Skills

Skills make up a large portion of the dice checks you do in FATE. It's easiest to think of them as  "what is done, or not done, with varying ability." These are the actions you take to deal with challenges, conflicts, or simply reach toward your goals. Below is a tentative list suggested by FATE Core, with some additions/changes for a potential urban fantasy setting. It will obviously get cleaned up and organized more as we go. Any of these can be renamed, recategorized, fitted with specialties, etc. We will also probably tie in some sort of magic skill, or have it attached to an existing skill (like Lore for Wizards) based on the caster.
 * Athletics:  Acrobatics from 5E
 * Burglary:  Pickpocketing, lockpicking, casing a target, dealing with alarm systems
 * Contacts:  knowing and making connections with people Crafts: skill of working with machinery, for good or ill
 * Deceive:  lying to and misdirecting people
 * Drive:  operating vehicles and things that go fast
 * Empathy:  knowing and being able to spot changes in a person’s mood or bearing
 * Fight:  close-quarters combat (in other words, within the same zone), both unarmed and using weapons Investigate: find things out (concentrated effort and in-depth scrutiny)
 * Lore:  knowledge, education, scholarship, academics
 * Notice:  overall perception, ability to pick out details at a glance, and other powers of observation
 * Physique:  representing the character’s natural physical aptitudes, such as raw strength and endurance (nimble = Athletics, strong = Physique)(edited)
 * Provoke:  eliciting negative emotional response from them—fear, anger, shame, etc. (need some kind of justification but requires that your target can feel emotions—robots and zombies typically can’t be provoked)
 * Rapport:  making positive connections to people and eliciting positive emotion
 * Resources:  describes your character’s general level of material wealth in the game world and ability to apply it. This might not always reflect cash on hand, given the different ways you can represent wealth in a particular setting (basic, easy way to handle wealth as an abstraction without getting into minutiae or bookkeeping)(edited)
 * Shoot:  using ranged weaponry
 * Stealth:  allows you to avoid detection, both when hiding in place and trying to move about unseen
 * Technology: ability to effectively use machines
 * Will:  represents your character’s general level of mental fortitude, the same way that Physique represents your physical fortitude.(edited)

Specialization (homebrew idea): For every +1 in a skill, you can choose a subgroup to specialize in. For example, Shoot (+3) could let you pick Sniper Rifles, Archery, and Throwing Knives as your specialties. When rolling for these, count your skills as +2 more (in this example, Archery would be +5).

Changing Skills: a Matter of Survival

by Ryan Macklin

By only having 18 skills, the default skill list in Fate Core has some odd quirks and blind spots. Much of that is by design—different settings should have different skill lists. To quote Fate Core System, page 96:

When you’re creating your own setting for use with Fate, you should also create your own skill list. The default list we provide is a good starting point, but creating skills specific to your world can help make it seem richer by reinforcing the story with mechanics.

Of course, we don’t tell you in the book how to go about doing that, partly because there’s no one true way and partly because that’s not the job of the core book. In this article, I present a new skill while walking you through the design process. It sheds some light on how to make design decisions while building a skill list, and concludes with a new set of mechanics that were created as a result of rethinking two skills. Because there’s no one true way, the process in the article is shown by example—one you can use in your own builds, and tweak to serve your needs.

Creating the Survival Skill

There’s a character archetype that isn’t well supported in the default list: the survivalist. That includes the way Aragorn uses his knowledge of the wilds in The Fellowship of the Ring, the classic trope of the street urchin who knows how to survive in the urban jungle, characters like Robinson Crusoe or Oliver Queen (especially how he’s portrayed in Arrow), and so on.

The ratio of 18 skills/10 skill slots (which I call “the 55% Rule”—more about that in a moment) is key to Fate’s skill economy, because it means that any given character only gets reasonable spotlight time with just over half of the skills. To keep the ratio with minimum fuss, I’m going to swap out another skill—the natural choice for that is Notice, for reasons we’ll get into shortly.

Playing with the 55% Rule

There are a couple of exceptions to the 55% Rule that you should take into account when making new skills:

Skills reserved for a privileged few don’t count toward the number of skill slots determined by the 55% ratio.

Skills that are split functions count together.

Talents that are rare in a setting, like psionics or magic, are typically handled as an extra (chapter 11 of Fate Core System). Some extras work best as unique skills rather than getting tacked onto an existing skill. Because those skills aren’t available to everyone, they don’t count in the ratio. Furthermore, people taking such a talent are intentionally making a choice to be competent in something interesting, so part of the cost is not being competent in another (often related) set of actions. For instance, someone might take Psionics as a skill and forgo Shoot (because he has a stunt called Mind Bullets) or Physique (because he doesn’t need to work out to use Telekinesis). So the ratio is skewed slightly, but the competence element enforced by the number of skill slots remains.

Likewise, if you split a skill into different areas—such as having Lore become Academics (for broad scholarship), Sciences (for technical knowledge), and Lore (for occult, spiritual, and religious matters), then there’s no need to add a skill slot. In settings where such splits matter (such as the upcoming Fate edition of Achtung! Cthulhu splitting Lore as above), players who take one of these split skills generally have a particular branch in mind, not unlike having a specific take or vibe in mind when taking Lore from the Core skill set. So if a player wants their character to have two or more such skills, that’s a fine choice because, while it decreases the number of slots the character uses for conflict-oriented skills, it privileges them with discovery and knowledge—which is something of interest to quite a number of Fate players.

So, the 55% Rule isn’t about strictly adhering to a number. Keep it in mind when building your setting’s skill list, but understanding where each skill fits into the skill economy is just as important to making a Fate build work.

Cannibalizing Notice

Notice is probably the second-oddest skill in the bunch. (The oddest goes to Resources, which is its own article. Or series of articles.) It covers situational awareness, passive discovery, and reflexes in physical conflicts (in that it covers turn order). So before we construct the Survival skill, let’s parcel out Notice’s spheres of influence.

First of all, passive discovery—where the GM might call for a Notice roll to see if the characters process something they’ve just seen or heard in an actionable fashion—should be split into all the other skills. Investigate is the default, but every skill can be used to discover something: Lore to process that some arcane writings are actually a passcode to magically open a door, Shoot to get a sense of what weapon was just shot from a distance (“That’s a very distinctive sound” from Leverage’s Eliot), Empathy to reflexively tell if someone’s lying, etc. This means that anything where the character isn’t intently focusing on something, just the brain automatically processing stimuli in a useful way, is covered by how well versed the character is in a field. (This will naturally include ways where Survival conveys such information, such as spotting a useful item in the muck or seeing a hidden danger.)

We’re going to play more with this idea toward the end of the article.

Constructing Survival

The other two elements—situational awareness and establishing turn order—work with the skill we’ll naturally call “Survival.” But that’s not enough, because it doesn’t cover those characters in fiction mentioned above; it doesn’t cover the expertise needed to survive in those worlds. For that, we’re going to borrow some of Lore’s functionality, where knowledge is useful for overcome actions and creating advantages.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Wait, but Lore covers those situations already.” That’s true, but it doesn’t inherently model the characters above. The street kid has street smarts, not the breadth of knowledge conveyed by Lore. Oliver Queen is sharp, but in a way that means a high Survival rather than a high Lore. Now, we’re not going to completely steal that from Lore—the person with Great Lore will be a virtual encyclopedia, pointing out different plants and animals in a forest, but not necessarily be useful in action. Likewise, the person with Great Survival will be able to tell you what’s in a book on life in the desert, but the rest of the library isn’t in her wheelhouse.

Fate already has a precedent for skill function double-up, where Athletics and Fight can be used for melee defense, and Physique and Athletics can both be used to get out of tight situations, so this isn’t new. It simply builds on the high-competence nature of Fate characters.

That’s enough to construct a Survival skill, using language from Notice and Lore. But let’s play with one more thing…

Spinning Survival as a Defense Skill

Survival isn’t an attack skill.

Another odd hole is Shoot defenses. Typically Athletics is used to dodge a bullet in more cinematic circumstances, but if Survival is based in part on being able to stay alive, then we can extend that to being a defense against ranged attacks by hunkering down or taking cover. (Depending on the nature of the narrative, it might even make more sense than Athletics.) So we’re going to add this as a base function of Survival.

A noteworthy design bit: this could just as easily be moved into a Survival stunt, if as a designer you think that’s one piece of functionality too many. The reason I don’t mind it is because Survival isn’t an attack skill, and it doesn’t defend against combat that’s right in your face.

Survival

The Survival skill is all about the ability to endure and physically thrive in the wilds, whether in jungle, desert, or even the streets and sewers of a city. It covers situational awareness—your overall perception and the ability to pick out at a glance useful things or dangers hidden in the surrounding environment.

Overcome: You use Survival to overcome obstacles relating to your environment, such as finding your way through rugged terrain, gathering edible food and potable water, and so on. Survival is also used to overcome obstacles relating to reaction: noticing a danger, hearing a faint sound of someone following you, spotting the concealed gun in that guy’s waistband, etc. Additionally, Survival can be used to treat a physical consequence akin to being a field medic, provided you have the proper supplies and time.

Create an Advantage: You use Survival to create aspects based on direct observation of your surroundings—finding an escape route in a debris-filled building, noticing someone sticking out in a crowd, tracking an animal or person, etc. When observing people, Survival can tell you what’s going on with them externally; for internal changes, see Empathy. You might also use Survival to declare that your character spots something you can use to your advantage in a situation, such as a convenient Escape Route when you’re trying to get out of a building, or a Subtle Weakness in the enemy’s line of defense. For example, if you’re in a barroom brawl you could make a Survival roll to say that you spot a puddle on the floor right next to your opponent’s feet that could cause him to slip.

Survival also allows you to create aspects based on using or manipulating your environment, such as making a trap or a foxhole, scrounging for supplies, building a shelter or tools, and otherwise altering the environment to suit your needs.

Attack: Survival isn’t really used for attacks.

Defend: You can use Survival to defend against any uses of Stealth to get the drop on you or ambush you, or to discover that you’re being observed. Survival is also used to defend against gunfire and other such attacks, but only when you are huddled down in a defensible position, such as a foxhole or bunker. (This is the opposite of using Athletics, which involves avoiding these situations via movement.)

Special: Survival is used to establish turn order in a physical conflict, replacing Notice.

SPREADING THE TURN ORDER LOVE

Since the skill to survive in the wilds is now how turn order is determined in a conflict, and not every great fighter is also a master of the outdoors, you could use the skill replacement method of stunt creation to cover other character concepts.

Survival Stunts

The Danger Sense and Body Language Reader stunts from Fate Core work for Survival. Depending on how you feel about it, the Reactive Shot might as well. Here are a couple more stunts tailored specifically for Survival.

Animal Ken. Creatures of the wild are second nature to you. Use Survival for Empathy and Rapport situations with animals.

Master of the Wild. Pick some sort of terrain or broad environment. Once per scene, when you create an advantage that involves spending a little time scavenging or manipulating the local area, you can give that aspect an additional free invoke.

Natural Healer. Your time in the wilds has taught you how to patch yourself up when hurt and to recognize what’s good to use around you for cleaning wounds or as medicine. You can use Survival to address consequences that are physical in nature. (Design note: I’m on the fence about whether this is a natural part of the skill or a stunt, and sometimes I think that maybe just recovering from a mild physical consequence is inherent to Survival.)

Master of the Ring. Given even a brief sense that the situation could get physical, you can use Fight in place of Survival for the purposes of establishing turn order and for spotting hidden dangers that could come into play during a fight.

At Home in Academia. Whether browsing in the library stacks or wandering through the campus garden, no one gets a jump on you on your home turf. Use Lore instead of Survival or Empathy when establishing turn order.

Making Passive Discovery Cool

Now that we have Survival detailed, we’re done with hacking the skill set, right? Well, yes, but we don’t have to stop there. I mentioned above that we’re splitting the passive discover of Notice into all skills, so let’s extend that concept into a new mechanic: automatic discovery.

This concept centers around rewarding characters with high competence in any field (which is every character in a Fate game) by ensuring they never miss key information. In automatic discovery, all of your skills rated at Good and higher have an additional benefit: they always succeed at overcome actions or creating advantages that involve passive discovery—i.e., any time when the GM would normally call for a skill roll to spot or hear something that is reflexive and takes no time or effort. No roll is required; the characters are just that good. Now instead of the person with a high Notice being the person who discovers all things, the person with the high Athletics notices the martial arts an opponent is using (thus suggesting where they trained), the high Burglary sees the telltale scratches around a lock or window pane that suggests it’s been compromised, and so on.

The characters can still make actions involving active discovery, just as normal. Nothing’s changing in that regard for creating advantages or other actions that involve focused effort. After all, Notice isn’t really useful in that regard; that’s where Investigate (or other skills, depending on the situation) comes into play.

Furthermore, we’ll add a little bit more to skills that are Great or higher—assume they succeed with style at passive discovery. That means extra free invocations or other benefits from being one of the setting’s top experts or masters of that field or discipline.

In settings where gaining knowledge is potentially harmful, such as those where fighting to retain one’s sanity is a big deal, automatically succeeding at passive discovery is one of the most dangerous things to have. And that makes it even more interesting. But even without that, this dynamic highlights every character’s mind and ability to discover and unconsciously process things under fire.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this walkthrough on making a skill and extending the rest of the skill list. Happy gaming!

Voyages: A Skill Set for Getting There

by Tara Zuber

“It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

—Ursula K. LeGuin

Everyone has their travel story. Strangers meet and separate along the road. Itineraries fall to pieces. Destinations change. Odysseus and Dorothy Gale just wanted to get home and Frodo just wanted to throw the One Ring away, but the path from A to B is rarely a straight line. Others surge across the land, over the seas, and through the air without a set destination. Tintin hunted for adventure, the Bride for revenge, Amalthea for unicorns, and Don Quixote for his impossible dream. Some, like Carmen Sandiego, cross continents and time for grand heists, while others, like Phileas Fogg, race around the world just to settle a bet.

This adaptation of the default Fate Core skill list focuses on how players get from place to place and all the stories they collect along the way.

THE SKILL LIST

New skills are bolded and italicized.

Athletics, Construction, Culture, Deceive, Empathy, Fight, Investigate, Mechanics, Medicine, Navigate, Notice, Pilot, Rapport, Resources, Shoot, Stealth, Wilderness, and Will

What’s Changed?

Those familiar with Fate Core may have noticed that Burglary, Contacts, Crafts, Drive, Lore, Physique, and Provoke are missing. Characters can still do these things—they’ll just call on different skills to do so.

Crafts has been divided between Construction and Mechanics to allow for the varying expertise people with differing amounts and kinds of travel experience would have. Construction builds, while Mechanics make things go. Construction can build a boat or the body of a vehicle, but doesn’t include the knowledge to make it work. Likewise, Mechanics can build an engine, but not the vehicle to house it. Characters may have skill in both, but with differing specialties based on their background and interests.

Drive has been expanded into Pilot, which addresses all manner of vehicles that move over land, on water, or through air.

Culture and Fight handle Provoke rolls. With Culture you draw on your cultural knowledge to push the right buttons to influence locals. With Fight you can incite violence.

Physique has been merged into Athletics. Use aspects, stunts, and roleplaying to suggest specific characteristics, such as strength, speed, or grace.

Contacts are now part of Resources. Consider adding an aspect to claim additional people resources in areas familiar to the character. You might also consider a contacts-related stunt using Resources.

Burglary rolls can be done with Stealth or Deceive. For overcoming a locked door, consider using Mechanics to pick the lock or Construction to remove the hinges.

Finally, this skill list assumes that ranks in a skill imply knowledge. Therefore, Lore rolls should be handled by the most closely related skill. For analyzing a bullet, try Shoot. For questions of physics, try Mechanics. Discuss with your GM which skill is most applicable.

Stress

In Fate Core, skill in Physique can provide additional stress boxes. While you can opt to keep stress tied to a physical skill and use Athletics to determine the stress boxes, the added skills provide other options.

If you prefer to focus on physical stress as injuries, you may use Medicine to add stress boxes as the characters can automatically and immediately address their wounds.

Another possibility is combining the mental and physical stress tracks into one. In this case, rather than representing injuries, stress is the general disorientation and frustration associated with travel. In this case, you would use Culture to add additional stress boxes, since Culture is your ability to adapt to a new situation.

See page 118 of Fate Core System for how these added boxes work.

What’s New?

Skills are used to overcome, create an advantage, attack, or defend. Only the relevant actions for each skill are listed below.

Construction

Construction is the skill of building objects with any material. Characters skilled in Construction are the builders, architects, and designers.

Overcome: Construction is a more limited version of the default Crafts skill and allows you to build, break, or fix objects, provided you have tools and time.

Create an Advantage: With Construction you can point out aspects of an object, both positive and negative. You can also use Construction to make or sabotage objects on the fly or to strengthen defenses.

Construction Stunts

Bearing Gifts. Create a present for someone you’re trying to influence. Use an aspect to describe how the person feels toward you afterward (e.g., Thankful).

Prison Break. Whenever you’re being detained, spend a fate point and escape.

Culture

Culture is the adaptability that makes travel easy and interesting for you. With Culture, you not only know the right clothes and local secrets, you also know how to blend in and how best to insult, shock, scare, or compliment the locals. Culture isn’t how you affect others, but rather how you fit into what people expect or how you demonstrate respect by a show of fitting in.

Overcome: Use Culture to adjust to a new place and society and to overcome culture shock and other hazards of travel. With Culture, you can blend in as a social chameleon, estimate the layout of a place, and provoke or influence locals.

Create an Advantage: Use Culture to give yourself temporary aspects that influence how others see and react to you (e.g., Convincingly Authoritative, Using the Right Gestures). You may also use your cultural knowledge to build a better Rapport with or to Deceive people.

Culture Stunts

Polyglot. You’ve picked up bits and pieces of languages from all over. Add +2 to Culture rolls involving language.

You Honor Us. Gain +2 to a Culture roll after respecting a local custom. After using this skill, you must again demonstrate your respect to reuse it.

Mechanics

Mechanics is the knowledge of machines and making things go. Mechanics can build and repair engines, design traps or locks, and understand the interaction of different physical forces. It’s the skill of engineers and physicists.

Overcome: Mechanics allows you to build, break, or fix machines and engines, provided you have tools and time. You can also pick locks.

Create an Advantage: Mechanics allows you to notice the strengths and weaknesses of a system. You can point out these aspects to your advantage. You can also fix or sabotage a machine under pressure.

Mechanics Stunts

Above and Beyond. Once per session, add an extra aspect with one free invoke to a machine you’re repairing.

Trap Master. Your traps require three Good rolls against passive opposition. You can spend up to three fate points increasing each requirement from Good to Great.

Medicine

Medicine lets you dress wounds and diagnose problems.

Overcome: Medicine is used to overcome physical stress and consequences in yourself and others.

Create an Advantage: Medicine can also be used to set physical weaknesses on your opponents, creating aspects to exploit in a fight.

Defend: Medicine can defend against poisons.

Medicine Stunts

Cornered. In close quarters, use Medicine—and supplies from your medical kit—instead of Fight to injure an opponent who attacked you on their previous turn.

Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. If the people you’re interacting with are aware of your medical skills, add +2 to Rapport.

Navigate

Navigate handles map-reading, backtracking, following directions, finding North, and being able to translate distances into the time, fuel, and supplies needed to traverse them.

Overcome: Use Navigate if your character is lost. They can retrace their steps, determine North, or navigate by stars or landmarks.

Create an Advantage: With Navigate, you map your course and can learn about or set aspects along the way. You can also take time to map out a new settlement.

Navigate Stunts

Always Prepared. You studied the route and anticipated necessary supplies. Once per journey between two settlements, set an aspect with a free invoke that demonstrates this preparation.

Back and Safe. Once per session, spend a fate point to safely and without interruptions return to wherever you’re staying or have recently slept.

Pilot

The Pilot skill gets you from point A to B in every way except walking. It is flying airplanes, spaceships, and zeppelins, driving cars and trains, sailing and rowing boats, and riding bicycles and horses. If it moves, you can operate it.

Overcome: Pilot is used to maneuver through or over a space. The skill allows characters to get through poor conditions (e.g., storms, tight spaces, rough seas) and to show off. It can also be used for contests.

Attack: Pilot is not typically used for attacking. You can, however, use your vehicle as a weapon by crashing or ramming into another object to cause stress. You incur as much stress as you cause and must complete a second roll to determine whether your vehicle remains viable. Your second roll must be equal to or greater than the stress you caused to remain usable.

Defend: You can defend against attacks from similar vehicles to whatever one you are piloting by dodging, weaving, and making other clever movements.

Pilot Stunts

Experience Counts. Roll Pilot instead of Mechanics or Construction to fix a vehicle your character is familiar with.

This Is My Domain. Choose Air, Water, or Land and add +2 to all Pilot rolls that involve a vehicle operating in that space.

Wilderness

The Wilderness skill is the basic know-how for getting by. You can forage for food, distinguish between safe and poisonous foods, follow tracks, start a fire, and create basic tools like fishing lures and nets. Wilderness intersects with several other skills, but is entirely concerned with how you survive the great outdoors. While Wilderness doesn’t include “street smarts,” it is also useful within cities as many of its uses—such as finding or creating shelter, starting fires, and locating food—would also help for surviving city streets.

Overcome: Wilderness helps you overcome challenges posed by the environment. You can find food and water and notice dangers posed by poisonous plants or certain sounds.

Create an Advantage: You create advantages by declaring helpful aspects on the environment, such as an Animal Path leading to fresh water, and by adapting the world around you, such as by creating a Shelter. You can also develop tools, such as creating a Net for easier fishing.

Wilderness Stunts

Water Baby. You know everything there is to know about living in and around the water. +2 to Wilderness when you’re in the same zone as a body of water.

Animal Family. Growing up, you spent a lot of time around animals. Choose a species to declare your animal family. When you encounter a member of that species, you can communicate and request favors using Wilderness. +

Actions as Intent: Discover in Fate Core

by Mark Diaz Truman

When I first started as a developer for Fate on Timeworks, I had a tough time writing stunts. John Adamus—my patient editor—kept sending drafts back to me with the same note: “You don’t need a stunt to use Shoot to lay down suppressive fire or Resources to make a problem go away with cash. The actions already take care of that.”

It took me a while to internalize that a skill like Burglary works for more than just picking someone’s pocket. It can be used to convince someone you’re a real thief instead of an undercover cop (defend), to find high-quality tools for breaking and entering a big box store (create advantage), to run a classic con job on a mark (overcome), or to interrogate a suspect about a crime (attack). Burglary doesn’t say how a character should use their skills and talents—it just outlines an arena of conflict that matters to a particular build of Fate Core.

As I’ve done more Fate development, I’ve thought a lot about how the four actions structure those arenas of conflict. In Fate Core, actions convey the intent of the players as their characters engage through the lens of their chosen action. The four actions we have, however, neglect learning as a collaborative tool in the fiction; players aren’t inherently rewarded for choosing to learn something about the situation at hand. This article presents some of my thinking about how the existing actions are structured and presents a new action for use in Fate Core that explicitly puts learning into the player’s hands—discover.

While Fate can certainly have more than four actions, discover offers unique opportunities to shift the tone and focus of Fate Core—this article also explores the option of removing attack as an action, digging deeper into drama, intrigue, and mystery, and moving away from combat and injury. I hope the discover action finds a place at your table—and in your Fate Core builds—whenever investigation and discovery are central to your game.

Skills as Intent

In many roleplaying games, skills convey intent. Diplomacy as an available skill clearly offers a way to resolve problems nonviolently. If you take Diplomacy as one of your core skills, you’re the talker of the group; it’s your job to settle conflicts with words. On the other hand, an Appraise skill is about discovering information rather than resolving problems. The intent of Appraise is to gather data or prepare for a negotiation rather than overcome an obstacle.

In most games, you don’t need to say what you intend to do with a skill when you pick it at character creation; the very act of picking the skill tells the GM and your fellow players a ton of information about your character’s position in the game. “The guy with a high Firearms skill and a specialty in Shotguns? Oh, he’ll be shooting people for us in combat. The rest of the time he’ll hang back so our social characters can get things done.” The skill conveys your intent, long before you say what you plan to do in a scene.

Stretching Intent

The narrow focus of skills in most systems often results in some strange interactions at the table, as players try to find ways to use their core skills with completely new intents. The fighter tries to use whatever skill makes her good at hitting people with swords to talk someone into cooperating; the wizard tries to come up with a clever plan that uses his intelligence to harm their enemies once he’s out of magic spells.

And thus the debate begins: does a skill establish an arena of conflict or does it tell us what your intent is within that arena of conflict? If you’ve got Swords as a core skill, does that mean you’re skilled at harming people with swords (an intent!) or does it simply indicate that you have a wide degree of training in swords, such that you should dominate conflicts across the entire arena of the skill?

Actions as Intent

The subtle genius of Fate Core is that it separates the arena of conflict—a skill—from the action’s intention. Differentiating the arena from the intent makes Shoot or Athletics or Rapport about more than just one mode of interaction with objects in the fiction. Instead, each skill delineates an arena of conflict and the actions allow the players to mix and match intents as needed. Players can use a skill to charge through a problem and then turn around and use the same skill to patiently prepare for future conflicts.

For example, you can use Provoke to overcome a weak-willed guard blocking your path, create an advantage by inspiring Carnal Lust or Intense Jealousy in a target, or inflict mental stress with a focused attack. In some versions of Fate Core, you might even be able to use it to defend against some actions. (There’s another article I could write here about why some skills can’t attack or defend.…)

Overcome

When characters choose to overcome an obstacle, they intend to move past the obstacle right now. Moving past opposition can happen in stages as part of a challenge, but overcome is usually about an immediate attempt to move past a problem—which is why most experienced Fate players try to create an advantage or two before rolling to overcome.

Create Advantage

Create advantage, unlike overcome, is future oriented. When characters create advantages, they intend to prepare for future rolls and establish the context for future action by creating aspects. Clever players use create advantage to create aspects that shift or redefine conflicts, but those aspects still need to be compelled or invoked to resolve the situation.

Attack

Overcome is about moving past an obstacle; attack is about harming or weakening an obstacle in a significant way. Superheroes might overcome the guard outside the supervillain’s lair to get to the bad guy, but they intend to weaken the villain so he can be taken into custody. Attack is about sticking with a target until that target is defeated, removing the opposition from the narrative instead of moving past it to the next obstacle.

Defend

Characters can defend against more than attacks: they might oppose other characters learning things about them, protect important aspects or other characters, or maintain their focus in the face of distractions. Defense is about resistance. The intent is to say “No!” and continue on the current trajectory instead of allowing other characters to act.

Learning New Information

Of course, create advantage is also used to learn more about a situation or a character in the scene. Empathy, for example, is often used to uncover existing aspects or place an existing aspect on a target. Unfortunately, the overlap between preparation and learning isn’t as clean and simple as we might like it to be.

Preparation vs. Learning

Create advantage works primarily because preparation and learning have some overlap. If a vigilante superhero detective runs tests on fragments of a bullet found at a crime scene, he’s both trying to learn something about the murderer and prepare for future confrontations. Ideally, the vigilante learns something meaningful about his opposition that he can also call upon later in the story to assist him in capturing the villain.

But preparation often doesn’t have any learning component at all. If our friendly neighborhood hedge magician is cooking up a Potion of Strength, it’s unlikely she suddenly gains any knowledge during the ritual. The same goes for a kid detective gathering up A Crew of Misfits or a rugged space marine equipping a Heavy Minigun. Characters can clearly get ready for a future conflict without learning any new information about their opposition.

Yet characters can learn something new about the opposition without also preparing for a future conflict. I think there’s room in our stories for players to ask interesting questions that don’t lead to aspects, provided there’s a way to make the information matter to the story.

Fictional Positioning in Fate

In Fate, the players create the narrative in which the game takes place, collectively determining the fictional positioning of the story elements. Fictional positioning is an agreement we develop through talking during a game, the way we all agree that goblins would probably run from a giant troll or that bullets don’t hurt vampires. This kind of positioning builds on itself, and we track it in the game—even if we don’t notice we’re tracking it—so actions in the past tend to influence actions in the future. If goblins ran last time, for example, shouldn’t they run this time?

Determining fictional positioning in Fate frequently means creating aspects, but that’s not the only way to do the job. If your Fate game is about a team of bionic detectives investigating crime, you can add the aspect Bionic City Blues or you can simply state “We’re all bionic detectives, investigating crime in a near-future city.” The lack of an aspect doesn’t make it less true; it only means you can’t spend a fate point to invoke the aspect on a roll.

The lack of mechanics around fictional positioning sometimes leads players to want to create aspects for everything. But if every new piece of information warrants an aspect, you end up “spamming” aspects, overwhelming the narrative with ten aspects on the table that are never reincorporated into the fiction. When every invoke is a free invoke on a new aspect, we miss the satisfaction of returning to the aspects that grounded the story in the first place.

In my experience, most players intuitively understand that aspect spamming distracts from the narrative, and they limit their create advantage actions to meaningful moments of preparation. And since the vocabulary of create advantage doesn’t imply discovery to most players, those create advantage actions don’t usually involve listening, learning, observing. Characters prepare, act, and react, but they don’t take much time to learn in any formal sense, even when they’re creating aspects.

The Player’s Gaze

One solution to the absence of create advantage actions dedicated to learning is to just give players the information they need when they need it. Compels are great for this, since the GM can introduce information that’s complicated—“No, I am your father”; tricksy—“I am not left-handed either”; or downright devastating—“What’s in the box?” Information is often less important than action, so giving the players the information they need to get to the action is the priority.

But this model isn’t really collaborative; the GM delivers information and the players act on that information. The magic of roleplaying is that information is really part of a broader conversation between the players and the GM. The questions the players ask are as important as the answers the GM gives because they determine what parts of the world get defined. Discovery only has a collaborative element if the players have an equal say in what merits disclosure.

Imagine a game as a cluttered, darkened attic, filled with books and artifacts. Sure, the GM called out some specific parts as relevant before the players sat down to play—the major antagonists, some set pieces, a few themes—but the back and forth between the players and GM shapes the space. Where do the players direct their flashlights? What objects hold their interest? What questions do they ask about the space? The answers to these questions define the space as much as anything the GM presents.

Moving Toward Discover

What’s needed is a method of learning new things about the setting that frame the action without overwhelming the system with aspects. Information straight from the GM is useful but ultimately limiting, since it works against the collaborative nature of Fate. We need something more robustly in the players’ control, something that allows them to trigger new information without needing to place a new aspect on the table—a discover action!

The Discover Action

Use the discover action to learn new information about environments, obstacles, and characters in a scene.

The discover action allows your character to get new information about what’s going on in the current scene without creating a new aspect. Sometimes you’ll need to dig deeper into a situation to discover answers, but other times a quick glance is all you need to start learning more about the situation.

When you undertake a discover action, you get the chance to ask the GM a question about the situation through the lens of the skill you’ve chosen. If you want to know more about a threatening gunman, you can try to determine more about the gun itself (Shoot), the emotional state of the gunman (Empathy), or the position the gunman is occupying (Notice). The GM answers honestly, but failure results in your question pushing you into danger, revealing unpleasant information, or costing you precious time or resources.

After you finish your discover action, you may want to create an aspect on the scene by creating an advantage with your new knowledge or taking advantage of the boost you created if you succeeded with style.

USING CREATE ADVANTAGE AND DISCOVER

If you include discover as an action, players can’t use create advantage to learn new information. All of those actions now fall under discover. Players can use create advantage to capitalize on the information they’ve gained, such as using Provoke to place the aspect Hot Tempered on an NPC after discovering the NPC’s weakness using Empathy.

When you fail using discover, you either ask a question of the Gamemaster related to the skill you used at a major cost or the opposition asks questions about your character, delving into your secrets and weaknesses.

When you tie with discover, you ask one question of the Gamemaster related to the skill you used at a minor cost.

When you succeed with discover, you ask one question of the Gamemaster related to the skill you used.

When you succeed with style, you ask one question of the Gamemaster related to the skill you used, followed by either another question or the creation of a boost.

Katherine’s spectral photographer, Deborah, is taking photos of a child’s bedroom. Deborah’s team has been hired to cleanse the house of evil spirits, and they’d like to know what they’re up against.

Katherine says, “I’ll take a bunch of different shots all over the house, using the Spectral Film I brought. I’ve got a cheap instant camera in addition to my normal rig. I’d like to use Investigate to discover what kind of ghosts or demons might be haunting this place.”

Marissa, her GM, says, “Sure. That sounds good. I think you’ve got all the gear you need for a quick survey. It’s a Good (+3) difficulty with passive opposition.”

Deborah has a Good (+3) Investigate and rolls + + - - for a total of Good (+3). Not quite enough to succeed without any costs.

Marissa asks, “Do you want to use the free invoke on your Spectral Film?”

Katherine says, “Yup! I’ll use that for +2, and I’ll also spend a fate point on my Sharp Eye for the Supernatural to succeed with style. Here’s my question: ‘What kind of supernatural forces are here?’”

Marissa smiles and says, “There are definite signs of demonic possession throughout the building…and signs that something mortal fought them off in the past. You also see signs of new demonic activity, as if they’ve been reawoken.”

Katherine thinks for a moment about taking a followup question or a boost. She settles on Demonic Signs as a boost so her team can take immediate advantage of what she’s learned.

Sample Discover Actions

Here are a few Fate Core skills presented with an appropriate discover action. These should give you some idea about what discover might look like in your game, including a few skills that might be difficult to imagine using with discover.

Crafts

Discover: Use Crafts to learn about the properties, strengths, and weaknesses of various objects. You might use it to learn about how a building or device was constructed, to find out what materials were used to make an object, or to discover who made a particular item, assuming the creator would leave telltale evidence. You may need additional scientific equipment or time with an object to use this action with Crafts.

Drive

Discover: Use Drive to learn more about vehicles and the evidence they leave behind or to judge speed and distance while driving. You can also locate the quickest or safest route to a destination or find the correct parts or gear to get a vehicle up and running again.

Investigate

Discover: Use Investigate to ask questions about a crime scene, learn information from records, or get any other information that’s best learned through careful study. It’s important to differentiate this from discovering information using other skills—i.e., specifics about cars (Drive)—and information gained through a quick overview (Notice).

Physique

Discover: Use Physique to ask questions about physical training, exercise equipment, and your own body. Ask questions about your physical limits and abilities, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of physical objects. You can also gain information about the world through physical tests using Physique, e.g., how much does this thing weigh?

Provoke

Discover: Provoke lets you learn more about your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, but in a social sphere instead of a physical one. Use Provoke to ask questions about how people react to specific stimuli, spotting reactions that might not be immediately apparent. Note that you need to differentiate Provoke and Empathy; the latter provides much richer information about the intent and emotions of the target.

Will

Discover: Use Will to learn more about the mental defenses of others—especially when you see them tried and tested—and, through reflection and concentration, recall what you may have overlooked. Discovering information with Will may also be possible in contests of mental strength, like interrogating a difficult witness.

Five Actions in Fate Core?

What does adding the discover action mean to your Fate Core games? Well…it works pretty well to just drop it into an existing setting. Players internalize what discover can do fairly quickly, and nothing in Fate Core limits you to four actions. Five actions diversify intentions in scenes, giving players many tools to use when interacting with the environment and each other.

Overcome as Attack

If you want to keep your Fate game to four actions, think about cutting attack. In your setting, do folks often turn to physical or social violence to damage their opposition? Or do characters mostly try to accomplish their goals without harming others at all? Maybe you don’t actually need an attack action.

If you want to cut attack, let overcome do the heavy lifting for you during combat. Since most fights can be thought of as moving past opposition instead of harming people, your players can use overcome to take out their opposition in a conflict. Targets of an overcome action can mark stress boxes or consequences—one for a success and two for a success with style—to resist being taken out.

This has a few huge advantages:

Avoids the Arms Race: Without an attack action, there’s no longer any advantage to having a +10 to a roll. Anything above 3 shifts (a success with style) is wasted. Players can focus more on non-combat skills—and spend more fate points outside of combat—even if combat is a solid chunk of the game.

Cuts Down on Conflicts: Since overcome doesn’t inflict stress, many fights are over after a single roll. Characters have to choose to stay in, marking stress boxes and consequences to represent that they aren’t willing to give up the fight just yet. That’s always the case in Fate, but treating attacks as overcome actions helps dramatize the choice.

Diversifies Takedowns: In addition to minimizing fights, it also puts social, mental, and physical skills on the same level. Taking someone out with Deceive or Provoke works the same as taking someone out with Fight or Shoot. Staying in the fight against mental and social attacks works the same too!

PASSIVE DISCOVERY

This discover action works well with Ryan Macklin’s take on Passive Discovery (page 10 in The Fate Codex, Vol. 1, Issue 2). Instead of rolling, characters with a Good (+3) or better in a skill can choose to succeed without style on any passive discovery action.

As you might guess, I’ve got some other stuff planned that makes use of swapping out attack for discover. In the meantime, I look forward to what you all do with this version of discover!

Special thanks to Emily Care Boss for her work on fictional positioning, Ryan Macklin for his early thoughts on the potential for a discover action, and Bruce Baugh for sharing his thoughts on actions and intent. There are sure to be many versions of discover, but this one owes a debt to all of you.

ATOMIC ROBO

Custom Skills

Creating a new skill starts with a name. It doesn’t have to be the final name of the skill, but you need something to give you direction and a sense of what the skill is intended to do.

Skill Actions and Applications

Skill are defined in two ways: in terms of the actions that you can take with the skill, and the applications of its use. While there are only four actions, as discussed in Fate Core, the number of potential applications is roughly infinite.

A skill’s name provides context for its place in the story. Its actions tell you how it matters in game terms. The intersection of a skill’s context and its actions gives you its applications—the circumstances under which it can be used.

For example, the context of a skill called Combat context is very likely going to be fighting, and the context of the Fate Core skill Provoke is social interaction. Even if both skills have the attack action, they’ll apply it in different ways. Combat’s attack application involves inflicting physical harm with things like fists, guns, or other weapons, while Provoke’s attack application involves inflicting mental harm via threats and intimidation.

A skill can have more than one application for a given action. For example, the Fate Core skill Athletics lets you defend against both physical attacks and attempts to create physical advantages against you—that’s two applications of the defend action.

This distinction between “actions” and “applications” isn’t found in Fate Core, but it’s important here because under these rules every skill has a cost dependent on how many applications it has, so we need to be a bit more precise than usual. These rules also assume that all skills are priced this way, and that a typical player character has around 30 points to spend on skills.

Mike wants to play a telepath who can project mental illusions into a target’s brain. He wants to make a custom skill to do this, and starts by calling it Hallucinations.

What game actions are a good fit for Hallucinations? One big use for the skill is probably going to be convincing people he’s someone other than himself, which sounds like overcome. Advantage is a good one, too—Mike can see using those illusions to distract his opponent with imaginary enemies or immobilize them in an imaginary pit. That also makes it sound like he could use it for defense against physical attacks by appearing to be a couple of feet in another direction, so he adds defend to the list. And what kind of imaginary enemies can’t cause imaginary wounds? That’s definitely attack.

That’s four actions in total (overcome, advantage, attack, and defend) with one application for each.

The skill descriptions in Fate Core go into a lot of helpful detail for each game action, but you don’t need to be so in-depth when making your own skills. A brief phrase for each application should suffice—just enough to remind yourself and the GM how it works. For example, “Overcome: Create believable illusions” or “Attack: Hallucinatory damage.”

Each skill starts at a cost of zero character points and has two free applications. For each application the skill has in excess of two, increase its cost by 1.

Hallucinations has four applications, so it’ll cost 2 character points. Done!

Exceeding Recommended Limits

The actions and applications for standard and custom skills only reflect their usual, reliable functions in the game. If a player wants to exceed these guidelines, that’s totally cool—as long as it makes sense in context. But keep in mind when you do this that you’re potentially setting a precedent, so proceed with caution.

For example, Briana’s playing a pilot in the Pacific Theater of World War II. She wants to ram an enemy aircraft, effectively using Vehicles as an attack. Unorthodox! The GM’s fine with it, with two provisos: One, the attacking fighter will automatically take whatever damage the defending aircraft does (as will Briana’s pilot, unless he can eject in time), and two, she’s going to need to invoke an aspect to do it.

Briana agrees. First she creates an advantage to put an aspect on his plane: Ramming Speed! Next round, she invokes that aspect for effect to temporarily add the attack game action to Vehicles, and rolls her attack.

Sample Skills

Here are more detailed write-ups of a few standard Fate Core skills. If a single action has more than one application for the skill, each action listed indicates a separate application.

Athletics (2 skill points)

The Athletics skill represents your character’s general level of physical fitness, whether through training, natural gifts, or unusual means (like cybernetic enhancement or genetic alteration). It’s the skill that represents how good you are at moving your body.

Overcome: Deal with an obstacle that requires physical movement—jumping, running, climbing, swimming, etc. If it resembles something you’d do in the decathlon, you should roll Athletics. You’d also roll to participate in any contests or challenges that rely on these types of activities. Note that conflicts aren’t obstacles; those are handled by Defend (see below).

Create Advantage: Maneuver to gain an edge, such as finding Higher Ground, forcing someone to be Cornered, or climbing a tree to get a Bird’s Eye View.

Defend: Dodge close-quarters or ranged attacks in a physical conflict.

Defend: Counter efforts to create an advantage against you, if you’re in a position to physically interfere with whomever’s making the attempt, or to keep someone from moving past a certain point.

Combat (2 skill points)

The Combat skill deals in all manner of violence, unarmed or armed, close-quarters or ranged.

Create Advantage: Execute a maneuver or “special move” in combat, such as disarming your opponent, throwing sand in their eyes, striking nerve points, or laying down suppressive fire.

Attack: Inflict some form of physical harm, whether hand-to-hand or ranged. Defend against Combat attacks with Combat or Athletics.

Defend: Counter hand-to-hand attacks in a physical conflict. Combat cannot defend against ranged attacks, however; use Athletics for that.

Defend: Counter an attempt to create combat-oriented advantages.

Contacts (2 skill points)

Contacts is the skill of knowing people and making connections with them, especially in a pinch. The better you are with Contacts, the better your information network.

Overcome: Poll your social networks for information. Whether that’s old-fashioned “man on the street” type of work or searching archives and computer databases, you’re able to hunt down information (or people). Note that in the case of finding a specific person, a successful roll doesn’t necessarily give you immediate access to them, depending on the situation. For example, if the research scientist in question is currently detained by the authorities, that’ll be a separate obstacle to overcome (maybe using Contacts, maybe using some other skill).

Create Advantage: Leverage your contacts to create a story detail or create/discover an aspect. “Hey, my contacts tell me that Joe Steel is the Best Mechanic For A Thousand Miles—we should talk to him.”

Create Advantage: Get the word on the street about a particular individual, object, or location, based on what your contacts tell you. These aspects almost always deal with reputation more than fact, such as Known Sycophant or Notorious Swindler. Whether that person lives up to their reputation is anybody’s guess, though that doesn’t invalidate the aspect. (People often have misleading reputations about themselves that complicate their lives.) Similarly, you can also use your information network to plant information or get you information to help in the conflict.

Defend: Counter an opponent’s attempts to create social advantages against you, provided your information network can be brought to bear in the situation.

Deceive (3 skill points)

As might be expected, this is the skill of lies and misdirection. Whether spinning a convincing falsehood, crafting a disguise, or bluffing some poor dope who really ought to know better, it’s all Deceive.

Overcome: Bluff or give a false impression. These are situations in which the stakes aren’t high enough for a contest or conflict, but you still want to roll to see if things get complicated or not. More complicated cons might involve a contest or a challenge, as you layer the deception to achieve your goal.

Overcome: Create a convincing disguise, whether for yourself or others. You’ll need to have the time and supplies to create the desired effect.

Create Advantage: Obtain information from someone who (falsely) believes you to be trustworthy. This is more likely to get you story details than an aspect, but if the information represents a tangible advantage, it might net you an aspect.

By a similar token, the advantage might be an aspect you’re putting forward as a false impression. For example, if you’re undercover at a fancy corporate shindig, you might use Deceive to declare a Wealthy Industrialist Cover Story on the scene to help you mingle with the guests.

Create Advantage: Distract or misdirect, similar to declaring a false impression above. This can also apply in physical conflicts for feints and fake-outs, allowing you to put an enemy Off-Balance.

Defend: Counter efforts to discern your true motives. This includes someone using Empathy against you, as well as throwing off investigation attempts with false information.

Empathy (3 skill points)

Empathy involves knowing and being able to spot changes in a person’s mood or bearing. It’s basically the Notice skill (see below), but for people.

Overcome: Perceive a change in someone’s attitude or intent.

Overcome: Remove mental consequences from yourself or others.

Create Advantage: Read a person’s emotional state and/or get a general sense of who they are. This presumes you have some kind of interpersonal contact with them. Most often, this will mean discovering their aspects, but you can also create new aspects for NPCs as well. If the target has some reason to be aware that you’re trying to read them, they can defend with Deceive or Rapport. This includes the use of Empathy to try and discover what circumstances will allow you to conduct mental attacks against the target by figuring out their breaking points.

Defend: See through lies and deceptions to someone’s true intent.

Defend: Counter someone’s attempt to create an advantage against you in a social context. Generally speaking, this usually requires direct contact with them. If you’re working through an intermediary, Contacts is probably a more appropriate skill to use.

Notice (1 skill point)

The Notice skill represents a character’s overall perception, ability to pick out details at a glance, and other powers of observation.

Overcome: Spotting or reacting to something in the environment, often in a timely manner. This includes hearing the faint sound of a twig snapping behind you, spotting a concealed gun in that mail carrier’s waistband, and searching a cluttered room for the evidence you need.

Note that this isn’t license for the GM to call for Notice rolls left and right to see how generally observant a character is; that’s boring. Instead, call for a Notice roll when both success and failure would have equally interesting results.

Create Advantage: Discover something new and advantageous in the environment via direct observation. You might look over a room for details that stand out, find an escape route in a debris-filled building, notice someone sticking out in a crowd, and so on. This advantage can often manifest as a situation aspect. For example, you might spy Hidden Handholds in a wall, find a Weak Point in a tank’s armor plating, or chance upon some Distinctive Spoor in the course of tracking a monster.

When you’re watching people, Notice can tell you what’s going on with them externally; for subtler, more internal changes, use Empathy.

Defend: Watch over an area to detect people trying to use Stealth or Burglary to infiltrate it.

Example: Action-Science Skills

Here are the standard skills in our action-science setting. They’re all basically taken right from Fate Core. If you’re wondering where the actual science skills are, see Science: It’s Special.

Athletics

Burglary

Combat

Contacts

Deceive

Empathy

Notice

Physique

Provoke

Rapport

Stealth

Vehicles

Will

ATOMIC ROBO

Modes

What Modes Are

A mode is a broad area of competence, represented as a group of skills connected by a common theme. For example, the Action mode includes skills about things like running, fighting, and piloting, while the skills in the Banter mode are all about social interaction.

Every game should have a small number of standard modes, somewhere between four and six, available to players. These modes should reflect the themes of your setting, and should collectively cover everything that the typical PC in the setting might be expected to tackle problems.

The four standard modes included here—Action, Banter, Intrigue, and Science—are intended for PCs in a science-oriented, modern-day action-adventure setting.

Unusual characters who don’t fit neatly into this paradigm, such as a robot in a setting dominated by humans or a wizard in world of warriors and scoundrels, can have one or more weird modes. These are either player-defined or purpose-built in advance to enforce the themes or tropes of the setting, or both. “Weird” doesn’t have to mean literally weird--they’re also good for niche skillsets that aren’t integral enough to the setting to be standard modes. Examples in our modern-day action-science setting might include things like Reporter, Secret Agent, or Martial Artist. If the standard modes describe ways of doing things, weird modes describe the character doing them. You can find a few pre-fab weird modes later in this section to act as examples.

Every PC has three modes, whether standard or weird.

What Modes Do

The primary function of modes is to make character creation quick and easy. Instead of picking and rating skills individually, you pick three modes, give each a rating, and get to playing.

Modes also serve as a way to quickly conceptualize or evaluate a character, or even a setting. A character’s selection of modes gives you a good indication of what’s important to that character’s concept—what they’re all about. Even at a glance, you can tell that a character with Action, Science, and Robot modes is much different than one with Dinosaur, Intrigue, and Banter modes.

Every mode has a rating. Of a PC’s three modes, rate one at Average (+1), one at Fair (+2), and one at Good (+3). While these rules don’t add a mode’s rating directly to a roll, a mode’s rating does affect the rating of its skills.

Modes and Stress

Characters start with two mental stress boxes and two physical stress boxes.

Modes with Athletics or Physique can give your character additional physical stress boxes, while modes with Provoke or Will can give your character additional mental stress boxes. A mode with one or more of these skills rated at Fair (+2) adds one box, while one rated at Good (+3) adds two boxes.

If a mode has skills that apply to both scopes, pick one. For example, the Action mode has Athletics, Physique, and Provoke. If you’ve given it a rating of Good (+3), you could have two more physical stress boxes, two more mental stress boxes, or one in each.

Bonus stress boxes from your Good (+3) and Fair (+2) modes are cumulative. So if you have Good (+3) Action and Fair (+2) Intrigue, both of which have the Athletics skill, you’ll get three more physical stress boxes—two from Action and one from Intrigue.

A character’s array of modes is the only way to add stress boxes.

The Standard Modes

Here are the standard modes in our action-science setting, complete with the standard skills each contains (taken from those listed earlier).

Action: Action-hero type stuff, like flying a plane, leaping over a chasm, or some good old-fashioned face punching. If you’re being overtly physical or tough, you’re making use of a skill in the Action mode.

Skills: Athletics, Combat, Notice, Physique, Provoke, Vehicles

Banter: Interpersonal skills, polite and otherwise. This covers everything from reasoned persuasion to irrational intimidation and all points in between.

Skills: Contacts, Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, Rapport, Will

Intrigue: Subterfuge, subtlety, and ventures of questionable legality. Stealth, disguise,

and your standard B&E all fall under Intrigue.

Skills: Athletics, Burglary, Contacts, Deceive, Notice, Stealth

Science: All fields of scientific endeavor, whether you’re hacking a mainframe, accelerating particles, or rebuilding a transmission on a ’69 Charger. If you’re pitting your brain against an inanimate object, you’re probably doing Science.

Skills: Notice, Will, all sciences. (See Science: It’s Special for more detail on the Science mode.)

Even with just four modes, the player’ choices of ratings allow for plenty of variety—and that’s not even accounting for skills and stunts, which offer even more differentiation between PCs.

Custom Modes

Supplementing these are custom modes. Optional and usually player-defined, custom modes serve two basic purposes. One, they cover unusual character concepts, like sentient robots or possibly psychotic dinosaurs. Two, they say something very specific about the character in question. A custom mode might combine elements of two or more standard modes, or it might bear no resemblance whatsoever to the spectrum of typical human ability.

We’ll unpack what all that means later on in this chapter, but for now here are some examples of custom modes.

Robot: You’re a mechanical artificial intelligence of some kind. Robo himself is the most obvious example, but that doesn’t mean he has to be the only one.

Mutant: You’ve been altered by science into something more (or less) than human.

Secret Agent: You’re an elite operative for a shadowy organization of one kind or another.

Reporter: You’re a professional journalist of the investigative variety who relies on a sharp eye and sharper instincts to get to the bottom of things.

Some of modes will have a bit of thematic overlap, like Intrigue and Secret Agent. That’s perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. No standard mode is wholly unique, and many custom modes will share something in common with one or more standard modes, or even another custom mode the character may have. It’s actually beneficial when they do.

Mode Costs

The cost of a mode equals the total combined cost of its skills. The cost of an individual skill depends on how many applications it has. The next section, Skills, has more detail on skills and how their costs are determined.

For example, here are the costs of our standard action-adventure modes:

Skills Within Modes

If modes represent broad areas of competence, then skills are like specialties within those modes. Even so, skills can be pretty broad themselves.

Skills are the basis for everything your character actually does in the game that involves challenge and chance (and dice). Like modes, skills are rated on the adjective ladder. The higher the rating, the more effective your character is with the skill.

Trained, Focused, and Specialized Skills

A skill’s rating is limited to three possibilities—equal to its mode’s rating, one step higher than its mode’s rating, or two steps higher than its mode’s rating. Thus, no skill can be rated more than two steps higher than its mode’s rating.

When you take a mode, you are also trained in all of its skills—your rating with those skills is equal to the rating of their mode.

Skill ratings can improve from there, “climbing” the Adjective Ladder. So if you were to improve one of those Action skills from trained to focused, its rating would be one rung higher than Fair (+2), or Good (+3). If you improved it to specialized, its rating would be two rungs higher than Fair (+2), or Great (+4).

Trained: The skill’s rating equals the mode’s rating.

Focused: The skill’s rating is one rung higher than the mode’s rating.

Specialized: The skill’s rating is two rungs higher than the mode’s rating.

No skill can be higher than specialized within a given mode. This means the highest skill rating your character can have is Superb (+5)—a specialized skill within their Good (+3) mode.

Modes you don’t have are rated at Mediocre (+0). Skills in these modes can’t be improved, so they’re all Mediocre (+0) too.

Reinforced Skills

A skill is reinforced if it’s associated with more than one of your character’s modes. The more it’s reinforced, the higher its starting rating. If a skill is associated with two of your character’s modes, it’s reinforced once—write it down as focused under the higher-rated of the two modes (and only under that mode). If all three of your character’s modes have the same skill, it’s reinforced twice—write it down as specialized under the character’s highest-rated mode.

Regardless of how many modes reinforce a skill, it should never appear more than once on your sheet.

Your character’s three modes are Good (+3) Action, Fair (+2) Science, and Average (+1) Intrigue. Suppose that all three of these modes contain the Notice skill, which means Notice is reinforced twice. Because it can’t appear more than once in your modes, it will only appear under Action, because Action is the highest-rated mode that contains it. Because it’s reinforced twice, its rating will be equal to Action’s rating plus two, so you have Superb (+5) Notice.

Further suppose that Action and Intrigue also both contain the Athletics skill, so Athletics is reinforced once. Again, it can only appear once in your modes, under the highest-rated mode that contains it, so that’ll be Action. And because it’s reinforced once, it’s a focused Action skill, which means its rating is equal to the mode’s rating plus one—in this case, Great (+4).

Improving Skills Within Modes

Reinforcement isn’t the only way for a skill to be rated higher than its mode’s rating. You can also spend excess skill points, whether during character creation, during play, or after an appropriate milestone, to improve skills as well.

Science: It’s Special

You’ve no doubt noticed that none of these standard skills is particularly scientific in nature (the “sweet science” of fisticuffs notwithstanding), nor is any of them apart from Notice and Will associated with the Science mode.

That’s because each field of scientific study is its own skill—robotics, physics, exobiology, engineering, mechanics, chemistry, you name it—with the same two actions. And all of them are associated with the Science mode. In other words, the Science mode has a virtually unlimited number of associated skills, or at the very least way too many to list here.

When you write the Science mode on your character sheet and give it a rating, all of your Science skills—that includes all fields of science—have that same rating by default. For example, if you have Fair (+2) Science, that means you have Fair (+2) Robotics, Fair (+2) Physics, Fair (+2) Engineering, and so on. You don’t have to write these individual sciences down on your sheet. You can just write something like “All Other Sciences” and leave it at that.

You can improve any of these Science skills just like you’d improve any other skill in any other mode. So if you have Fair (+2) Science and want to have better than Fair (+2) Robotics, you could bump your Robotics skill up to Good (+3) or Great (+4).

Science Actions and Applications

Every Science skill other than Notice and Will has the following actions and applications:

Overcome: Know things and solve problems related to the scientific field in question.

Create Advantage: Leverage your scientific knowledge to create or discover details or aspects related to your chosen field, whether by time-consuming research or by suddenly recalling vital information. This lets you do things like recalibrate complex machinery (Hyper-Sensitive Sensors), introduce a new algorithm to a robot’s programming to change its behavior (Human... Friend?), or add a volatile compound to a rocket’s fuel to improve its performance (Almost Too Much Thrust).

Sample Custom Modes

Each of these custom modes includes a list of skills associated with the mode. These skills are taken from the list of standard action-science skills provided earlier.

Keep in mind that these custom modes are meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. If your idea of a martial artist doesn’t gel with the one presented here, that’s fine. They’re templates, nothing more.

Martial Artist

A paragon of self-discipline, physical training, and face-punching.

Skills:

Athletics

Combat

Notice

Physique

Stealth

Will

Pilot

A trained, well-traveled pilot, professional or otherwise.

Skills:

Contacts

Notice

Vehicles

Reporter

Someone who makes it their business to know other people’s business.

Skills

Contacts

Empathy

Notice

Rapport

Stealth

Will

Robot

A generic robot, with no specific assumed function—your average automatic intelligence.

Skills:

Athletics

Notice

Physique

Secret Agent

A covert operative for a covert agency.

Skills:

Burglary

Contacts

Deceive

Notice

Stealth

Vehicles

Soldier

A skilled combatant with a military background.

Skills:

Athletics

Combat

Contacts

Notice

Physique

Vehicles

Will

FRONTIER SPIRIT

Skills

The Burglary, Lore, and Stealth skills are not used. In their place, we add Infiltrate, Mythology, and Science.

Infiltrate

Infiltrate combines Burglary and Stealth from Fate Core. While being sneaky is useful, it’s not enough of a focus that characters should need to invest in two skills to be good at different kinds of being sneaky.

Overcome: Use Infiltrate to overcome obstacles related to avoiding the notice of observers, getting into secured areas, and sneaking around or generally being where you aren’t supposed to be.

Create an Advantage: Infiltrate can be used to create advantages related to being or remaining unseen, the element of surprise, knowledge of a secured area or security measures, or other things.

Attack: Infiltrate isn’t normally used to attack.

Defend: Infiltrate is rolled to oppose attempts to Notice you while you’re being sneaky, or to investigate your infiltration. You can also roll it to defend against attempts to create advantages related to highlighting you, drawing attention to you, or otherwise making you conspicuous.

Mythology

Mythology covers abstract, general knowledge of spirits and the otherworld. It’s perfectly possible to get by without this skill, so not all mediums will have a high Mythology, or even any at all. It’s of little use in direct interaction with spirits, which is governed by the common skill set. It’s most useful for noticing or taking advantage of hidden characteristics of the otherworld—common properties that happen to be present, clues to its nature, or weaknesses an upset spirit might be trying to hide.

Overcome: Discover or recall hidden or obscure facts about the otherworld and spirits, along with their applicability to present circumstance.

Create an Advantage: Capitalize on hidden or obscure facts about or properties of the otherworld or spirits that are relevant to the current circumstance.

Attack: Mythology isn’t normally used to attack.

Defend: Mythology isn’t normally used to defend.

Science

Science covers…science. The observational study and description of the material world, and the application of that knowledge. Science is of no help when dealing with the otherworld, or with the actions or effects of spirits or spiritual interference. Science can rule out natural explanations or help with fixing the consequences of a spirit’s meddling, but that’s as far as it goes.

Overcome: Apply scientific knowledge to remove an obstacle. While flexible, Science always requires tools specialized for the task at hand, unlike more personal skills such as Athletics and Physique, and using Science to solve problems often takes a lot of time.

Create an Advantage: Science is much more suited to creating advantages. This usually means making an observation about the material world and drawing some conclusion about it, which can then be leveraged by using another skill.

Attack: Science isn’t normally used to attack.

Defend: Science isn’t normally used to defend.

= New Skills and Stunts = Use the skill list from Fate Core for this game, but remove the Drive skill and add two new skills: Alchemy and Sail.

Alchemy

Alchemy is the science of combining materials and chemicals in order to produce other materials and chemicals with new properties. Alchemists can produce poisonous gases, potent acids, healing elixirs, luminescent fluids, and other useful mixtures. They cannot achieve true transmutation, such as transforming lead into gold, though many frauds are willing to sell fictional techniques for accomplishing this.

Alchemy is also the study of biological processes, including health, illness, aging, and recovery. All modern medical treatment requires the practice of alchemy. Even the preparation of folk remedies and botanical cures is a basic form of alchemy. Competent diagnosis and treatment of ailments requires specialized study, so characters must have the Doctor stunt if they wish to help others recover from physical consequences.

Overcome: You can use Alchemy to overcome a variety of obstacles where alchemical knowledge would be useful. For instance, you could mix an acid to dissolve a sturdy lock, or you could determine the components of an unknown alchemical mixture. Alchemy is useful for overcoming medical obstacles as well, and it can be used to remove aspects of a medical nature.

Create an Advantage: When you have alchemical supplies and tools on hand, you can create advantages. For instance, you could mix a gas and release it into a guardhouse, leaving the soldiers inside Quite Sleepy. Or you could distill an elixir which gives an ally Liquid Courage.

In addition, you can provide your allies with mixtures, which they can later use to create advantages on their own. When your ally uses the mixture, you roll Alchemy to create the desired aspect. Your ally might need to roll to deliver the mixture, such as Shoot to throw a flask or Stealth to pour a vial into someone’s drink.

If you wish to create alchemical weapons, such as acids or explosives, you can do so by creating an advantage. You or your allies could then use the free invokes granted by the advantage you created to improve their attacks.

Attack: You cannot use Alchemy to attack directly. If you wish to apply your alchemical knowledge and supplies to damage a specific obstacle—for instance, trying to dissolve a sealed metal box—that is better represented as an overcome action.

Defend: You cannot normally use Alchemy to defend.

Alchemy Stunts

I’ve Drunk Worse: You’ve grown accustomed to toxic fumes and chemical burns. You can use Alchemy to defend against attacks and aspects involving poisons, toxins, and other chemicals.

Doctor: Your alchemical studies include treating the ailments of the human body. You can roll Alchemy to allow another character to begin recovering physical consequences. Characters who have Alchemy at Average (+1) or higher can provide you with teamwork bonuses on recovery rolls, even if they don’t have the Doctor stunt.

Alchemy in Practice

To create an alchemical mixture, an alchemist needs access to three things:

Tools: flasks, burners, pipes, and retorts.

Materials: liquids, powders, metals, and crystals.

Time: Anywhere from a few minutes (to produce a simple acid) to several years (to produce a breakthrough in alchemical science). Typically, an alchemist can produce a simple alchemical mixture—such as a one-use gas bomb or a vial of antivenom—in less than an hour.

To set the difficulty of an Alchemy roll, consider not only the magnitude of the task to be accomplished, but also the tools, materials, and time available. When a character must work with a limited set of tools, or with poor quality materials, or in a rush, increase the difficulty.

Sail

The practice of sailing a ship requires competence in reading navigational charts, using instruments to determine one’s position in the solar system, measuring the local wind currents, and setting the sails to produce the desired course and speed.

Overcome: While you are navigating a ship, the GM may ask you to roll an overcome action to determine how quickly the vessel arrives at its destination. This roll can be modified by stunts belonging to the navigator and by the ship itself.

If you fail an overcome roll with Sail and want to succeed at a cost, you can choose to damage the ship as your cost. In this case you’re pushing the ship past its limits, causing its structure or mechanisms to suffer. By default, a minor cost produces a situation aspect, such as Engine Stalled Out, and a major cost produces a consequence, such as Torn Mainsails.

Create an Advantage: A ship’s navigator can roll Sail to put the vessel in an advantageous position relative to an enemy vessel. The enemy’s navigator actively opposes this roll by using Sail. See Ship Combat for more information on this.

Attack: You can use Sail to try to ram an enemy vessel, as described in Ship Combat.

Defend: A ship’s navigator can defend with Sail against Shoot or Sail attacks made by enemy vessels, or against enemy Sail rolls used to create an advantage.

Sail Stunts

Superior Tactics: When it comes to naval battles, you’ve seen every trick in the book. +2 when actively opposing Sail rolls to create positional aspects.

Second Star to the Right: Charts and arithmetic mills will never replace the instincts of a good navigator. +2 to Sail overcome rolls to improve the speed of a journey.

Other Skills and Stunts

Several Fate Core skills have additional uses in this game, as listed below. We also give a few sample stunts.

Athletics

Characters with higher Athletics will have an easier time getting around in zero-gravity environments.

No Gravity? No Problem: While in zero gravity, you receive +2 to any roll to move between zones or to move extra zones in a single action.

Freefall Wrestling: While in zero gravity, you can use Athletics instead of Fight to make unarmed, hand-to-hand attacks against an opponent.

Crafts

Ship crews use Crafts to maintain and repair their vessels.

A Finely Tuned Machine: When you stack an advantage by invoking one of your engineering-related aspects, and give it to an ally using your ship’s equipment to perform an action, you grant that ally a +3 bonus instead of the usual +2.

Miracle Worker: Once per session, after you succeed on a Crafts roll to begin recovering a ship’s consequence when outside combat, you can spend a fate point to immediately remove the consequence.

Deceive

The art of deception can be a useful—if not necessarily honorable—talent for a ship’s captain.

Subtle Signaling: By understanding the relationship between lantern signals and the hexagrams of the I Ching, you can construct signals that carry hidden significance. To understand the hidden message, an observer must have the Subtle Signaling stunt or must successfully overcome with Lore, opposed by your Deceive.

The Finest Snake Oil: You’ve learned enough scientific jargon to convince people that the flasks of colored vinegar you’re selling are elixirs of youth or miracle cure-alls. +2 to Deceive while trying to convince someone that you’ve produced a remarkable feat of alchemy.

Lore

Though modern weapons have transformed the face of warfare, the insights of past battlefield masters such as Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz are critical for the education of any commander.

Eightfold Formation: From your study of battle formations, you know how to arrange your troops for any situation. During crew combat, you can use Lore instead of Will to benefit units under your command. See the Fate System Toolkit (page 167) for a list of these benefits.

Empty Fort Strategy: Your knowledge of armies and warfare allows you to construct a convincing illusion on the battlefield. You can use Lore instead of Deceive to create a plausible but untrue situation aspect on a zone. Creating this aspect requires enough time before the enemy arrives to arrange the scene appropriately—creating false tracks, propping up rifles in windows, and so forth.

For instance, you might place Well Garrisoned on an empty building, or Bristling with Traps on an otherwise ordinary road. Enemies who see your illusion attempt to overcome using Notice, with a difficulty equal to the shifts of your Lore roll used to create the illusion. Any enemies who fail this action will believe the aspect is true, and will act accordingly.

Notice

An experienced commander looking down on a battlefield will see more than blood and chaos. A true strategist will see opportunities, weaknesses, and—above all—the guiding hand of the opposing general.

We Have Already Won: Before a physical conflict begins, if you have advance knowledge of the area in which the battle will take place, and you have the opportunity to discuss tactics with allies, you can use Notice to create an aspect on a single zone without actually being there. This aspect represents the benefits of planning and scouting, such as Coordinated Ambush or We’ll Hold Them At This Pass. You can use this stunt for crew battles and for conflicts between individual characters.

It’s A Trap!: +2 to Notice to detect hidden aspects, such as Concealed Trenches or Snipers Watching, on any zone you can see.

Provoke

Fear and anger can be effective tools for driving a crew to perform extraordinary feats.

Have At Them, You Dogs!: You keep your troops motivated in combat by bellowing a constant stream of colorful, inventive, and multi-lingual insults. You can use Provoke instead of Will to benefit units under your command during crew combat. See the Fate System Toolkit (page 167) for a list of these benefits.

Iron Grip: Your crew is too afraid of you to keep any secrets from you. You can use Provoke instead of Empathy to detect changes in the crew’s mood or to discover any secrets or plots the crew is hiding from you.

Rapport

A charismatic leader can remove a crew’s fear, doubts, and fatigue with a few well-chosen words.

Follow Me To Glory!: You are an inspiring presence on the battlefield. You can use Rapport instead of Will to benefit units under your command during crew combat. See the Fate System Toolkit (page 167) for a list of these benefits.

Good Show!: When you show approval of a job well done, you encourage your allies to achieve greater success. Once per scene, if an ally successfully creates an advantage, you can grant another free invoke on the same aspect if you are close enough to issue encouragement or congratulations. This does not require an action.

Shoot

Napoleon himself started as an artillery officer, and used the firepower of his cannons to devastate his enemies.

Hit Them Where It Hurts: When you successfully attack a ship, you choose—rather than the defender—whether the ship must absorb the attack with ship consequences or crew conditions. The target chooses which specific consequences or conditions to use.

Warning Shots: a well-timed volley of cannon fire can discourage enemy ships. Once per exchange, you can use Shoot to oppose an enemy ship’s attempt to create a position aspect against any ship.

Will

A ship’s captain must be decisive and determined, or else risk losing the faith of the crew.

Master and Commander: Once per scene, when your crew or battle unit performs a single action under your command, you can substitute your Will for any skill the crew or unit would have used. This Will roll cannot be improved with teamwork bonuses.

One With the Ship: Your sweat and blood keeps the ship going in the worst circumstances. When the ship would take a consequence, your character can instead choose to take an equivalent consequence.

Structural Changes

So far all of these systems still assume something that looks like the current skill list in most important ways—there’s a list arranged in a certain way,and a progressive set of bonuses. But those assumptions need not be universal—you can do some crazy stuff by stepping outside of the normal bounds.

Pyramid Alternatives

The most obvious hack is to replace the pyramid, with a column system—as is used in advancement—with a point-buy system, or even something like skill packages from specific backgrounds. This is really something you can change quite freely, but before you do, just be sure you understand why the pyramid is in place. It is fast, it demands characters be capable (the apex) but well-rounded (the foundation), and it makes sure that not every character can do everything (the skills you can’t buy). It’s not unreasonable to change these—a superspy game, for example, might have characters with very broad skill bases—but make sure you know what problem you’re solving when you make the change.

Larger Steps

Nothing says skills need to progress smoothly. Suppose that each “rank” of a skill was actually two steps on the ladder—you might now have a pyramid of 1 Superb (+5), 2 Good (+3) and 3 or 4 Average (+1), and if you’re feeling mean, move the default down to Poor (-1).

Why do this? Suppose you have a small skill list, as you might for professions or approaches. You get a heroically potent pyramid—more so than the default, even—for a smaller list. It also strongly separates the “tiers” of skill level, something that may be thematically appropriate in certain genres.

Aspects Only

If you want to take a very extreme step, you can forgo skills entirely, and use aspects for everything. This requires a single change to the way aspects work. Now, in addition to everything else, they provide a passive +1 bonus in situations where they apply. Thus, if my aspects are Acrobatic, Ladies’ Man, Strong, and Swordsman, I can count on a +2—effectively a Fair skill—in most sword-fighting situations involving strength, which bumps to a Good (+3) if I do something acrobatic.

If taking this tack, some extra thought will need to go into aspect selection so that everyone has a good understanding of when their aspects are and aren’t applicable. The first instinct of many players will be to gun for broad, simple aspects, like strong or smart, because they’re so easy to apply in most situations. However, the real advantage will go to players who take the time to put a bit more story into their aspects. Knight covers a lot of ground, but Knight of the Stars covers even more, and Renegade Knight of the Stars covers even more. As is so often the case, the most interesting characters will be the most mechanically potent.