How significant do you make the consequences of burning fate points.

In the past I have taken a couple of points of strength and toughness to represent long term injury. In our last session a player took the highest energy critical to the leg (something like immolates the target, killing them). If they decide to burn a fate point (I am giving them the gap between sessions to decide) how harshly would you effect them? A loss of fellowship to represent burn scars seems to make sense, but is that enough?

antony131073 said:

I would "go back up" in the crit tables and have a look of the "minor" effects. Generellay... well, losing a leg. Staying down till it is replaced with a cybernetic. Or a piece of wood!

One of my players had his skull pulped by a daemon. Since the remainder of the team succeeded in driving the beast off, he burned a fate point and I allowed his character to survive with the help of cybernetic implants. These implants had the effect of reducing a number of stats such as his intelligence and fellowship but they allowed him to survive and it makes for an enjoyable game experience.

Steve

For my game, when it comes to burning fate points, I go all out in favor of the character. They have so precious few of the damned things that when one gets burnt, it's the next best thing to a miracle. As such, there are rarely lasting injuries.

When a PC burns a fate point, I extract them or otherwise completely defuse the situation that caused the fate point to be burned. I've done everything from having statues of saints falling for no discernible reason right at the perfect time to block a volley of auto-fire that would have (did, but "history" got a bit of a rewrite due to the fate point being burnt) shredded a character to having the character snap out of an odd moment of deja-vu where they had premonitions of their impending death (they were shredded by a shot cannon...) if they went around that corner. Basically, when a fate point gets burnt, it's a call to me to invoke all forms of odd twists of fate and coincidence.

In the case of a 10+ crit to the leg, unless the PC's have made significant progress after that point, i would simply rewind time a bit and stop the leg from ever being shot in the first place... maybe drop a statue on the gunner (I like dropping statues on things) or have his las gun explode in a shower of burning light setting him on fire with flames licking up in, what appears for a second to be a burning phoenix or aquilla. If you're not willing to rewrite recent history, the worst I would do is take his leg, but never ever cost the character permanent characteristic damage. That's just my take on their use though. I'm quite hard on the characters in most all situations -when a fate point is burned, that's my time to give them a break for once.

I've yet to have any of my players burn a fate point (which says terrible things about my GMing, I'm sure), but as a player I once gained 13 insanity and corruption from burning one. Made sense, seeing as something horrible and unnatural had taken and interest in him and was ensuring his stayed alive.

How cruel i am with effects from burning a fate point all depends on how the fate point came to be burnt.

If it was just cause i got a lucky hit on a pc then i tend to be quite lenient, if however it was the result of some stupid action by that player then i tend to be a lot more cruel. loss of limb and some stat decreases tends to be my usual for stupid actions. For lucky hits i tend to give the player a choice between, loss of limb, severe damage to limb, stat losses, by letting the player choose i find it helps the player keep the character following their vision of it instead of me just over ruling their decision.

Burning a Fate Point is a get out of jail free card. I don't have any consequences for it, it's the entire point of them.

I take the view that a burnt fate point is a miracle. It only gets burnt when it would take a miracle to survive. Depending upon what it was that caused them to need said miracle, the consequences I inflict may vary. In some cases, they'll get a premonition in time to flinch out of the way, the shooter will get struck by clear-sky lightning (especially interesting when it happens inside, and leaves no mark on intervening structures), they may stoop to pick up a penny just as the sniper pulls the trigger, or some other consequence-free bizarre circumstance. Other times, that fate point will just stop the incredible injuries they just suffered from killing them before they can get sufficient medical care.

Case in point- the midget psyker in my current campaign got pulped by assault cannon fire at less than 5m. The fate point he burnt stopped the impact and concussion from shattering his entire skeleton and pulping his internal organs, and prevented the hydraulic shock from pulling all of his blood from his body. He survived, unconscious and barely alive until the PDF corpsmen who came in with the 'reinforcements' could get them into ICU and onto life support. He lost a limb and a half, received a fist-sized hole in his torso, including serious chunks of liver, spleen lung and colon, and shattered five ribs, and chipped both the twelfth thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae. He's currently getting a cybernetic resurrection (quote from the session wrap-up: "We can rebuild him. We have the technology. He will be stronger, faster, better... and taller"), and generally having a bad old time of it alternating between bionic surgery and recuperation in ICU. I decided not to apply any other downsides, as a cyber rebuild has enough built in, considering how much I also play up the hatred of psykers and mutants, and the fact he's void-born doesn't help him much...

Evilgm said:

Although you can of course run fate point burning any way you want, the rulebook does suggest that you do not get off scot free. Example in the book describes a fatal las cannon shot leaving the survivor horribly wounded, hideously burnt and unconcious. This seems the right way to do it for me. You cannot burn a fate point if you get a 6 or 7 crit so I do not think burning one to stop a 9 or 10 crit should give you a complete free pass.

I think I will go with loss of leg and D10 Fel to represent the burns.

Meh, I'm with Graver on this one. The fact that you're burning one of your precious, precious fate points is punishment enough, no further mutilation required, thank you.

If they burn a fate point on a critical hit that would normally have killed them, I just look up the crit table to whatever the next non-lethal hit would be and that is what they get plus they are stabilized so no blood loss.

I have also given my group the chance in some adventures to GAIN fate points by doing stuff that is really REALLY heroic and out of character for the universe. Stuff like saving a special flower on a planet that is going to be nuked etc. I never make that the main goal of the adventure but if they go way out of thier way to do really positive stuff I drop a fate point on them. I use it like a karma thing.

LEGION3000 said:

I probably wouldn't give a fate point for that sort of thing but definitly reward that kind of behaviour. In that case if they took it to a Magos Biologis then they would discover that it had some very potent properties in some regard which the Magos will be able to synthisise to a lesser degree for some benefit, then give the players the drugs based on the actual remaining flower in reward (after a period of R&D by the Magos of course).

I don't necessarily view the consequences of fate point burning as necessarily a *bad* thing. Someone horribly burned in a fire or pulped by a fenksworld pit thing may find themselves rebuilt with the Machinator Array trait, or similar.

Being hideously scarred might make you more intimidating. A guardsman brought to the brink of death by warp sorcery or demonic attacks might be gaining some lore about the warp or demons, or at least offered the chance.

That is basically the way I look at it. Spending a fate point may save your life but you will suffer in some way nonetheless. The results would not manifest in game mechanic negatives, however. They did spend one of their very rare points after all - it would be rude to punish them nonetheless. No, the repercussions I'd focus on would be damage organs, lost limbs, etc. The sorts of things which can be fixed, but which will mark the character irrevocably in some way -adding some more flavor to the character.

So, if the cultist you are in a gunfight with shoots you through the eye and kills you, but you burn a fate point, instead the bullet catches you in the cheek and destroys that side of your face. You'll live and suffer no negatives mechanically, but you will need to have reconstructive surgery, replacing half your face with prosthetics. This is how all the baddass characters in 40k end up looking the way they do - the slow destruction and replacement of body parts throughout the course of their long careers.

With the possible exception of Harlon Nayl. One hundred and fifty years at the top of his game, and not a single prosthetic.