Actions and Outcomes
It’s Time for Action!
You roll the dice when there’s some kind of interesting opposition keeping you from achieving your goals. If there’s no interesting opposition, you just accomplish whatever you say you’re trying to do.
As we’ve said in prior chapters, characters in a Fate game solve their problems proactively. Players, during the game you’re going to do a lot—you might break into the bad guy’s fortress, pilot a starship past a minefield, rally a group of people into a protest, or poll a network of informants to get the latest word on the street.
That’s when it’s time to take out the dice.
- Choose the character’s skill that is appropriate to the action.
- Roll four Fate dice.
- Add your skill rating to the dice roll. The total is your result on the ladder.
- If you invoke an aspect, add +2 to your result or reroll the dice.
Cynere needs to bribe her way past the guards keeping her from entering the city of Thaalar. Amanda says she’ll do this as a straight-up overcome action, because the guards are nameless NPCs anyway and not really worth a conflict.
Lily looks through Cynere’s skill list and picks Resources as her skill, hoping she can scrounge enough out of her coin purse to satisfy them. Her Resources skill is Average (+1), so she’ll add one to whatever result she gets from rolling the dice.
She rolls and gets: ±0+
Her total result is +2 (+1 from her dice and +1 from her skill of Average), which corresponds to a Fair on the ladder.
Opposition
Every action you take has some kind of opposition, whether it comes from another character (active opposition) or from the difficulty of the task itself (passive opposition).
Amanda decides to roll active opposition against Lily on behalf of the guards. She decides the most appropriate opposing skill is Will—they’re trying to resist the temptation of bribery, after all.
The guards are nameless NPCs with no reason to be particularly strong of will, so she gives them a Mediocre (+0). She rolls and gets: ++0+
…for an incredibly lucky result of +3!
That gives her a Good (+3) result, beating Lily’s roll by one.
For the GM: Active or Passive? If there is no character in the way, then look at your situation aspects in this scene to see if any of them justify some sort of obstacle, or consider the circumstances (like rough terrain, a complex lock, time running out, a situational complication, etc.). If something sounds interesting, choose passive opposition and set a rating on the ladder.
Sometimes you’re going to run into edge cases, where something inanimate seems like it should provide active opposition (like an automated gun) or an NPC can’t provide proactive resistance (like if they’re unaware of what the PC is doing). Follow your gut—use the type of opposition that fits the circumstances or makes the scene more interesting.
The Four Outcomes
When you roll the dice, either you’re going to fail, tie, succeed, or succeed with style.
Every roll you make in a Fate game results in one of four outcomes, generally speaking. The specifics may change a little depending on what kind of action you’re taking, but all the game actions fit this general pattern.
Fail
If you roll lower than your opposition, you fail. This means one of several things: you don’t get what you want, you get what you want at a serious cost, or you suffer some negative mechanical consequence. Sometimes, it means more than one of those. It’s the GM’s job to determine an appropriate cost.
Tie
If you roll the same as your opposition, you tie. This means you get what you want, but at a minor cost, or you get a lesser version of what you wanted.
Succeed
If you roll higher than your opposition, you succeed. This means you get what you want at no cost.
Succeed with Style
If you roll three or more higher than your opposition, you succeed with style. This means that you get what you want, but you also get an added benefit on top of that.
For the GM: Serious Cost vs. Minor Cost: When you’re thinking about costs, think both about the story in play and the game mechanics to help you figure out what would be most appropriate. A minor cost should add a story detail that’s problematic or bad for the PC, but doesn’t necessarily endanger progress. You could also ask the PC to take stress or give someone who opposes the PCs a boost.
For the GM: For active opposition, you don’t really need to worry about how hard the roll is—just use the NPC’s skill level and roll the dice like the players do, letting the chips fall where they may. We have guidelines about NPC skill levels in Running the Game.
How Hard Should Skill Rolls Be? Anything that’s two or more steps higher than the PC’s skill level—Fair (+2) skill and Great (+4) opposition, for example—means that the player will probably fail or need to invoke aspects to succeed. Between that range, there’s a roughly equal chance that they’ll tie or succeed, and a roughly equal chance that they will or won’t need to invoke aspects to do so. Finally, a couple of quick axioms: if you can think of at least one reason why the opposition sticks out, but otherwise just can’t decide what the difficulty should be, pick Fair (+2). It’s in the middle of a PC’s range of skills, so it provides a decent challenge for every skill level except Great (+4), and you want to give PCs a chance to show off their peak skill anyway.
The Four Actions
Overcome
Use the overcome action to achieve assorted goals appropriate to your skill.
When your character’s in one of these situations and there’s something between her and her goals, you use the overcome action to deal with it. Look at it as the “catch-all” action for every skill—if it doesn’t fall into any other category, it’s probably an overcome action.
When you fail an overcome action, you have two options. You can simply fail, which means you don’t attain your goal or get what you were after, or you can succeed at a serious cost.
When you succeed at an overcome action, you attain your goal without any cost.
You may occasionally run into situations where it seems appropriate to provide a different benefit or penalty for a given action result than the one listed. It’s okay to go back to the basic description of the four outcomes and sub in something that makes sense.
Amanda says, “Okay, so you make it to the top of the tower, and you start working. But then, you hear footsteps echoing below you in the tower—sounds like the next guard patrol got here just a bit early.”
Amanda shrugs a bit and says, “Work fast? You’re looking at passive opposition here—crunched for time, and dealing with intricate machinery bits, so I’ll call that Great (+4).”
Landon chips in a fate point and says, “Well, you know what I always say… Smashing Is Always an Option,” referring to one of his aspects. Amanda chuckles and nods, and with the invocation, he manages a Superb (+5). That’s enough to succeed, but not enough to succeed with style, so Landon accomplishes his objective at no cost.
Create an Advantage
Use the create an advantage action to make a situation aspect that gives you a benefit, or to claim a benefit from any aspect you have access to.
Sometimes, that means you’re doing something to actively change your circumstances (like throwing sand in an opponent’s eyes or setting something on fire), but it could also mean that you’re discovering new information that helps you (like learning the weakness of a monster through research), or taking advantage of something you’ve previously observed (like your opponent’s predisposition to a bad temper).
Opposition might be active or passive, depending on the circumstances. If your target is another character, their roll always counts as a defend action.
When you fail, you either don’t create the aspect, or you create it but someone else gets the free invoke—whatever you end up doing works to someone else’s advantage instead. That could be your opponent in a conflict, or any character who could tangibly benefit to your detriment. You may have to reword the aspect to show that the other character benefits instead—work it out with the recipient in whichever way makes the most sense.
When you succeed, you create a situation aspect with a free invocation.
When you succeed with style, you place two free invocations on the aspect.
The first couple of exchanges have not gone well, and she’s taken a couple of big hits already. Lily says, “Amanda, you said there was a lot of filigree and furnishings and stuff laying around, right?”
She says, “Sounds fine to me. Sounds like you’re trying to create an advantage with Athletics. One of the golems gets to roll a defend action against you, just because it’s close enough to get in your way.”
Amanda describes the golems’ difficulty with their footing, and now Cynere’s got a little bit of an advantage in the coming exchange…
Zird is approaching a local merchant he’s been hired to get close to (i.e. spy on) for the sultan of Wanir, in the famous bazaar of Wanir’s capital city.
Amanda says, “Works for me. He’s a merchant, so his Deceive’s pretty high. I’m going to say it’s passive opposition, though, because he’s not really suspicious of you. Try and beat a Great (+4).”
Amanda looks at her notes, grins, and says, “Okay, here’s what you notice. This merchant is obviously a very social fellow, boisterously engaging other shop owners and potential customers as he makes his rounds. This geniality takes on more of a flirtatious, suggestive air any time he speaks to young men—he can’t seem to help that.”
“Pretty man, huh?” Ryan says. “Does he think I’m pretty?”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “The things I do for business…”
Attack
The attack action is the most straightforward of the four actions—when you want to hurt someone in a conflict, it’s an attack. An attack isn’t always physical in nature; some skills allow you to hurt someone mentally as well.
In addition, passive or not, the opposition always counts as a defend action so you can look at these two actions as being inexorably intertwined.
When you tie an attack, you don’t cause any harm, but you gain a boost.
When you succeed with style on an attack, it works like a normal success, but you also have the option to reduce the value of your hit by one to gain a boost as well.
Cynere is locked in combat with Drisban, one of the famed Scarlet Twenty, the elite guard of Antharus. In her inimitable fashion, Cynere attempts to slice him open with her flashing blade.
Amanda rolls for Drisban and gets a –1, bringing his total to Good (+3). Lily wins by two, inflicting a 2-shift hit.
Lily chips in her fate point, making her final result Epic (+7). She gets 4 shifts and succeeds with style, cutting into him with a flourish. She chooses to inflict a 4-shift hit, but she could also have inflicted a 3-shift hit and taken a boost, if she’d wanted to.
As Zird finishes his opening argument, Amanda describes how Skortch uses Provoke as an attack, poking holes in Zird’s theories and forcing him to reevaluate. Skortch has a Provoke of Good (+3).
Defend
Use the defend action to avoid an attack or prevent someone from creating an advantage against you.
Because you roll to defend as a reaction, your opposition is almost always active. If you’re rolling a defend action against passive opposition, it’s because the environment is hostile to you somehow (like a blazing fire), or the attacking NPC isn’t important enough for the GM to bother with dice.
When you tie a defense, you grant your opponent a boost.
Can I Defend Against Overcome Actions? In general, no—the default assumption is that if a character’s trying to overcome an obstacle and no one’s actively opposing them, they’re just dealing with the difficulty of the task itself. But! You can roll active opposition if you’re in the way of any action, as per the guidelines. So if someone’s doing an overcome action that might fail because you’re in the way, you should speak up and say, “Hey, I’m in the way!” and roll to oppose it. You don’t get any extra benefits like the defend action gives you, but you also don’t have to worry about the aforementioned bad stuff if you lose.
You’ll notice that the defend action has outcomes that mirror some of the outcomes in attack and create an advantage. For example, it says that when you tie a defense, you grant your opponent a boost. Under attack, it says that when you tie, you receive a boost.