Game Balance and the Laws

[traeki]

How important to game balance are setting specific structures like the Laws of Magic and, say, Vampires dependence on Feeding?  That is, it seems pretty clear that the latter would be a positive cost refresh "flaw", but the former -- going by Harry's character sheet, which is awesome -- seems more implicitly rolled into character design.  So I'm curious to what extent you think I might unbalance the System by dramatically altering the Setting (I'm excited about using the DFRPG rules for other settings such as Alpha Omega or Shadowrun, for example).

My guess is that it doesn't matter very much because those things are mechanically dealt with by compels or even out-and-out plot devices, but I'm curious if the power level of, say, Evocation is in part dependent on the fact that you're not allowed to kill people.

I'm new to Fate, but it's often asserted that it's hard to build an unbalanced character -- there's too much advantage to be gained by having interesting flaw aspects (and indeed this is one of the things that makes this system so profoundly enticing for me).  To take things to one extreme, if I just used the DFRPG rules for a supers campaign of some kind, and stripped away all the flaws from templates by default, would that significantly alter the baseline power of a 10-refresh character?

[iago]

You can rip out the Laws of Magic if you aren't overly concerned about people turning into Victor Sells style "monsters" due to the corrupting influence of power.  Mechanically, when you break the Laws of Magic you end up gaining power -- specifically for breaking that law again (that's why they're negative refresh).  The more you kill with magic, the better you get at it, but the more it changes you and the closer it takes you to becoming a "monster" rather than a mortal.  If that's not important to you for your game, rip it on out -- though you'll find that without them magic has fewer limits on it to keep people from doing really horrific things to the "bad" guys.

I think you could do a decent supers game with the engine in the DFRPG, but I think it would require a fair amount of tuning all over to get the tone and feel of play more into the right pocket for supers. It's not just a case of "ditch the flaws".

[traeki]

Mechanically, when you break the Laws of Magic you end up gaining power -- specifically for breaking that law again (that's why they're negative refresh).

Ahh, I was wondering how that worked.  Very cool.

I think it would require a fair amount of tuning all over to get the tone and feel of play more into the right pocket for supers. It's not just a case of "ditch the flaws".

Quite.  I was simply using that to illustrate my point.  That said...  I will also be waiting with breath firmly bated for the Fate 3.0 publication.  I mean Oh Man am I excited about that creature.

If you're willing to venture at all off topic, though, I'm curious what you think are the key areas for tuning such things?

My guess would be that by tuning refresh rate, stress boxes, and skill selections you could get pretty far.  What are the other things you find/anticipate have to bend or break when you're tuning a Fate 3.0 instantiation?

[iago]

If you're willing to venture at all off topic, though, I'm curious what you think are the key areas for tuning such things?

My guess would be that by tuning refresh rate, stress boxes, and skill selections you could get pretty far.  What are the other things you find/anticipate have to bend or break when you're tuning a Fate 3.0 instantiation?

Yep, those are a big part of it. For starters, you'll also want to eyeball your philosophy of weapons and armor (in terms of stress bonuses), your notion of how fast consequences recover, how much you want to locate the implementation of superpowers in the skill bloc versus extensions like stunts and powers, what sort of forced movement options you want to fold into the combat system (e.g., knockback and other superheroic effects), how you want to represent ludicrous amounts of strength ("I'll hold up this falling skyscraper!") in ways that scale appropriately to your genre...

[svb1972]

A drop of fresh blood
A doll
A pot of boiling water

Thaumaturgy to slowly boil someone's blood.  Strong link, should be fairly low power and it's WAY less flashy than ripping their heart out.

[iago]

Thaumaturgy to slowly boil someone's blood.  Strong link, should be fairly low power and it's WAY less flashy than ripping their heart out.

Less flashy, yes, but it's not low power. Taking a life is not easy, but it's always possible for those willing to put in the effort.

[Ancalagon]

but I'm curious if the power level of, say, Evocation is in part dependent on the fact that you're not allowed to kill people.

Hello

This is a bit of a tangent, but I feel it's an important question on the "feel" of the system.

In some systems (let's say, many editions of D&D for example), some attacks are too weak to kill a foe, period.  For example, if you threw a dagger, and you're not particularly good at it, at a tough dwarven warrior, this will not kill him, period.  You may hurt him, you will certainly anger him, but he has too many hp, that even with a critical hit, he won't die from it.

In some other systems - and in real life! - even a somewhat weak attack has the potential to kill.  There was a court case in Ottawa a few years back where someone sucker punched someone else, and the single blow ruptured a blood vessel in the victim's brain, and he died on the spot.  That is perhaps an extreme example, but say if I shot at someone with a weak gun, like say a .22, I would still be charged with attempted murder - even though it' s a "weak bullet", it can still kill.   In warhammer frpg 2nd ed, each attack has the potential of having its damage "explode", so an arrow from a puny goblin has a small, but not negligible, chance of slaying a mighty armored knight. 

This is a pretty important question.  If you do it D&D style, the PCs can feel more heroic... but sometimes to the point where it is very plot disruptive.  It can lead to "so what the bad guy is pointing his gun at me and telling me to freeze, I can take the damage!" kind of thinking.   If you use a more realistic system, it can lead to more realistic roleplaying - if someone is shooting at you, it's *bad*, no matter how tough you are.  On the other hand, the adventure can be derailed by an important NPC (or PC) being killed by a rock thrown by some puny goblin punk.

So... how does this work in Fate 3.0?   To get back to the topic at hand, if we are closer to option two, it means that you can't really ever throw aggressive evocations (say, like beams of fire) at other humans because you risk killing them - in other words, you can't use it to soften them up - not without risking breaking the laws of magic.

[iago]

So... how does this work in Fate 3.0?   To get back to the topic at hand, if we are closer to option two, it means that you can't really ever throw aggressive evocations (say, like beams of fire) at other humans because you risk killing them - in other words, you can't use it to soften them up - not without risking breaking the laws of magic.

In Fate 3.0 is a broad topic, since that encompasses both SOTC (where the answer would be "not much risk of killing") and DFRPG (where the answer would be "solid risk of serious injury if not death").  SOTC doesn't do bonuses for weapons (weapons are just color there), and has long stress tracks.  DFRPG has shorter stress tracks and bonuses (sometimes big bonuses) for stress on a successful hit, which can quickly turn into consequences or even a taken out result (which might include death).

I'd say you gotta be careful with those evocations for sure.

[Ancalagon]

Thank you!

I had noted the differences in stress track length between SotC and character sheets posted for Dresden Files characters, but I had attributed that to me not understanding the system.

I imagine that this would be very easy for the GM to adjust to his preference. 

[TheMouse]

Just mathematically, let's consider two characters with equal skill fighting each other. The bonuses don't matter, because one's offensive bonus is equal to the defensive bonus of the other. Assume equally effective investment in Stunts as well.

The dice can produce a maximum of +4 and a minimum of -4. If the attacker gets max and the defender gets min, that's a range of 8. This exceeds the base stress track, even if using so minor of a weapon that it grants no bonus. That means that such a hit goes to Consequences and leaves the character even more vulnerable to future hits.

Setting up a sucker punch might be a maneuver with a free tag. In that case, it adds 2 to the above example. That's 5 beyond the base stress track. I don't know which stress reduction model DFRPG is using for Consequences, but using the normal 2/4/6 structure that seems common among FATE hacks, that means a serious Consequence and the track almost full. That's bad.

[iago]

Setting up a sucker punch might be a maneuver with a free tag. In that case, it adds 2 to the above example. That's 5 beyond the base stress track. I don't know which stress reduction model DFRPG is using for Consequences, but using the normal 2/4/6 structure that seems common among FATE hacks, that means a serious Consequence and the track almost full. That's bad.

It's not *quite* as dire as that, in that you can combine consequences (so you could take a -2 and a -4 in order to get rid of 6 points of stress) and in that you only check off the box it lands on, not all of the boxes up to and including that one.  So, suppose a target with Mediocre Endurance, thus a stress track length of 2 -- Joe Shmoe. He gets hit by maximum bad dice luck: -4 on his defense, +4 on the attack, assuming equal attack and defense skills in action, margin of 8.  That's 8 stress before you add in a Weapon rating for, say, a knife. Let's call that Weapon:2.  10 stress.  He'll need to take a -2 and a -6 (total of -8) consequence set just to get that to land on the stress box in position #2.  Someone comes up and love-taps him for 6 stress on a subsequent attack, and he has to use his remaining -4 to get that to be a 2-stress hit -- but that lands on his already marked out stress box #2.  In that case, it "rolls up", but there's no stress box #3, so he's Taken Out anyway.  Taken Out means the attacker's player gets to define the nature of the defeat -- which could be death.

It's not easy to one-shot kill people in the system (though that's nominally possible), partly because the game is careful not to give players a feeling they could have their characters taken away from them through capriciousness.  BUT, it is easy to one-shot CRIPPLE people in the system, because consequences land fast and hard and the ones past -2 take a while to heal from.  And that's usually enough to make someone think about maybe getting the hell out of this fight.

[Ancalagon]

the chance of someone rolling a - 4 (or a +4) is 1 in 81 (or 1.23%).  Unless I'm really off, the chance of rolling a 0, +1 or -1 on the 4 dice is 51/81 (or 62.9%), so such a dire result (8 apart on the stress track) is not too likely.

... in fact, with the frequency of average rolls, a 1 point difference between the attacker and the defender (the attacker has say, +3 attack vs a + 2 defense) would be quite significant.  Hmm... that can have consequences on how the game runs.

p.s.  I have a cold, so my curve calculations may be off.

[iago]

You're right! A -4 vs +4 situation is much like the one cited above where a punch causes someone's vital bits to rupture and they die.  Rare, but possible.

Of course, when someone swinging the punch is 9 feet tall, warty, green, and has a curious allergy to iron, they don't NEED to get a margin of 8 in order to make you really, really hurt.

[Bosh]

Dresden Files FATE is trying to do different things with its damage system than either D&D or Warhammer, the purposes of the damage systems are:

D&D: you're a big damn hero, (unless you're first level ) big damn heroes do NOT get taken out by puny little untrained goblins no matter how lucky the goblins unless there's is a damn big swarm of goblins.

Warhammer: the world is a nasty dangerous place ANY attack has a chance of doing serious serious damage to your character.

FATE: skill generally matters more than random chance but what can trump skill is how dramatically appropriate something is. Let's say Bob the Bloody killed a women in a fit of rage and then felt remorse about it and tried to reform (Aspect: "Haunted by what he has done"). Meanwhile Sarah's mom got killed by Bob the Bloody swore revenge (Aspect: "You killed my mother. Prepare to die."). Let's say Sarah confronts Bob, gives a speech and then lunges at him with a pointy knife. She's driven by fury and he hesitates because of his feeling of guilt.

Bob is an experienced warrior and Sarah's just a teenager, in D&D Bob could just laugh Sarah off and in Warhammer Sarah attacking Bob and any other random teenager attacking Bob, but in Fate those two aspects get tagged, giving Sarah a +4 bonus, which is enough for Sarah to trump Bob's greater level of skill. It's that sort of thing that makes Fate tick, not trying to be realistic.

[TheMouse]

Ah, I didn't realize that you were using roll up type stress. I had figured from comments made about the faster conflicts rules for SotC that y'all were using a stress as HP type model.

Although I suppose with a base track of two that it hardly matters.