Help with an item of power.

[pole287]

One of my players is planning on having a character who is defined my a magic deck of cards with various effects depending on what is drawn. He will have to regularly draw cards from the deck roughly once an hour. The effects will not only be positive they will just as often be negative. I need help getting stats for it and to figure out the cost. The character is going to be a pure mortal in all likelihood the deck is going to be from some god of chaos or trickery not sure if he obtained or stole it from the god or if he just got it somewhere else and it was made by the god.

[JDK002]

You'll need to clarify what exactly the deck is going to do, and how mechanically you plan on making it positive and negative.  Are these cards going to give random powers?  Create scene aspects?  Act as attacks?

You could get clever with it and come up with several aspects, powers, attacks, blocks, ect.  Write them on actual cards, and whenever the player uses the deck he actually draws an actual card from the deck.  Whatever card is drawn is what happens.  As for cost probably a -1 or -2 given the totally random nature of the ability.

Also not sure if you were referring to the actual Pure Mortal template, but just for the sake of clarity, you can't use the template (with the bonus refresh) and have an Item of Power.  Having any supernatural powers at all, even by extension, nulls the refresh bonus of Pure Mortal.

[pole287]

Honestly not really sure how to do it that's what i am asking for help on with ideas. Would i use the minor talent template then? My player just expressed interest in it and I wanted to know what peoples ideas for the negatives and positives would be.

[crusher_bob]

As an item of power, he'd have to have an aspect associated with the item.  Any particularly bad effects could then be compels based on that aspect.

Are the powers supposed to be 'instant' when drawn, or for example, if he gets the ability to breathe fire, does that ability stick around until it's replaced by another one?

Possible ways of implementing this:
--------------

Ritual/Channeling/sponsored magic.
So, the player would determine the effect he wants using the evocation/thaumaturgy rules, and the explanation for how it happens is that the character draws card out.

Then, any time you decide to make the power do something different, instead of what he wanted it to do, you hit him up with a compel.  Or if you decide that a random effect from the items makes an especially noteworthy problem, that's another compel.

----------------

Another way to implement this is with variable powers (look under the shapeshifting section), possibly true shape shifting, and then some limitations slapped on.

This version would give him 'minor' effects that are mostly reflected by the ability to shift his skill points around, plus how many ever points of variable power you can fit in.

[mithrandirthewhite]

Another idea would be to build a tarot deck with each card acting as a sponsor ritual.  This can be used as a draw a card at random for a random effect that may help you or not, or the deck can be used as a divinition tool.

[pole287]

Another idea would be to build a tarot deck with each card acting as a sponsor ritual.  This can be used as a draw a card at random for a random effect that may help you or not, or the deck can be used as a divinition tool.

Something more along the lines of this in the random aspect of drawing a card.
So i guess my thing would work something like this the character would be compelled every so often to draw a card putting some type of effect upon the character. The item would cause whatever it gave whether negative or positive until the next card is drawn and the effect changes. So the big thing is what kind of effects should I have happen either positive or negative?

[Haru]

The idea to actually make a deck of cards is really awesome, and I encourage you to do that.

Then I would go and make the stats for the item something like this:

Deck of Tricks [-3]
It is what it is: And that's an old deck of 52 playing cards plus jokers.
One Time Discount [+1]: A deck of cards is a small item.
Luck of the Draw[-4]: As a standard action, you may draw a card from the deck. You are granted the powers attributed to the card. The powers last for 1 scene.
You've got to know when to hold 'em...: You may spend a fate point to have your current card last for one more scene.
...know when to fold 'em: Once per scene, you may spend a fate point to immediately draw a new card from the deck, after you just drew a card as a standard action.

Luck of the draw is modeled after modular abilities. Since you can't choose your power, I reduced the modular base cost by 1 point of refresh. You'd have to have powers worth approximately 3 refresh on any card, but not all of them have to be very useful or work together very well.

Example cards:

• evocation (offensive air specialization)
• Gaseous Form
• Document Forging (stunt) + superb deceit + "Mimic document" (the card acts as psychic paper)
• channeling (fire) + focus item (+1 offensive fire power and control)
• superb driving + superb scholarship + ghost speaker
• Diminutive Size + inhuman strength
• superb investigation + Psychometry + Quick Eye (stunt)

Well... you get the idea. You can easily change the 3 refresh, if you want more or less refresh on those powers. The superb skills are based on the mimic abilities power and can be replaced by higher or lower skill levels if you like, but I would always grant the maximum skill level your campaign allows. And of course those skills are not subject to the pyramid, they are extra.

[ImpishMortal]

The idea to actually make a deck of cards is really awesome, and I encourage you to do that.

Then I would go and make the stats for the item something like this:

Deck of Tricks [-3]
It is what it is: And that's an old deck of 52 playing cards plus jokers.
One Time Discount [+1]: A deck of cards is a small item.
Luck of the Draw[-4]: As a standard action, you may draw a card from the deck. You are granted the powers attributed to the card. The powers last for 1 scene.
You've got to know when to hold 'em...: You may spend a fate point to have your current card last for one more scene.
...know when to fold 'em: Once per scene, you may spend a fate point to immediately draw a new card from the deck, after you just drew a card as a standard action.

Luck of the draw is modeled after modular abilities. Since you can't choose your power, I reduced the modular base cost by 1 point of refresh. You'd have to have powers worth approximately 3 refresh on any card, but not all of them have to be very useful or work together very well.

Example cards:

• evocation (offensive air specialization)
• Gaseous Form
• Document Forging (stunt) + superb deceit + "Mimic document" (the card acts as psychic paper)
• channeling (fire) + focus item (+1 offensive fire power and control)
• superb driving + superb scholarship + ghost speaker
• Diminutive Size + inhuman strength
• superb investigation + Psychometry + Quick Eye (stunt)

Well... you get the idea. You can easily change the 3 refresh, if you want more or less refresh on those powers. The superb skills are based on the mimic abilities power and can be replaced by higher or lower skill levels if you like, but I would always grant the maximum skill level your campaign allows. And of course those skills are not subject to the pyramid, they are extra.

Very nice!

[Becq]

Haru's got a good idea with Modular Abilities to represent the potential bonuses imparted.  You might add "Human Form, involuntary change" to reflect that the benefits aren't always available, and availablility isn't under the character's control.  And as others have mentioned, a "bad draw" would reflect a compel on the attached aspect (which could be "bought off", possibly by the mechanic Haru suggested).

[Grentain]

Yo! I'm actually the player in question, and I appreciate the feedback! I admit that I'm not particularly familiar (read: at all familiar) with the Dresden Files system, unfortunately, though I hope to be rectifying that shortly.

The idea for the deck was that, as Pole had already said, the character would feel a compulsion to draw a card at a regular interval, with the card drawn affecting the character in a given way until the next card was drawn. One of the things that I'd considered is having the effect of the cards not necessarily be immediately obvious; for example, to everyone (including the person drawing the card) it would look like a normal playing card, and it would be left to experience to figure out what benefit (or malediction) the character gets. So the character may draw a card and say, "Well, nothing seems different." until he realizes that gouts of flame are spitting from his mouth. In addition to this, the entire deck appears blank until it's time to draw another card (so no stacking the deck!)

Some ideas that I had were to have the suits and colors of the deck be attuned to respective "families", or things they represent, insomuch that red suits and black suits would internally have similar affects to each other, but distinctly different ones from the other color. Same for suits. It would give a form of structure to the deck, rather than "I pull this ability out of nowhere when I draw a card". We'd discussed the possibility of using fudge dice to determine whether the affect on the character was positive, negative, or miscellaneous.

An example might be that Red cards affect the character's body, and the suit of Hearts affect it in a "natural" way, so a red hearts card might affect the character's toughness, stamina, strength, speed, etc. So if they got a card that affected their toughness, they might get supernaturally tough, or they might get a temporary case of hemophilia. Or they might be able to drink a bunch of booze without becoming wasted (Neutral).

[JDK002]

An easy way to handle the positive/negative effect is to tack on a temporary aspect to the character every time a card is drawn.  This way the GM can compel it (negative) as they see fit, and the player can invoke it with fate points if they want (positive).  I would even treat the first compel of any "deck aspect" as a debt point.

Example: You draw a card that gives you Inhuman Strength.  So you also get the aspect "I Don't Know My Own Strength".  Then say you need to make an emergency call on your cell phone.  The GM compels the aspect and you break the phone trying to dial.  On the other side, you could later invoke the aspect with a fate point to help break down a door with your new super strength.

[Haru]

Haru's got a good idea with Modular Abilities to represent the potential bonuses imparted.  You might add "Human Form, involuntary change" to reflect that the benefits aren't always available, and availablility isn't under the character's control.  And as others have mentioned, a "bad draw" would reflect a compel on the attached aspect (which could be "bought off", possibly by the mechanic Haru suggested).

I'd kind of tied in human form when I reduced the modular abilities base costs. I would not so much create "bad draws", every card is kind of good, but a specific card might be extremely inappropriate for a specific situation.

But yes, instead of drawing cards IRL, you could simply chose the modular abilities at the time you draw the card in the game. I like the randomness though, and it can make for interesting games if you suddenly lose your fighting powers and have to rely on social skills.

@Grentain
If you take my suggestion as a starting point, you can dedicate the powers you think would be fitting to the cards in question. Take actual playing cards and write/draw on them. You could even leave some of them blank if you run out of ideas, and when you draw one of those, you can say "hey, you know what would be cool as a power right now?" and just fill it in as you go. I would have jokers work like actual jokers, so that you can choose a card and therefore the powers granted by the deck. That the deck is immune to being stacked goes without saying

DFRPG makes a big distinction between player knowledge and character knowledge, so while you may know what a card can do, your character might not. Yes, other RPGs make that too, but I think it is to a far bigger degree here.

Spouting gouts of flames would probably be "Breath Weapon (fire)".

Though I have to say, while it is an awesome idea, it is an incredibly complicated one for a first character. Depending on how much refresh you put into it, it will be like playing a new character every other scene, and you'll have 52 of those. So I'd probably start low, make it a 2 refresh item with 2 refresh powers. I've put some examples up there, but if you have more questions, ask away.

[Grentain]

I appreciate the concern for making a complicated character be my first one, but honestly I think that's the best way to keep myself interested in it. I'm no stranger to table-top RPGs or roleplaying in general, though I am new to the Fate system. I tend to pick up things fairly well, though, so I wager I'll be mostly alright.

I liked the suggestion of tacking on an aspect to the power, so that it could affect the character in positive and negative ways (after all, if I got stuck with a draw that made me weaker than a wet noodle in a scene where we're fighting, that wouldn't be much fun, would it?) and allow for Compels. I likely wouldn't write on the actual cards, but rather have a chart or something. I'm kind of interested in starting to write a back-story for the gent, now, figure that he's got a similar chart but hasn't quite figured out what every card means.

[UmbraLux]

The idea for the deck was that, as Pole had already said, the character would feel a compulsion to draw a card at a regular interval, with the card drawn affecting the character in a given way until the next card was drawn. One of the things that I'd considered is having the effect of the cards not necessarily be immediately obvious; for example, to everyone (including the person drawing the card) it would look like a normal playing card, and it would be left to experience to figure out what benefit (or malediction) the character gets. So the character may draw a card and say, "Well, nothing seems different." until he realizes that gouts of flame are spitting from his mouth. In addition to this, the entire deck appears blank until it's time to draw another card (so no stacking the deck!)

Here's a possibility (spoilered for length): 

(click to show/hide)

Draw a card, choose between gaining a declared aspect related to the suit's element, focus, or skills or gain a power from the category assigned to the card.  Normally, the power can't cost more refresh than whatever you pay for this item +1 but cards may alter that...for good or ill.

Hearts
   Water
   Love, Spirituality, Mental & Emotional state
    - Alertness, Conviction, Discipline, Empathy, Presence, Rapport
   Psychic Powers

Diamonds
   Earth
   Wealth & Physical state
    - Athletics, Burglary, Endurance, Resources, Survival
   Ritual / Thaumaturgy
   
Clubs
   Fire
   Wisdom, Industriousness, Creativity
    - Craftsmanship, Driving, Investigation, Lore, Performance, Scholarship, Stealth
   Channeling / Evocation

Spades
   Air
   Adversity, Challenge
    - Contacts, Deceit, Fists, Guns, Intimidation, Might, Weapons
   Strength, Toughness, and Speed Powers

2, 3, 4, 5 = table gets one free compel against character; gained power max is refresh cost of item
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 = gained power max is refresh cost of item +1
J, Q, K, A = character gets one free tag on any aspect for suit related skills, actions, or powers; gained power max is refresh cost of item +2

[tymire]

You could make this your High Concept and use compells and fate points from there.  That way you keep the pure mortal bonus.  A lot of the time it really won't matter.  Taking a card every hour in game would make things very crunchy and more about the character than the overall story, which imo isn't a good thing.

Past that if you are going to use an actual deck, definately use a tarot one.  Your negatives would just be the card reversed. When you consider the fact that they also have multiple meanings...