As most experienced players know, there are very few situations in which it is beneficial to spend a Fate Point to gain a +10 bonus on a test. It is almost always better to save your FP to reroll a failed test or add additional DoS to a successful test. This simple house rule, inspired by Shadowrun's pre- and post-Edging, aims to make boosting your rolls before rolling a viable choice for important tests.

When you elect to spend a Fate Point to grant a +10 bonus on a test, you may reroll the test if it is failed. This reroll gains the same +10 bonus as the first attempt.

What are your thoughts on this? Personally, I see no way this could seriously disrupt game balance and view it as an entirely positive quality of life improvement.

EDIT: To clarify my statement, you have two choices on how to spend your fate points:

1. Spend a Fate Point after rolling a test to reroll it.

2. Spend a Fate Point before rolling a test to get a +10 bonus. Then if the test is failed, you may retry the test with the same +10 bonus. (No refunds if you pass on the first try, of course).

Wouldn't that make the normal option of spending a FP to reroll a failed test obsolete?

If we go with your suggestion, the second roll should have some kind of penalty in my opinion - to balance the options.

e.g, spend a FP to get +10 to the first roll, and if it fails, reroll with a -20 penalty instead.

Versus , spend a FP to reroll a failed test.

Do you mean that if you then decide to spend a second fate point to reroll the test, you retain the +10 bonus from the first spend fate point?

Absolutely.

Btw. if you have sufficiently low chance for rolling you gain a higher chance of success by using +10 than using a reroll. Can't remember where that limit is though, might be in one of my old posts.

It doesn't make it obsolete, Keffisch. The first is 'I HAVE to succeed on this roll, so I'm using my resources for it,' while the second is 'I really thought I'd succeed on that roll, but I didn't. Better change that while I can.' One is proactive, the other is reactive. The first is trying to shoot an important target at extreme range before they escape, the second is rolling a double-ought on your supposedly Reliable weapon and rerolling to prevent a jam in the middle of a fight, if not hit.

I like OP's idea. Using Fate proactively is always a gamble , which is why it's a much less popular option than spending Fate on rerolls. After all, with the latter you already know you have no other choice, but with the former you risk wasting Fate, because your roll could well be high enough by default.

In a way, this mechanic could be elegantly unified into a single "spend Fate to reroll" rule -- except that if you announce to do so before actually rolling for the Test (and thus before knowing whether or not you'd actually need to reroll), you get awarded a free +10 bonus for the first roll.

That's a good call; only have the +10 on the first roll. I'm going to run this by my group on Sunday.

Keeping the +10 bonus on the second roll is mostly to make things easier to remember. It's also consistent with existing rules for rerolling tests, which instruct you to attempt the roll again using all the modifiers that applied to the first roll.

A number of those reroll mechanics also say to take a -10 penalty on the second roll. Removing the +10 bonus that came with the first roll matches that.

I'm almost positive RAW if you spend a fate for +10 you can spend another for a reroll and keep the +10. Your change would just remove the need to spend a second, making it objectively better than simply spending fate for a reroll.

I'm almost positive RAW if you spend a fate for +10 you can spend another for a reroll and keep the +10. Your change would just remove the need to spend a second, making it objectively better than simply spending fate for a reroll.

You are correct, RAW does allow you to do that. However, I've never seen my players use that option, as it requires spending two very precious FP.

My method does produce a higher chance of success than spending a Fate Point reactively if you fail a test. However, you can possibly waste a Fate Point if you pass the test on the first try and don't gain anything from extra DoS. It's an option to make sure you succeed on vital tests, but it doesn't replace the most common use of FP: the "Oh $#!*, I failed my test, better reroll that" option.