A thought occurred to me the other day while debating other gamers on Facebook about alignment systems and how I feel about them. Which of course, as you should all know by now, I really don’t like them because of how restricting and personality stunting they tend to be. My preferred systems tend to use personality traits of some type or another that reward role play with mechanic based rewards.
In Whitewolf’s old World of Darkness games this would be Nature and Demeanor, with acting out your Nature giving your character back extremely important Willpower points. In Fate, you have your character’s Aspects; High concept, Trouble and three Aspects. Having your aspects compelled gains you fate points you can use to enhance your rolls in some way shape or form related to your Aspects. It is one of the nicest and smoothest systems for encouraging roleplaying I’ve seen in a system and have been dying to use it for real.
Bringing up the topic of Fate’s aspects made me pause for a second though when I was debating the merits of alignment. Why couldn’t you put the Aspects and Fate points into DnD style games in place of the 2-axis alignment system?
You might be able to put the whole set of 5 Aspects (High concept, Trouble, and 3 “Other”) on each D20 character and make it work. Compels and Invocations could still work the same too. The only real questions that come up are related to the mechanical effects of Fate points in a D20 setting and the removal of alignment from a D20 setting. Those two concerns are not little. Both of those things are capable of completely breaking the mechanics of the game. I’ve talked about my problems with alignment before (maybe not on this blog, but I’ve had the discussion before!) and I think I can deal with the issues of removing it fairly well, but the Fate point question is a new one to deal with and is going to require some speculation and thought.
The removal of alignments is pretty straight forward. Overall I remove the descriptors of Law, Chaos, Evil, and Good from many different abilities, spells, and class features. In cases of spells like “Detect Evil” it becomes a spell that detects intent and/or actions and not just a general aura of “this dude is just totally reeking of Evil” to make it a more strategic spell to use. Any type of damage related abilities (e.g. Smite Evil, or Damage Reduction 5/Good) is replaced with either a generic “magic” descriptor or some specific type of damage modifier (Silver, Fire, etc). Good and Evil are actions, not elements. Holy and Dark can replace Good and Evil as energy types, but they aren’t inherently Good or Evil. Some spells like the Protection spells just get combined and turned into a generic spell that just does what it does in general and doesn’t care about specific types of enemies or their alignments.
Like I said, eliminating the 2-axis alignment is easy. Now for the hard part.
The creation of aspects is easy enough to put into D20 systems. You just use the same exact rules. Easy, simple, clean. The rules for that stuff are basically universal and could be applied anywhere since it is all really just about creating a character and defining their personality quirks and motivations.
Where it gets difficult is when you get into the mechanics of it all. Fate points and the Fate point economy are very different from most anything in standard D20 settings. Mechanically the Fate point grants a +2 bonus, a reroll, and a handful of other mechanic specific things unique to the Fate system that are only able to be utilized by invoking an Aspect on something. A +2 bonus isn’t very useful most of the time. It is really only improving your odds on a D20 by 10% and is only a minor boost to any damage roll. Very different from the significant increase that it grants you in Fate. The reroll is a useful tool and could be wonderful to use. The creation of a scene aspect is something that translates decently too. Maybe it’s time to look at some of the things available in the D20 system that might be similar.
In Unearthed Arcana you find Action points. Action Points are a rather similar thing that have also made an appearance in settings like Ebberon. A character, according to Unearthed Arcana, gains 5 action points at first level or 5 + ½ character level for characters starting at higher than level 1. The characters gain 5 + ½ Character level (rounded down) every time they level. Leveling is the only way (per Unearthed Arcana at least) is the only way to obtain more Action Points. Action points can be used to give a bonus on a D20 roll (+1D6 lvl 1-7, +2D6 lvl 8-14, +3D6 lvl 15-20, taking only the highest number rolled when rolling multiple dice), use a class ability an additional time per day, double their AC bonus for fighting defensively (goes from a +4 to a +8 Dodge bonus to AC normally, +6 to a +12 with 5 ranks in tumble), Emulate a Feat that they qualify for but may not have, gain an extra attack during a full attack action at their highest attack bonus, boost their effective caster level by 2 for a spell, recall a spell just cast, stabilize if they’re in negative HP, and enhance various feats that already exist (e.g. Applying metamagic feats on the fly, bonuses to power attack or combat expertise).
These action points sound like they’re a good place to start. I’m going to check Pathfinder’s rules for something similar though first to make sure that these are the best they can be.
Well, so a check with Pathfinder reveals them using Hero Points. Each character starts off with 1 Hero point and only gaining one every level (or with DM rewarding them for milestones and such, there’s a long list to give you ideas). Each character is only allowed a maximum of 3 Hero points at any one time. These points can be used for the following types of things: Act out of turn to perform a Move or Standard action, Bonus to any D20 roll (+8 Luck for prior to the roll, or a +4 after the roll. Can be used on another character for half the bonus), Extra Move or Standard action on your turn, Petition the GM for a hint, Recall a spell or daily ability use, Reroll any D20 roll, Special things not normally possible (like a fighter casting a first level spell, blind a foe with a normal attack, bypass damage reduction entirely, all of which should typically require a skill/attack roll), Cheat death (if your character would be killed you are instead left with negative HP and are Stable. This requires 2 Hero Points).
Well, they have some similar themes. That’s for sure. They also have a limitation of only allowing a single point to be used in a turn (the exception being the Cheating Death option). Maybe a combination of the two would be best since neither seems quite right for the intent and spirit of Fate points.
So obviously the amount of starting points is an important thing to establish. Starting Fate points are normally determined by your character’s Refresh rating. This isn’t possible to use since there is no refresh rating in the D20 system. Unearthed Arcana’s Action point starting number is way too high. It ruins the Fate point economy right out of the gate. Why compel an aspect if you have plenty of points on hand? So I think the 1 point of the Pathfinder Hero points system wins out.
Next up is how you earn them. I will continue with the 1 point free per level theme of the Hero points system here. It’s quite a logical extension of the system already established in the previous paragraph. Now as for other ways to gain points, we look to the normal way Fate points are earned. Here we use the normal rules for driving the Fate point economy. Compels give the PCs points to use while Invoking or placing aspects spends them. The hard limit set on Hero points of no more than 3 at a time is meant to limit the potential for abuse by players. Now that the points are being used via the Aspect system that means that there are other limitations on their use and the need to have a hard limit like that is unnecessary now. So we’ll remove that from the rules.
The uses of these points will be a little bit more difficult.
First you have to invoke you aspects. When you Invoke in Fate you have to show a good reason why it makes sense for this aspect to be used in the situation and context you are using it in. In Fate spending a point lets you do things like adding static bonuses to a roll for yourself or another PC, allowing a reroll on any of your rolls, or adding bonuses to the passive defense of something. Obviously these mechanics don’t translate well so I think just allowing a combination of both systems (Unearthed Arcana and Pathfinder) is the way to go. So I think a proper list of actions should be as follows:
-Give a Luck bonus of +8 to any D20 roll, or +4 to another player’s roll (if the aspect invocation is appropriate)
-I’ve eliminated the penalty for before or after because of that’s the spirit of the Fate point rules
-Reroll any one D20 roll, taking the second result no matter what
-Recall a spell or gain 1 additional use of an ability/power
-Gain an extra Standard or Move Action (if the Standard action is an attack it is at your highest Attack Bonus)
-Act out of order, acts like a readied action. May only use a Move action or a Standard Action
-Cheat Death, does not require the invocation of an aspect. As above, spend 2 points and you survive a blow that should have killed the character with negative HP, unconscious, and in stabilized condition. This will force the character to have to take a new Aspect similar to a (Severe Consequence or Extreme Consequence, can’t decide yet) that is entirely a negative and is in keeping with the theme of the blow delivered to them. The recovery will require something similar to the recovery rules in Fate and will impose a new aspect on you until you are fully recovered from the blow.
-Boost your effective caster level by 2 levels
-Use a feat you don’t have but qualify for, or enhance one you already have
-Perform an action that is “impossible” (casting a spell as a pure Fighter, bypassing damage reduction, etc). This action should have a a skill check or an attack roll associated with it at an appropriate difficulty.
I will also replace the 1 point per turn limit with a rule requiring the invocation of multiple aspects, and the limit of only being able to invoke each aspect once per turn. Obviously Compels work the same way they always do. You gain a Fate point for accepting a Compel and can refuse one by spending a Fate point.
By adding in Fate points to the mix you might be able to add additional uses for your various skills in D20 settings. You could potentially use them to create advantages and Tags, or use them to allow the players to add a free-invocation aspect to a scene. The possibilities are really limitless and could really enhance the game. Obviously there are plenty of tweaks that can be made here and these are only the baselines I’m looking at for how I would implement these. I’d love to hear someone else’s thoughts on this.
(Hmmmm… what about the consequences rules being used as bonus HP…)
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