robo RPG? The concept of dividing skills up into groups is good for FATE. Really good. But the implementation is waaaay too granular for a FATE system. Your Modes are all rated different and within each Mode each skill is also +0 +1 or +2. What you end up with a range of skills from +5 to +0 and given that the FATE dice don't really have a big amount of variation on their roll, it ends up being just too big of a potential difference. I mean, yeah, in FATE Core you have a skill pyramid with some granularity to it since you end up with skills that are +0 and a skill that's +4, but honestly I think the large difference is a fairly big problem with FATE Core too, just a little less because you'll only have one skill at the top. The concept of grouping skills and of basing big stunts on them is good, I just think the Trained/Focused/Specialized bit is too much.
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May 30, 2014 04:04
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I am about to start a game of FATE with 5 total roleplaying newbies, they are keen but have no real experience. We played a short Technoir campaign that went down pretty well, and now they want me to run something more open ended and FATE caught their eye for allowing you a lot of freedom with your character etc. I have run a lot of games in the past, but nothing like FATE. Is there any advice I should take onboard before we have our first planning session next week? Anything to watch out for with newcomers? I know that all of them have at least glanced at the core rules, with a couple having read them in a lot of detail.So they aren't coming into this totally blind. My plan for the first session was to give a general outline of what I would like to run, before letting them alter it through world/setting/character creation.
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May 30, 2014 11:16
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Phrosphor posted:I am about to start a game of FATE with 5 total roleplaying newbies, they are keen but have no real experience. We played a short Technoir campaign that went down pretty well, and now they want me to run something more open ended and FATE caught their eye for allowing you a lot of freedom with your character etc. At page 52 you have rules for "Quick Character Creation", which is a great way to get newbies into Fate with minimal work. Maybe consider that? One of the first things you might struggle with learning Fate is the importance and use of Aspects. Limiting them to one and "whatever comes in-game as the story advances" is a pretty easy way to do it. But actually, they being total newbies helps a ton learning Fate, since they don't have any preconceived notions about RPGs. It's a lot harder to get D&d-heads into it since they want to look at everything with the dirty, cracked, D&D colored glasses.
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May 30, 2014 11:28
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Hugoon Chavez posted:dirty, cracked, D&D colored glasses. I was really worried about this with my group, but they all ended up making characters that aren't very combat-oriented. Pretty much there's a fast-talker, a problem solver, and a front man. I'll have to be careful to make the actual fights they get into down the line into a more puzzle-y affair. Like, off-hand I think only the literal athlete character put Athletics on his pyramid. They were all really good about making characters with a lot of hooks and openings to leverage as the GM. I was especially surprised by one guy, Josh, because I'm used to him being a real ruthless, synergizing min-maxer in D&D. This time, he came out with a FATE character whose facade of extreme competence is challenged at multiple steps by various insecurities and dysfunctions. I guess what I'm getting at is, I think that once a D&D veteran gets past the fact that their character sheet isn't just a list of combat bonuses, it's not hard to get them to come up with a more abstract idea.
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May 30, 2014 13:06
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deadly_pudding posted:I guess what I'm getting at is, I think that once a D&D veteran gets past the fact that their character sheet isn't just a list of combat bonuses, it's not hard to get them to come up with a more abstract idea. Yeah, once people get in the right mentality I think most would feel relieved that they can actually play a character instead of a sheet with a bunch of numbers. I mean, when we all started playing we pictured the game to be like that, it only takes a decent system that emphasizes the character building and roleplaying and most will be totally thrilled to play an interesting dude instead of Punchy McStabby with his +3 sword.
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May 30, 2014 13:15
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So seeing as how the latest Dresden Files novel just came out, anybody given any thought to running a Dresden game using the more-streamlined Atomic Robo system? Granted, 90% of it doesn't really need "converting;" mega-stunts and weird modes cover the vast majority of the powers section in a much less fiddly manner. Magic might require a little more work--obviusly, "Wizard" is a weird mode, possibly one that works a bit like Science except with skills like Fire Magic, Thaumaturgy, etc. instead of "All Sciences." Thaumaturgy and item-crafting map pretty much one-for-one to the Invention rules, and I'd be willing to bet you could rejigger Brainstorming into the Sight easy-peasy. Probably just needs an optional rule that you can take shifts of Mental Stress to "make up" the difference on a failed roll or something. Evocation magic is the one part that gets a little bit tricky. The system in Dresden is too fiddly (and frankly way too easy to abuse), but I like the divide between "power" and "control." I'm not as wild about the fact that the DFRPG rules tend to model a system where a wizard's spells seem to get bigger the more exhausted she gets (since typically you start with the smaller Stress costs, but by the time you're down to having to burn your Severe consequence, gently caress it, might as well toss those shifts into power). Maybe the key is to just ape the Invention rules again and treat an Evocation as a "build your own one-use mega-stunt" system. Starts at +0 (or maybe +2, since it's faster working), each stunt effect adds +2. Difference is that unlike Invention, you have to pay for those shifts. Figure you get free shifts equal to your Wizard mode, but you can do things like invoke Aspects or take Costs (which might be Stress or a temporary Aspect or just an unexpected side effect of the power) to make up the difference--maybe you can take a stunt to give you more free shifts to represent freakishly powerful wizards. Then you roll the relevant magic skill to actually cast the spell (which might incur more another Cost depending on the roll). I dunno, something about that doesn't quite feel right, but I'm sick and fuzzy-headed and can't quite put my finger on it.
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May 30, 2014 19:00
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Phrosphor posted:I am about to start a game of FATE with 5 total roleplaying newbies, they are keen but have no real experience. We played a short Technoir campaign that went down pretty well, and now they want me to run something more open ended and FATE caught their eye for allowing you a lot of freedom with your character etc. When I was a new GM to FATE, I had a lot of difficulty giving my players appropriately difficult challenges. One thing it takes a bit of play to realize is that, kind of like 4E, you have to tax your players' resources in order to ramp up to big dramatic challenge. You especially have to chip away at their fate point stocks, how many fate points the party has available can pretty easily be read as their potential to defeat any particular challenge. Consequences are also a bit of this, and if they do prep for fights free invokes from discovered/created aspects, but mostly it's about the fate point economy. There's pretty much nothing a party with full FP can't handle.
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May 30, 2014 19:33
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GimpInBlack posted:So seeing as how the latest Dresden Files novel just came out, anybody given any thought to running a Dresden game using the more-streamlined Atomic Robo system? Is there any word on when Dresden Accelerated is coming out yet?
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May 30, 2014 22:58
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mikeycp posted:Is there any word on when Dresden Accelerated is coming out yet? Last update on it was a few months ago, as I recall. It's in development, but no specific details.
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May 30, 2014 23:01
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Considering just how drat long Dresden Files RPG took, don't wait up. That said, what's wrong with good ol' regular Dresden RPG? I know it's not Fate Core, but it's pretty close, and a great game. edit: also, no word on The Paranet Papers? I'm guessing this was kinda forgotten with FAE Dresden on the works. Kinda sad. re-edit: in their blog, Evil hat says: quote:Backers of the Fate Core kickstarter may remember us talking about Dresden Files Accelerated, a Dresden Files RPG based on Fate Accelerated. What we promised then was that development on that project — a lighter-weight alternative RPG to our “big books” Dresden Files RPG, not a replacement — would start in 2014. And it has! The team is assembled and moving forward under the creative leadership of Leonard Balsera. That said, just because we said we’d start development in 2014 doesn’t mean that it’ll be released in 2014. You know us: we like to Get It Right. And with that in mind we encourage you to think of DFAE (as we’ve come to abbreviate it) as a 2015 thing. So yeah, don't expect Dresden FAE this year, but it looks like the Papers are indeed coming out soon-ish. Hugoon Chavez fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 08:40
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TheDemon posted:When I was a new GM to FATE, I had a lot of difficulty giving my players appropriately difficult challenges. One thing it takes a bit of play to realize is that, kind of like 4E, you have to tax your players' resources in order to ramp up to big dramatic challenge. You especially have to chip away at their fate point stocks, how many fate points the party has available can pretty easily be read as their potential to defeat any particular challenge. Consequences are also a bit of this, and if they do prep for fights free invokes from discovered/created aspects, but mostly it's about the fate point economy. There's pretty much nothing a party with full FP can't handle. Thanks for all the advice guys, I don't think I came across really well I my original post but I am really excited to run this.
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Jun 2, 2014 09:11
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So I'm thinking of running a FAE JoJo's Bizarre Adventure PbP, and the way I wanna handle Stands in it is by letting the player choose either an extra Aspect (for more complicated powers that wouldn't necessarily directly affect specific rolls) or an extra Stunt (for stuff like "being able to hit things really hard" or "being able to loop time backwards to undo an action") to describe the Stand's power. Is this a good system or no? The reason I'm not just using one or the other is because JoJo powers can get loving weird; there's one in Part 3 that ages whoever's in the user's shadow backwards until they pop out of existence, there's one that can go into mirrors and attack people's reflections, there's even one that takes people's wishes and uses them to form items from dirt. There are some that Stunts would work for, like Star Platinum (which is basically just "hit things a lot of times really hard") and Silver Chariot ("hit things really fast with a sword"), but for a lot of them a +2 bonus to a roll under specific circumstances doesn't really seem like it would make sense; an aspect that can be invoked (maybe only requiring a fate point every second time, so as to not discourage the PCs from using it liberally) would make more sense.
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Jun 2, 2014 09:19
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Hugoon Chavez posted:Considering just how drat long Dresden Files RPG took, don't wait up. It kind of doesn't work - wizards pretty much break the game over their knee, and there's been a bunch of new ways of thinking about Fate that have come out since the Dresden Files RPG came out that would really benefit the game. Piell fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jun 2, 2014 |
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Jun 2, 2014 13:59
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Piell posted:It kind of doesn't - wizards pretty much break the game over their knee, and there's been a bunch of new ways of thinking about Fate that have come out since the Dresden Files RPG came out that would really benefit the game. Piell is talking from experience. The long-running Nawlins game on these forums is an all-wizard (and one time traveling cowboy) game, and Mistaya, who GMs it, has taken to throwing out such amazing things as a Denarian backing up an advanced wizard to challenge us...and we're just at the Submerged level. And this is after having axed Focus Items, mind. Wizards are some broke-rear end poo poo.
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Jun 2, 2014 14:44
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The problem with DFRPG is that wizards are stupid powerful compared to everybody else. Which is correctly emulating the source material (where wizards are indeed stupid powerful compared to everybody else) but doesn't work well in an RPG scenario where you have wizards, non-wizard supernaturals, and normal people all in the same group and everyone wants to contribute.
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Jun 2, 2014 15:12
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SALT CURES HAM posted:So I'm thinking of running a FAE JoJo's Bizarre Adventure PbP, and the way I wanna handle Stands in it is by letting the player choose either an extra Aspect (for more complicated powers that wouldn't necessarily directly affect specific rolls) or an extra Stunt (for stuff like "being able to hit things really hard" or "being able to loop time backwards to undo an action") to describe the Stand's power. First off, Stunts aren't just +2 bonuses. They can do other things like allowing you to use a skill in a way you ordinarily couldn't use or breaking some rule. JoJo Stand stunts would likely have to be more powerful than standard FATE Core stunts, though. Some of them outright impose Aspects upon the situation. Generally I recommend giving people broad license for Stand abilities and maybe requiring Fate point expenditure for particularly powerful individual applications like stopping time. Overall, JoJo are more like puzzle fights than standard fights. A lot of combat rolls likely will be info-gathering or other Create Advantage actions rather than straight up pummeling. Hell, some of the villains've outright lost to a single pummeling once their trick was figured out (virtually no physical stress track, only puzzle stress track or something like that). I seem to recall (I could be wrong) at least one that was defeated without the heroes even seeing them. TheDemon posted:Am I the only one who doesn't really like Modes in the Atomic Robo RPG? I can see that. Apocalypse World limits its stats to a range of 4 (-1 to +3), and it has more variance on its bell curve than FATE does. Of course, AW has static target numbers, so some things don't fully translate. Still, +0 through +3 is probably plenty of granularity for a dice system with as center-weighted a bell curve as Fudge dice. (And now I'm curious hwo many people've heard of Fudge, the system FATE originated from.) The base concept of Modes is pretty good yeah. FAE Approaches also is a decent idea at baseline but has the problem of too much vagueness in the default Approaches, allowing you to use your best Approach in an extremely wide variety of situations.
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Jun 2, 2014 15:31
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SALT CURES HAM posted:So I'm thinking of running a FAE JoJo's Bizarre Adventure PbP, and the way I wanna handle Stands in it is by letting the player choose either an extra Aspect (for more complicated powers that wouldn't necessarily directly affect specific rolls) or an extra Stunt (for stuff like "being able to hit things really hard" or "being able to loop time backwards to undo an action") to describe the Stand's power. I'm hacking together an ultralight FATE system for JJBA and right now the way I'm handling Stands is that : Calling out your stand costs a Fate Point, every stand has a strength (a narrow category of actions where they get a +2 to relevant rolls, e.g. Star platinum gets a bonus to offensive physical conflict rolls, Harvest gets a bonus for searching for things or observing the environment) a weakness (same but in reverse, e.g. Silver Chariot receives a penalty to any act of strength not directly related yo swordfighting) and a Special Ability (spend a fate point to basically control the narrative within strict parameters: The World can stop time for five subjective seconds, so when the user activates this ability they can essentially declare themselves as having done any action unopposed as long as they could have done it in that window of time) Its a bit janky but I think it works, since this is for a FATE system so stripped down it doesn't even have approaches, just stunts and aspects- JJBA is a setting that reacts negatively to granular rules, since that bogs down the extent of available shenanigans. Still need to play test it though.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:17
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I can't imagine there's much purpose in the 'FP to call Stand' rule. I can't remember an example of someone failing to summon their Stand in times of trouble.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:25
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I should clarify that its only one fate point and its available for the whole scene, its really only there to herd players into approaching problems in a way other than "immediately summon ghost punch mans to deck NPC," and encourage them to try and think in ways other than direct combat.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:31
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Piell posted:It kind of doesn't work - wizards pretty much break the game over their knee, and there's been a bunch of new ways of thinking about Fate that have come out since the Dresden Files RPG came out that would really benefit the game. To elaborate on this, it's very easy for a wizard to completely trivialize challenges by which I mean it's very easy for someone playing a wizard to accidentally trivialize challenges not by being a ruthless powergaming minmaxer but simply by doing stuff they think is wizardy and cool and the next thing you know they've basically won. My actual personal play experience was that of a mixed group (all at the same FP level) ranging from semi-supernatural PIs to fae knights to a single actual wizard, and the wizard character basically handled every sort of combat challenge we faced more or less single-handedly and also had enough in the way of other abilities that they were also pretty boss at stuff that didn't involve blowing up trolls with lightning bolts. And like Piell says, there've been some advancements and improvements in FATE over the years outside of the whole wizarding issue. It's got a longer and more fiddly skill list than it needs, supernatural powers are also often more fiddly than they need to be (compare how Dresden Files handles things like supernatural speed or toughness to, say, Atomic Robo's version), the magic system beyond being kind of broken is also kind of unnecessarily complicated, etc. It's not so much "ugh, Dresden Files, what a lovely game" as much as people designing for FATE have refined their technique a lot over the last four years or so and it shows.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:53
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mr. stefan posted:I should clarify that its only one fate point and its available for the whole scene, its really only there to herd players into approaching problems in a way other than "immediately summon ghost punch mans to deck NPC," and encourage them to try and think in ways other than direct combat. Why would you not want them to use Stands, though? Seriously, I can't remember the last time someone in Jojos tried to solve things without a Stand except when fighting a gimmick villain. I guess Jojolion counts, maybe? Mostly because Soft & Wet and Paisley Park aren't that easy to use to solve mysteries though.
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Jun 2, 2014 17:55
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mr. stefan posted:I should clarify that its only one fate point and its available for the whole scene, its really only there to herd players into approaching problems in a way other than "immediately summon ghost punch mans to deck NPC," and encourage them to try and think in ways other than direct combat. The main way JoJo encouraged its heroes doing things other than straight up ghost punching enemies was to make those enemy difficult to punch. Thus all the gimmick enemies we see as well as some really powerful villains. Or are you worried about them ghost punching random non-enemy NPCs? That's better handled by setting players expectations for appropriate behavior.
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Jun 2, 2014 19:03
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SALT CURES HAM posted:So I'm thinking of running a FAE JoJo's Bizarre Adventure PbP, and the way I wanna handle Stands in it is by letting the player choose either an extra Aspect (for more complicated powers that wouldn't necessarily directly affect specific rolls) or an extra Stunt (for stuff like "being able to hit things really hard" or "being able to loop time backwards to undo an action") to describe the Stand's power. I'm running Persona, which bears a lot of "mechanical" similarities to JJBA Stands, in Fate Core, and the way I ended up settling on Personas was as follows: A character's Persona has a "Light" Aspect, or High Concept, a "Dark" Aspect, or Trouble, and one Stunt. Persona stunts and aspects have Permission to provide magical powers to the Persona and/or PC using it. A character always has access to the Persona's Aspects, in a non-magical capacity, even when the Persona has not been Summoned. So, a character with the Persona OGMA, whose Light Aspect is "Celtic God of Strength" can always invoke that to perform feats of stength. He can't use it pick up and hurl a 9-foot granite sculpture unless he conjures an enormous, Irish, demon-ghost to do it for him, though. Likewise, a Persona's Stunt is permitted to be rather more powerful than a normal stunt, and can only be used while a Persona is Summoned. These are usually major enough to cost a Fate Token. Summoning a Persona is just Creating An Advantage. This is important, because, like a Stand, a Persona and its User both share the same pool of stress and consequences. Damage inflicted on either "character" affects both of them, even if any applicable Consequences are meant to apply to one of them specifically. So, a PC on the receiving end of an 8-shift hit might declare, "My Persona dives in to intercept the blast", and take a Severe Consequence that primarily affects the Persona, such as "Shattered Form", which the GM can Compel to interfere with summoning and magic. The other 2 shifts become Stress, as normal. On a similar note, the Persona provides the versatility of potentially being in more than one place at once, and the Persona and User can potentially tank situations for each other. A single enemy can probably only grapple one of them at a time, for example, and I don't have a problem with a Persona and its user occupying different Zones in a conflict. For JJBA, though, probably most Stands that aren't Hierophant Green have to remain in the same Zone as their User. A persona as described above takes up one of a character's Stunt slots at character creation. Adding more aspects or stunts to the Persona always costs Refresh- you can't just spend another of your free Stunts on it.
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Jun 2, 2014 19:50
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 20:29 |
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Evil Mastermind posted:The problem with DFRPG is that wizards are stupid powerful compared to everybody else. This, and also for Fate the magic system is really fiddly. I get what they were trying to do, what with keeping magic to a couple of skills, but all the different foci and refinements and extra options just got too hard to track. It's a lot easier to use the model of Atomic Robo's Modes to say that, for example, Harry Dresden is a Good (+3) Wizard with Superb (+5) Fire and Spirit Magic skills than to say Harry has 5 Conviction but a +1 power refinement in Fire and a +2 Control bonus from his blasting rod. What I'm thinking right now for Evocation is that it works essentially like Invention (which would also be the model for Thaumaturgy), but you skip the function and flaw Aspect step. Also, add the following stunt effect options: "target everyone in a zone" and "last one full round." Instead of the catches in the Invention rules, each stunt benefit comes with a cost, and at least one cost has to be stress or a consequence. As per Invention, if you stack the same stunt effect multiple times it increases the cost from minor to major. Then you roll the relevant magic skill and the spell happens, but based on the result of the roll the player and the GM determine the nature of the costs. Your actual result serves as the total for purposes of things like attack rolls, defense, overcome actions, etc. This approach ditches some of the granularity, which means you're no longer able to model things like Dresden himself being all power and no finesse or his apprentice being the opposite, but that's easily modeled by stunts. Maybe:
So, for example, Harry Dresden's trusty old "Fuego!" spell probably looks like this: Fuego!
For a total difficulty of Fantastic (+6) and three costs, one of which is a major cost unless Harry has that stunt above. A spell to create, say, a Slippery Floors Aspect would be simpler and probably look like: OSHA-us Noncompliancus
For a difficulty of Fair (+2) and one cost. In this example, the +2 is added to your result for purposes of the Create an Advantage, not the actual spellcasting. So if you roll Great (+4), you've succeeded on the spellcasting action (and thus the GM chooses one cost and you choose the rest) and scored an effective Fantastic (+6) on the Create an Advantage action, which is probably enough to succeed with style. Final example: A basic shield spell to keep you from being shot to poo poo by a bunch of mooks. Shields Up!
Difficulty: Great (+4), two costs. I'm still debating whether evocation should require you to "buy" an Add A Game Action stunt effect just to cover the effect of a spell. I'll have to playtest that. Under this system, I'm inclined to say that focus items are assumed, and the difficulty of casting without them is modeled as a compel on your Wizard mode Aspect. Or you could build focus items using gear-as-stunts if you want.
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Jun 2, 2014 20:07
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