Game design/customization questions

Hey everyone, As I wrote in my introduction post, I have yet to run a game of FATE, but have familiarized myself with the Core rules as much as possible. I would like to know people's opinions on how I should customize the FATE core rules to fit my setting. A quick background on my setting, without diving in specifics: High Fantasy; High Magic; various fantasy races and human cultures; 10 elemental gods, each with their own elemental race; magic domains for each element/god. I was planning on creating a skill for each Domain of Magic (i.e. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, etc.). The magic system would work like this: Permission: One aspect reflecting that you have the ability to perform magic. This aspect must be taken when you create your character, not through character advancement. (i.e. Magician, Mage, Wizard, Warlock, Sorcerer, etc.) Cost: A +2 or +1 skill slot for your initial Domain of Magic, thus setting the skill cap for all of your magic Domain skills. For each Domain learned afterwards, a skill slot of equal value or less than your initial Domain of Magic. New domains can be learned at Minor Milestones (by switching one of your +1 skills with a new Domain skill) or at Significant Milestones (by spending your skill point on the Domain). Only at Major Milestones can you can increase your initial Domain beyond the skill cap of +2, thus increasing the Magic skill cap for your other Magic Domains. Rules: When you make a roll to perform magic, add your Willpower skill and your appropriate Magic Domain skill.You can perform magic without any points in Willpower, but you cannot perform magic without points in the appropriate Magic Domain. The Magic Domains you are allowed to put points into are based on your race. If you are able to perform magic from multiple Domains at once (i.e. if you have a wand or staff), you roll as normal, add your Willpower, but only add the highest magic skill. The reasoning behind this is that the benefit you would gain from adding another type of magic is cancelled out by the difficulty of wielding both at the same time. (i.e. You want to throw a "Fireball." You use Air magic to pull together a sphere of combustible air, use Fire magic to ignite it. The benefit you gain from using Air magic to feed the combustion of the Fire magic is negated by the difficulty of dividing your will to wield magic from two different domains.) However, a common principle of magic is that if you tie or fail your roll, you may take mental stress or consequences in order to succeed - the value of the stress or consequence is equal to the number of shifts that it takes to bring the roll to a success. Actions: The actions described below each Domain are suggestions but are not the limits on how you can use your magic. Difficulty: Magic is inherently difficult to perform. Regardless of Domain, performing magic is almost never below a +4 (Great) difficulty as shown on “The Ladder” in the Fate Core System. Some types of magic are even more difficult. Also to balance Magic and Melee/Ranged Combat, I would be using the Weapon/Armor Ratings option (weapons automatically deal shifts of physical stress depending on the deadliness of the weapon; armor reduces physical stress taken depending on the type of armor). Because I'm adding 10 skills (and also splitting the Lore skill into History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, and Traditions), and because it is a game with creatures/heroes with superhuman powers, I was planning to play a game with a +5 (superb) skill cap. Also to balance Magic and Melee/Ranged Combat, I would be using the Weapon/Armor Ratings option (weapons automatically deal shifts of physical stress depending on the deadliness of the weapon; armor reduces physical stress taken depending on the type of armor). Because I'm adding 10 skills (and also splitting the Lore skill into History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, and Traditions), and because it is a game with creatures/heroes with superhuman powers, I was planning to play a game with a +5 (superb) skill cap. How does this sound? Has this method of adding skill bonuses together been used before for any games that you know of? If so did it work or fail? Secondly, what is the best way to include fantasy races in a FATE game? I think its obvious that ones race or culture should be part of one of their aspects (likely their Major Aspect). However, what benefit should a race give? Some races have permanent abilities such as flight or water-breathing, that I don't believe should require spending a fate point to use. How would you balance races without powers (i.e. humans) to be as good as races with powers? I suppose different races could start with different Refresh (less Refresh for races with special abilities). I could see some races having abilities that would require the spending of a FATE point, such as the ability to reduce damage (i.e. a fire sprite spending a Fate point to invoke their racial Aspect in order to reduce the shifts of stress she received from a Fire attack). Alternatively, I considered each race/culture would have certain Skills that it was naturally good at, that you couldn't use your +4 or +5 skills for any skills besides those. But when I attempted to make lists of skills for each, race, I didn't like the results, as it limited player creativity. What are some other options that have been used in other game settings? Finally, what methods do you all use to organize your main page for you FATE games. I know most of the layouts I have seen, have the names and aspects of each PC and then beneath Stress Boxes, Consequences, and FATE points (though I know some also use cards for Fate points). Then below that Game aspects, Situation aspects, Boosts, and NPC's. My question though, is there anyway to keep these things organized and easily movable. Attempts I have made end up messy and ugly looking. What are some tips and tricks you guys use? Those are my main questions for now. Thanks, Ben

Hmm... Certainly a set of interesting questions: 1) Magic Skills I haven't seen anyone use this before, but I would caution against adding together skills directly in such a manner as you are effectively doubling skill cap for magic to effectively Legendary+1 (+9) in a way that makes it really easy to game skill columns to get there much faster than any other skill (<9 advancements assuming you start at a +3, rather than ~30 as a normal +9 would take from the same point.)  Due to the way that rolls work in Fate, even small changes in the distributions of skills make huge changes in the odds of a given result, so increasing the spread of the dice roll modifiers causes issues with balancing between characters and letting players improvise solutions.  One clear example of a way to get what you are trying to pull off is the typical Weapon v. Armor rules you see in Fate where they only impact effects of a given result but not the result itself, so you may want to simply treat Willpower as if it was a combination of the Weapon bonus and Armor Bonus. 2) Fantasy Races At least personally, I take the approach that I just have the players give a general idea of how they would describe a given race, and just note that they see no significant mechanical benefit out of it unless they pay for it in character options such as Aspect Invokes, Skills, or Stunts.  This gives the players as much leeway as they want making a unique individual in the race even not being good at what their race usually is.  A few examples Avia: These bird folk are able to fly under their own power.  Due to the fact that they are busy trying to keep in the air, they are not significantly better in combat unless they are specifically trained to fight, which would be represented by a custom stunt.  In general circumstances being able to fly doesn't make a huge difference unless you routinely have your players rolling for platforming, which isn't exactly typical gameplay. Orcs: Standard fantasy orcs, usually stronger than humans but not quite as educated.  Orcs would normally spend most of their skills on Physical skills as opposed to mental skills, but there is no reason that you can't play contrary to type as something like a scrawny Shaman or something like that. Unicorn: A Horse like creature with a horn and a talent for magic; pretty much every one has a basic level of levitation magic.  Generally speaking as long as their telekinesis can only move things in line with what a human can pick up at a range equivalent to a human arm length.  If a particular character is better than your standard baseline ability at moving things they should be taking some sort of bonus for it. Basically, I personally like making them balanced by way of making everything effectively a human with more options for how to theme their character options. In terms of actual Fate Products that handled different fantasy races or things that could be reskinned as races. I am aware of roughly 4 ways that it has been done Standard - Provide a list of suggestions on skill choices, suggested aspects, and a few special stunts.  In some books the stunts are mandatory and must be paid for normally It's Not My Fault I'm Fantastic - More or less each race has a unique stunt (its a comedy game based on FAE, it takes a very light approach to this. Its fairly common to end up with most of the characters being half-breeds with occasional third-breeds) Dresden Files - Characters are built on templates which require them to take certain special abilities which all cost refresh.  Essentially your character's type is defined by a number of stunts using non-standard pricing rules and requirements of other stunts. Dresden Files Accelerated -  Characters are defined by mantles that give the character a number of basic "Conditions" (ie a custom resource), and several core stunts, with a list of additional stunts they can take optionally.  An applicable suggestion from that book on creating your own: "I offer two overarching guidelines to GMs confronting this challenge.  The First is abandonment of any intent to achieve balance between mantles... ...Expression of that [Mantle's concept] however requires however many stunts and conditions needed for accuracy.  However, GMs should beware of creating a mantle whose nature denies other players the meangingful participation by extreme, even overwhelming, strengths." (The second is just don't be afraid to reuse material) 3: Layout In terms of layouts for my game I am absolutely terrible about that and usually just plop down character sheets on the main sheet where everyone can see them as I tend to play types of Fate where there aren't too many moving parts of to keep track of, though I have also been known to just use the standard or slightly modified version of the Roll20 character sheets to track details.

It sounds like this winds up somewhere between a basic FATE game and a D&D like game. There's nothing wrong with that, and FATE tends to flexible enough to run just about anything. With magic, It may be simpler to have Schools of Magic vs Domains. For example, instead of combining wind and fire to make a fireball, you could say that it falls under the Evocation school.  Regarding trying to differentiate characters, you could make fast and easy Mantles for each class. For instance, a Warlock gains power from her patron, anytime you cast magic at a higher level than you normally can, you end up crossing a debt box. Those debt boxes can be regained by performing a favour for the patron. If you would like race differences, then you might give a static skill boost to certain races. Example; Gnomes might be naturally curious and inventative, so they would have a boost to crafts. If you're worried about balance, then try a one-shot, and make adjustments from there. This all being said, you could ignore it, and try a regular FATE game. Provide some races and classes as examples, and ask them what sort of characters they want to play. If someone wants to play a Sorcerer with an affinity to fire, maybe he would have an aspect "Born in the Flames" , and a stunt which decreases the amount of fire damage taken.

Hello Ben, Hmm, this is problematic. You’re planning on dumping 10 additional skills into the pool of skills and busting up Lore into more skills. I recommend having a single skill for magic, use an Aspect to determine spell casting potential (like you said) but have Stunts for the specific school of magic.  I highly recommend reading over as many of the Fate magic systems as you can.  High Fantasy Magic by Nathan Hare (a member of Fate Corps) is a favorite and especially good and may fit your requirements. However, look over the others that are available. Some are free or pay what you want. I also like Fate Freeport but that is a pay product. Read up on customizing skill lists for your game.  /Matt

Thanks for the response! Basically what I am trying to do is find a rule system that I can build to match the world I have already been working on for years. So, I didn’t choose D&D because it doesn’t fit the magic system I am trying to create. My world doesn’t have Vancoan magic nor schools of magic such as Evocation or Abjuration. I have read High fantasy Magic, but so am still trying to do something out of the box, here. I like Zargon’s suggestion that instead of adding the bonuses together to determine a hit, rather do it like the Weapon/Armour bonuses and add the bonus after the hit. So (and I know I am reversing what you suggested) you would roll and add your Will bonus to determine if your magic was successful then add the bonus from your specific magic skill to determine shifts. The only problem I foresee, is that Magic can and will be used for more than attacks and defense. The true beauty is how you can use magic to Create advantages and overcome as well. Zargon I have no idea what you mean by raising the Cap to legendary (+9). If I played as normal +4 would be the skill cap for Will, while +2 would be the cap for Magic skills. So +6 is more accurate (or +7 if I went with a high power game). That is why magic would innately be difficult to even perform.  Matt, I think it’s important for the magic skills to take skill slots, as it represents magic users using up their brain space with magic knowledge. I also want each domain to be a separate skill because I want individuals who are natural pyromancers, for example, to be better at fire magic than someone who just learned it from their wizard mentor. If you group magic into one skill, their is no differentiation. As for the Lore skill, is it your opinion that it should be kept as one skill, with only stunts to differentiate the type of Lore you know? I personally don’t like that, because you would be giving up fate points and refresh just to say that you are good at History or Medicine when you roll Lore. Perhaps I don’t understand Stunts, they are the thing I am most iffy on when it comes to Fate. I have no idea what the stunts would or could be in my setting. Titus, it is like D&D in some ways, but not all. I wouldn’t have character classes so to speak, but there would be rules depending on what type of magic user you are as to how you use and learn magic, kind of how you were describing. Thanks again for the responses, I obviously still have a lot to think about and work on before I’d even feel comfortable running a one-shot. I’d love to here any more suggestions you guys might have. Thanks, Ben

May as well first clarify the direct response to my post, over the course of ~3 Major Milestones (assuming 10 skill pyramid) your character could go from +4 Willpower and +2 [Magic] (+5 to magic rolls) to +5 Willpower and +4 [Magic] (+9 to magic rolls) with your approach of adding together skills and only capping the starting Magic skill. (Your post says you are playing with a skill cap of +5, a net +10 takes 10 Major Milestones)  The basic point I am trying to get across is that you end up with unexpected levels of variance which makes balancing the skill checks nigh impossible which is why if you really need to have the two skills interacting you should probably treat one of them as Weapons and Armor for magic rolls. In terms of the list of 10 skills for Magic, This isn't inherently bad and does have the advantage that it forces users to stick to a particular set of magical powers and not be able to hop all over the place in terms of talent, and they wouldn't immediately become the master of any new spellcraft they find instead learning each of them granularly, however you do make character creation a lot more of a chore and tax casters who want a broad range of spells by making them take 10 different mostly identical skills.  The other approach of handling things is to just have Aspects tell you what type of magic a caster uses and only have a single skill for all Magic checks.  For example, If my caster focuses strictly on Earth and Fire I could use the High concept as something like "Half-Dragon Volcano-Mage" and go through with the GM to indicate that Volcano-Mages are good at Earth and Fire, and not much else; depending on how you view your magic system, either they straight up wouldn't be able to work with other elements, or they would just be opening themselves up to all matter of nasty compels and invokes from the GM, like having a spell to throw water onto a fire exploding into a burst of steam.  Your characters would really only go changing what types of magic they have at milestones, when they can change aspects to cover their new areas of focus.  Stunts mostly start coming into play when a character's spellcasting straight up breaks the rules of how things work or when a character is especially good at a single aspect of spellcasting, and these would usually be custom anyways with whatever restrictions you want to put on them. On The Subject of Stunts: When you really look at stunts for the most part they boil down into two categories with Fate Accelerated's templates serving as a good demonstration of these: The Ability for a player to break the rules in some way.  FAE: Because I [Reason], once per session I can [Thing that isn't normally allowed] A character being uniquely skilled in a certain thing such that they always get bonuses without spending Fate points for invokes. FAE: Because I [Reason], I get a +2 bonus when I [Action] [description] Both of these are a reasonable trade off for your hard earned points of refresh because, the first just lets you do what you want, and the second saves you Fate points in the long run assuming you are good at setting the scene for it being applicable once or twice per session.

Well the +2 skill cap on magic would apply to all your domains, but to increase your skill cap, you first have increase your intitial domain. An innate puromancer would have to increase fire to +3 before being able to increase their Mind magic skill to +3. I had original thought to create a whole separate pyramid for magic skills, but not sure how that would work with Roll20 character sheet. I am starting to agree with you about Will determining accuracy of magic and the domain skill determining how effective it is after it succeeds. In that case, perhaps a separate pyramid would be required, But Inwould still want each slot to cost one of their standard skill slots. Are they domain skills nearly identical? I don’t think thy would be. Each element has certain things they can do. Some of the Domains, such as Life, don’t even have an Attack or defense option. As for aspects like Volcano mage, I don’t want to have to think of names for every combo of magic. In my game there are magicians (though what they may call them selves can vary, I.e. mentalist, shapeshifter, prophet, etc.) who only use one type of magic, though it often isn’t the only thing they are skilled at (I.e shapeshifting foxfolk assassin). There are priests/priestesses who exclusively focus on their god-given magic domain and master it. There are mages (apprentice wizards) who attempt to learn all domains of magic so they might one day become wizards (or evil sorcerers). There are also shamans, witches, and warlocks who trough varying means, use spirits to help them perform magic outside of their own domain. So coming up with a cool,flashy aspect name for every combination of mage is pointless. What do you call a mage who has mastered prophecy, earth magic, and shapeshifting? What do you call them if the spend their next milestone learning life magic? As for stunts, I see them in my game mainly being used to modify things other than magic. Magic should have rules and structure and indon’t like the idea of stunts making that pointless.

On the subject of the skill pool: Adding 14 skills to the skill pool is not inherently bad.  But it will have an impact, and you should understand that impact and decide what (if anything) you want to do about it. Ordinarily, adding skills really means breaking existing skills down, given that the core pool is relatively comprehensive.  That means skills become narrower.  This means more complexity, insofar as there are more skills to keep track of and remember which apply when, and more options to juggle at character creation.  But it also means more differentiation, because skills being less bundled means more unique combinations of skills--I can make a historian and you can make a doctor and they will be mechanically different in a way they wouldn't if both were just "lore."  That's the trade-off. Totally distinct from that trade-off is how broadly competent your characters are.  You can have a small pool of broad skills and have still have narrow competence if your characters can take only a handful of those skills.  You can have a huge pool of narrow skills and still have broadly competent characters if they each have high ranks in dozens of those skills.  These "dials" are therefore independent.  So the second decision to make is, given the size of the skill pool, how many of those skills can a character be good at?  And be aware that you don't necessarily have to use a skill pyramid, so you don't have to make characters better at their capstone skill in order to give them more skills.  This is particularly true when you're looking to give extra skill slots to make up for having more skills to choose from. Now, your magic domains are a little different.  They're not really breaking down existing skills  because they're letting you do things you couldn't do before with the old skills.  But at the same time, they are largely overlapping with existing skills insofar as the obstacles you can overcome with magic could have been overcome by mundane means (albeit with more difficulty sometimes).  So you don't really need to give characters more skills to achieve the same level of competence: their old skills haven't gotten narrower, and their new skills (should they choose to take them) are providing a lot of that breadth of competence that the mundane skills they're giving up would have. Don't get me wrong, your magical skills are worth considering when you make that second decision (how many things can a (starting) character be good at).  But I wouldn't assume that because you've added 50% more skills you must give players 50% more skill slots. I would even break it down into three questions: 1) How many mundane things should a non-mage be good at?  2) How many domains should a typical "dedicated" mage pick up?  and 3) How many mundane things should that dedicated mage be good at?  And if your answers to those questions don't add up, you can always fiddle with the exchange rate (e.g. if you wanted mundanes to be good at 10 things, and mages to be good at 6 and two domains, then you could say taking a magic domain costs two skill slots of the same level).  

Tim, thanks for the insight! For those of you who are following this topic and are interested, I have been working on my setting with a friend who is good at helping me cut down on the unnecessary complexities that I have instituted. Now, I am planning to remove the mechanic of combining Will with Magic skills. Instead, Will will remain as described in the Core rules (mainly as a defense against mental assaults). The magical domains will become individual skills. The permission for the Extra of using magic would be an Aspect at character creation. Your racial and magic-user aspects and which and how many Domains your character has or can have would be decided simultaneously. The cost would be devoting one of your skill slots per Magical Domain you know. Since Domains are skills, they follow the same rules as other skills (the exception being that you can't have any other magical domain higher than your initial domain). If your aspect allows you to learn multiple magical domains, you can also perform magic for multiple domains at once. You simply use the highest skill bonus of the domains you are using. Each skill would describe how the magical domain works. To answer your question, Tim, I would probably start out by playtesting the setting with the standard pyramid of 10 skills. So non-magical characters would be good at 10 mundane skills. Common magicians and priests would be good at 1 magical skill and 9 mundane skills. Mages would be good at 1-8 magical skills and the inverse amount of mundane skills. Shamans, witches and warlocks should be good at about 1-3 magical skills and the inverse amount of mundane skills. Playing as a wizard or sorcerer would not be possible as a starting character, but would have to be achieved through milestones, as a wizard or sorcerer would have not only mastered all forms of magic, but also have probably a higher skill cap as well, representing a character who has gone through a lot of milestones in his life. This is all assuming I go with 10 magical skills. I could break it down farther. I am slowly working on it.

Has anyone in this group played a game, perhaps in the Harry Potter setting, where losing an item, such as a wand, would greatly impact your ability to perform your skills, like magic? How did those rules balance? Considering that in Harry Potter, magic is very hard to perform without your wand and that there is a whole spell devoted to disarming you opponent, and that wands are easily physically broken, how would this be handled fairly? Is breaking/destroying a characters item that would severely put them at a handicap within the setting, be fair? Would losing an item be a consequence? Would breaking the item (wand, weapon, armor) be Create Advantage or Attack (especially if it is causing consequences)? Typically items are background information, so I am trying to see how making an item important mechanically would balance with the rules.

Hello Ben, In Fate, items are usually defined by Character Aspects ("His Father's Sword"),  Gear Aspects ,  Weapon/Armor Aspects , or with Create an Advantage, all of which is part and parcel to the  Bronze Rule aka Fate Fractal . Loss of an item would probably be the result of a  Consequence of an encounter. /Matt

Thanks, Matt I've already read over those rules and played around with ideas about how Gear/Weapon/Armor aspects would fit in my game. I think I have worked a way where losing your wand wouldn't severely handicap your mage, but that being disarmed (Create Advantage: Disarmed) could still be invoked and compelled against you. However, I would still like to know if anyone can answer this question: If a broken item (Wand, Weapon, Armor, etc.) is a Consequence, and Consequences are only taken as a result of a) succeeding with a Cost in an Overcome Action or b) attempting to absorb shifts of Stress from an Attack (right?), then you would have to Attack a character in order to break their item and hope that they took the consequence rather than the stress (unless you had a Setting rule that said you had to take the consequence - that you can't take stress, only consequences, if your items were being targeted. Personally, I think that that is all too complicated, and that Create Advantage should be able to be used to break an item, and that players would just have to understand that in this settings, your items may be broken by magic (or even powerful Fight rolls).