Just wondering if people have a policy on when Fate Points can be spent during combat. At the end of my last gaming session, my character was wounded and I hadn't used any of my 3 fate points (being a newbie I usually forget about them during the game!). We stopped the game at the end of a round of combat, to pick the action up again next week.

Am I able to simply state at the end of the session "I'll use my remaining Fate Points to try and heal the damage I have taken", or should this action only be possible on my turn? I assume that you can use them at any time, even to interupt other people's actions, but I just wondered if there is a limit to when they can be used, or how many can be used at once.

Personally I would feel that stating "I use all my remaining fate points to heal" as you're done for the session to be somewhat cheap. But there's normally no limit on when you can use them.

Graspar said:

I think that I'm OK with that sort of usage, I'd just explain it away as the wound not actually being as bad as it appeared to be and let the game roll on next time.

It clearly is "meta gaming" though, and I did feel a bit odd about the whole idea.

I agree with Graspar: when the session ends and you haven't used all your fate points, I think they should stay unused.

xenobiotica said:

The thing is though that the players will quite often know when the end of a session is coming up. So as the time comes closer and they look down at their character sheets seeing that they still have spare fate points and have taken wounds they'll use them.

So I believe that it's going to happen anyway, if not right at the end then five minutes before it. I therefore tend not to worry about it, let it happen, explain it as a second wind and be ready to give them a tougher time next week.

Oly said:

That's the main reason why we changed that rule for fate points in our game. I felt it cheapened the seriousness of wound damage that you could just "burn" it off when you felt the session was drawing to a close. Instead, we allow you to reduce the damage of an incomming attack by spending a fate point, that way it's a little less of a no-brainer when to spend 'em.

But that's just us.

Oly said:

True, it's hard to completely prevent this sort of meta-playing. I don't know how everyone else work as GMs but me and my friends play, whoever is GM usually prepare the material session to session, and more often than not, we have a set time which at least someone can't play beyond, but we sometimes finished the GMs prepared matrial before we have to end, and when the GM finally says that he doesn't have anymore material, that's the point of no return, or rather, the point of no more fate point spending, I say.

For another house rule to limit the occurance of such metagaming, how about rewarding unspent fate points at the end of a session with perhaps 20-50 xp?

I think you can only spend points to heal once per session, but I'll need to go back and check that. Either way I'd allow it as far as was reasonable. I'd also not want to award bonus xp to characters just for having more fate points than the others, so I'd leave xp related bonuses out.

No limit is in rules, can spend on healing until you run out if you want.

Although, if they use them between sessions, you could rule he spent his refreshed pool of FP and not what he had from the previous session.

We basically handle it as Slaunyeh described. They do not suddenly heal their wounds, but rather spend them to reduce damage the instant they are hit. (Teh EmprAH's looking after you, turning a solid hit into a graze)

The RAW doesn't set any limits for using FP to heal up (I think, gotta look it up) and the end of session healing spree is simply too meta for my taste). But another fix could be to place "Refresh Points" in the mission instead of just refreshing them after each session.

Serialkilla said:

When it comes to removing wounds after the fact, I tend to take inspiration from the Drama Points used in Eden's Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG - the point get's spent, and it turns out that the wound wasn't as severe as it first looked. The wound hasn't healed, the point has just retconned some of the damage away so that, actually, the character didn't take quite as much damage as he thought he did...

Similarly, with wounds being largely abstract until you start getting into the territory of Critical Damage, it could just as easily be a second wind as the character forces himself to keep fighting...

But those both tend to be within the fight when the damage occured... going back to it hours or days later, because you've got spare FP left... that's a different matter. In those situations, I'd only allow the use of a single Fate Point on healing when the character is recieving medical attention or otherwise being healed.