Yeah, I see no problem with mondo fate points. It's fun and all when someone does something stupid and charges off after something all by themselves and gets their leg cut off for it...but it sucks to loose a cool character from your story and something that the player enjoys, because of a bad call.

That being said, sometimes they irritate me as a GM...they always use them when I really want to slap them for something and they manage to skirt away from it.

I think after our last session, my players realize how difficult their current mission is goign to be, and as such, are going to have to hoard their fate points and only use them when they really, REALLY need 'em.

Headhanger said:

The fate points helped, but it was really the legitimate rolling under 20 for 5-of-every-6 rolls for about 6 hours of gameplay (all dice rolls made under the view of GM and other players) that made all the difference for him. Sometimes you just get lucky.

Necrozius said:

Whoa. This is actually pretty overpowered. Consider that the Adeptas Sororitas has a FAITH ability that allows the player to spend a Fate point to avoid rolling a Fear test (or spend it to ignore IP/CP gain). This house rule completely superceeds the Sororitas special FAITH ability in this aspect. To allow a Fate point to be spent to automatically succeed a test is way too powerful IMO. They were meant to provide a reroll, not auto success. Maybe implement an addition to the rule that if a FP is used to auto-succeed, that the FP has a chance to be BURNED instead of just spent. It leaves the auto-success there as a choice, but offers a discouragement to over-use it. It would probably require some testing to get a reasonably balanced % for the chance, maybe somewhere around 25% I would think.

Personally, I find a greater problem is rolling up a charcter with just one Fate Point. You don't dare spend it in case you REALLY need it later in the game. And avoid death once and that's it - no fate points at all. Sucks.

voidstate said:

I disagree with this for two reasons.

a) Dark Heresy is a dark, gritty future where death, insanity, and corruption lies around every corner. Its easier to simulate that with little fate points then a bucket load of them.

b) A GM can always fudge a roll to save a character, but its impossible to fudge a roll to hurt a character who has a bucket load of fate points. Like said above, there are just times you want to lay the smack down on the characters, having them barely skirt out of danger, and having a load of fate points counters that.

Just a short note; I play DH with only two players. I have found that around 6 FP is a pretty good thing if you want them to be able to face difficult situations. Especially those from the published scenarios. 2 PCs will be undermanned, outgunned, and surrounded in pretty much every fight they end up in. And they also lack enough diversity in skills in order to cover such aspects as; Combat, Investigation, Knowledge, Psyker, Sneak, Tech, Social within just two characters.

On average they burn 1 fate point each scenario we have put them through.

I actually think the Fate Point rules in DH are not powerful enough. Its a personal taste, I just think they should have a few more options.

Other then that, i have no complaint on them.

Xathess Wolfe said:

Bull. Burning a fate point is not "get out of death free". It's just get out of death. So fudge the roll to make it result in massive damage/other certain death. Player burn fate point to live....ends up a quadruple amputee instead of dying, There is nothing other than the basic guidline to be a fair arbiter of the rules that stops the GM from fudging anything in any direction he chooses.

DocIII said:

That's how I do it. Fate Point makes the character survive the encounter, but there will always be a consequence (Equipment lost, limbs lost, loss of sanity, capture, etc.)

DocIII said:

Oh not denying that, but in either case the character is unplayable, or he's playable. Crippled for life, totally corrupt, dead, insane it all makes the character unplayable. Basically Fate Points are to stop your character in this case from being dead or unplayable, and make them playable. A living but unplayable character still is unplayable, so allowing to spend the Fate Point, then still declaring the character unplayable removes the entire purpose of the Fate Point.

Now in your example, basically you're allowing the person to buy cybernetics to be able to walk and act again. But in my example I was stating that there are times that regardless, you WANT a player to be unplayable, and Fate Points counter that.

I assume you mean characters and not players, I would hate to think you want to make players unplayable. I find fate points really dont help there at all.

As for the notion of making characters unplayable as a choice you want to make, you are the GM, you have final say. But its best to tell the player you want to take his character out of action instead of complaining that his or her character cant be removed cause of or her fate points.

I find this to be a problem completely of your own.

I personally don't see a problem with the fate point system. In any system it is possible to either roll very well in character generation or min max your point distribution.

Nor have I seen them to be too powerful in game play (the highest in the group is 5). Lets face it if you need to roll a 25 or less and spend a fate point you still will likely fail. If you needed a 75 in the first place it should not be too much of a shock that the character actually succeeded.

Their main use has been to save characters from death. A function I agree with. When I end up as a fine pink mist, I like the fact that there is a game mechanic that lets you say "Umm I was really enjoying playing that character I would like to continue.". Making the character unplayable because you don't like the get out of jail free effect this has defeats the main purpose of fate points (at least as I see it).

That having been said if you are going to go that route, I think this is one of those things that needs to be made clear to all players BEFORE it comes up in game. I don't know about others but it might arouse some angst in me if my GM suddenly told me I was a brain damaged quadriplegic due to a house rule he neglected to mention.

Consequnces/injury when a FP is burned is Not a house rule:

Core Rule Book, pg 185:

"So for example, if a character was shot with a lascannon and suffered a Critical Hit that would have killed him, instead he will only be horribly wounded, hideously burnt and rendered unconscious on 0 Wounds."

Now I don't generally completely maim characters when they spend a fate point. My point was that burned fate points don't let you get away free, nor do they stop the GM from running the game however he needs to.

DocIII said:

Yes but 0 wounds does not indicate loss of limbs, bodily functions or bowel movements. It implies you are at 0 wounds, unconscious or not. Anything else is purely cosmetic and up to the GM.

I usually do inflict sanity points and serious scars and even limb loss, but those are judgements made by me as a GM not by the definition you posted above.

Its up to the GM to use logic and story to control the actual effects of fate point use. Sometimes you fall out the window and land in a lake, other times you return weeks later with a horribly scarred face.

Sometimes they just miss. Such as in Pulp Fiction.

Peacekeeper_b your imperial_noble.pdf can no longer be downloaded from Dark reign forum - the link seems to be broken. Could you perhaps share the file with me or put it back on Dark Reign?

Cheers

MOther

MOther said:

Not at the moment. They are all on my master computer back home and I am kind of in the middle of afghanistan and the moment.

Sorry.

But I do know some of the UA articles so up on emule for download.

Thanks for you thoughts guys.

@ Gregororius. I think you can get 6 fate off a mindwiped PC. Roll a 10 for your starting fate (giving you 4), then take Mara landing Massacre (no homeworld pre req that i can see, unless that was errata'd) for an extra +1, then roll a +1 fate on the divination table for a total of 6.

Did I miss something?

Peacekeeper_b said:

True 0 wounds does not = lost limbs, but neither does 0 wounds = "horribly wounded" and "hideously burned" or even "rendered unconscious". So the example in the book calls for loss of all wounds + situation appropriate additional consequences. Of course the results of a FP burn can be anything the GM chooses, that's the nature of the beast, and the point of this discussion.

Example 1: In my game a PC was thrown from a tower and fell 60+ meters to land on stone. He lost the grapple test before getting tossed, he failed the AG test to grab something to stop his fall, failed the AG test again on a FP re-roll, and fell to his certain and messily splattering doom. Burned a FP to survive. Woke up days later w/ his shattered legs set in a one of those metal cage w/ pins going into the bone fragments to hold them in place contraptions.

Example 2: In my brother's game the psyker got a few too spooky/risky/attracting enemy attention phenomena, so the two twitchy Imperial Guardsmen (after player review of the bit about psykers in the primer) lost it on his last bit of freakiness, hosed him with combat shotguns (in crits to the head before later shells ravaged torso and ripped a leg off) and threw his body down a chasm and tossed a couple of frag grenades on it. Player burns FP to survive. His body is discovered by Ad Mech reclamation teams that were taking genetic samples of the mutants the acolytes had killed (to add to the databanks used to determine what is and isn't an acceptable degree of genetic drift) Admech saw the sanctiong brand on a bit of intact skin, discovered mutilated dismembered psyker was somehow barely alive and took him in for a full cybernetic rebuild and mind wipe before sending him back to the =][=. Now the other acolytes think they have a tech-priest in the cell.

The point being that the expenditure a fate point to avoid certain death only entitles the character to NOT DIE, no more, no less. Anything else is just whatever the GM feels is appropriate to give the player according to the situation.

The lost limbs bit in my previous post wasn't a mandate, it was merely an argument to counter the fellow who claimed that fate points made it impossible for the GM to control the game b/c the players could spend them to get out of anything.

Some people seem to think that burning a FP = character completely unharmed by whatever would have killed him. I'm just trying to make clear that that is not the case.

Consequences are just fine. The operative word here is ->unplayable<-.

Our GM has created his own ad hock and very simple table that he rolls on to see how well the fate point works. The effects range from miraculously unharmed (the lascannon missed) to unconsous in the hospital waiting on replacement limbs (the lascannon took of his leg but managed to cauterize the wound) .

In all cases however the character could still be played.

Peackeeper_b had an example of a brain wipe. That would be a no no as that character is now unplayable.

Remember a servitor is technically alive as well but I do not think that is what they had in mind when they gave fate points the ability to survive mortal situations.

That was actually my example.

I'm sure my friend Nathan would be interested to hear how his 7-foot cyborged ad mech psyker that he's enjoying the hell out of is unplayable.

Think robocop with secret psychic powers.

Ahh! my apologies for citing the wrong person.

I am very happy that your friend is having fun with his new character because that is basically what he has, a new character (with some similar stats).

There is nothing wrong with that but his old toon is effectily dead (unless you plan on him regaining his memory at some point).

The extra FP's can be a pain, granted, but the player should not be penalized for having a good stat. Some ways you can resolve this (many of which have been mentioned in some form already):

• Make his life more interesting, he gets to do cool things but spends his points far more as a result
• Negotiate with the player to have him spend his fate points in his character history, and give him something cool in exchange (you saved X by jumping in front of the plasma blast. Somehow you survived, you now have Peer: Administratum and some useful favors to call in)
• Similar to the first and second points (and Luddite's suggestion), create some situations where a hero can step in a save the day at great personal risk. It doesn't have to be him, and they don't have to do it, but it'll make him burn points to be awesome.
• Say his great destiny also draws attention... and as we all know attention = las fire.
• Talk to the player before hand and ask him to spend his points on useful non-crucial rolls as much as possible. He'll be uncommonly useful outside of combat, for a guardsman, and be less untouchable in combat.
• Just let it go and see what happens, dealing with the problem if it actually becomes an issue.

In general though, I doubt it would make a player too troublesome, unless they are troublesome by nature, in which case they'd find something to make you nuts regardless.

llsoth said:

He's already gettung flashes and bits and pieces.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Quoted for truth! If I didn't have so much junk in my signature already, I would put this in it.
(Sorry, I just found the way you put that very funny. Please return to the very interesting discussion of fate points.)

My character has 5; I try to be conscious of that and not use them a lot, except when I really need them.