Extras

Defining Extras

An extra in Fate is a pretty broad term. We use it to describe anything that’s technically part of a character or controlled by a character, but gets special treatment in the rules. If your Fate game were a movie, this is where the special effects budget would go.

Magic and supernatural powers
Specialized gear or equipment, like enchanted arms and armor in a fantasy game or hyper-tech in a sci-fi game
Vehicles owned by the characters
Organizations or locations that the characters rule or have a lot of influence over

We consider extras to be an extension of the character sheet, so whoever controls the character to whom the extra belongs also controls that extra. Most of the time, that’ll be the players, but NPCs may also have extras controlled by the GM.

The Bronze Rule, aka the Fate Fractal

Before we go any further, here’s something important: anything that can be treated like a character, in terms of having aspects, skills, stunts, stress, and so on, can be treated as a character, regardless of what it actually represents.

We call this the Bronze Rule, but you may also have heard of it as the Fate Fractal if you pay attention to the Internet. We’ve already seen some examples of this earlier in the book; you give your game its own aspects during creation, you place situation aspects on the environment as well as on characters, and the GM can let environmental hazards attack as if they had skills.

Creating an Extra

Making an extra starts with a conversation. This should happen during game creation or character creation.

What elements of your setting are appropriate for extras?
What do you want the extra to do?
What character elements do you need to fully express the extra’s capabilities?
What are the costs or permissions to have extras?

Setting Elements

Chances are that you already have some ideas for extras in mind after your work in game creation; pretty much every fantasy game has some kind of magic system in it while a game about superheroes needs powers. If the action revolves around some important location—like the characters’ starship, a home base, or a favorite tavern—consider defining that as an extra.

Zird’s magic (and the magic of the Collegia Arcana) comes up as an obvious first choice, as do Landon’s martial arts. Lenny and Ryan both note that they’re not interested in lengthy lists of spells or combat moves. Also, because it’s a fantasy game and magic exists, they agree that enchanted items need consideration.

What Extras Do

In broad terms, sketch out what you want the extras to be able to do, compared to what your skills, stunts, and aspects can already do by default. Also, think about what the extra looks like “on camera.” What do people see when you use it? What’s the look and feel of it?

Does the extra influence the story, and if so, how?
Does the extra let you do things that no other skill lets you do?
Does the extra make your existing skills more useful or powerful?
How would you describe the use of the extra?

They agree that it influences the story for several reasons. They imagine vistas full of unknowable magical effects and plot devices for Zird to stick his nose in, as well as the Collegia’s territorial desire over the lore.

Specifically, they rule out the presence of world-altering “high” magic, creating things out of thin air, firebombing whole cities, and so forth. If those things exist, it’s a thread for a scenario, and the product of several people making huge sacrifices.

Using Zird’s magic is all about the weird. Ryan imagines making up odd lists of requirements and ingredients that don’t really follow a consistent pattern—some things he can do quickly, others he can’t, and it’s all about dramatic interest in the moment to determine which is when. The group is comfortable with this looseness, so they assent.

Assigning Character Elements

If the extra influences the story, then it should use aspects.
If the extra creates a new context for action, then it should use skills.
If the extra makes skills more awesome, then it should use stunts.
If the extra can suffer harm or be used up somehow, then it should take stress and consequences.

There are a few ways an extra can use skills. The extra might be a new skill, not on the default skill list. It could re-write an existing skill, adding new functions to the skill’s four actions. The extra might cost a skill slot during character creation or advancement in order to be obtained. It’s possible that an extra might include one or more existing skills that the character has access to while controlling the extra.

An extra that describes some integral ability of a character might grant a new stress track—beyond physical and mental stress—directly to that character. An extra that is a separate entity from the character—such as a location or a vehicle—might have a physical stress track of its own. You might also designate a skill that influences that stress track—just as Physique provides extra stress boxes and consequence slots for physical stress.

Permissions and Costs

A permission is the narrative justification that allows you to take an extra in the first place. For the most part, you establish permission to take an extra with one of your character’s aspects, which describes what makes your character qualified or able to have it. You can also just agree it makes sense for someone to have an extra and call it good.

Fortunately, because extras use character elements that are already familiar to you, dealing with costs is fairly simple—you just pay what you’d normally pay from the slots available to you at character creation. If the extra is a new skill, you just put it into your pyramid like normal. If it’s an aspect, you choose one of your five aspects as the one you need. If it’s a stunt, you pay a refresh point (or more) to have it.

The Writeup

Extra: Collegia Arcana Magic Permissions: One aspect reflecting that you’ve been trained by the Collegia.

People who are trained in Collegia magic are able to use their knowledge to perform supernatural effects, adding the following actions to the Lore skill:

Create an Advantage: Use Lore to alter the environment with magic or place mental and physical impediments on a target, such as Slowed Movement or A Foggy Head. Characters can defend against this with Will.

Defend: Use Lore to defend against hostile magics or other supernatural effects.

Extras and Advancement

More Examples of Extras

Weapon and Armor Ratings

A Weapon value adds to the shift value of a successful hit. So, if you have Weapon:2, it means that any hit is worth 2 more shifts than it would normally be. This counts for ties, so when you’re using a weapon, you inflict stress on a tie instead of getting a boost. That makes weapons very dangerous.

We recommend setting a scale for Weapon damage from 1 to 4, keeping in mind that on a tie, a Weapon:4 hit will take out four Average nameless NPCs. Then set your Armor ratings based on what you think you’d need to fully protect against the weapons on each level.

Amanda talks to the group about adding Weapon and Armor ratings. They agree, so now she’ll set up examples of weapons and their corresponding ratings. It’s a fantasy world, and fairly gritty, so she thinks about the “Weapon:4” guideline above and decides that any large, two-handed weapon (like a polearm or claymore-like sword) would spell doom for a nameless NPC group, even on a clumsy hit.

Weapon:1 corresponds to items like brass knuckles and small saps, or most improvised weapons. Armor:1 is padded clothes.

Weapon:3 covers most swords, maces, and anything you use one-handed. Armor:3 is mail and plate.

Zero-Sum Is Boring: The reason we say this is because the first thing your players will want to do is eliminate the effectiveness of whatever their opponents have by armoring up. And unless you want your NPCs to get slaughtered, eventually you’re going to have to do the same. If everyone tends to be the equal of everyone else in terms of weapons and armor, you have a zero-sum game, and you might as well just go back to making everyone roll their default skills.

Another option is to make really good armor unusually scarce, the province of the extremely privileged, rich, or otherwise elite. So while it might be really easy to find a Weapon:3 sword, only the Royal Guard of Carmelion has the master blacksmiths necessary to make armor that’s its equal. Players might spend a lot of time trying to buy, cheat, conquer, or steal their way into such a set of armor, but at least you’ve squeezed some drama out of the attempt.

Superpowers

Most game settings that have superpowers have the following in common: the purpose of a superpower is to make the stuff you do (your skills) more awesome, and the fact that everyone has superpowers is accepted as a conceit of the game.

Then give every PC a number of additional refresh to buy powers with. These are all taken from a game called Chrome City, home of Simon the Cyber-Ape. It’s basically four-color supers with a cyberpunk veneer thrown on it, and he comes from a society of intelligent, cybernetically enhanced apes who practice kung-fu.

Extra: Energy Blast

You can use Shoot to blast other people with energy, without needing a gun or other implement. You have free rein to decide what your blast is like, whether it’s some elemental force or just undefined bolts of light. (This doesn’t cost refresh, because you can already use Shoot for attacks.)

Extra: Super-Strength Costs: 2–6 points of refresh

Extra: Super-Speed Costs: 3 points of refresh

You take a +2 on all defense rolls with Athletics, or in contests relying purely on speed.

Extra: Super-Resilience Costs: 1–3 refresh

Extra: X-Ray Vision Costs: 2 refresh

This also helps you stay hidden, because you can see when people are looking for you and where they are. +2 to Stealth to avoid detection.

Powers and Scaling

As you can see, “balancing” powers in Fate is more a matter of art than science. There are some rough equivalencies you can rely on, like 1 fate point = 1 invoke-equivalent or 1 stunt-equivalent, but when you get into writing rules exceptions like the one for X-Ray Vision, there’s no hard or fast rule for what’s too powerful. Everything is relative to your tastes, and Fate is hard to break. More precise guidance is in the Fate System Toolkit.

Special Gear

However, gear can also have a lot of story value. An enchanted sword may have its own legend and personality, or a cursed heirloom might reflect the family that’s been forced to keep it for centuries. Use aspects to describe these, and remember that the aspects should provide opportunities for invocations and compels. If you want, you can give the invocations themselves some special flavor, giving them a one-time, stunt-like bonus.

We recommend against going overboard with this and giving every single item your PC owns an aspect or stunt. This is a game about your character, not about his or her stuff. For the most part, you should assume that if your character has a particular skill, that includes the appropriate stuff to use that skill effectively. Reserve extras for items that have unique or personal value, something that you’re not going to be changing constantly through the course of the campaign.

Extra: Demonbane, The Enchanted Sword Permissions: Finding the sword during the game.

The sword Demonbane has an aspect called Slayer of Demon-Kind. If you are the sword’s bearer, you can invoke this aspect when fighting or opposing demons. You may also be subject to a compel due to the sword’s enchantment; it continually pushes its bearers to destroy demons with total abandon, and may cause you to lose sight of other objectives, prevent you from escaping a demon’s notice, or other complications.

Extra: Brace Jovannich’s Dueling Pistol Permissions: Possessing the aspect The Legacy of Brace.

Brace Jovannich is the most feared, most respected gunfighter the world of Aedeann has ever known. His gun, known worldwide for the slaying and maiming of hundreds, is yours now. Only you know why you don’t just throw it in a canal and save yourself the trouble of its reputation.

The pistol gives you a +2 bonus to any Shoot attack made in a one-on-one duel. We’re talking formal duels here, not just singling someone out in a normal gunfight—you challenge or get challenged by someone, there are seconds, etc., etc. If you’re using Weapon values in your game, it also has a rating similar to other pistols.

Cybertech and Super-Skills

In some settings, though, there’s another role for cybertech that borders on the magical: it allows people to do things in cyberspace, creating a new context for action related to tech itself.

Extra: Interface Costs: Skill ranks

Overcome: Use Interface to fix a malfunctioning computer system, bypass security lockdowns and other obstacles by hacking your way through, force a piece of tech to trigger a programmed response, and keep a piece of tech from triggering a response.

Attack: Use Interface to break down a computer system directly.

Extra: Media Permissions: Choosing “The Media” archetype at character creation.

Others can spread gossip and rumors, but you have your finger on the pulse of broadcast media. At your word, the events of the day become news, whether it’s on television, radio, or the Internet.

Create an Advantage: Use Media to place aspects on an event or an individual reflecting the reputation they gain from your stories.

Defend: Use Media to prevent damage to your own reputation or peace of mind from someone else using the Media skill.

Mob Justice. You can incite people in public to physical violence with Media, and gain the use of two Average (+1) nameless NPCs for that scene, who will attack people at your direction.

Wealth

When you want a character resource to be finite like wealth is, a good option is to use a custom stress track to represent the exhaustion of that resource. You’re creating a new context for conflict when you do this, allowing the new stress track to be attacked and harmed like mental and physical stress.

Extra: Resources, Revisited Permissions: None, anyone can take the skill.

At creation, all characters get a special mild (A 20-spot From a Friend), moderate (Payday Loan), and severe (They Want To Break My Kneecaps) consequence that they can take in wealth-related conflicts.

Attack: You can make financial moves to destroy someone else’s resources or force them to overspend to deal with you, and thus inflict wealth stress and consequences. If you take someone out this way, it means some kind of permanent shift in their finances for the worse.

As an interesting advancement option, you might consider allowing permanent downgrades of the Resources skill as a tradeoff for upgrading certain extras, if that extra is something money can buy.

Vehicles, Locations, and Organizations

It doesn’t always have to be that complicated, especially if you’re going for something more subtle—for example, if you want to tie up some cool stunts into a vehicle and use the superpower or special gear rules above, that’s perfectly valid. This is for when you want a vehicle to be a real personality and cornerstone of your game, as iconic as the Enterprise or the Millennium Falcon.

Extra: The Galerider

In this game, the characters are given a handful of extra refresh, skill ranks, and aspect slots to invest into sailing ships. The group decided to invest collectively in one awesome ship.

Costs: Skill ranks, refresh, and aspect slots, invested by several characters.

Skills (representing the ship’s crew; PCs can use their own skills if higher): Fair (+2) Shoot, Sail (equivalent to Drive).

Boobytrapped. For a fate point, any PC can have Weapon:2 on an attack or add 2 to the Weapon value of any Fight attack that happens on board, by triggering any of the nasty traps scattered across the deck and interiors as part of their action.

Extra: The Plenary of Ghiraul Permissions: None; assumed as part of the game’s premise.

This small nation-state is known for its vast spy network and laws which protect the rich and powerful, usually at the expense of the peasantry. You rule it; congrats. When acting against other nations, use the skills here rather than the ones on your character sheet. In this case, your skills represent the efforts of your spies, nobles, artisans, and armies, respectively.

Skills: Great (+4) Investigate; Fair (+2) Crafts.

Stunts: Counter-Intelligence. The Plenary can use Investigate to defend against other nations’ attempts to learn its aspects. Succeeding with style on this defense allows the Plenary to feed the nation an aspect that contains false information instead.

Magic

Extra: Lucas’s Arts Permissions: None, anyone can commune with a spirit for power.

At creation, characters get an extra three slots for aspects that they can assign to describe their relationship with an ancestor spirit. The aspect should include context, so something like Sujan Has It In For Me or Dammar and I Share Respect is appropriate.

Commune: This is the skill for becoming one with and manipulating the energy of ancestral spirits.

Create an Advantage: Use Commune to stack free invokes on your spirit aspects, or to retune the spiritual energy in an area to your favor.

Defend: Use Commune to defend against hostile supernatural influences. Failing to defend from these attacks deals karmic stress. (Note: You cannot defend against supernaturally enhanced attacks from humans or other corporeal entities directly with this action.)

Each of the ancestral spirits also gets a writeup, which describes their portfolio, general philosophy, and the benefits they can confer. You gain these benefits by expending a free invoke gained with the Commune skill (as in, only the Commune skill), or by spending two of your fate points. One benefit should always allow you to simply say that something happens in the story without a roll.

Sujan, the Spirit of Warding Philosophy: All life is worth guarding and preserving, even in the face of great adversity.

Extra: Schools of Power

Costs: Aspect slot (for the permission), skill ranks (kind of), refresh.

You can only belong to one order at a time, and leaving an order to join another is practically unheard of (read: interesting option for PCs to pursue over the course of a campaign).

Skills: Great (+4) Learn; Fair (+2) Destroy.

Stunts: Necromancy. +2 to any use of the Black League’s skills to affect corpses.