Fate Character Creation: Makass, Part 2

So this next part was a bit harder as I mentioned in my last post. This part of character creation is where you select your Skills, Stunts and Extras. Skills are the same type of thing they always are in an RPG, the statistical representation of how good at particular things you are. Stunts are neat things you can do with your Skills and abilities. They are the way to add flavor to your character’s actions and abilities which help to distinguish your character from someone with exactly the same statistics as you, usually through things like some type of particular training, personality quirk, or raw talent (it’s really loose on the specifics, which is a good thing). Meanwhile Extras are special powers that help define some unique ability your character might have, like Magic, Cybernetics, Superpowers, or in Makass’ case, Psionic Powers.

So first things first, let’s look at Skills. Everway wasn’t exactly a skills based system. 4 stats with a single specialty in each category didn’t exactly lend itself to micromanaging the character’s skills. So Makass’ actual skills were never fleshed out back then and since everything else I’ve used the character in was a Class based system or an MMORPG, they still haven’t really been developed and established. Fate 3.0 uses what they call the Skill Pyramid to speed along character creation. It is simple and easy to figure out. The view of it on the character sheet really spells it out for you. Alternatively you can use the 20-point skill column system that is used in the Dresden Files RPG as they suggest, but that is more for advanced play and takes a little bit more time and familiarity with the system. So for now I’m going to stick with the Pyramid.

Okay, when you select your character’s skills you get the following: 1 skill at Great (+4), 2 at Good (+3), 3 at Fair (+2), and 4 at Average (+1). The numbers determine how much of a boost you get to the particular skill, just like any other game with dice and a skill set out there. Roll your Fudge dice, and add the skill total to the results along with your other factors (for more information on mechanics I recommend my buddy’s blog).

So for Makass I’m going with the following for now:
Great    (+4): Will
Good     (+3): Intimidation, Lore
Fair         (+2): Deceit, Notice, and [Reserved]
Avg.       (+1): Resources, Investigation, Empathy, and [Reserved]

I’m figuring as a Psionic character, Will is going to be his most important stat and very likely his casting stat so it goes right to the top. Intimidation plays into his personality while Lore is there because he’s a former member of a Psionic Order, of course they made him study. The rest is a bunch of general skills that make sense for him. I didn’t use two slots because I wasn’t exactly sure what to put there. In an actual character creation scenario for this game this would be perfectly acceptable and recommended early in the campaign so that the character can be adapted to the circumstances that arise that no one was expecting. It keeps the character and setting organic and evolving without punishing the players.

So, onto Stunts and Extras. Everyone in this game gets one Stunt for free. If you take only one Stunt you start off with a Refresh Rating of 3. Refresh determines what your starting Fate Point total is at the start of each Session. You can take up to 3 Stunts at creation per the baseline rules (this is always flexible though and depends upon the setting you’re trying to build). If you take 2 Stunts you start with a Refresh of 2, while 3 leaves you with a Refresh of 1. You can’t hit 0 or lower Refresh. If you do your character becomes unplayable. (The Dresden RPG explained that away as your character succumbing to their abilities/powers/nature and losing their Free Will in the process.)

Stunts let you change the way a Skill works for you. It indicates a lot of different things, like special training, genetic alterations, or any endless variety of things that make your character special. Skills are considered unique for the character and are used to show why they’re different than that other guy with the same Deceit Skill level. Typically speaking the way you design a Stunt is by following one of these three paths (Book examples in parenthesis.). You’re either adding a new action to a skill (Backstab: Use Stealth to make a physical attack as long as your presence isn’t discovered by the target), adding a bonus to an action (Arcane Expert: Gain a +2 Bonus to create an advantage with Lore vs things of Occult or Supernatural origin), or creating a rules exception (Riposte: If you “Succeed with Style” [kinda like a crit] on a Fighting Defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost).

You have to try and keep your Stunts balanced though. They shouldn’t completely replace the use of a different skill. It should be something you use every once in a while to make something cool happen. If it’s too powerful you can balance it by requiring a Fate Point to be spent to activate it, limit it to a certain number of uses per scene, or require some type of Consequence or Stress to be inflicted upon the character. There are no hard and fast rules on this though so you need to work with your group to determine what makes the most sense.

For Makass I’m going to use his free Stunt to take one I call “Make an Example of Him.” When invoking his aspect “Shock and Awe” to defeat an opponent, Makass may use his Intimidate skill to make defensive combat actions for the remainder of the scene against foes who saw his target get taken out. This represents his opponents hesitating to go after him because of how brutally he took out his last target. This is a little bit too powerful just to have without an activation cost, so I figure the requirement of him spending a fate point to invoke Shock and Awe specifically to defeat a target allows him to activate this Stunt. Which is just allowing him to use Intimidation as a defensive action against physical attacks. Obviously I’d have to clear this with the GM, but I feel it is properly balanced, very cool, appropriately thematic, and falls within the guidelines laid out by the rulebook.

Extras are something more nebulous though. It has taken a ton of effort to come up with this parts. Extras, as mentioned before, are the unique powers and abilities of your character. These are your Cybernetics, Secret Societies, Magic, Superpowers, gadgets, and so on.

Now this is where this whole thing gets tricky. With me as the only arbiter of the powers I’m about to bestow upon Makass I could be doing a rather large disservice to this system in the following paragraphs. At the time of writing this I’m bouncing my ideas off of one other person, but since he’s not the actual GM watching over him it takes out some of his stake in fight, so to speak.

Extra creation is generally free form with a bunch of different ways to integrate things. You can have a flat Refresh cost, it could be based in an Aspect or a Stunt. It can come in the form of a magic sword or a suit of gigantic robot armor. It’s all about how you go about doing it, how you word it, and how it fits into and contributes the setting. This was honestly the hardest part to try to grasp in this section. The initial rule book for the 3rd edition came with only a couple of poorly explained examples, but fortunately the internet is full of useful things, including an updated Extras section for the core rulebook that is leaps and bounds better than the initial Kickstarter release. So I’ve put way more work than I should have into grasping this concept and this is the culmination of this particular endeavor.

So Makass is all about his psionics. I want him to be able to use it with impunity. He should be able to do simple, everyday tasks, like eating while using them without so much as batting an eye, let alone spending a Fate point to use them. I also want them to feel organic and flexible. I don't want to have to be limited by a spell list, or other items that make it seem like a set of rules. So after some heavy research I decided to start from an example from the updated extras chapter.

This particular example is called Collegia Arcana Magic. This example basically allows anyone in the particular setting with a high enough Lore skill and the proper training to use magic. The advantage of the way this Extra works is that it is entirely an organic process. There is no spell list, just a general idea of what it can do when you decide to use it to complete one of the 4 basic actions. It's simple and works similar to what I was wanting so I'll use it as the baseline for Makass' Psionics.

So Permissions are part of an Extra. It's some type of requirment that you have to meet in order to have access to them. It basically just means that you have to meet certain requirements that you and your GM work out before hand. Typically it will be reflected in your High Concept or other aspects, but it can come from the other areas too, as always the system is flexible and at your mercy. So in Makass' case his permissions will be an Aspect reflecting the fact he has abilities. Which is more than covered by his High Concept.

The next thing to work out is Costs. The example I pulled from only requires you to have Skill ranks in Lore. It makes sense for the setting they're building because magic can be used by anyone with the proper training. It isn't based upon your inherited traits. Makass' powers on the other hand are a birthright and are only possible because his mind was awakened by the nature of his blood. So because this isn't just a common feature of his world that everyone has access to, there needs to be another set of costs associated with it.

Costs can come from anything. Most likely you'll see it come from Skills, Refresh, or an Aspect. So because this power set is coming from the College Arcana baseline I will have to use a skill that controls the power. Lore doesn't quit fit with the theme of his abilities so I'll go with Will instead. Okay, that one was easy, but it is still missing something that makes it feel like it's a birthright. Maybe I need to add a Refresh cost to it to help with that.

The power gamer in me screams at me when I say that though. From a gameplay mechanics perspective this doesn't sounds fair or balanced, at least not at face value. So to remedy this feeling I began some more research. I decided to look through the Dresden Files RPG for inspiration since it is a very well fleshed out setting that is already established. Looking through there I found the Channeling power. It's a lesser form of Evocation magic that only deals with 1 element, like Force for example. Well that sounded like a good place to look into further so I did.

Evocation magic in Dresden has similar functions to what I described above, with having the magic just be a free form extension of the casting stat. There is a lot more under the hood of the Dresden RPG though. Two special casting Skills, mental stress damage, magic item slots, counterspelling, and a whole mess of other things that take a ton of explaination to understand the nuances of it all. All I was interested in was an idea to enhance the psychic abilities of Makass to make that point of Refresh seem worth it.

So looking at the cost of Channelling, it's worth 2 Refesh. For that you get the same things as what I have from the Collegia but with a few more things. The only ones that really interest me are the ability to use Mental Stress boxes to give you bonuses to your "spells". I don't want these things to get super complicated and slow down gameplay so I will only use that. I don't need spells, focus items, or those other things.

So after tweaking it and bouncing the ideas back and forth with someone else a few times I figured out exactly how it should play out from a gameplay standpoint.

Extra: Psionic Powers: Telekinesis (Shut up, the name needs work)
Permissions: One Aspect reflecting that you've unlocked your psionic potential
Costs: Skill Ranks (Will), -2 Refresh

People who have unlocked the psionic potential within their own minds are able to use Will to manipulate the world around them through sheer force of will. This Extra adds the following Actions to he Will Skill.

Overcome: Use Will to apply force to objects. This can be used in place of Athletics or Physique to overcome obstacles/etc. Allows use of skills like Craft from a distance at a -2 penalty

Create an Advantage: Use Will to Alter the environment or place physical impediments on a target. This could be things like Entangling Psychic Tendrils, Psionics Dust Storm, or Waves of Force.

Attack: Use Will to directly harm an opponent. Typically manifested in either pure bolts of force or in psychically launched objects.

Defend: Use Will to directly defend from physical attacks.

The psionic may also enhance their powers by taking points of Mental Stress. The Psionic may gain a number of additional shifts equal to their Will for 1 shift of Mental Stress on their power manifestation. You can buy additional Shifts on a 1 for 1 swap of Mental Stress. (E.G. A Psionic with a Will of 4 may take a 4 Shift Mental Stress hit to gain 7 Shifts on their next manifestation. Will 4 + 3 Extra Shifts = 4 Mental Stress Hit).

There are a couple additional rules that can be translated over from the Dresden RPG for shaping these abilities but we don't really need to go over them here. It makes for a good set of examples of Shift costs for a GM to work with though.

All in total his Starting Refresh will be a 1, so he's going to be having to deal with a lot of Compels every session in order to gain a decent stock of Fate points to use during gameplay. I don't actually see that as a downside though.

So with that figured out I think we have a very good baseline for Makass at the beginning of his adventures. Here's everything put together (I will make up a character sheet for him and post it, but right now you can deal with this):

Name: Makass

Aspects:

High Concept: Aspiring Psionic Powerhouse
Trouble: I WILL Be The Best, The Consequences Be Damned!
Phase 1 Aspect: Weak? I’ll Show You Who’s Weak!
Phase 2 Aspect: Shock and Awe
Phase 3 Aspect: You’re Wasting My Time, Chattel…

Refresh: 1

Skills:
Great    (+4): Will
Good     (+3): Intimidation, Lore
Fair         (+2): Deceit, Notice, and [Reserved]
Avg.       (+1): Resources, Investigation, Empathy, and [Reserved]

Stunts:
Make an Example Out of Him - Once per Scene, when Makass invokes his Aspect "Shock and Awe" while defeating an opponent, he may for the remainder of the scene he may use Intimidate as a defense action against combat actions against opponents who witnessed the take down.

Extras:
Psionic Powers: Telekinesis
Permissions: One Aspect reflecting that you've unlocked your psionic potential
Costs: Skill Ranks (Will), -2 Refresh

People who have unlocked the psionic potential within their own minds are able to use Will to manipulate the world around them through sheer force of will. This Extra adds the following Actions to he Will Skill.

Overcome: Use Will to apply force to objects. This can be used in place of Athletics or Physique to overcome obstacles/etc. Allows use of skills like Craft from a distance at a -2 penalty

Create an Advantage: Use Will to Alter the environment or place physical impediments on a target. This could be things like Entangling Psychic Tendrils, Psionics Dust Storm, or Waves of Force.

Attack: Use Will to directly harm an opponent. Typically manifested in either pure bolts of force or in psychically launched objects.

Defend: Use Will to directly defend from physical attacks.

The psionic may also enhance their powers by taking points of Mental Stress. The Psionic may gain a number of additional shifts equal to their Will for 1 shift of Mental Stress on their power manifestation. You can buy additional Shifts on a 1 for 1 swap of Mental Stress.

Okay so that looks like a good build and a great example for the translation. I think I'm going to do a few more of these in the next couple weeks. This was surprising fun. Sorry for how long this was, hopefully the next one will be less long winded as I won't have to explain some of the details.