New player/GM - questions regarding Consequences, and sticky aspects

[Nerhesi]

Hello all, I've got a couple of questions that I believe you ladies/gents can help me with

a) How do you generally deal with "sticky aspects", lets say like blindness, which make sense that they should be constantly affecting the afflicted, rather than requiring a fate point to take "advantage" of? The same goes for things like "knocked prone" or "stuck" or "mouth sealed shut".   These are aspects that would result from thaumaturgy as an example (This is probably more of my lack of experience here).

b) What happens when you are forced to take a consequence but you don't have the slot for it? Lets say you have a consequence from any of the various triggers that can cause it (thaumaturgy, conflict, etc...). You're stress track is empty, but you have a severe or moderate consequence, and some other conflict/effect/whatever forces you take a couple of more. What happens? You're not taking stress, you're just forced to take more consequences... are you taken out?

[Haru]

Hello all, I've got a couple of questions that I believe you ladies/gents can help me with

Welcome.

a) How do you generally deal with "sticky aspects", lets say like blindness, which make sense that they should be constantly affecting the afflicted, rather than requiring a fate point to take "advantage" of? The same goes for things like "knocked prone" or "stuck" or "mouth sealed shut".   These are aspects that would result from thaumaturgy as an example (This is probably more of my lack of experience here).

Aspects are true. They are not just a phrase that's stuck somewhere, it's describing a situation in the story. If someone is "blinded", they can't really do anything they would need their eyesight for. You can simply not allow a certain action if an aspect is in play that might prohibit it.

On the other hand, I would discourage "I win" aspects. If you "blind" your opponent, he's not incapacitated, he's just temporarily blinded. You can use the free invoke or spend Fate points on it to get an advantage on it, but you don't get a blanket bonus. Remember that the idea of Fate is not so much to emulate physics but story. When you use an aspect, it's kind of like mentioning it in the story you are telling, highlighting it. Now once or twice in a paragraph, it's fine to mention that your opponent is blinded. But mentioning it every sentence? That's going to sound really daft. It's assumed that if an aspect isn't invoked, it doesn't affect the scene. He might be blinded, but he is such a good fighter that he can still defend himself or even attack you. But you can, of course, invoke the aspect to work against him.

Since DFRPG was released, Fate has gone through quite some evolution. The current version is "Fate Core", which you can get on a pay what you want basis from Evil Hat. It explains the whole Aspects thing far better than DFRPG does, so you might want to check it out, I think it really helps.

b) What happens when you are forced to take a consequence but you don't have the slot for it? Lets say you have a consequence from any of the various triggers that can cause it (thaumaturgy, conflict, etc...). You're stress track is empty, but you have a severe or moderate consequence, and some other conflict/effect/whatever forces you take a couple of more. What happens? You're not taking stress, you're just forced to take more consequences... are you taken out?

Usually in a case like this, the price should be known upfront, when you set the scene. When you do that, the players involved can say that they wouldn't be able to pay that price if it comes to it, so you can change it or take it to the next level. If you can't take a mild consequence, you'll need to take a moderate. And so on. If you are all out, come up with something else together. The cost of a scene doesn't always have to be consequences, there are lots of things that can happen to a character. Take their weapons, their loved ones, themselves.

[Nerhesi]

Thanks for the quick - I feel I may have incorrectly articulated my second question:

b) What happens if a PC or NPC is being afflicted by multiple consequences of the same type? Mechanically.. does it work? Do you just upgrade the consequence until you find a free one and then they are taken out? Do you assign stress instead? Regardless of the conflict source... Say your Broken Arm, then you're Blinded Worse Than a Bat, and finally your Ankle Fractured. Am I making sense?

I'd like to add a third question:

c) Thaumaturgy/rituals seem very powerful (rightfully I guess), as they both bake-in defeating the opposed roll (so basically skill level +4). However... this probably isn't very effective against powerful NPCs or players correct? They may be covered by a ward, happen to have a block up (fudge-spirit shield), enchanted items with blocks built in, or perhaps can even spend fate points... is that a valid understanding?  Or mechanically unable to improve your resistance to thaumaturgy/ritual ... (I hope you can).  This would at the very least downgrade the intended consequence/aspect/result if not cancel it outright.

[Haru]

b) What happens if a PC or NPC is being afflicted by multiple consequences of the same type? Mechanically.. does it work? Do you just upgrade the consequence until you find a free one and then they are taken out? Do you assign stress instead? Regardless of the conflict source... lets say you arm is broken, then something happens to blind you, and your leg may also get broken. Am I making sense?

Yes and no. Fate is a bit funny there.

When you are in a conflict, you take a consequence in order to stay in the fight. You don't just get one pushed onto you. There are situations where the negative outcome can be pre-determined. For example if you want to jump from a moderately tall building, the GM could say "well ok, that's an athletics roll with a difficulty of 5, but if you don't make it, you'll need to take a moderate consequence, since your leg will be broken."

That's basically the only way you can take consequences, conflicts and situations like that.

In a conflict, you take stress. If the stress overflows on your stress track, you are taken out. You can choose to take a consequence and reduce that stress (for example a moderate consequence reduced the incoming stress of one attack by 4 shifts), but you can't be forced to take a consequence. You can always say "that's it, I'm taken out", and that's that. If you take 1 shift of stress and you don't have your mild and moderate consequence, and you need to take a consequence to not be taken out, you would have to take your severe consequence. It reduces the attack by 6 shifts, but since there is only 1 shift in the attack, it might be a bit overkill. And yet, sometimes you just need to do this.

Keep in mind, absorbing 1 shift of stress with a severe consequence is still a severe consequence and should be something severe happening to the character. It's not a 1 shift hit, it's a severe consequence.

I'd like to add a third question:

c) Thaumaturgy/rituals seem very powerful (rightfully I guess), as they both bake-in defeating the opposed roll (so basically skill level +4). However... this probably isn't very effective against powerful NPCs or players correct? They may be covered by a ward, happen to have a block up (fudge-spirit shield), enchanted items with blocks built in, or perhaps can even spend fate points... is that a valid understanding?  Or mechanically unable to improve your resistance to thaumaturgy/ritual ... (I hope you can).  This would at the very least downgrade the intended consequence/aspect/result if not cancel it outright.

A thaumaturgic ritual is, by and large, simply a scene to resolve a problem.

Take Fool Moon. When Harry tries to find out something, we get a scene about him doing a ritual to summon up a demon and ask questions.
If Murphy was the one looking for information, we would have gotten a similar scene, but with her going through Wikipedia and some police databanks in order to retrieve the information.

You can do the same here. You could have a scene with the characters fighting someone, or you can have a ritual scene to do that.

Personally, I don't think the high numbers for a ritual are all that interesting. What's far more interesting to me is having the right components at hand. So instead of saying "he's got a +4 ward around himself", I would rather say "he has a ward around himself, what are you going to do to counter it?"
If they have a vial of his blood, I'd just say the ward is null and void because of the good connection. With a piece of hair, it might be different.

Basically, set the scene of the ritual in a way that makes it awesome. Counting numbers rarely does that.

Determining whether or not you can kill someone with a spell can be done by other means. On the side of the player characters, that's usually a line that's not going to be crossed. And if it is, I will gladly accept that and explore where crossing the line leads, rather than try to figure out where to get the last 2 shifts of power from.

And after all that, I would give it a fixed difficulty. That can still be somewhat high (say 12-16 shifts), but not as high as I've seen some rituals be. Because everything has been accounted for and you can't really actively oppose a spell when it comes flying at you.

Well, unless you're a player character, then I would set up the scene for your to be able to counter it and fling the turkey into the vampire.

[Nerhesi]

Thank you for all your answers thus far. You can see my struggle here in attempting to prep a group to play a game that is very different from our past experiences (Traveller, WoD, D&D, Ars Magica, etc)

One final question. Have you experimented with having fixed modifiers for consequences (and only those, not aspects).  I'm looking at Fate 2E as you'd suggested, and I know things are perfectly even, but I'm curious about having consequences (mild, significant, severe) has standing penalties of -0/-1/-2 or such. Any advice?

[Haru]

I suggested Fate Core. Dresden File is Fate 3, Core is Fate 4. Fate 2 is a whole other monster.

http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core/

[Haru]

I wouldn't go with a modifier like that. Even a +1 modifier is really powerful. Hell, the free invoke on the consequence can be enough to send you down a spiral you can't recover from.

Though, adding to that:
Fate is rather robust towards hacking. I wouldn't do too much to the DFRPG, but if you want to play around with it, there's nothing stopping you. There's also the Toolkit, which suggests a lot of very interesting hacks for Fate:
http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-system-toolkit/

Also, a version of the DFRPG based on Fate Accelerated Edition (FAE) is going to come out next year. I had the privilege of being able to playtest it, and so far, it works really good.

[Sanctaphrax]

In general, if you want an Aspect to do something to a character, it's best to Compel it. A Compel is a fun and fair way to get impeded by your blindness or your broken leg or whatever.

[blackstaff67]

I wouldn't go with a modifier like that. Even a +1 modifier is really powerful. Hell, the free invoke on the consequence can be enough to send you down a spiral you can't recover from.

I'm gonna jump in mechanically, so to speak.  Many d20 players think a +1 isn't all that much and they're right--if we were using d20.  Given that a d20 is used to resolve things, a +1 to something only equals 5% difference to things.

But DFRPG/FATE uses 4d6 and THAT, my friends, generates a bell curve--not the flat line of probability that a d20 makes.  A single +1 can make up to a 13% change to a die roll.  Food for thought, just saying.

[g33k]

... If Murphy was the one looking for information, we would have gotten a similar scene, but with her going through Wikipedia and some police databanks in order to retrieve the information ...

Ummm... or not.

FWIW, Wikipedia is kinda notorious as a source of unreliable info.  It's a great place to get a general overview of commonly-known / uncontested info, but any time there is ANY active agenda or contested opinions in play... well, Wikipedia gets unreliable.  At the VERY most, one can jump to the quoted sources, and begin looking at those.

But most of Murphy's scene's would probably be on the street:  looking for witnesses & checking with sources, etc...  Online research does not good narrative make, IME.

[Haru]

My point was more along the lines of "mundane investigation scene vs. ritual summoning".

[g33k]

My point was more along the lines of "mundane investigation scene vs. ritual summoning".

Fair 'nuf!  Sorry for missing your point, and replying off that point!

[g33k]

I'm gonna jump in mechanically, so to speak.  Many d20 players think a +1 isn't all that much and they're right--if we were using d20.  Given that a d20 is used to resolve things, a +1 to something only equals 5% difference to things.

But DFRPG/FATE uses 4d6 and THAT, my friends, generates a bell curve--not the flat line of probability that a d20 makes.  A single +1 can make up to a 13% change to a die roll.  Food for thought, just saying.

Well, 4dF.

But yeah, it bell-curves, with the peak (average effort) at zero.  Not only that, thr maximum rande of +/-4 is 9 total values, so less than half the range of a d20.  So if you consider Fate's "best roll" of +4 as comparably-good d20's "20," and 4dF's "-4" as akin to d20's "1," then every +1 on a 4dF roll is more like +2 on the 1-20 range; so a FP's worth of benefit is like a "+4" on a d20... IF the d20 were non-linearly skewed toward the 10/11 center.

But 4dF's +4 & -4 each only happen 1/80th of the time, unlike d20's 1/20th of the time.  +'es and -'es to the roll can be worth a HUGE amount, compared to what the roll gives you!

[Taran]

Welcome

In general, if you want an Aspect to do something to a character, it's best to Compel it. A Compel is a fun and fair way to get impeded by your blindness or your broken leg or whatever.

Thank you for all your answers thus far. You can see my struggle here in attempting to prep a group to play a game that is very different from our past experiences (Traveller, WoD, D&D, Ars Magica, etc)

One final question. Have you experimented with having fixed modifiers for consequences (and only those, not aspects).  I'm looking at Fate 2E as you'd suggested, and I know things are perfectly even, but I'm curious about having consequences (mild, significant, severe) has standing penalties of -0/-1/-2 or such. Any advice?

This.

Also, you can (and should) raise difficulties for harder tasks.  Sneaking on 'Dried leaves'  might be a difficulty of 3 instead of 2, or give an opponent a +1 to alertness. 

Otherwise, if the opponent knows the aspect exists, they can tag it or spend a FP on it to get a +2 bonus or the character (or GM) could simply compel the 'dried leaves' aspect to have someone fail their stealth.

I wouldn't give blanket bonuses or penalties for consequences.  They are bad enough as it is.

That said, our table house-ruled that consequences can be tagged once per scene for free if you haven't gotten medical attention for the consequence.