What is Fate?
Fate is the essential difference that marks your character as an adventurer, rather than an ordinary run-of-the-mill citizen. Adventurer characters have a destiny, a mission, a definite goal in life. They may not be aware of what this is. It may not be very glorious, it may not even be particularly pleasant, but the character is marked out by the gods to do it - whatever it is.
Because your adventurers are marked by Fate, they are unlikely to be cut in two by the first goblin to swing an axe in their direction - they are marked for better things!
To represent this, characters are allotted a number of Fate Points, which can be used during the game to save them from serious injury or death.
How Many Fate Points does your character get?
| Characters Race |
Fate Points Allocated |
| Human |
D3+1 Fate Points |
| Wood Elf |
D3-1 Fate Points (Minimum of 1) |
| Dwarf |
D3 Fate Points |
| Halfling |
D4 Fate Points |
| Gnome |
D3 Fate Points |
Gaining and Losing Fate Points
Fate points are essentially a divine gift and recognition of a character's destiny. They are granted by the gods and thus Fate Points may also be gained and lost as a result of divine action. A Fate Point may be gained by winning a god's favour and may equally be lost by losing it
How are Fate Points used in Fragile Alliances?
Fate Points are used to save a character from certain death; by expending a Fate Point, a character can live again to fight another day.
For example, a character may expend a Fate Point in order to ignore a critical hit result which would otherwise have proved fatal - the character is knocked unconscious rather than killed and wakes up having been left for dead or is merely grazed by the killing blow. A character who falls off a cliff can expend a Fate Point in order to walk away unharmed - saved by a million-to-one chance such as a bush or a patch of exceptionally soft sand.
Fate Points are powerful things and players should be minded that they are precious. Once a character has spent a Fate Point, it is gone - Fate Points are not recovered easily and once a character has run out, he or she can cheat death no longer.
The Function of Fate Points in Fragile Alliances?
The function of Fate Points is threefold:
First, they allow our Heroes to make miraculous escapes, as in all the best adventure stories. Adventurers can dodge falling stone blocks by a whisker, survive slipping off a cliff by landing in a convenient patch of bushes, run unscathed through a hail of arrows, and so on. With hairs-breadth escapes and twists of fate, players are willing to risk their characters, making for a faster and more exciting game than would otherwise be the case.
Secondly, Fate Points reflect the idea that our heroes have a destiny which sets them above the rest of the world. Just as in films, John Wayne can make it to the machine-gun nest with marines being cut down around him, so our adventurers can take great risks - and get away with them.
Lastly, combat in Fragile Alliances is more dangerous than in other RPGs. This is partly because combat is dangerous in real life and partly because if combat is always the easy way out, players will be less inclined to try something a little more subtle, like thinking! Obviously, there will be some occasions when fighting is the only course of action and, even in the ordinary run of things, characters can get killed very easily if the players don't learn caution. Fate Points can give the rash player a second chance and the unlucky player an even break. Of course, if the players insist on rushing into every situation, waving swords about, they will quickly run out of Fate Points and permanent death will follow with grim inevitability. Most players will get the idea fairly quickly and realise that a gung-ho approach is not necessarily the best.
When To Use Fate Points?
Basically, a Fate Point can be expended whenever a character is about to die - in combat, through traps or accidents, as a result of poison or disease, or in any other circumstances. Instead of dying, the character expends a Fate Point and then the gamemaster has to devise some way of ensuring that the character survives.
How To GM Fate Points?
When a character expends a Fate Point the gamemaster will come up with something that prevents the character from dying.
No doubt the player in question will be full of helpful suggestions, but as a general rule, the gamemaster will ensure that the character survives but is not much better off as a result. The character should survive the situation, but that's it. In fact, in most instances, the gamemaster will still impose some injury or loss on the character which prevents them from achieving their objective. Thus spending a Fate Point should never be considered as a way of ensuring success, merely survival.
Examples of the use of Fate Points
It can sometimes be difficult to come up with a suitably tailored deus ex machina for the results of using a Fate Point on the spur of the moment, so here are some ideas.
Spending Fate Points in Combat
Here is the wrong way to deal with Fate Points in combat.
Clem Shirelock is in a hard fight with a band of Chaos Mutants. He has been reduced to 0 W and a critical hit result indicates that he is about to have his head removed by a neatly swung axe. Clem's player spends a Fate Point. The gamemaster ignores the critical effect, but Clem is still at 0 W, so the next hit Clem takes is another critical. Clem's player spends another Fate Point...
The problem with the gamemasters decision, in this case, is that it has left Clem in a survival loop. At this rate, Clem will get through his three Fate Points in as many rounds; their only effect will be that he will die three rounds later than he would have done otherwise.
So let's try that again.
Clem takes a hit which takes him below 0 W. It is a hit to the body and the critical result indicates that he will be disembowelled and die immediately. Clem's player spends a Fate Point and is told by the gamemaster that everything goes black. While the player is wondering what has happened, the gamemaster makes a note that Clem has been struck by the flat of the blade and flung against the wall, hitting his head and knocking himself unconscious. He may wake up several hours later (still on 0 W) to find himself being tended by his victorious comrades; imprisoned in the mutants' lair with his defeated comrades; left for dead, stripped of all equipment and valuables, and all alone.
The trick is to use your imagination. In the second example, Clem's fight ends as soon as he uses the Fate Point and his survival is assured even though he has gained no advantage from its use other than to survive the combat.
The use of a Fate Point can also provide an opportunity for the gamemaster to direct things if the players have gone a little off the track. You, the gamemaster, control when and where characters wake up and you can use this to your advantage. If, for example, the adventurers have missed a vital clue about the lair of the evil Necromancer, they may wake up in a small village, having been found left for dead in the forest. As their wounds are tended, the villagers will tell them about the black tower beyond the wood, where hideous screams are heard at night, and about the recently dug graves which have been found torn open, apparently from the inside.
There are also some things you will have to watch. Remember, the players know that the character who expended a Fate Point isn't dead, but their characters don't. You must make sure that the players act accordingly. You should also avoid being vindictive yourself - if a character appears to be dead, an Orc or mutant will leave him/her and move on to another foe; they won't generally have another few stabs 'just to make sure'.
Spending Fate Points to avoid Traps And Accidents.
When a character expends a Fate Point to avoid being killed by a trap or some other mischance, there are several possible approaches to what happens next:
The Adventure Movie Method: The spikes, spears, falling blocks, or whatever, miss by a whisker, grazing the character's armour, possibly destroying a backpack or some other item of equipment, but leaving the character unscathed.
The Cartoon Method: The character is spiked, or speared, or flattened, or whatever, but he walks away. W may be reduced to zero and some or all of the character's equipment may be destroyed, but the character is still just about alive.
The gamemaster may also choose to wind the clock backwards slightly to prevent the adventurer from gaining a benefit from avoiding the trap. Thus instead of being spiked, squished or falling down a bottomless pit, the gamemaster may just decide that the character steps forward and hears an ominous click under his foot. He has discovered the trap before triggering it, but must now decide how to avoid doing so.
A neater solution perhaps would be to simply have the trap trigger and the adventurer dodge backwards, thus still leaving them with the problem of how to get past it.
Spending a Fate Point to survive Poison And Disease
When a character expends a Fate Point to avoid death from poison or disease, the effects of the poison or disease miraculously stop when the character is on the point of death and normal recovery ('enhanced' as usual by medical attention) can begin immediately.
For example:
Clem Shirelock is bitten in the leg by a Giant Rat in the course of an adventure and the gamemaster rolls a D100 to see if the bite carries the Black Plague. It does and Clem must make a Disease test, rolling his T x 10 or less on D100 in order to avoid the infection. Clem's T is 3 and the player rolls 98 - a failure. A week or so later, Clem is struck down with the Plague and becomes progressively worse over the next few days. After five days, his S and T reach zero and the player expends a Fate Point to prevent Clem from dying. Clem lapses into a coma and, for two days, he hovers on the brink of death. On the third day, he opens his eyes and asks for food - he has begun to recover.
How Characters Gain Fate Points.
Fate Points are an undeniably valuable commodity. The next question is, of course, how does a character get any more?
There are four ways in which a character can acquire Fate Points:
- Character Generation - Every PC acquires a limited number of Fate Points during character generation stage as explained above.
- Winning Divine Favour - Clerics and Druids may gain Fate Points as a result of a particularly successful roll on the Cleric Advance Table or the Druid Advance Table.
- Earning a Divine Gift - At the gamemaster's discretion, a deity may give a character a Fate Point instead of a blessing. As with all blessings, the character in question must be genuinely deserving and must have done the deity a great service, such as performing some quest (not a Trial) at the deity's behest. As with the Advance tables, only one Fate Point is awarded.
- Heroic Achievement - If a character succeeds in staving off a great, world-shaking menace of divine origin (such as the machinations of a Chaos God), a Fate Point may be awarded along with the usual Experience Points. The menace must be have been so great that, but for the character's action, an appalling disaster would have taken place. Don't let any fast-talking players convince you that wiping out a couple of dozen cultists is the same thing.
Characters may not buy Fate Points with Experience Points under any circumstances. Never, never, never. No how, no way.
How Characters Can Lose Fate Points.
Just as characters can gain Fate Points through divine favour, so they can lose them through divine disfavour. A bad roll on the Cleric/Druid Advance Tables have this effect and Fate Points can also be lost as the reverse of a blessing. If a character does a deity a great disservice, the deity may strip the character of a Fate Point until suitable reparation is made.
Bertoldo the thief is being interrogated by Don Valentino and his henchmen who suspect him of cooperating with the Nulner City Watch. During the course of the interrogation, he lapses into unconsciousness and is visited by two entities. The first in the guise of his dead mother begs him to tell the truth and save himself from further injury. The second an old man sitting with a black cat in his lap warns him of his obligations with the following verse "Oh! what a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive." he says sarcastically "BUT OH! WHAT A PAINFUL PATH WE TREAD WHEN WE DECIDE TO TELL THE TRUTH INSTEAD." He leans forward in his chair and wags a warning finger in Bertoldo's face "Betray me Bertoldo and I will drop you like a hot muffin."
Thus Bertoldo is reminded of his duty and lies convincingly to Don Valentino sticking to his story despite the beating he receives. Had he told the truth he would have lost the support of Ranald (the god of tricksters) and a Fate Point.
NPCs and Fate Points
As a rule, NPCs do not have Fate Points - part of their function, as explained above, is to distinguish the PCs from the rest of the world.
However, certain characters that are key to the plot or who warrant special favour as super-heroes or super-villains may be given a few Fate Points just to ensure their survival beyond the first few encounters or setbacks. This enables some NPCs to become the adventurer's staunch ally or arch-nemesis without the danger that a single lucky or unlucky dice roll will take them down.
Comments