Sample conflicts

[crusher_bob]

Have written up a sample physical and sample social conflict.  Can someone please take a look and see if I missed anything important.

Physical Conflict
Social Conflict

and for bonus points

House rules for thaumaturgy declarations, and example thaumaturgy ritual

[Deadmanwalking]

Fun. Good examples, but there are some issues:

Physical:

Pre Turn Order: Normally, you don't tell the PCs a scene's Aspects, they can use Assessments to figure them out or guess at them (or use Declarations to create them), and if either of those succeeds they get a free tag.

Turn 1: Compels don't usually penalize dice. That's not how they work. She could easily be compelled not to notice the attackers, but the compel would be a flat "You fail." not a penalty to her roll.

You don't roll for Enchanted Items effects (which include Blocks), though you do roll to hit with targetted ones. They provide a flat value (6 in this case). In answer to the questions regarding such items: Yes, you can do all those things.

Turn 2-4: Everything looks good.

Social:

Pre Turn Order: Yor conception of when scenes end matches up with mine, but that's not game rules. Others may have different, equally valid interpretations.

Everything Else: Looks good.

Thaumaturgy:

General: Check out p. 270 under "Casting the Spell" and "When Not To Bother". Thaumaturgy is only dangerous if you're in a hurry.

House Rules:

A lot of these seem unnecessary. Having the target there strikes me as an easily Taggable scene Aspect ("He's Right There!") not anything requiring house rules, ditto most of the rest, really. The 'doing it in your head' rules aren't quite explicit, but they're damn close, just for example.

The exceptions are the timing and how many declarations you can make rules, which strike me as far too mechanistic for what these rules are supposed to be doing: Telling the story of a spell. If you have five great, thematic, ways to use Lore for a declaration that take ten minutes total, by god you should get the full benefits of those! Because that's awesome and will add to the story, and is far more thematic than forcing people to come up with ways to use all their high skills (and ONLY their high skills). Likewise, how long the ritual itself takes should be a 'speed of plot' sort of thing, depending on the specific ritual and who's doing it.

This is FATE, it's not supposed to be as mechanistic and "Insert Slot A into Slot B" as these rules are making it.

The exampl,e itself works fine within the rules used.

[Wordmaker]

I'd be okay with revealing very obvious Aspects to players at the start of each scene, like "Rainy Day," or "Busy Highway." But leaving it to guesses and assessments does net the players a free tag, so there's a bonus for them there if they need to do the extra work.

One thing I spotted is how you're not sure about players having to spend Fate Points to use the Aspects of a scene, since they have their own Aspects they can use. That's the thing, Scene Aspects can be tagged or invoked along with your own. So if a PC has the Aspect "Hotshot Driver" and the Scene has the Aspect "Busy Highway," and he wants to escape from a pursuer in another car, the PC can spend two Date Points, invoking his "Hotshot Driver" and tagging the "Busy Highway" for a total +4 bonus to his roll to lose the other car in traffic. You can't be sure your own Aspects will always be applicable, so having those Scene Aspects lying around gives you more options.

I do like your Scene breakdown from the White Night example. It lets big climaxes be properly epic (if that's the feel of your game) without worrying about the characters using up all their Stress.

[crusher_bob]

Are evocation blocks not rolled too, like the blocks from enchanted items?

Is the sample compel in the social conflict appropriate, or should it have required not interrogating the goons at all?

Reasons of why I wrote the extensive stuff on declarations:
There have already been plenty of questions posted here:
Can you make multiple declarations with one skill?
Can you make declarations with any skill?
etc.

I wanted to head all those questions off; here's explicitly how to make declarations. 
Next, why aren't all declarations 'equal'?  If I have superb resources and got the workspace stunt, what does having a superb workspace allow me to do that my resources didn't let me do already?  If I can make as may declarations with one skill as I want, why can't I make all my declarations with my best skill.  Sire, the other players will probably throw dice at me if I whip out the thesaurus and try to make 15 lore declarations, but how many are acceptable?  And would they still throw dice if I tried to make 5 Lore, 5 resources, and 5 workspace declarations?  Or is it the fact that I'm making 15 declarations the reason they are throwing dice at me?

And then, while reading the 'how to summon a demon thread', the assumption was that you would always take the safe way out, and only summon control -4 power.  Sure, this might take 20 or 30 exchanges, but how long does that take anyway?  And why would I want to rush things? 

So I wrote something that answered all those questions too.
I figured that almost all of the time, time for thaumaturgy would be limited by time in the game world.  You have to have the binding circle complete before the moon comes up, you have to find your buddy before the sun rises, stuff like that.   

If you want to allow the PCs to do some thaumaturgy while someone is breaking down the door, then they can try completing the ritual in one pass by calling a whole lot of power invoking aspects to control it.  And you can say the the 'about five minute' ritual they do is quick enough that they get it done before the door is broken down.

The rules already explicitly cover stuff like exactly how many evocations I can throw, by tracking my stress meter.  If the rules were going to be that light, they could just say you could only throw 'a few' evocations before you got too tired.

[Wordmaker]

I think the majaor difference between evocations and thaumaturgy is the timeframe for casting. With evocations, you usually use a few in a given scene, so it's important, for the sake of drama, to know what kind of strain that's causing. It's not as much of an issue with thaumaturgy, because you're highly unlikely to even attempt a single ritual when you don't have the time and space to do it safely and to rest up afterwards, let alone try to perform more than one in a single scene.

[Deadmanwalking]

Are evocation blocks not rolled too, like the blocks from enchanted items?

Evocation blocks are rolled...but it's purely a control roll, anything in excess of the Power channeled is wasted.

Is the sample compel in the social conflict appropriate, or should it have required not interrogating the goons at all?

Sure. Losing an exchange here sounds about right for a compel. They aren't exactly all or nothing...chance just doesn't play into them.

Reasons of why I wrote the extensive stuff on declarations:
There have already been plenty of questions posted here:
Can you make multiple declarations with one skill?
Can you make declarations with any skill?
etc.

I wanted to head all those questions off; here's explicitly how to make declarations. 

I get that, but by making things so specific you're really limting people's creativity and going directly against the reasons the rules were written as they were. And those aren't hard questions to answer, either ('Yes', and 'If it's appropriate.') respectively.

Next, why aren't all declarations 'equal'?  If I have superb resources and got the workspace stunt, what does having a superb workspace allow me to do that my resources didn't let me do already?  If I can make as may declarations with one skill as I want, why can't I make all my declarations with my best skill.  Sire, the other players will probably throw dice at me if I whip out the thesaurus and try to make 15 lore declarations, but how many are acceptable?  And would they still throw dice if I tried to make 5 Lore, 5 resources, and 5 workspace declarations?  Or is it the fact that I'm making 15 declarations the reason they are throwing dice at me?

This is why tabletop games are better than computer games. You have a GM, someone with judgement who you presumably trust. The GM is and should be the arbiter of this kind of thing based off of the needs of the story and coolness and appropriateness of the declarations in question.

And then, while reading the 'how to summon a demon thread', the assumption was that you would always take the safe way out, and only summon control -4 power.  Sure, this might take 20 or 30 exchanges, but how long does that take anyway?  And why would I want to rush things? 

So I wrote something that answered all those questions too.
I figured that almost all of the time, time for thaumaturgy would be limited by time in the game world.  You have to have the binding circle complete before the moon comes up, you have to find your buddy before the sun rises, stuff like that.   

Those sound like great ideas...but ones that should only come up when dramatically appropriate. Say, when the GM Compels your "Precisio is Everything" Aspect to make the ritual take longer. They should also vary from ritual to ritual. I'll say it again: Speed of Plot. Rituals should take as long as is narratively convenient.

If you want to allow the PCs to do some thaumaturgy while someone is breaking down the door, then they can try completing the ritual in one pass by calling a whole lot of power invoking aspects to control it.  And you can say the the 'about five minute' ritual they do is quick enough that they get it done before the door is broken down.

Absolutely! But you don't really need any house rules to do this.

The rules already explicitly cover stuff like exactly how many evocations I can throw, by tracking my stress meter.  If the rules were going to be that light, they could just say you could only throw 'a few' evocations before you got too tired.

That's exactly what they did. Outside of combat, anyway. Scenes are of arbitrary length and end when the GM says they do...and then your Stress track empties.

Now combat is a bit different, and by necessity a bit more rules heavy, but Thaumaturgy isn't combat, and so it's time frame doesn't need to be nearly as specific. It's complicated enough already, I don't see the need to make it's duration specific (unlike every other non-combat action, mind you) on top of everything else.

[crusher_bob]

Evocation blocks are rolled...but it's purely a control roll, anything in excess of the Power channeled is wasted.

My question was along the lines of this:
Do I roll the dice to modify the power of the block, like if I were defending with athletics?
In the example combat, when Jing-Wei is dodging gunfire fire with lore; she rolls the dice each time there is an attack and modifies her lore each time.
That seems to be the right way to do things, so my question was, do I do the same roll off for evocation defenses?  Or do you not roll the dice for them?

As for the rest, looks like we disagree about rules complexity.

But more generally, are there any places in my house rules that are unclear?  Do there seem to be any way to exploit them?  Is there anything in them that seems to
contradict the fluff?

For example, can the Merlin still stop the Red court with a ward, while combat goes on?
Using your writeup, the Merlin has a base complexity for wards of 18, and a base control of 11 (and an base ritual power of 7).  If we assume that a complexity 18 ward is enough, he can move on to the ritual right away.  With 5 minutes of prep, he could in theory make 8 declarations, which should give him plenty more power if he wants it.

But what about getting the ritual done in a speedy manner?  Assuming none of the senior council are helping him with the ritual, he can safely throw up a complexity 18 ward by himself in about 15 minutes.  But the book says that the Gatekeeper was there to help.  Assuming the Gatekeeper can safely call up around 5 power an exchange for wards, that would cut their safe time down to around 10 minutes (2 power draws).  But what if they wanted to be unsafe, and call up power closer to their discipline?  Then they can do the whole thing in around 5 minutes.

What if a complexity 18 ward isn't going to be enough?  (And they were as desperate as PCs tend to be?)  They could take 5 minutes of prep and get another 12+ complexity, especially with the Gatekeeper to contribute (they can each trivially generate 3 successful declarations).  But how long will it take them to throw up?  We'll say they each have 3 fate points to spend here, that means the Merlin could call up around 15 power and the gatekeeper maybe 10 in the first ritual pass.  Then they can safely complete the ward in the next pass.  If they are truly PC level desperate (and have plenty of fate points), they might be able to do the whole thing in one pass, after taking a plenty of consequences for drawing that much power in one pass.
So, if they are really desperate, the Merlin and the Gatekeeper can do a force 30 or so ward in around 10 minutes.

That's close enough to the time a large combat might be going on in the background for me.

What about the thing Harry does with the ghosts in Grave Peril?  The book lists it as complexity 5.  Harry has a good lore at this point, so he can either accept a minor consequence or invoke an aspect to be able to move directly into the ritual, and he can do it in one pass.  So he can have it done in 'around 5 minutes'.  Since the vampires had fallen back from the battle for a moment, that's good enough for me.

[Deadmanwalking]

My question was along the lines of this:
Do I roll the dice to modify the power of the block, like if I were defending with athletics?
In the example combat, when Jing-Wei is dodging gunfire fire with lore; she rolls the dice each time there is an attack and modifies her lore each time.
That seems to be the right way to do things, so my question was, do I do the same roll off for evocation defenses?  Or do you not roll the dice for them?

You roll as normal for controlling Evocation. If you roll less than the Power you've channeled, you take backlash or fallout and the spell either works or doesn't as normal (unless it's a Rote, in which case it just flat-out succeeds). If you roll equal to or higher than the Power channeled, you get the full block effect of the shifts of power channeled but no more. This, IMO, helps make up for spell defenses often being much higher than non-magical defenses.

As for the rest, looks like we disagree about rules complexity.

Clearly. 

But more generally, are there any places in my house rules that are unclear?  Do there seem to be any way to exploit them?  Is there anything in them that seems to contradict the fluff?

Contradict directly? No. At least, not that I can remember, though I bet quite a few spells take much longer than your system would indicate (as it's kinda low-end), and on a tangent, I'd bet Strength 20 is more than sufficient to stop an army, 30 seems excessive.

[Korwin]

If the total complexity of the ritual is equal to below your base complexity, you don't have to do any preparation at all. You can do the whole thing in your head.

Isnt that a normal rule?
Or do you mean by "in the head" like

(click to show/hide)

Harry in Changes (Calling Uriel and Mab)

I like the 5 minutes of preparations HR.

You can make a number of declarations equal to your skill (or workspace, etc) level minus two.

So you would need an Workspace 3 to use +2 skills.

Question: Do failed declarations carry an penalty besides lost time?

Ow, my aching knees

 
That I dont like. Anther needed skill for Wizards? (Discipline, Lore, Conviction, Resources, Endurance)
Not shure I like the 5 Minutes per exchange rule. (But I like it better than speed of plot or how can I fasttalk the GM into as little time as possible.)

How about 3 different casting speeds? Like in the preparation?
Sadly I have no idea how that would work.

On the whole I like you Thaumaturgic HR and I will base mine on yours.

[Korwin]

Reading the Physical example at the moment:

I dont repeat what was allready mentioned. I'll only state what I think nobody covered yet.

Normally, magical shields persist for the whole exchange, so the block should stay up the whole exchange

I was under the impression, that an exchange would be a round (in D&D Terms), and the whole combat would be the scene.

The second goon rolls 4df and gets (0, 0, 1, 1) adding his good (+3) gun skill, and his tagged aspect gives him a total of +7 to hit

Cant tag the aspect a second time.

The defense provided by the Lucky Dictionary collapses, the goon has a margin of success of +0, and he is using a weapon:2, so Jing-Wei takes 2 points of stress:

Not shure about this, if the Block gets canceled out, does it still decrease the attack?

[Deadmanwalking]

I was under the impression, that an exchange would be a round (in D&D Terms), and the whole combat would be the scene.

True. How's this relevant?

Cant tag the aspect a second time.

You can if the two each had the Aspect individually, which seems likely since each was sneaking independently.

Not shure about this, if the Block gets canceled out, does it still decrease the attack?

Yep. On the attack that cancels it out anyway, later attacks not so much.

[crusher_bob]

I was under the impression, that an exchange would be a round (in D&D Terms), and the whole combat would be the scene.

Yes, I was just explicitly pointing out that the block works against multiple attacks, rather than stopping just one.  In theory, it can block every attack you take that round.

Cant tag the aspect a second time.

Two goons, each with Lying in Wait they each tag their own aspect once.

Not shure about this, if the Block gets canceled out, does it still decrease the attack?

Yes, it just doesn't defend against any following attacks.

[EDIT]
heh.

[crusher_bob]

Isnt that a normal rule?
Or do you mean by "in the head" like [...]

The rules imply it, I just went ahead and made it explicit.  Harry does something similar in, erm, White Night I think, when using a spell to contact Elaine.  It's also why I throw in the comment about not being able to drive while doing that...

I like the 5 minutes of preparations HR.So you would need an Workspace 3 to use +2 skills.

The stuff about workspace is mostly there to make the High Quality Workspace stunt explicitly worth something.

Question: Do failed declarations carry an penalty besides lost time?

No. 

That I dont like. Anther needed skill for Wizards? (Discipline, Lore, Conviction, Resources, Endurance)

That rule is there for a few different reasons.
1
To help keep a cap on guys who want to do huge thaumaturgy when they have several days to do nothing.

2
To make the various shortcuts to power slightly more attractive.  If there's no real cap on how long you can do the ritual, you can just sit down and do a power 40 ritual 'safely'.  And note that being restricted is only worth a -1.  So guys like Harry with a higher endurance than discipline can do rituals for as long as they want to, really.

3
To prevent the PC from just doing the, "well I have discipline 5" so can just draw one power an exchange for the whole thing...

Not shure I like the 5 Minutes per exchange rule. (But I like it better than speed of plot or how can I fasttalk the GM into as little time as possible.)

When first writing, I hadn't intended it to be a literal five minutes per pass.  For example, if the PC pulls of some shenanigans to do the whole ritual in one pass, then you can just declare that it took "exactly 2 minutes and 47 seconds" or something.  But when you want to know about how long the whole multipass ritual took, saying that each power draw takes "a few minutes" would only confuse matters.

[Korwin]

Normally, magical shields persist for the whole exchange, so the block should stay up the whole exchange

True. How's this relevant?

Got the wrong impression from the phrasing, I read "whole exchange" to mean whole encounter...

1
To help keep a cap on guys who want to do huge thaumaturgy when they have several days to do nothing.

Wanted to write, they need still to sleep. But with the right powers, they dont...
Another question, how would Thoughness and Recovery Powers work with this rule?

2
...And note that being restricted is only worth a -1.

Ah, so with Diciple 5 and an +1 Focus for Controll you can still safely do Rituals for weeks?
Is that your indent?

[crusher_bob]

Ah, so with Diciple 5 and an +1 Focus for Controll you can still safely do Rituals for weeks?
Is that your indent?

Note that you'd need control +1 for every aspect of thaumaturgy that you wanted to do.  Also, having 6 control lets you safely summon 2 power a pass, so your rituals can go twice as fast.  The endurance limit can also be gotten around that way.