Star Wars is fairly over-the-top and is a good match to the Spirit of the Century setting, but I’m going to be making a few tweaks, and using a lot of refinements from The Dresden Files.
Fate eschews excessive detail mechanics by simply using Aspects to describe anything that matters. You can do more than just tag them:
That gang leader has a gambling habit. (The gamemaster may be keeping a few Aspect slots empty against such an eventuality, or inspiration on the fly.) On success, you come up with something that was already true.
| Time Increments |
|---|
| Instant |
| A few moments |
| ½ minute |
| A minute |
| A few minutes |
| ¼ hour |
| ½ hour |
| An hour |
| A few hours |
| An afternoon |
| A day |
| A few days |
| A week |
| A few weeks |
| A month |
| A few months |
| A season |
| ½ year |
| A year |
| A few years |
| A decade |
| A generation |
| A human lifetime |
| Several human lifetimes |
It’s useful to have terms laid out for the different aspects of the ladder:
| Value | Ability | Scarcity | d20 Difficulty | DC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| –3 | Abysmal | Omnipresent | (Automatic) | (–10) |
| –2 | Terrible | Ubiquitous | (Trivial) | (–5) |
| –1 | Poor | Abundant | Very Easy | 0 |
| 0 | Mediocre | Ordinary | Easy | 5 |
| +1 | Average | Common | Average | 10 |
| +2 | Fair | Uncommon | Tough | 15 |
| +3 | Good | Unusual | Challenging | 20 |
| +4 | Great | Rare | Formidable | 25 |
| +5 | Superb | Obscure | Heroic | 30 |
| +6 | Fantastic | Exotic | Superheroic | 35 |
| +7 | Epic | Unheard-of | Nearly impossible | 40 |
| +8 | Legendary | Nonesuch | (Absurd) | (45) |
Average difficulty is something that anyone with basic training in a skill can do. Fair and Good are the provinces of journeymen, professionals, and people with considerable raw talent. Great and Superb are for master craftsmen, seasoned veterans, and people combining raw talent and training. Fantastic and Epic are the provinces of rare geniuses in the full flower of their talent, or extended works from teams of talented people.
Note that extra shifts past a base difficulty create a margin of success that can be applied in different ways:
One square is 1.5m (SECR p146). The general scale for damage conversion is:
| d20 Damage | Weapon Rating |
|---|---|
| 1d3, 1d4 | Weapon:0 |
| 1d6 | Weapon:1 |
| 2d4, 1d8, 1d10 | Weapon:2 |
| 3d4, 2d6, 1d12 | Weapon:3 |
| 4d4, 2d8, 3d6, 5d4, 2d10 | Weapon:4 |
| 6d4, 4d6, 3d8, 2d12, 7d4, 5d6, 3d10 | Weapon:5 |
| 8d4, 9d4, 3d12, 6d6, 10d4, 5d8, 4d10 | Weapon:6 |
| 7d6, 11d4, 12d4, 8d6, 6d8, 4d12, 5d10 | Weapon:7 |
| 9d6, 7d8, 5d12, 10d6, 6d10 | Weapon:8 |
These details are not perfectly reflected in the actual Damage Rating table
because I want there to be a game-mechanical incentive for thugs to use brass
knuckles instead of bare fists. Damage Rating is more of a funds
matching
for shifts on a roll: a nick from a greatsword does no more
damage than a nick from a dagger, but a good hit from a greatsword inflicts a
lot more damage. You need skill to do a lot of damage, but even Fair skill
with a Fair weapon against Mediocre defense and no armor is getting 4 shifts.
Another set of ideas for weapons
Weapons and armor have more significance than in Spirit of the Century. Instead of having Fists covering unarmed combat and Weapons covering armed combat and thrown weapons, a single Melee skill covers all hand-to-hand combat (and thrown weapons with the right proficiency).
Weapons have a Damage Rating and armor has an Armor Rating; if you make a successful attack, for every shift you achieve, you may add another shift up to the weapon’s Damage Rating. Then subtract the Armor Rating from this; if your shifts are still positive, you inflict physical stress at the appropriate level. An unarmed attack does damage based purely on its shifts, so an attack roll that is precisely matched by defense does no damage; if an armed attack achieves 0 shifts against an unarmored opponent, it still inflicts 1 stress. Some weapons (usually heavy weapons or out-scale ones like starfighter or capital ship guns being used on people) are so potent that they also have a Damage Bonus, which adds to your damage shifts when you hit, or a Damage Multiplier, which may double or triple the matching of their Damage Rating).
Other ways people handle it: in Spirit of the Far Future, bigger weapons inflict more than one box of damage when they hit. Consequences can be used to buy down damage boxes— mild takes it down by one step, moderate by two, severe by four. The only difference between a fist, a pistol, and a rifle is range.
There are also stunts that affect this: the Lethal Weapon stunt adds 1 to your unarmed damage rating; the Fists of Death stunt adds another 1, and Force powers like Force Blow add as well. You may also take the Heavy Hitter stunt if your Might is at least 3, or a Weapon Finesse stunt if your Athletics is at least 3.
| Weapon | Damage Rating |
|---|---|
| Unarmed, sling stone | Weapon:0 |
| Small melee weapons: blackjack, brass knuckles, combat gloves, knife hold-out slugthrower, shortbow arrow |
Weapon:1 |
| One-handed melee weapons: club, baton, vibroknife, sword, axe, mace Two-handed middle-grip weapons: quarterstaff, doubleblade, bayonet Slugthrower pistol, hold-out blaster Longbow arrow, crossbow bolt |
Weapon:2 |
|
Two-handed melee weapons and polearms: tetsubo, greatsword, halberd, spear
One-handed vibroweapons: vibroblade, vibrosword, vibrodoubleblade, vibrobayonet Heavy slugthrower pistols, slugthrower rifles and automatic weapons Blaster pistol, ion pistol Stun baton, stun pike Sith-steel sword or doubleblade |
Weapon:3 |
|
Two-handed vibroweapons and polearms: vibroaxe, vibrogreatsword Sith-steel greatsword Heavy blaster pistols, blaster rifle, ion rifle, blaster carbine, Light repeating blaster Flamethrower |
Weapon:4 |
| Vehicular impact, heavy repeating blaster, Wookiee bowcaster | Weapon:5 |
In combat, it is possible to get inside a being’s guard, making it hard for them to take full advantage of their weapon. This can be done as a maneuver: the defender is penalized by the weapon’s length, at –1 for a billy club, shortsword, quarterstaff or doubleblade; –2 for a longsword or tetsubo; –3 for a greatsword or polearm. Once you are inside their guard, the weapon’s effective damage rating is halved (round down), and you can get a free tag on Inside Their Guard or In Your Face on their next action if they don’t make a maneuver to cancel that. (Though they can also tag that for a head-butt...) Weapons with greater reach have a corresponding advantage when defending against weapons with lesser reach, and, depending on the combat map, may be able to reach across zones.
Anyone can wear unencumbering armor, which is presumed to include some form of hood or light helmet to provide cranial protection. Heavier armor imposes a penalty on sleight of hand, stealth, and many uses of athletics (all gymnastics stunts, jumping, and climbing including the Human Spider stunt) of –1, –2, or –3 for light, medium, or heavy armor respectively; this penalty is negated if you take the Armor Proficiency stunt.
| Armor | Armor rating |
|---|---|
| Street clothes | Armor:0 |
| Unencumbering armor; spacesuit | Armor:1 |
| Light armor | Armor:2 |
| Medium armor | Armor:3 |
| Heavy armor | Armor:4 |
| Powered armor; Sith-steel plate armor | Armor:5 |
Under the standard rules, it’s rather difficult to be a
sniper. Sniping requires setup: you roll a Guns maneuver to build up
tags on a target, like in my sights
, sitting duck
, and
head shot
. Before rolling the attack, specify that these tags
are being used for damage, not accuracy; they do not add to your roll
to hit, but they do count when calculating damage (including
the funds matching
from a high-powered weapon). Unlike normal
combat, where shifts do not increase the level of consequences,
consequences worsen by one level for every two shifts past the amount
needed to trigger mild consequences.
A character can burn through ammunition while laying down suppressive
fire. Figure out details for this once I have clip
sizes determined. This creates a suppressive fire
Aspect
for the zone, which can be tagged normally; your Guns roll when
creating suppressive fire is the number of free tags available for
your allies to dodge enemy fire or hit enemies who emerge from cover.
Autofire can also be used to make an area effect attack on a
2m×2m area, or as a free tag (full-auto!
) to shoot at
a single person. (Burst fire gives a +1 to hit, full-auto +2.)
This is tentative; look at other full-auto rules.
The Evil Hat wiki has examples of consequences.
There is no Mysteries skill.
Requires Athletics 3.
Your skill increases the Damage Rating of an appropriate melee weapon by +1; each weapon is a different stunt. Such weapons include the unarmed strike, combat glove, dagger, shortsword, doubleblade, rapier, and force pike; finesse for a normal weapon also covers the vibroblade version of it as long as you’ve had time to train with one. You may use a bonus from the Heavy Hitter stunt or finesse; they are two different styles of fighting.
The understanding of languages, cultures, and etiquette; all the Linguistics stunts from the Academics skill are moved here. It can be complementary to many other social skills.
You are good at figuring out languages, even if you don’t speak them so well. You’re one of the many galactic citizens who can easily carry on a conversation where each side is in a different language. This should grant extra languages with lower speaking fluency.
At point blank range, Melee can be used to counter Guns because
the combat can interfere with gun wielding. Making a maneuver
to close quarters can give a free tag to impair the use of a gun
against you; the bigger the gun, the easier it is to get that close.
Social maneuvers may also be used, with taunts like
Look who brought a gun to a sword fight!
Wearing a helmet that completely covers your face gives you a +1 bonus on intimidating anyone who is not so accoutered, in addition to any bonuses for Threat of Violence (SotC p101), and a +1 on social defense (because they feel secure in their anonymity and they’re hard to read). Having this bonus for your minions far outweighs the occasional threat from upstarts who dress up as your minions to infiltrate your base.
This covers both Fists and Weapons. Fists-related Stunts only work for unarmed combat; Weapons-related stunts only work for armed combat.
Weapon groups:
Can use Melee to defend against thrown weapons.
This negates dexterity penalties for wearing armor: with Might 1, you can wear light armor; Might 2, medium armor; and Might 4, heavy armor. It does not negate endurance problems (so climbing over a one-story fence isn’t a big problem, but climbing a cliff face is, and your running endurance is reduced).
Requires Might 3.
When you hit, you hit hard. Your damage rating in all weapons that can work with hard hitting increases by 1; this will not work with a weapon that is all about grace, but most have at least one style where sheer power will do well. You only need 1 stunt for all weapons, while [Weapon] Finesse must be learned for each type.
Only members of the Hidden Academy have access to Weird Science and mad Science.
Requires Medic. You take no penalties for operating on life forms other than your own, as long as you have any plausible reason to know about them.
Requires Xenomedicine. Even when confronted by a radically different life form that no one has ever seen before, you can spend a fate point and take no penalties for dealing with this species for one scene.
This replaces the Burglary skill.
Galactic-quality survival skills integrate the practical results of evolutionary biology; Survival will let you take a good guess at the rough average temperature of an area by looking at the incidence of smooth-edged and rough-edged leaves, but you need Science to do the statistical work to get it within 1–2°. Similarly, Survival will let you take a good guess at the ratio of sizes of a creature’s eyes and head and guess whether it might be nocturnal hunter.
This replaces the Engineering skill, and moves to cover general competence at methodical, technical tasks; this is a galaxy in which these fields have been overlapping for thousands of years. Anyone with the right background can perform the unspecialized tasks at their skill level, and can pick up the background fairly easily. Gaining a specialization requires formal training; attempting to perform a specialized task without the proper training is a +3 difficulty.
A technician who has a relevant Science specialty matching a Technician specialty has an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of their field; in the engineering disciplines, they’re called an engineer, and in medicine, a doctor. One with Academics and the Scholar stunt for the field also knows a great deal about the history of their discipline and of numerous solutions to past problems; in software, this person would be termed an architect.
The stunts of Doctor, Medic, and Surgeon apply to both Science and Technician when it comes to medicine. Diagnosis and lab tests are Science; anything from setting a broken limb to brain surgery falls under Technician.
| Field | Unspecialized | Specialized | Stunts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medicine | First aid | Paramedic | Doctor, Medic, Surgeon |
| Astrogation | Navigate a known route | Plot a course from scratch | |
| Software (computer, droid) | Operate and maintain computers and droids | Improve and design software | |
| Hardware (electrical, mechanical, hydraulic) | Repair and maintain devices | Improve and design devices | Grease Monkey, Mister Fix-It, Thump of Restoration |
| Civil engineering | Construction and maintenance | Building and city design | Demolitions |
As Grease Monkey, but applies to software.
As Mister Fix-It, but applies to software.
As Thump of Restoration, but applies to software.
A specialist in breaking computer security.
Spirit of the Century is designed to be used for a steady state. This campaign is structured for long-term advancement, and there should be many, many more stunts than anyone will ever be able to afford.
Diaspora has an interesting rule of scope: in a single roll, you can only use an Aspect from a given level of scope. Levels in this game would be:
map(if one exists)
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