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Question to throw to the thread since I'm thinking of running a FATE game in the future: How would you go about statting a major boss monster? More specifically, say I've got a party of 4-5 characters who are all not too far removed from newly-built characters, with the typical Skill Pyramid running up to +4, with a general mix of fightier and less fighty characters. What should an NPC look like in order to not casually TPK the party, but also be a serious and exciting threat instead of going down in a round or two of attacks covered in stacked boosts while barely getting any attacks off?
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Oct 24, 2013 21:46
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Rather than the board game direction, I think this has potential as a way to do a normal dungeon with a determined ending without having to map it out. Venturing into unknown parts of the dungeon is an Attack against the Dungeon that inflicts exploration stress on a hit and leads the party to traps/monsters on a miss. When the Dungeon picks up consequences, the party has figured out patterns to its layout to allow them to explore it with greater efficiency. When the Dungeon is Taken Out, you found the exit.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:02
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Ooh, I may need to steal this.
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Nov 5, 2013 21:24
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My interpretation of the Aspect is that it's a definition of a way in which a given character (in the Fate Fractal sense) is relevant to the story. The difference between "I Won't Lose To You" and "Badass Motherfucker" is when they can be invoked - if she has the latter, it means that she can get a +2 bonus in any sort of fight situation, meaning that she's going to be effective in combat in general. If she has the former, then she can get a +2 bonus only when facing her rival, meaning that she's only going to get that effectiveness boost when she's fighting that person. If she has both, then she's always going to be effective in a fight, but has the potential to be even more so in a fight against her sworn enemy, because each Aspect can only be invoked once per roll, so the two together can give her a +4. This is important because it encourages her to seek out and fight Cure Pitch, because that's her role in the story as dictated by her Aspects. Aspects guide the flow of the story. Unrelated question as long as I'm here: In a Fate Core campaign/setting where the party won't have ready access to vehicles, what would be a good skill to replace Drive?
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Jan 6, 2014 16:40
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I know at least one Fate variant replaced 4dF with d6-d6. e: If I just drop the skill, then there are only 14 skills, and if I adhere to Skill Columns then 15 skills means a character can eventually get exactly one skill up to +5. Parkour might work, though, or maybe I could just compress the skill list enough to bring it down to 10 skills. The default list feels a bit big to me, anyway. ee: So apparently there are 18 skills, not 15. That makes this much simpler. Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jan 6, 2014 |
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Jan 6, 2014 17:43
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Okay, here's something I've thought about a lot and I'm not sure how to best handle: "Super mode" for characters in Fate. Say you're running a Power Rangers game, so all the PCs can transform into super fighting heroes to fight the enemy monsters, but can also potentially fight (at a serious disadvantage) as regular humans if they have to. Or a Super Robot game, where anyone can throw their mech into overdrive for a limited period of time to turn the tables on the enemy. Or something like Xenogears, where people can get into mechs to fight other mechs, or just hulk out and fight mechs with their bare hands, but the latter turns a relatively weak mech into a serious threat. How would you model this kind of thing in Fate?
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May 20, 2014 16:21
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deadly_pudding posted:Give the monsters a stunt on their Physique- I'm liking this, actually. Maybe slightly less powerful version of Super-Villain to make it possible (if very hard) to take them on without transforming - something like reducing all damage by 2 shifts. Depends how serious you want the divide to be.
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May 20, 2014 18:49
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The dual problems of "some skills are more useful in terms of breadth of actions they can affect" and "in a genre game, like a kung fu epic or something, there are certain things that pretty much everyone should be assumed to be able to do" are why I've been getting steadily more interested in FAE.
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Jul 7, 2014 22:38
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I honestly prefer the approach of having one stress track and letting both physical and mental stress accumulate on it, then having the effects of defeating the character depend on what sort of methods the party was using. I think that's how FAE does it.
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Jul 16, 2014 18:29
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So I was just thinking about a framework to run a murder mystery investigation as a modified Fate conflict. The results seem interesting enough that I'd be interested in shoehorning it into a game I run at something. The idea is that you have The Case as a "character", with two Stress tracks and two sets of Consequences - one each for Mystery and Truth. It has a set of skills or approaches - this could just be a general Mystery approach, or an Approach for each suspect, or however you want to model it. The case doesn't take actions (although maybe it could in another version of the schema), all actions are taking by the detectives. You create advantages as normal, but Attacks are special: If you hit, you deal damage to the case's Mystery Track/Consequences as normal, but if you miss, you instead deal damage to the Truth Track/Consequences as if you hit by the same margin you missed by. As the Mystery Track accumulates Stress, the party learns more about the case - clues are revealed, alibis are expanded, time of death is cemented, and so on. As the Mystery Consequences are filled, you learn important things about the case - dramatic revelations that cut down on your pool of suspects, bringing you closer to the truth. If the Mystery Track is defeated, you catch the culprit. As the Truth Track accumulates Stress, the case becomes more confusing - clues seem to contradict each other, promising leads dry up or get more complicated. As the Truth Consequences are filled, new Aspects are added to the scene representing trouble at the investigation - maybe Reginald has become convinced without proof that Victoria must have done it because he has a grudge against her. Maybe the bumbling constable shows up and tries to muscle in on the investigation. These must be overcome to continue the investigation. If the Truth Track is defeated, the culprit gets away without being identified. Here is a quick and dirty example of the rules in action. I didn't start writing it up with a coherent crime explanation in mind - the solution formed gradually over the course of the scene. e: Going further, you could use this as a framing mechanism for an entire adventure. Make an interrogation a Contest, and the number of successes each side ends with being used to determine Mystery/Truth damage. Depending on the game tone, there could even be combat scenes embedded into the investigation. Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 17:43
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Meanwhile, on a less ambitious line of thought, I threw together a rough framework for running Paranoia in Fate. I mainly just think that Fate's stress/damage rules are really good for modeling Treason conflict.
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Aug 21, 2014 16:02
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Running a FAE campaign right now. One of the players wants to pick up a (still alive) monster and throw it at the encounter boss. How the hell would you model that?
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Feb 9, 2015 04:29
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I need some encounter design tips! Players in my campaign, please don't look. I'm running a sort of hybrid game of Atomic Robo RPG and Fate Core with a lot of combat (it's based off of One Piece). A couple of my players are getting frighteningly powerful, and I want to find elegant ways to keep them challenged without just upping the enemy skills by 3-4 ranks. Culprit #1: Sword duelist. +4 Combat, soon to be +5. Stunt: +2 to Attack with Combat in a one-on-one duel. Stunt: +1 to Create Advantage or Defense with Combat when fighting a sword-wielding opponent. Mega-Stunt: Once per scene, force an enemy to use Consequences when absorbing damage from a hit. On a Success with Style on a Defense roll with Combat, inflict a 2-shift hit instead of gaining a Boost. Culprit #2: Paper manipulator. +2 Combat, +3 Craft, but... Stunt: +1 to Attack and Defend using Combat when facing the leader of an enemy faction. Mega-Stunt: +2 to Create Advantage when it's paper-related. When invoking any Advantage made that way on an attack, get +3 instead of +2 for the Invoke, and the attack gains Weapon: 2. #1 can consistently be rocking +7 to attack rolls in duels when the rest of the team is on +3 to +4 attacks, and almost as strong on the defense, on top of multiple Aspects good for invoking on attacks AND powerful defensive/counterattack options. #2 stacks a couple paper advantages on the target and then slams them for +12 or higher on a single hit. Both are poised to tear through any reasonable opposition with minimal effort. They're starting to get cocky. I want to humble them. Or at least, keep them from taking down what's supposed to be boss encounters in 2 hits. How would you design a foe for these guys that at least makes them feel like they're being seriously threatened?
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Mar 18, 2015 01:20
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An obvious thought that occurs to me I haven't done with the paper crafter is to separate her from her paper.
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Mar 18, 2015 03:52
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Transient People posted:Another thing to also look into is what actual shonen series' do to make bad guys, even bad guys weaker than the party, be scary. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a good example of how to get creative, because very often it's the seemingly least frightening enemies that are scariest. Probably the definitive example of this line of thinking are the 'Dio's Sons' villains - one of them is simply not in the arena and can't be punched out, and forces the party to experience the stories they most identify with as the protagonists, right down to tragic endings and crippling losses (so if your favorite story is one where the hero dies...), the second one uses photography artifacts turned living beings that move so fast you cannot even see them and steal your body heat, and the third fights by using animated memories to attack and defend as well as do impossible things like retrieving a lost artifact from the memories of one protagonist. Strange powers like these ones can't be fought just by swording them directly or slamming down a million CAs, because they aren't playing the same game as the party. Try doing that. Introduce villains who are unmatchable in their element (Bladeproof so the swordsman can't cut them, Tacticsproof so CA's can be counterinvoked if he can at all see them coming, fighting from five miles away so the goal is to get to them while attacks and obstacles rain down on the party, etc.), and let the players do their thing to try and drag them out of it and beat them. It should make for some memorable encounters! This is a good idea. One of the villains for the upcoming arc already has his finger on the metaphorical trigger, but loves playing convoluted games with people, so that's already a step in that direction. The best part of that kind of fight can often be the moment when the heroes finally get past all the unfair tricks and get to fight the guy directly, and have him totally outmatched for the actual slugfest. God, if only I were good enough to create a scene as memorable as D'Arby the Gambler... In other news, I just finished as a player in a 2-year-long Fate Core game. It was a bit rough in patches, but the system allowed me to turn things in the direction of fighting most of the major villains via talking them down thanks to a stunt to use Empathy to do mental attacks, which was a lot of fun. The game ended with a giant boost-overstacked team attack on the final boss that landed the total attack roll at 21.
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Apr 2, 2015 21:53
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Continuing in my theme of trying to wrap my head around how to mechanically express specific things in Fate: I'm a big burly tanky guy. Behind me, in another zone, is my zappy wizard friend. A monster is in my face, but giving the wizard the evil eye. Being the meatshield, I want to try and physically block the monster from walking past me and eating the wizard. How do I accomplish this?
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Apr 17, 2015 21:10
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| # ¿ May 8, 2024 07:55 |
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GimpInBlack posted:This would be a Defend action. By presenting active opposition, you're forcing the monster to roll an Overcome action for its movement, even though moving a single zone is normally an automatic thing. e X posted:Aspects are always true, even when they don't give free invokes any more. So, in your case, I would go and create some kind of aspect that binds the guy to you, either physically, i.e. "Got you cornered" or "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" or psychologically, i.e. "You got business with me first!" or "Only a coward wound run away". These are both interesting! The Defend and Overcome actions are always things I've been kind of vague on. Some followup questions: It seems like the actual idea behind Defend is that it's an action you can do, off of your turn, in any situation where you can present active opposition to what's being done, whether it would require a roll or not. Is that an accurate (or at least reasonable) reading? Could I roll Rapport to Defend against someone flipping the switch to blow up the hostages? How does that tie in to situations where more than one person is in a position to intercept something? Like, the most obvious one - Monster attacks Bob, Steve is in the zone and wants to intercept the attack. Could Steve Defend in Bob's place, since he's in a position to provide active opposition? How does the Overcome action work, just in general? If there's an Aspect on the field that's conceptually blocking me from doing something, what am I rolling to overcome it? What do I roll to create an Aspect if I'm not doing it to a specific target (say, Notice to find something in the environment I can use to my advantage, that comes up a lot in the game I'm running)? How do I know when to use Defend and when to use Overcome to represent an action that might be thwarted? Quinn2win fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Apr 17, 2015 21:53
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