Talents, Focus and Equipment

The rules basically extend the game by adding a new talent – the Poison talent, and the Poison ability focus. The focus is a Cunning based skill, and as in the game, it requires at least the Focus to use poison (without accidentally harming yourself). Poison typically works best on edged weapons, and unlike the CRPG, you can apply it on bolts and arrows.

Components for crafting poisons should be rare to come by – no price is listed (yet), and if the players are foraging, a Cunning roll against a difficulty of 11 should be made (if the character is in an environment where such things could grow) to locate the crafting component needed. A downtime of one day minimal is needed for a single flask of poison, which is good for 3 doses. Poison expires within a minute – exposure to air quickly cause them to lose their effectiveness.

Deathroot Extract

Equipment: Deathroot, Flask
Requires: Cunning 1, Novice Poison talent, Poison focus

Attack deals +1 Spirit damage, and you can use 4 Stunt Points to stun the target for 1 round.

Venom

Equipment: Venom Extract, Flask
Requires: Cunning 1, Poison novice talent, Poison focus

Attack deals +1 Spirit damage, and you can use 4 Stunt Points to reduce target’s Speed by 2 and Initiative by 2.

Concentrated Deathroot Extract

Equipment: Deathroot, Flask, Distillation Agent
Requires: Cunning 2, Novice Poison talent, Poison focus

Attack deals +2 Spirit damage, and you can use 3 Stunt Points to stunt the target for 1 round.

Concentrated Venom

Equipment: Venom Extract, Flask, Distillation Agent
Requires: Cunning 2, Novice Poison talent, Poison focus

Attack deals +2 Spirit damage, and you can use 3 Stunt points to reduce target’s Speed by 2 and Initiative by 2.

Crow Poison

Equipment:  Toxin Extract, Deathroot, Distillation Agent, Flask
Requires: Cunning 3, Journeyman Poison talent, Poison focus

Attack deals +3 Spirit damage, and you can use 2 Stunt points to stun target for 1 round.

Why a One Roll Combat?

The idea of one roll combats come from video games – the famous “reaction sequences” from God of War and its numerous clones as well as the Time Crisis arcade games. In those games, usually, out from nowhere, an enemy will launch at you or an event will demand your immediate attention. On the screen a button will flash and you have to hit it at the right timing to avert imminent doom. Resident Evil 4 uses this to good effort, with an entire fights played through by pressing a combination of right buttons.

An armed confrontation, in a RPG, is usually a time for thrill and action-packed roleplaying; but sometimes tactical rules could drag the process down and it becomes a number-crunching, planning-laden process. The motive of thinking up a one-roll combat is to have the thrill of combat without all the lengthy dice rolling.

When to use One Roll Combat?

One of the features of old-school dungeon crawls, and in console rpgs, are random encounters (or planned encounters for the the good old dungeon). The intent is to soften up the adventurers before they come to meet the final bad guy at the end. The idea of one roll combats is for those cases – not for epic, dramatic, pivotal showdowns (which are often slow-downs as well)  but for fighting mooks.

A lot of emphasis on one roll combat is more than just attribute + skill or a roll-under of certain sum of number – but also the use of environment, tactics and strategies to outsmart your opponent. While usually in a normal combat encounter the usage of those is broken into several rounds, for a one-roll combat system this is all abstracted in one quick roll (or several rolls, for each of the player).

Actually, another inspiration for this idea comes from Tunnels and Trolls, where everyone rolls their combat dice and adds and compare it with the monsters. No movement chart, no flanks or attacks of opportunities. Well, no formal rules, anyway. It is possible to use “saving rolls” for other effects, but there’s only GM’s fiat to work that out.

Likely Objections to ORC

Right, typing “One Roll Combat” is tiring my fingers out, so let use ORC as its shorten name instead. One of the biggest objections to ORC is that it takes out all the planning and the fun crunchy part of the game. It’s a valid one; however, ORC is not intended to replace all combat. It is a pacing tool, as one could see later.

A second challenge to ORC is what if it doesn’t incorporate all the nuances of combat? For example, if designing an ORC for D&D 3.5 and it doesn’t take into consideration iterative attacks, fighters may feel ‘nerfed’ when using the ORC system (or for D&D 4, the inability for fighters to mark targets for a long term advantage). For such reason, ironically ORC is good for medium rules heavy game instead of ultra-heavy ones – unless the players are all right with the inconsistency. One thing to stress though is that ORC is a pacing tool – it is  intended for “mook combat” , an alternative to “only 2 combat scenes per game” as fully ran combat could run up to an hour.

A Simple One Roll Combat System for Fate 3.0

To start off simple, let’s consider a ORC for Fate 3.0 (where ORC is the acronym for One Roll Combat). The SRD for Fate 3.0 is online and at any rate it is based on FUDGE. The concept is simple.

1. The mob is given a level, maybe Average (+1) or Good (+3). The GM will roll 4dF for the mob, add it to the it’s level and hide the result.
2. Each player has a chance to use one skill (and if they wish, tag an Aspect or two) in the fight. That skill represents their main thrust of strategy in the combat. A character who uses the Weapon skill is of course, engaging in combat. Another character may use Leadership in an attempt to coordinate the battle. One may use Stealth to try to stay hidden and cause distractions.
3. Players will roll their skill.
4. Each player compare his skill to what the GM has rolled. For each player, if he rolls lower than the mob, he takes a physical stress equal to the number of shift. If the player has rolled higher, the mob takes 1 point of damage. Keep track of the running damage.

For each point of damage taken by the mob, its quality drops by one level. Once it is reduced to mediocre (+0), the mob is dispersed or utterly destroyed. Hence, a mob of Fair quality (+2) upon taking 2 or more points of damage would not be of any threat. If this is too easy, consider this variant – for every point of damage equal to the number of players, the quality of the mob drop by 1. So for 4 characters, if there are 4 points of damage, the mob’s quality will go down by 1.

Only evaluate whether the mob’s threat is neutralised after giving resolving each roll of the player’s.

Of course, some skills would not be applicable during a a pitched battle (for example, Academics), so it’s the GM’s call whether a skill can be used. Depending on the nature of the enemy, certain skills may be penalised. A character going hand to hand with a bunch of gangsters wielding tommy guns may get a disadvantage via tagging of an aspect.

Doing an ORC fo Fate is simple, really. Let try something with medium crunch next – Dragon Warriors.

Create Light Breeze: The wind created is one of heat, and all those caught in it must make a strength roll of 2d6 + Elementalist’s Rank or suffer -2 to Attack and -1 to Defend.

Stargaze: Against fire attacks, the Elementalist has an AF of 2 + his Rank, for the benefit of reducing damage.

False Rumours: Originally, the spell just create aural illusions which sounds threatening. The fire variant of it makes the sounds feel alluring, and could lull someone off to sleep (Pit the Elementalist’s Magical Attack against all the hearer’s Magical Defence). This spell can also make one specific target more vulnerable to mind controlling spell (such as Transfix). If used as such, he suffers a penalty to his Magical Defence equal to half the caster’s Rank.

Windwall: The wall itself is of intense heat. Anyone who come within 2.5m of the caster will take 1d6 points of damage; those who steps within will take 1d10. But the caster himself is not immune from the effects. He takes 1 point of damage per round (unless he has Stargaze cast prior!)

Summon the Host of the Air: All the insects summoned would leave nasty, itchy rashes or boils, which count as a disease (roll 4d6 under Strength to shrug it off). Those who are unable to resist it will find that the itch is unbearable, imposing a -2 penalty to all rolls and reducing the affected person’s Looks by 4. For each day that passes, roll 4d6 under Strength again to see if the disease is shrugged off. If not, 1 point of damage is infected per day (not curable by natural resting)

Intangibility: No variant exists (anyone care to suggest?)

Garrotte: The caster, if he wishes, may want to scar the neck of the victim with burn marks, if the victim takes more than 6 points of damage from the spell.

Flight: For an impressive entrance, the Fire Elementalist could cast a ‘bridge of flame’ to appear under him, as if he is walking on fire in thin air! This can impose a Morale Check on mere mortals and adventurers.

Spin: As the darkness variant of the spell, Spin would cause the poor victim to be bore into the ground, and cause it to become molten in the process (+2 points of damage).

Banshee: The Banshee would be dead after one implosion, but on its death throbs it would ignite the air around it, causing an explosion of flame which is spherical in shape, and up to 20m in radius and having Speed 20, doing 4d10 + 4 points of damage to all victims. Only those who have cover to duck behind, or at the edge of the explosion, may use their Evasion to avoid the flame.

So this is it for the Fire Elementalist’s variants! Remember that variant spells should cost half the MP in the primary (so a level 10 Fire Banshee costs 5 Fire MP and 10 Air MP).

Wound Boxes

Ordinary characters have no wound boxes – upon a hit, they will take a consquence immediately or are taken out. Your character’s levels in Toughness, Might and Atheltics will determine the amount of Wound Boxes you have. For every 2 levels in any of those skill, you will get one wound. However, you can’t get more than 4 wound boxes this way. For every 4th wound box and above, you will need an Aspect to describe your capability to withstand damage, such as “Giant size” or “Durant”.

Damage

Instead of giving a damage rating for all weapons possible, try using this simple system. A weapon that is sharp will give a +1 damage; large weapons which require two hands to wield grant another +1 damage and heavy weapons get another +1. A typical longsword would have +2 damage for being sharp and heavy.  The GM is free to add more modifiers to it – for example, a super-sharp mono-filament sword may have +2 sharpness.

If you strike in combat, you do damage equal to the weapon’s damage rating multiplied by the amount of shifts you have gained. If you generate spin, you may also add an aspect. Depending on the damage, it is either sticky or non-sticky. It is sticky if you manage to cause a roll-up on the wounds track otherwise, it is temporary.

Taking this out for a spin, a longsword with +2 damage with a shift of +2 will do +4 damage, which is enough to take down most characters with a blow. Aspects and Fate Points can be invoked by the defender to reduce the amount of damage taken (-2 for each Aspect invoked).

For firearms, the damage is equal to the roll (not number of shifts, but you must generate at least 1 shift) multipied by the number of shifts. If you manage to generate a spin, you increase your shift by 1. Guns can do deadly damage in this case, but for each type of guns, there’s a maximum damage. For example, a revolver may only have Damage +3 – no matter what your roll is, you will never do more than +3 damage.

Armour

Damage goes to armour first, then to the wounds; so wearing a suit of armour is like having a few more wound boxes. However, certain weapons with the Piercing skill directly ignores armour – the level of the piercing skill determine the amount of piercing damage done which is not absorbed by armour, and is equal to the level of piercing skill multiplied by the number of shifts obtained.

Usually, padded armour gives 1 additional wound box, chain mail gives 2, plate gives 4 and full plates gives 6. It is recommended, though, that characters have a relevant Aspect for being able to wear armour from plate onwards. In Fate Fantasy, there is an Armour Training skill which determine the heaviest type of armour that one can wear.

The wound box given by Armour are put in front of the existing wound boxes which the character. Hence, a character with Toughness 2 wearing padded armour will have 2 wound boxes.

For firefight, the armour would be simple Kevlar chest-plate, full combat suit and so on. Those are generally more effective against bullets than close combat weapons though.

Being Staggered

The idea here is simple. Whenever you are hit by a weapon which does 4 points or more damage, even though your armour has blocked it, you may be staggered. You are staggered if the damage of the weapon is 4 or above.

Effects of Staggering

The effects of Staggering is simply that your Defence score drops by half till your next turn in combat. This should stop knights from going around in full plate as if they are something of untouchable armoured killing machine.

Cuts and Bruises

For a more lethal feel to combat, GM may want to consider that even in case of a failed bypass roll, if the weapon is large or sharp enough to be dangerous (more than 4 points of damage), he may wish the target to take 1 HP damage anyway.

Attributes and Ranged Attacks

In a previous article on adding a new Stat called Ranged Attack, there is a section missing on how would attribute influence the stats.

• Strength: Use the same rules for Armour Bypass rolls. Increased Strength has no adds to Ranged Attacks
• Reflexes: 13+ will give you +1 Ranged Attack, while 16+ will give you +2 and 19+ will give you +3. Likewise, score of 6 to 8 gives you a -1 and 3 to 5 gives you a -2
• Intelligence: For score of 16+, you get +1 to Ranged Attack. For score of 5 and less, you get -1 to Ranged Attack
• Psychic Talent: No effect

Barbarian Archery Style [The Wild Hunt]

At rank 8 when Barbarian would get Bloodrage, he can choose to forsake that for Wild Hunt. In this unique style, the Barbarian fires arrow at several targets within range, splitting his combined score of Perception and Ranged Attack  for each target.  He achieves that by holding a number of arrows in left hand along with the bow and rapidly firing them at target base on instinct alone (this is similar to the archery style used by the ancient Huns of our world). The drawback is the Barbarian may not go into Berserk before or after the Wild Hunt and his Evasion and Defence is reduced to zero till his next round.

1. Wild Hunt cannot be used if the Barbarian has used Berserk.
2. The Barbarian adds his Perception to his Ranged Attack
3. The Barbarian may fire at any number of targets by splitting his modified Ranged Attack score (up to 5 targets maximum)
4. The Barbarian is at 0 Defence and 0 Evasion till his next turn in combat
5. The Barbarian may not enter Berserk or Bloodrage for the rest of the combat.

Barbarian Horseback Archery

At rank 8, the Barbarian ignores penalties for moving quickly while firing (normally, a target that is moving quickly has a +4 vs. ranged attacks – in the same sense, if the archer is moving quickly, he would also suffer the penalty).

The idea here is to introduce another statistic to govern the use of ranged attacks, such as bows, crossbows and throwing daggers, as the discipline that goes behind them is different from hand to hand combat.

Ranged Attack

In addition to the stats Attack, Defense and Evasion, Ranged Attack determines your chance to hit with a ranged weapon. When using a bow in combat, you use Ranged Attack instead of Attack and otherwise using all the other rules as stated in Dragon Warriors.

Here is the progression of Ranged Attack for each character:

Knights: Starting score of 11, +1 Ranged Attack every 2 levels
Barbarian: Starting score of 12, +1 Ranged Attack every 3 levels
Sorcerer: Starting score of 9, +1  Ranged Attack every 4 levels
Mystics: Starting score of 12, +1.5 Ranged Attack every 2 levels (always round down)
Elementalist: Starting score of 7, +1 Ranged Attack every 3 levels
Warlock: Starting score of 9, +1 Ranged Attack every 4 levels
Assassin: Starting score of 11, +1 Ranged Attack every 1 level

Close Combat Ranged Attack

If anyone attempt to fire into a close combat, he incur a -2 penalty. Also, if the first attack miss, the ally involved in the combat must roll his Evasion to prevent being hit too. Rolling Evasion to counter ranged attacks is only possible if the target is aware that he is being fired at. Usually a verbal warning from a party member counts.

This article discusses ways in which aspects can be easily placed in Fate 3.0 during a conflict, making them the central theme of combat and fierce debates instead of high skills and good dice rolls.

Placing Aspects on Close Call

If a named character’s attack fail to connect, consider placing a fragile aspect on the target instead of just letting it pass. A close call could be both sides having the same roll or narrowly missing by a range of 1. As usual, the GM’s judgement call is used to consider if the Aspect being placed is suitable. Examples would include:

• “Even though my enemy manages to block my blow with a shield, my powerful blow knocks him staggered” (Aspect: Staggered)
• “My hail of machine-gun fire may have missed them all, but they are going to drop the idea of flanking” (Aspect: Flanking them won’t work!)
• “Accusing him of murdering his own brother may not have non-nonplussed him at all, but I am not so sure about the audience!” (Aspect: The Audience Doubts Him)

Close Call Attacks against Minions

A group of minion not commanded by a named character gets an fragile aspect whenever there is a close call, and the range is increased to 2 (so if the group’s roll vs. your roll is 2 or less, you get to place the aspect).

Spin on Maneuvers

The original Spirit of the Century rules allow that on a spin during a Manuever, the Aspect becomes sticky. However, it doesn’t make sense that a maneuver which has such dire consequences have no practical impact at all. For example, a martial art master may use his Brawling skill for a maneuver, maybe “I trip him down so that he is off balanced” and achieved a spin of 3+ – so perhaps the opponent’s ankle is sprained or otherwise his movement is hampered; but such a feat should incur some physical stress at least!

The easiest way to rule this is to change allow the Manuever to inflict stess equal to the roll minus  3 (down to a minimum of 1). A more drastic way, for a deadlier game, is for one round the whammied character is considered to have all his stress boxes failed.

Other use of Spins include allowing the character to make one free action against his target, if you like to have a more cinematic game.

Fate Fantasy is a modification to Fate 3.0 for a fantasy-based setting.

The PDFs below are a rules modification for Fate 3.0 (the rule-set behind Spirit of the New Century – from Evil Hat Productions). These rules are more suitable for a sword and sorcery style of game. Currently, they are still pretty raw, unformatted but functional. There has been a single play-test and tweaks are still being made to it.

You are free to download those rules and play around with them!

Fate Fantasy: Skills (478)
Fate Fantasy: Talents (Stunts) (389)
Fate Fantasy: Combat Rules (471)
Fate Fantasy: Magic (467)
Fate Fantasy: Character Sheet (372)

Under the new system, Elementalists will get to roll d6, d10, d12 and d20 for their blast powers. The basics work like this:

• The basic damage dice the Elementalist roll is 1d4. To increase the base dice, you spend additional MP as below
  • Increase to D6: +2 MP
  • Increase to D8: +4 MP
  • Increase to D10: +6 MP
  • Increase to D12: +8 MP
  • Increase to D20: +16MP (see the trend here?)
• You also do a base damage equal to the amount of MP spent. Hence if you spend 1 MP for a blast, it is actually a 1d4+1 point of damage
• You cannot spend more MP than your rank.
• Range is 5m * MP spent
• Speed is 10 + (MP spent)

Hence, using this revised formula, let see how the various blasts look like:

1 MP Blast = Damage: 1d4+1 (2 – 5) , Speed: 11, Range: 5m

3 MP Blast = Damage: 1d6+3 (4 – 9), Speed: 13, Range: 15m

5 MP Blast = Damage: 1d8+5 (6 – 13), Speed: 15, Range: 25m

7 MP Blast = Damage: 1d10+7 (8 – 17), Speed: 17, Range: 35m

9 MP Blast = Damage: 1d12+9 (10 – 21), Speed: 19, Range: 45m

12 MP Blast (12th rank elementalist) = Damage: 1d12+12 (13 – 24), Speed: 22, Range: 60m

17 MP Blast (17th rank elementalist!?) = Damage: 1d20+17 (18 – 37), Speed: 27, Range: 85m

As you can see, whereas in the original rules a 3rd rank elementalist can throw a 6d6 blast, in the revised rules, he at most can spend 4MP for 1d6+4 points of blast, which is weaker than the Sorcerer’s spells but just as effective. A 12-MP blast from a 12th rank Elementalist is pretty much death unless the target is warded against magic.

Comparing with Sorcerers

As a comparision, the 9th level spell Firestorm inflicts 4d10 + 4 damage, which is a range of 8 to 44 points of damage. A 9-MP blast from the Elementalist does 1d12+9, which is just 13 to 24 points of damage, which is half the damage potential but has a higher base damage.  Firestorm has a speed of 18; the 9-MP blast has 19 speed, a slight advantage. However, Firestorm is an area-of-effect spell.

We can also consider the level 4 Shadowbolt spell (Speed 14, 2d6+10 damage) against a 4-MP blast, which has too has a Speed of 14 and does 1d6+4 points of damage. Shadowbolt has a potential of 12 to 22 points of damage while  the 4-MP blast has a potential of 5 to 10 points of damage. Clearly at lower levels the revised elemental blast cannot hold a candle to the Sorcerer’s spells, but this is the point in the first place, if Sorcerers are supposed to be the artillery (or ‘nuker’) mage.

Deathlight, a level 7 spell, does 3d6+10 damage (13 to 28 points of damage) while a 7-MP blast is 1d10 + 7, which yields 8 to 17 points of damage with an advantage in 1 point in speed. Clearly the Sorcerer is still the best damage dealer here.

What if we just double the power cost?

One other solution is that for the base damage for a 1-MP blast is 1d6. For every 2 MP, you increase that by a further 1d6. Hence a 3rd rank elementalist, who can spend 3 MP for a blast, does 3d6 points of damage. That is comparable to Sorcerers, but this time round it is the Sorcerer who has a much stable damage output while the Elementalist has a chance for a higher damage output but if poor roll prevails, he just going to do 3 points of damage. This puts Elementalist’s maximum potential damage output on par with the Sorcerer’s, with an element of risk thrown in, which gives it a different style.