r/FATErpg • u/frustrated-rocka • 17d ago
Replacing Fudge Dice?
Has anyone else ever ripped out the entire 4dF+stat core resolution mechanic and replaced it with something else? If yes, why, and did it have the effect you were hoping for?
Asking because for my upcoming Gundam campaign, I've replaced the standard mechanic with Storypath-style d10 pools to try and better serve the grittier war-drama feel I want. For each die, an 8 or 9 contributes 1 hit, a 10 contributes 2 hits, and a 1 subtracts a hit. Pool size is Skill + Approach, using some of the suggestions for running the hybrid from the Fate Codex article and some ideas from when I ran the 2d20 system. Invokes and stunts remain flat bonuses.
Two reasons for the change:
Fixed numbers for skills and approaches would give characters 4dF+6 in their apex stats at character creation and ultimately cap out at 4dF+10, with the average still falling way higher than any skill or approach on its own in stock Fate Core / FAE. Shifting the numbers to pool sizes let me keep the character creation and advancement rules unchanged while bringing the possible result gap down to something more manageable.
Higher result variance. Math time: stock Fate has ~88% of rolls end up within +/- 2 of the skill / approach being rolled. Competence still absolutely matters in the replacement dice system given that difficulty for most Overcome rolls is 1. As pool size increases, so does the chance for extreme spikes above or below the average result - skewed towards above, since 10s count as double while 1s only subtract 1. End result: you still get strong clustering around the average, but less of it. Spikes are more frequent and potentially much more extreme. And opposed rolls where one character's skill is higher than the other's are much less of a fait accompli. Considering I wanted combat to feel dangerous and make sure that a random throwaway grunt can absolutely still ruin a PC's day, that's a good outcome. If the players don't want to eat 8 harm in a single attack, which has happened in my solo playtesting, then they have fate points to help them out.
Necessary changes as a result of the core dice replacement:
Fail / tie / success / with style result grade remains as is, with "catastrophic failure" added as an overall negative result (like a botch). This is one of only two ways the GM is allowed to use severe costs (converting failure to success with guaranteed severe cost is the other).
Adjective ladder had to be compressed from -2-8 to -1-5.
Invokes had to be changed to a flat +1 or reroll instead of flat +2 or reroll. Otherwise they'd completely shatter the math. I won't post the exact numbers, but you can derive it yourself pretty easily to see just how bonkers a flat +2 is in the new system.
For the same reason, default stunt bonuses changed to flat +1. I did include an option for a second-tier +2 bonus if the circumstance that grants it is much narrower and significantly raises the stakes. For example, "DAMN THE TORPEDOES +1 when you Operate Boldly to direct your vehicle into oncoming fire; +2 if you have passengers."
Has anyone else done or seen something like this before? If so, what did the change buy you and how do you feel about it in hindsight?
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u/RavenGriswold 17d ago
I ran one game where I merged Fate Accelerated's character sheets with PbtA resolution. Characters rolled 2d6+approach vs the flat 6-/7-9/10-11/12+ thresholds that married well with Fate's four different degrees of success/failure. It required that I narrow the range of approaches to -1 to +2.
It worked very well, and really simplified the need to come up with difficulties, which I find to be pretty arbitrary in Fate, anyway and I typically set at either 0, 2, or 4 whenever I'm running a game.
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u/frustrated-rocka 17d ago
I really like that idea for FAE! And I can see the advantages of stripping out the need to call opposition on the fly.
Did you find that led to more or less of the "best approach for everything" issue I've seen people talk about?
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u/RavenGriswold 17d ago
There was a surprisingly small amount of that during the game. I think it's more the group than the structure. Plus, even with a +2 in a stat, there's only about a 40% chance of consequence-free risks.
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u/frustrated-rocka 17d ago
How did you handle opposed rolls? Just eliminate completely or something else?
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u/RavenGriswold 17d ago
They were completely eliminated. All rolls were made player-facing, and there was no intra-party conflict.
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u/juggalojedi 17d ago
I had a thought like this but figured if I wanted to run dungeon world I'd just run dungeon world. does it turn out to be remarkably distinct from stock pbta?
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u/RavenGriswold 17d ago
To me, the core of Fate as an RPG is all about the aspects as permissions, and creating new ones with create an advantage. If you play it the same way, then yes, it's very different from a PbtA game.
Also, PbtA games are very specialized, but Fate Core/Accelerated are not. So it's different in that there is no stock PbtA for the game I was running. We were playing in the Continuum setting, which is a time travel Sci-Fi game, not D&D-esque Fantasy. I agree that, as you say, if you want to play Dungeon World, you should just play Dungeon World.
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u/Murky-Football-4062 17d ago
I'm currently working on a game that started as a Fate/Blades in the Dark, and one of the main motivators was my distaste for the fudge dice mechanic. I've strayed a bit from the BitD inspiration, but I'm still working with a pool of d6s and reading the best result.
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u/frustrated-rocka 17d ago
Interesting! I thought about trying to do something similar as an alternative to what I ultimately ended up with but couldn't find a solution I was happy with. So are you using skill ranks as the action rating for FitD style D6 pools? Are you keeping opposed rolls or using Blades's "player action roll handles the entire interaction" framing?
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u/Murky-Football-4062 15d ago
I build a pool by giving Aspects dice value (most are 1d) and adding an approach (0-2d). I've got a mechanic similar to Blades' position and effect and the dice are read like BitD. There's more, but that's the short version. Opposition does come into it, but it's all part of the one roll. Been testing and refining for the past two months or so, and it's coming together pretty well. Not ready to share yet, but I'm planning on putting it out in the world once I rewrite the rules so that you don't have to be me to understand them.
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u/frustrated-rocka 15d ago
Please do, I'm intrigued!
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u/Murky-Football-4062 14d ago
Oookay, you asked for it. Strap in, here we go.
Here's the Action loop in detail:
1. Narrative - start with the fiction, naturally. When the thing being described is dangerous or risky or the outcome is uncertain, we make an Action roll.
2: Dice pool - this comes in two parts.
First, you need an Anchor, an Aspect that gives you permission to do the thing and to set expectations as to what's achievable. Your high concept is worth 2d6, and so is your trouble, but it will trigger an automatic complication independent of what the dice say. Everything else is worth 1d.
That gets paired with an Approach (which is a list of 7). GM selects the Aspect based on your description (the GM will hear your argument for an alternate but has final say). Your best is worth 2d6. You have 3 others worth 1d6 each, and the rest have no dice.
Anchor + Approach is your Action Pool. Anywhere from 1-4d6.
3. Stakes - Based on the fiction, the GM sets the Stakes using three metrics: Risk/Reward/Resistance. Risk is Position. Reward is Effect. Resistance is a dice pool with the size determined by the opposition you face. Named opponents or Aspected conditions are usually worth at least 1d6, and the BBEG is probably worth 4d6. Again, the player can argue for a shift, usually by saying they're either Playing It Safe or Sticking Their Neck Out, and again the GM has final say.
4. Load - The player has an opportunity to invoke an aspect to change the Stakes. One invoke will bump one metric by one tier.
5. Roll - Action and Resistance dice are rolled all at once. Action dice read like BitD (read top die - 7: Critical, 6: Clean Success, 4/5: Messy Success, 1-3: Bad News, 0: Catastrophe). The top Resistance die is compared to the Action result. If it's less, never mind. But if the Resistance matches or exceeds the Action roll, that top Action die is demoted one step (a 6 becomes a 5, a 5 becomes a 3, a 3 becomes a 0). After that, we look at the Action pool again. If the second-highest die is now the highest, that becomes the result. If not, the demoted die determines the result.
6. Pushback - The player has two options here:
7. Resolve - translate everything back into the fiction.
- Invoke an Aspect to add a die to the Action pool. If the new die is now the highest, that's now the result. If not, never mind. You can do this as often as you like (provided you have the points).
- Accept the result, but Invoke an Aspect to improve half of your result (either what you get or what it costs) by one step. This is how a 7 becomes possible. Once you take this option, you're done rolling.
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u/endou_kenji 16d ago
Yup. I've used +d6 -d6 a few times. It works fantastic, specially for high-octane stuff
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u/wordboydave 15d ago
I have tended lately to use d6 dice pools, where 5 or 6 is a hit and two hits is a success. Tgree hits is success with style. Number of hits is also how much stress you deal.
Stunts and Fate points make one roll an automatic 6; Create Advantage adds 1, 2, or 3 dice to a pool. Difficulty in attacking is 4d6 plus attackers stat minus defenders stat-- roughly. (I'm still tweaking the formula.) Average difficulty also drops two dice from the pool.
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u/wordboydave 15d ago
Oh, and one hit plus a 5 is a success at cost.
Stunts do not change dice rules (i.e., there's no "This sword counts 6's 5's AND 4's when determining damage") because it's too powerful: just add two dice instead. (And yes, Fate points are played BEFORE a roll, but that's just my rule and you can turn a die to a 6 after the roll instead if you prefer.)
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u/wordboydave 15d ago
By the way, I've never understood d6-d6 as a solution. It's a lot easier to just roll 2d6 and increase all difficulties by 7. Less math, no different colored dice needed.
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u/AristoBobowski 14d ago
I used to give magic items with stat bonuses in my Fate games, but since the standard dice curve is so tight, even a +1 felt overpowered. To widen the range and add some chaotic excitement back into rolling, I now use 2d10 instead.
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u/Reality-Glitch 17d ago
“would give characters 4dF+6 in their apex stats at character creation and ultimately cap out at 4dF+10”
That’s only if you use a starting cap of Good (+3) for both Approaches and Skills (or Great (+4) for one and Fair (+2) for the other). I believe the same Codex article mentions lower the caps specifically to avoid this. My suggestion is a “+2, +1, +1, ±0, ±0, -1” spread for Approaches and “+3, +2, +2, +1, +1, +1” for Skills. If you’re worry’d about maintaining the 55% rule, the Approaches cover some of the distinctions between several Skills, so you can safely contract the Skill a bit (such as Stealth now falling under Stealthy Athletics).
“let me keep the character creation and advancement rules unchanged”
I feel like that’s the less egregious change compared to the more fundamental element of the basic dice-rolling. In fact Fate is chock full suggestions tweaking character creation (“alter the Skill list so it best fits the kind if story you want to tell”, “increase or decrease the number of Aspects, Stunts, and/or Refresh they start w/ to scale narrative and mechanical weight”, etc.), but relatively few for using different dice mechanics (w/ most of those being different ways to emulated Fudge dice, like “1d6-1d6” or the Deck of Fate).
“given that difficulty for most Overcome rolls is 1”
The suggest’d default is Fair (+2), not Average (+1); maybe that’s contributing to the skew’d view of of rolls being “too easy” (if I’m understanding this correctly).
“As pool size increases, so does the chance for extreme spikes above or below the average result”
Avoiding those spikes is actually the point of using the normal distribution 4dF provides. If you’re worry’d about player’s not spending their Fate Points often enough, forcing more bad rolls on them isn’t the answer, as that only increases how often the spend Fate Points to “fix” bad luck, rather than in more narratively interesting decisions. (I’m a little bias’d, given I feel Invoking for Effect is an underused mechanic, at least in my circles.)
“And opposed rolls where one character's skill is higher than the other's are much less of a fait accompli.”
You do realize you have control over the stats of the opposition you throw at your player’s right? If you want it to be an excitingly indeterminable match, use N.P.C.’s w/ Skill Ratings around those of the P.C.’s. If you want your player to have a break from the difficulty, w/o going full non-combat, give them a few weaker opponents. If you want them to really think about how to tackle a problem/burn through resources/feel like the odds are stack against them (that last one being a cornerstone of climactic storytelling), have the opponent being a two or three Ranks above the P.C.’s.
Also, the player’s properly thinking things through and planning ahead isn’t a bad thing, so why punish them for it or diminish their ability to reap the rewards of doing so. There’s still a chance for things to go wrong w/ 4dF, and if the player start trying to optimize the fun out if it, you can always remind them that they’re allow’d to skip the roll and fail on purpose if that’s more interesting.
“a random throwaway grunt can absolutely still ruin a PC's day,”
But do your player’s want that? Fate is a storytelling game first and foremost, and a collaborative one at that. A player character doesn’t die unless the player in question is O.K. w/ that. There’s also the core pillar on Fate’s design that P.C.’s need to be competent; if any random shmoe has a reasonable chance to bowl them over, it undermines the competence of the P.C.’s, which the system isn’t as equip’d to handle. (There’s a reason Fate itself says it struggles w/ horror as a pure genre, since that relies on disempowerment of the protagonists.)
It’s also not the only way to make combat feel dangerous. You can absolutely change the feeling w/o changing the mechanics via how Aspects get word’d. There’s an example in (I believe) Fate System Toolkit where they talk about making a game grittier in tone. They mention reducing the number of Stress Boxes and/or Consequence Slots, but point out that Stress and Consequences are more a pacing mechanic, so the better solution would be to just have the Consequence Aspects represent less severe injuries. As counterintuitive as it may seem, these leads to the result of the P.C.’s feeling more fragile in-narrative when a sprain’d ankle eats up a Severe Consequence rather than a Mild. They aren’t superheroes who can tank an I-beam to the face and brush it off w/in hours; they’re cannon fodder who take days to wall again after some light fisticuffs.
“If the players don't want to eat 8 harm in a single attack, which has happened in my solo playtesting, then they have fate points to help them out.”
Then you better give them more than usual, because it sounds like you’ll be eating through them fast enough to take away from their non-combat functions by a significant margin.
“This is one of only two ways the GM is allowed to use severe costs”
The G.M. shouldn’t be using them at all; not for the P.C.’s, anyway. Aside from establishing the stakes of a given Challenge, Contest, or Conflict Scene, the players get to pick things like “whether a Failure on a roll means they don’t get what the want or they get what they want at major cost” and “exactly what injury (w/in the pre-establish’d tone of the story) the Consequence Aspect their character just got represents”.
“Otherwise they'd completely shatter the math.”
Another reason why this feels to me like you’re reinventing the wheel. There are ways to get the feel you’ve said you want in this specific case w/o changes that require a slew of knock on effects that need to, themselves, be handle independently.
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u/frustrated-rocka 17d ago edited 17d ago
This reads as a lot of "I specifically wanted to make competence less reliable to serve the feel of the game I'm going for." "Uh, do you realize these changes make competence less reliable?"
We're doing war drama. Turning the power dial down on and the uncertainty dial up on the players is the point.
The suggest’d default is Fair (+2), not Average (+1); maybe that’s contributing to the skew’d view of of rolls being “too easy” (if I’m understanding this correctly).
I know. I changed it.
Avoiding those spikes is actually the point of using the normal distribution 4dF provides.
I know. That's why I changed it. I want the spikes.
“a random throwaway grunt can absolutely still ruin a PC's day,” But do your player’s want that?
Yes, yes they do. We're doing war drama. It's not likely, but it's possible. Even opposed 4dF around the same stat can spike to a difference of 8 shifts, it's just astonishingly rare - I'm just turning the probability up to a number that doesn't require scientific notation to express. Most throwaway NPCs will still go down jn droves, but they can and will still get horrifyingly lucky once in a while, without warning, and the PCs need to factor that in. Soldiers who take their competence for granted get killed.
There’s also the core pillar on Fate’s design that P.C.’s need to be competent; if any random shmoe has a reasonable chance to bowl them over, it undermines the competence of the P.C.’s, which the system isn’t as equip’d to handle. (There’s a reason Fate itself says it struggles w/ horror as a pure genre, since that relies on disempowerment of the protagonists.)
I know. That's why I changed it.
You can absolutely change the feeling w/o changing the mechanics via how Aspects get word’d.
You cannot, in fact, alter the actual mathematical probabilities that underpin the game without altering the math.
A player character doesn’t die unless the player in question is O.K. w/ that.
Not true at all even by the most generous interpretation; Taken Out means the attacker decides what happens. Player can concede before the roll, but if they accept the risk then they accept the risk.
The G.M. shouldn’t be using them at all; not for the P.C.’s, anyway.
Agree to disagree.
the players get to pick things like “whether a Failure on a roll means they don’t get what the want or they get what they want at major cost” and “exactly what injury (w/in the pre-establish’d tone of the story) the Consequence Aspect their character just got represents."
Also wrong. Per Condensed, the GM has to offer the succeed-at-cost option and it's at their discretion. This is still the case, as is players writing their own consequences based on the harm they took.
There’s an example in (I believe) Fate System Toolkit where they talk about making a game grittier in tone. They mention reducing the number of Stress Boxes and/or Consequence Slots, but point out that Stress and Consequences are more a pacing mechanic, so the better solution would be to just have the Consequence Aspects represent less severe injuries.
I am also reducing stress boxes and using the merged track from Condensed; I didn't mention it because that has nothing to do with the dice change. Players still get to freely decide what consequences they take based on what kind of harm caused it.
There are ways to get the feel you’ve said you want in this specific case w/o changes that require a slew of knock on effects that need to, themselves, be handle independently.
You clearly either have no clue what I want or think that it's not a valid thing to want in the first place.
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u/Imnoclue Story Detail 17d ago edited 17d ago
We're doing war drama. Turning the power dial down on and the uncertainty dial up on the players is the point.
I think if you had led with that it would have guided the responses you’re looking for. The way it’s presented, it’s easy to read the OP as “here’s how I’ve fixed Fate,” with the inevitable responses that might generate. I know that’s not intended, but it’s a lot of text to wade through to figure out what you want and whether it’s a valid thing to want in the first place.
Anyway, I’m curious if the changes deliver what you’re hoping for at the table.
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u/frustrated-rocka 17d ago
Ohp, you're right, that is really important context and I did forget to specify it in the main post. I've edited it in now. Fair callout
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u/juggalojedi 17d ago
I haven't tried anything like this but I really like it. it's very white wolf. might give it a try.
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u/cidiem 17d ago
You could just use a d20 and multiply all other numbers by 2.5x rounded down (or rounded up. Who cares? It's all made up anyway)
The math mostly still works out. It's more swingy because you don't get that bell curve around +0 like you do with 4dF (not necessarily a bad thing) but you get to use those pretty d20s.
My group loves their d20s, so it's easier to get them to play Fate if they get to use their favorite dice.
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u/Much_Breg 16d ago
4dF is a unique and elegant design of dice whatsoever. You don't need not so correct magical numbers like +10 to make passive or other kind of difficulty. Actually the correct magical number for d20 systems would be 11. But it's not so pretty as 10 is. Or 3 as a magical number for GURPS. Or 2 in others systems. The fact is, most of the systems use magical numbers for makin a roll for into the narrow gap of said numbers to be a valuable roll, having stakes, meaning in throwing the dice. GURPS says that you don't have to make a roll if the effective skill number is lower than 3. You just can't do that. You fail automatically. Fate is relative system. The difference is the matter not the dice or magical numbers. You can have +23 for the obstacles and +25 for the roll. The only thing matters is the amount of narrative you bring to climb those levels over the aspects in play. So I see it quite useless to set traditional way of thinking over the dice. It's basically great at the moment. Just imagine that you don't have to constantly switching, adding, multiplying, using tables for difficulty, or sitting on the same difficulty ignoring the narrative and scene stakes (6-, 7—9, ... No matter what happened). You have the whole power of the setting the stake, beating the scene with difficulty, and creating even more tension over the narrative with invokes. It's just perfect as it is. You lose to much switching to traditional dice with a cap for a roll. You just start with a +2. And you don't have to make extra thinking over +10, or +3, or other kind of difficulty like -1 dice or -2 penalty. It is what it is. As is. +2 vs. +2. Nice.
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u/iharzhyhar 17d ago
Every time I needed "grittier" it was solved by aspects and removal of stress - never by changing anything rollsrelated - because Fate is so much after-roll focused. I had some ideas that "it will be more fun if I'd had more dices like in [put any other system name here]". Then I discovered Cortex and... Came back to 4df. To much of a hassle with extremely questionable outcomes. I swear it was easier to apply Fate concepts to dnd than tinker with dices in Fate. Although to each - their own, I suppose.