There's an easy fix for that!

To be honest I didn't need to change the system as much as this; I could have simply said that establishing a shield creates an Aspect obstacle with a specific difficulty to overcome of the shifts put into the shield. I like this more dynamic version quite a bit more, though. It gives the player more control and could lead to some tense scenes as he runs out of invocations...

Succeeding with Style doesn't apply as-written to Dresden-style magic because when you're Evoking you set out to achieve a certain number of shifts and your effect can't go beyond that except that it increases the difficulty of resistance rolls against your Evocation (i.e. if I channel five shifts of power but end up rolling 7 on my Control roll I don't get to add any extra shifts of power to the damage, but the opponent has to roll against 7 to defend... that's if I'm remembering correctly).

My example therefore assumed that he was channelling 5 shifts of power on a Gain Advantage Evocation. The first 3 to get two free invocations (you're right - I forgot about the first free invocation at one shift) of the created advantage and another two to guarantee a third free invocation. This parallels the previous rules for Manoeuvring with Evocation, which set the base difficulty at 3 and gave extra duration for additional shifts.

Whether or not he could get invocations on top of that by rolling 7, 9 etc. shifts in the end is up for the individual group (or an official adaptation of Dresden to the new Core Fate rules) to decide.

You could of course ignore Lenny's suggestion of expanding the Success With Style mechanic and indefinite duration for magically gained Advantages to say it's a flat 3 difficulty to create an advantage + an extra turn of Duration per extra shift channelled and then use the Success With Style rule as-is.

There's no right or wrong way of doing it really, until someone makes an official magic extras pack.

For my game I like the idea that the shifts of power put into the spell (for a shield at least) give its overall power level, so I wouldn't grant additional free invocations if Harry succeeded with style on the Discipline roll even if he got more shifts than he needed to reach the number of shifts of power he channelled. He's 'pre buying' the free invocations instead.

Does that make sense?

I've just realised Barriers are gone too. They've been replaced with Scene Aspects. Not a big problem as they can be functionally identical, but actually being Aspects makes them better as they can be riffed off more easily.

Two other major changes in Fate Core: No Social stress track (social conflict is now just a specific type of Mental conflict; I think this makes sense as the difference between them was always a little fuzzy anyway) and you get just one set of Consequences for both Physical and Mental conflicts.

My gut reaction to the merged consequences was to not like it due to the illogical nature of not being able to, say, get a mild headache in the same scene as one sprains an ankle, but on the other hand it should speed conflicts up a bit and limit the overall number of consequences suffered by a given character.

I'm definitely going to adopt at least some of the conflict resolution systems from Fate Core as I think they bring an awesome extra level of dramatic control to the hands of my players. I look forward to watching them squirm on the horns of this dilemma: Do they just fail, or do they succeed at some heavy cost? Ahhh, drama fuel!

On the subject of DFRPG interacting with Fate Core, I've been discussing with Leonard Balsera how the new system deals with what would have been Blocks in Dresden Files. Specifically Shield evocations. The new system doesn't have Blocks but instead handles 'block actions' as Gain Advantage actions that set up an Aspect that needs to be overcome in order to pursue a certain action.

Here's how our conversation went:

Leonard's comments are in bold.

Hi hi, been pumping for answers on Twitter and Fred asked me to put them here instead. I'm liking the core contest rules but there's a bit of adjustment needed in my head from the Dresden rules (which I'm still getting to grips with anyway!)

I'd like to implement the clear, concise conflict resolution system in Fate Core in my Dresden game but I'm a little confused by the replacement for "Block". The sidebar says that to 'block' one now generally instead creates an Aspect with "Create Advantage" that must be Overcome. It then goes on to say that to Defend another person requires a full defence action. I take this to mean that one can defend someone else by setting up an obstacle (for example a book-case that can be hidden behind) that must be Overcome OR one can directly defend for someone else by taking a Full Defence action. Is this correct?

So, here's as concise as I can get it, and I'll review the draft to get it clearer.

* You can't use the normal Defend action to defend someone else from an attack, unless it's the only thing you do on your turn (aka full defense).

* You *can* put yourself between an attacker and a target, but that just means they're attacking you instead.

* You *can* create an advantage that forces the attacker to overcome an obstacle before they attack, which might disrupt the attack.

Thanks Leonard: Okay, so I'd read it right; I think it was the use of - between the two clauses that made them look like one followed directly from the other.

I was giving a concrete example on Twitter because I had a similar situation come up last night in my Dresden game.
A Wizard used Force magic to set up a Manoeuvre/Block to force a spirit creature out of a trailer just as it was about to scythe a victim. He did this by channelling 3 points into an Evocation for a Manoeuvre with some extra shifts to make it more potent, applying the Forced Out aspect to the spirit. He could just as easily have set up a 5-shift Block to stop the spirit, and that's what I'll assume for the purposes of conceptualising the new rules.
Under the new rules the Block would be represented as him taking a Gain Advantage action (and an Evocation) to apply the Magic Force Field Aspect to the scene. The spirit would then have needed to Overcome that Aspect (presumably needing to get more shifts than went into setting it up?) to get through it, presuming it's reasonable for it to penetrate a magic wall of force?

What about the good old shield-bracelet magic bullet shield? I presume the player would manoeuvre to Gain Advantage, setting up an Aspect of "Magic Shield", and then apply that Aspect to defend himself from bullets etc. when making a Defend roll against firearms attacks. Alternatively is it simply assumed bullets can't hit him while the Magic Shield is in effect unless the attacker rolls to Overcome the defence? This might vary according to who's a PC and who's an NPC, if you could answer the 'core interpretation' of both situations that would be really helpful.
I guess I'm a little concerned that the flexibility of multiple possible approaches to dealing with this sort of thing might make it hard to be consistent from one encounter to another if I forget what I did last time and work it out from first principles all over again.

In the alternate quantum universe where I had Fate Core before I designed Dresden, I would likely have said that evocation blocks/wards/whatever are technically creating an advantage, and I probably would extend the success with style rules to say that there's another free invocation to stack on at 5 shifts, then again at 7, etc.

Then, the option would go to the caster as to how he wants to let those ablate - as invocations s/he checks off over time when s/he defends, or as an imposed obstacle that s/he gives a value to in the moment, using several of those at once. All the player has to worry about in the moment is "oh, something is bumping on my shield, I get to do something".

In the fiction, that would mean that the rubric for duration for that kind of thing would switch over to "as long as the spell energy lasts". Which some people would consider apropos for Dresden, in any case.
With my luck, though, that solution breaks eight other things in Dresden.

Thanks very much. I like the idea of Duration coming down to 'available spell energy' where you get multiple 'hits' according to how much energy is in it. Extra free Invocations at higher shifts seems like a good way of doing it, and it does seem more in keeping with the way Harry uses his shields than a shield of fixed duration. He generally seems to be able to hold his shields up indefinitely with them only draining him when he actually takes hits.

This does lead me to ask: Are there plans to release a short document updating the Dresden Magic and other systems (where necessary) to work with Fate Core? In the meantime I really like what you've done with the 3, 5, 7 etc. shift shield idea and I might just implement that as is!

 It seems that this is a really easy way to implement any Evocation that lasts a matter of turns; you can sustain it with Fate Points after that, but once you're outta Fate points and out of free invocations, it's gone. Would you require an invocation every time the shield's used defensively if you were using the mechanic you suggested to stop it from lingering more than a few turns? Otherwise it would last the scene like any other 'sticky' Aspect, right?

Require an invocation? Probably not - for all practical intents and purposes, it's a scene aspect like any other, as you suggest.

So I could see charging up a shield when a fight starts and saving it a while for when you really need it.

That seems reasonable to me. Once you're out of Fate Points or tags it would only be a limited defence, so would represent the stage at which Harry's still just about holding up a guttering shield. I might be inclined to have an attack that went through it at that stage overcome the shield and put it out altogether, as it's on its last legs in those circumstances.

The result? No matter what object you throw, the weapon rating will be the same for the same spell. The advantage of throwing objects instead of blasting directly with magic is not extra damage - it is your attack ignoring magical defenses. The target is behind a threshold? That won't mean much for that knife thrown at him at 5 miles/second. Neither will a magic circle that blocks magic or the target having outright magical immunity.

That certainly makes it easier to adjudicate such events; it means I don't have to try and work out the 'weapon bonus' for a truck!

When you create special effects instead, you use your shifts of power towards that effect instead of weapon rating. Your control is no longer your attack roll because you are not attacking with the spell as a weapon. You create an effect and that effect then becomes the attack (it usually doesn't have a weapon rating)

So GM allowing they could sacrifice the 'weapon' damage of their evocation to instead create a temporary Aspect sorta-kinda per the Special Effect rules?

To use a concrete example let us say that Harry channels 6 points of Spirit to pick up a nearby SUV and hurl it at an enemy ghoul. Normally that would be a +6 damage attack (because he doesn't need to channel any of the Shifts into area effect etc.). He decides that he doesn't want to outright kill the ghoul with this attack because he wants to ask some questions, but he thinks a few broken bones might soften him up some.

He therefore decides to channel those Shifts of 'weapon damage' into creating a Special Effect/Aspect of "Pinned by an SUV". If he gets past the ghoul's defence he then applies his excess shifts as damage (as the weapon rating is now 0) and also applies the Aspect he desires. The difficulty for the Ghoul to clear the Aspect will be 6.

This example is complicated some by the fact that "Pinned by an SUV" really sounds more like a Block (against moving, if nothing else) but I'm not sure how I would resolve that element. Perhaps he could split his excess shifts between damage and a Block? That would mean he's applying an Attack, Manoeuvre and a Block all in one action (albeit at reduced efficacy for each), making it perhaps over-powered? Surely the ghoul shouldn't be able to just spend a Fate point to ignore the compel on "Pinned by a truck" when he tries to run away?

How would you chaps deal with this specific example?

The main reason I might want to allow this sort of thing is for realism. It seems likely that hurling a car at someone should have the chance of hurting them as well as applying an Aspect.

Of course, the wizard using TK to drop a truck on someone needs to have a 'truck' aspect of some kind to tag or invoke in order to make that spell work (and if I were GMing, the extended duration would be the whole of the effect that invoke would provide), while the wizard using TK directly doesn't have any such restriction.

That makes sense; they certainly don't get to use the truck as an Attack because they're using it as a Block. The rules get a little fuzzy here however as certainly it would seem that you might want to combine an Attack with a Block or a Manoeuvre; I suppose the way to do that would be to just attack and suggest that a logical Consequence of being hit by a telekinetically hurled truck might be "Pinned by a truck".

I'm not sure if the system already allows for this, but what about occasions where a manoeuvre or block would logically not only apply an Aspect but also stress of some kind? e.g. a truck hurled with the intent to apply "Pinned by a truck" as a manoeuvre seems likely to also cause some stress.

Hello all! I'm pretty new to the Dresden Files RPG (ran my first session last night) and I'm trying to get my brain around the magic system with a player of mine.

We think the example of "Entanglement" is incorrect. It states that the spell provides 1 scene of action because of the shift put into Duration, but the book says that you can increase the duration of Evocations by one Exchange per shift. If so, that would put the Duration of this spell at 1 Exchange.

Now, if the entanglement were caused by earth or branches etc. then I'd rule that it would remain after the spell itself had finished, leaving the victim needing to Manoeuvre to clear the tag, but as it is it describes a 'band of force' which should surely dissipate in the usual timeframe.

Are we right?