No more Fates Points?

By Folioman, in WFRP Rules Questions

Hello,yes why did they remove in 3rd edit? I mean it's not hard to use them as house rules but...

Ok lets take an exemple from the corebook,the one with Birgitta who try hopelessly to climb a wall with mastiffs on her back. Let's assume she failed with many banes on her dices... sure death... It's where Fates Points would be very handy. She might be molested by the dogs for a moment,but when her player realize the situation is hopeless,she spends a FP. Then I can imagine the dogmaster comes to stop the dogs from devouring the poor girl,then she would be enchained,imprisonned for a futur sacrifice to Slaanesh (or any other dark god) but alive! Hope for her she has good friends to get her out there...

Ideas or suggestions are welcome.

I would hazard a guess that they took them out because they wanted a grimmer and grittier world than second ed, the threat of death ever present with no fate points to rely on getting you out of a dangerous situation.

Really the only people who can answer that question are the designers, try asking one of the WFRPG podcasts that might be interviewing one for a 'definitive' answer.

Fate Points aren't there to make characters life easier,just longer,in my opinion. Another exemple: a character after a failed check is falling from a cliff,high enough for a sure death... A FP is spent,it dosen't mean character is safe,he would suffer many wounds/criticals,(trees helping him to slow down his fall) making him almost defenseless but again,alive!

They took out Fate Points, but they also changed how characters die.

The normal way for characters to "die" in most games is to be reduced to 0 or less Wounds/HitPoints. In WFRP3 this gives you a Critical Wound instead. If you get enough of these, you die. Which means that you can have your Wounds reduced to 0 in several combat encounters before you actually die from it.

Fate Points used to be there so that if characters had one unlucky combat the character didn't instantly die. This has been traded for the Critical Wounds system.

So, I'd say the best way to handle stuff that could instantly kill players is to give them one or more Critical Wounds (and possibly a bunch of normal wounds). If they allready have amassed Critical Wounds from other encounters, they might die. If they don't have any earlier Critical Wounds, they're just one step closer to death.

You might also consider letting the player use Fortune Points to lessen the damage recieved from something like this. For example, reducing the amount of Criticals recieved.

Yup, as I see it dying isn't that easy in 3rd edition unless you're left unconscious by comrades to the mercies of zombies or wolves that don't have more interesting things to do with you than eat you.

Don't forget that Fortune Points are meant to be spent, so you can earn more, so you can spend more, etc.

In 1st/2nd edition a snotling, armed with a toothpick, could in theory kill you in one hit.

This changed with 3rd edition, which means that there's no longer a use for fate points to counter this.

In my opinion I think this is better, but I can see why some might like fate points in game.

I have recently created a house rule in regards to Fate Points. A character in my game has Fate Points equal to his Fortune total. A PC may now burn a Fortune Point as a Fate Point but if they do this that Fortune Point is gone forever, meaning a PC with 3 Fortune who has need of Fate will burn a Fortune and will hence forth only ever have a maximum of 2 Fortune. They can continue to burn Fortune in this way until they no longer have Fortune and eventually no Fate. However, to invoke Fate they require active Fortune to do this, so if a PC has used all his Fortune in a session, and is suddenly in a scenario that would require Fate, they are out of luck. So, although using Fate may save a PC's life it forever scars their Fortune.