Author Topic: Is the fate system the best for the book series  (Read 7396 times)

Offline potestas

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Is the fate system the best for the book series
« on: January 18, 2013, 04:49:36 AM »
Brought up in another thread I opined that I don't care much for the rules when it comes to magic. Why you might ask:  Wizards have at best 4 spells per engagement with the possibility to flub them fairly easily. If they decide to go balls to the walls to take out some really big bad they have even less. This makes them about level 2-3 in the old dungeon and dragons system. Remember when a first level wizard could only memorize one spell and it was almost always charm person so you could have some one fight for you at for a round.(which would be breaking the laws of magic and so someone would come and cut your head off just cause you were trying to stay alive. ) Maybe you choose magic missile but either way after that you where poking things with your dagger.

True the DFRPG wizards can do some nifty things with the 3-4 spells they have, if they have enough power and if they roll well and if the target doesn't roll well. To many ifs. I Like magic, I like roleplaying games with magic in them, I like my wizards nice and powerful, its one of the reasons i hate MMOs  the guy with the stick is always tougher then the guy who can bend nature to his will and wipe out a continent. Really who would spend years studying the arcane when a guy with the club always wins. In most role playing games this is well reflected and no game reflected it better then Ars Magicka, wizards were top and the magic system is a blast.

I just can't get passed the idea that your limited to 3-4 spells. It doesn't matter how creative you are with them or what they can do in theory, you basically cast one defensive spell and hope it will last a few passes of the engagement. and you have 1-2 shots at taking out the bad guy.

An example defense in action: say you end up with a legendary roll: you have a block of 8 for one pass and then you have to roll again and gain another mental stress. Or you can reduce the block to 6 and have the spell last for 3 passes. Provided it isn't brought down early if the bad guy roles well. And what nasty in the Dresden world couldn't beat a block of fantastic.

I just can't see how the white court brought down the entire red court of vampires. This system is not meant for large scale engagements. Every few minutes the wizards have to hope their not in combat so their mental stress can reset, how does that happen in pitched battle. In the books when lucio is killing zombies with little blasts of flame very pin point stuff, harry even comments on how much control that takes. But she did it over and over again without rest, try that in the game. The game rules do not reflect what the book says these wizards can do. If we want we can describe our spells that way but the effect in no way will match what we describe. the power of the spell has to be broken up over all the targets. So a legendary effect becomes 2 good effects and a fair effect against only three targets. Maybe they die maybe they don't either way i got 1-2 spells left after that one and the defensive one i had to cast or i would have been killed at the beginning of the first pass because anything that's not human is faster and stronger.

Its true we have some enchanted items that really even up things but we really can't cast spells we just carry a lot of junk along with us. Then add the silly rules of magic into it and you got a lot of effects you can't even use against run of the mill bad guys. I just threw those out, what fun is  playing a mage if you cant polymorph someone or read their mind to find out if there the ones your looking for. Just plain ick thats what its is.

Now with all my feeling about the magic system you might ask why bother playing. I love urban fantasy, I can't decide which world is better The hollows or Dresdens I like playing in it. I only wish the magic system lived up to the books.

Offline Deadmanwalking

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #1 on: January 18, 2013, 05:15:24 AM »
Brought up in another thread I opined that I don't care much for the rules when it comes to magic. Why you might ask:  Wizards have at best 4 spells per engagement with the possibility to flub them fairly easily. If they decide to go balls to the walls to take out some really big bad they have even less. This makes them about level 2-3 in the old dungeon and dragons system. Remember when a first level wizard could only memorize one spell and it was almost always charm person so you could have some one fight for you at for a round.(which would be breaking the laws of magic and so someone would come and cut your head off just cause you were trying to stay alive. ) Maybe you choose magic missile but either way after that you where poking things with your dagger.

I think you're misunderstanding how mental stress from spells works. Say I'm starting character Harry Dresden, from the book. I have an effective Discipline of 4 and Conviction of 6 for Fire magic.

My Mental Stress track looks like this: OOOO (+1 Mild Consequence).

Now, let's say I'm going, as you put it, 'balls to the wall' and throwing out 9 shift of power to, say, burn down a building full of vampires. I've been through some shit, and have 3 FP to spend on this, making my success pretty damn likely, so I do it, making a Weapon 7 attack at  8 or 10 shifts on the entire scene. That's pretty impressive, even for the FP expenditure, and a lot better than non-Wizards get without literal heavy artillery (Grenades are only Weapon 4, after all), and potentially kills dozens of vampires all on it's own, since it's Zone Wide and nasty.

And here's the part where I think you misunderstand, because after this my mental stress track looks like this:

OOOX (+1 Mild Consequence).

Meaning I can do three more spells easily this combat. 4 if I'm willing to take a Mild Consequence (something like 'Tired' or 'Seeing Stars' or 'I Can Taste Purple') and 5 if I'm willing to take two of those. And even more if I'm willing to really get hurt doing it.

And I can do this every fight. Okay, the Consequences might not be available every fight, but the Stress is, and the consequences go away pretty damn quick since they're mild. I've just been re-reading the entire Dresden Files, and I can't think of an actual single encounter where Harry uses more than 4 spells and isn't tired as hell or punchy as hell afterward. That's what Mild Consequences look like.

True the DFRPG wizards can do some nifty things with the 3-4 spells they have, if they have enough power and if they roll well and if the target doesn't roll well. To many ifs. I Like magic, I like roleplaying games with magic in them, I like my wizards nice and powerful, its one of the reasons i hate MMOs  the guy with the stick is always tougher then the guy who can bend nature to his will and wipe out a continent. Really who would spend years studying the arcane when a guy with the club always wins. In most role playing games this is well reflected and no game reflected it better then Ars Magicka, wizards were top and the magic system is a blast.

Yes, because Dresden always vastly overshadows Murphy, who's totally not in his league, combat-wise. And Harry's never run out of magical juice and resorted to mundane attacks. Wait, neither of those is true at all.

And those 'few shots' you get are miles better than those provided by almost anything else. Legendary attacks at Weapon 8 on a starting character are possible. Fantastic ones at Weapon 6 are common, at least at Submerged.

I just can't get passed the idea that your limited to 3-4 spells. It doesn't matter how creative you are with them or what they can do in theory, you basically cast one defensive spell and hope it will last a few passes of the engagement. and you have 1-2 shots at taking out the bad guy.

Play someone with Sponsored Magic then. They can take a point of Sponsor Debt instead of a mental stress, if they like. This is how Harry's been managing a lot of his endurance as a spellcaster since Blood Rites.

I just can't see how the white court brought down the entire red court of vampires. This system is not meant for large scale engagements. Every few minutes the wizards have to hope their not in combat so their mental stress can reset, how does that happen in pitched battle. In the books when lucio is killing zombies with little blasts of flame very pin point stuff, harry even comments on how much control that takes. But she did it over and over again without rest, try that in the game. The game rules do not reflect what the book says these wizards can do. If we want we can describe our spells that way but the effect in no way will match what we describe. the power of the spell has to be broken up over all the targets. So a legendary effect becomes 2 good effects and a fair effect against only three targets. Maybe they die maybe they don't either way i got 1-2 spells left after that one and the defensive one i had to cast or i would have been killed at the beginning of the first pass because anything that's not human is faster and stronger.

Luccio is actually using a finger-thin whip of fire in that scene...which sounds like a great  narrative for a zone-wide Evocation in context. Also, the correct way to handle major engagements is as several actual scenes, with Stress refreshing between them. The game's designers have explicitly endorsed this view, with the duel followed by the big fight in the Deeps in White Night as their example, with those clearly two separate scenes. You need to remember that Fate is narratively based and so are it's scene breaks.

Its true we have some enchanted items that really even up things but we really can't cast spells we just carry a lot of junk along with us. Then add the silly rules of magic into it and you got a lot of effects you can't even use against run of the mill bad guys. I just threw those out, what fun is  playing a mage if you cant polymorph someone or read their mind to find out if there the ones your looking for. Just plain ick thats what its is.

So...you object to the Laws of Magic, too? What about the Dresdenverse's magic do you like?

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #2 on: January 18, 2013, 05:24:05 AM »
In my experience, the average PC Wizard has really powerful Evocations and makes frequent use of zone attacks.

As such, I've found that Wizards don't need to use all four mental stress boxes unless they're facing something really tough. One spell is often enough.

And of course, Thaumaturgy can do anything.

My opinions and experiences are not abnormal. If you want, I can dredge up a whole bunch links to people complaining that Wizards are broken.

Offline Hick Jr

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #3 on: January 18, 2013, 05:31:02 AM »
Hell, I could probably dredge up a dozen"wizards are broken" topic. Across at least three different boards.

And I think FATE does Dresden better than any other system. I mean, DND 3.5 sure as hell isn't doing it.
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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #4 on: January 18, 2013, 06:46:36 AM »
Wait a second... Aren't you taken out if all your stress boxes are marked?

Offline Deadmanwalking

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2013, 06:52:05 AM »
Wait a second... Aren't you taken out if all your stress boxes are marked?

No. If all your stress boxes are marked and you get hit again in that area and you don't reduce that hit to nothing with one or more Consequences, then you get taken out. Someone with their stress boxes full is vulnerable to attack in that area...but by no means out of the fight.

Offline blackstaff67

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2013, 12:51:22 PM »
We've started out Chest-Deep immersed in our own DFRPG, and while the two wizards are only throwing out 6(!) shift Evocations, I'm pretty sure if they wanted to tweak their builds they could up it to 7 or 8--which is still incredibly powerful to a vanilla mortal .  Using the building example, figure they'd spend 2 shifts to make a Zone wide attack on it--that still makes a 5 or 6 shift attack on everything in the Zone, and that's not taking FP's into account.

In the example of Warden Luccio, it looks and sounds like she called up a 7 or 8 shift attack (not unreasonable for a wizard of her age and experience), reduced it to cover a Zone (or two, hard for me to tell), targeted them with her rather high Discipline (probably a 6 or better--again, not unreasonable for her training), perhaps spent ONE FP--and cut the lot of them off at the knees.  All that for one point of stress.   And still a bad-ass with that Warden's Sword of hers.
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Offline InFerrumVeritas

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2013, 01:06:03 PM »
You mention how poorly Fate models large scale engagements.  Honestly, most systems do.  D&D blows at it.  And when the RPG was written, there weren't many large scale engagements in the books.  There still aren't. 

Offline Haru

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #8 on: January 18, 2013, 01:19:37 PM »
I have to say, I find that it is quite easy to model large scale engagements, if you keep in mind the "treat everything as a character" way of thinking that Fate encourages. If you have a group of wizards going up against a group of red court vampires, just create two characters that represent the two factions. Since they are by and large a homogeneous group, they will use the same basic mechanics. In a group of vampires, everyone will have claws and speed and such, the wizards will all have spellcasting abilities. Powers like "Hulking size" can represent an advantage in numbers, while "diminutive size" could represent a small elite force. You can then have those meta-character fight do the fight, instead of a multitude of regular characters, and 1 spell made by the meta-wizard will translate to a few dozen fireballs slung around by the various wizards on the battleground.

Your Players could meanwhile be at a key point of the battle at which you "zoom in" and have a regular conflict with the bad guys, and the outcome of this event will be a huge factor in deciding the meta-conflict.
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Offline Tarion

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2013, 02:10:43 PM »
I just can't get passed the idea that your limited to 3-4 spells. It doesn't matter how creative you are with them or what they can do in theory, you basically cast one defensive spell and hope it will last a few passes of the engagement. and you have 1-2 shots at taking out the bad guy.
Can you give me an example where Harry uses much more than that, in a single fight?

Spoilers through to Turn Coat. 

(click to show/hide)

There's a reason Harry carries his gun, and uses force rings.  There's a reason Wardens carry swords.  Harry pushes himself to the limit of his casting in virtually every book, and he does it with just a couple of spells per encounter.  The rules match the game system pretty damn well, as I see it. 

Offline Haru

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #10 on: January 18, 2013, 02:40:36 PM »
There's a reason Harry carries his gun, and uses force rings.  There's a reason Wardens carry swords.  Harry pushes himself to the limit of his casting in virtually every book, and he does it with just a couple of spells per encounter.  The rules match the game system pretty damn well, as I see it.
Oh, forgot that topic altogether. Scatterbrain...

You could also look at enchanted items as an extension of the limits of mental stress. If you store the
spells you cast most often in enchanted items, you have a pretty good arsenal at your hands. In narrative terms, it won't make much difference, if you use your rod as a focus item, or if you use it as an enchanted item, it will always be a fireball, and it will always require your blasting rod. You can just do more of them.

There's also been the idea of powers as specialized spells. In this case, the breath weapon power could be easily adapted to an "improved fireslinger" power, which would allow you to throw around low powered fireballs indefinitely. Instead of weapons, use discipline to aim, so it is pretty much indistinguishable from spells.
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Offline Mr. Death

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #11 on: January 18, 2013, 04:19:03 PM »
Yeah, I think you're kind of misinterpreting how stress works. Remember that it resets completely if the wizard has so much as a minute to catch his breath. So provided he gets at least a little rest between them, a wizard can theoretically throw dozens of spells around in a day. Whereas when a DnD wizard has blown his load, he has to rest for 8 hours to recover and reequip his spells.

I've seen creative wizard player characters get a lot of mileage out of their stress boxes, and it's been my experience that combat rarely lasts more than four or five rounds anyway.
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Offline JDK002

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #12 on: January 18, 2013, 04:56:59 PM »
In the 3 scenarios I've GM'ed, I've never once had my wizards gas themselves out unless there is some other factor in the fight that's affecting their mental stress track.  In my experiences the biggest problem wizards have is when the enemies survive the initial onslaught.  If the casters take even a mild consequence, their next spells effectvenesa can be far less effectve, or even compelled into totally screwing up the spell.

Offline fantazero

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2013, 05:02:55 PM »
I guess if Fate isnt the best system (hint, I think it is) what is the best in your opinion?

Also as for the White Court attacking ect
White Council has higher refresh
Warden Often carry Mundane Weapons (Swords, Grenades , Pistols ect)

I'd say I wish the magic system was a wee bit simpler but thats what the new Fate system is for  ;)

Offline finarvyn

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Re: Is the fate system the best for the book series
« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2013, 11:20:20 PM »
I'd love to see the Dresdenverse done using Amber Diceless. Not quite as complex as FATE but still free and loose to play...
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