Powers are Aspects…sorta. Some powers are easy to interpret and recontextualize into roleplaying terms while others are not. Split the Tree is philosophically more open and nuanced than Twin Strike, so it’s easier to tweak this way. A wizard’s spells don’t translate to anything that relates to the character itself. My magic missile doesn’t necessarily say anything about my character’s personality or nature, because spells are inherently detached from who I am.
So what’s this nonsense about powers equalling aspects again?
The only answer to that is to look at a power as a container. What if we use the slots of our powers as hooks to hold personality based mechanics on? Magic Missile may not describe me as a character, but I can still use that slot to hold a brief statement that does. If I do this for an at-will, an encounter, and a daily power, I have tools for roleplay that function in the same exact way as they would in their fighting context.
Be warned that this system applies to non-essentials characters only.
Being, Desire, Action
At character creation, each player will choose an at-will, encounter, and daily power (psionic characters will choose two at-wills in place of an at-will and an encounter).
“I AM” –Statement of Being.
To the At-Will power, the character will attach a statement about the character that starts with some version of “I am”. This is a statement of the characters base nature. It should describe something not explicitly stated on the character sheet, so having “I am an Elf Wizard” is going to be no big revelation as that should already be on your character sheet.
Use “I am” to describe an essential bit of your character. What archetype is he/she? What is an core truth to describe the character?
“I am a prankster”
“I am vengeful”
“I am proud”
“I am a guardian.”
Like an At-will power, your “I am” Fauxspect can be used many times in an encounter where applicable to get minor bonus or effect.
Note that it is completely non-important and non-necessary to “link” the power and the aspect. If you want, that’s great, but don’t get trapped trying to make chilling cloud fit your character’s personality. What’s important is that you have that power slot.
“I WILL” –Statement of Desire
You’re next going to pick an encounter power. On this power you will associate the expression is “I will”. It expresses something your character will always attempt to do. Try to keep it broad enough that you can use it in multiple situations. ”I will dance on the head of a pin during a full moon” is probably too specific. Try:
“I will always protect the weak”
“I will defend my honor”
A great way to build this is to combine it with your statement of being:
” I am x, so I will y.”
“I am x. I will y.”
and fleshed out:
“I am proud, so I will defend my honor.”
“I am a guardian. I will always protect the weak.”
You statement of desire is something you strive for, an ideal that can or cannot be beyond your reach. It can be used as an encounter power during roleplay for a substantial bonus or effect.
“I DO” –Statement of Action.
Last we get a statement of action. This is tied to your starting daily power and describes something that your character always does. This statement is an action that your character takes that he/she is good at, or is uniquely powerful. You don’t actually use “I do” here; replace “do” with a verb:
“I crush all who stand against me.”
“I stand against oppression in all its forms”
“I bless the weak with Pelor’s light.”
Statements of action allow you to expend the associated daily for great effect.
Advancing your character.
Your character starts with it’s statements of being, desire, and action at 1st level. On starting paragon tier, the character gains another statement of desire (attach to any other encounter power you have). When the character chooses its epic destiny, choose another statement of action (attach to any other daily power you have). You can change the powers a Fauxspect is associated with at the start of each new level.
These Fauxspects can change as the story needs, so knock yourself out with it! If the story changes something about your essential nature, go over it with the DM and get ti changed to fit the story.
Using Fauxspects.
Now that you have Fauxspects, you need to know how to use them. You can trigger these as the power they are associated to when appropriate. You trigger the Fauxspect by calling it out before rolling. You then expend the appropriate linked power(encounters expended for an encounter, dailies used for the day), and then you get a bonus to the skill check (generally what you’ll be using in a non-combat encounter) in accordance to what was expended. You can only expend one Fauxpect at a time.
At-Will/Being gives you a +1 to the roll.
Encounter/Desire gives you a +2 to the roll.
Daily/Action provides a +4 to the roll, and grants an extra success if you succeed during a skill challenge. If it is not a skill challenge, the DM can describe the increased effect.
The usage must be appropriate, meaning it must fit to a reasonable degree in the context of the scene as it occurs. You cannot invoke ”I protect the weak” to help you successfully beat up an innocent farmer. The DM (as always) has last word on what is appropriate, but should lean towards generosity when possible (not as much with at-will/being, but definitely with daily/action).
So, what are your questions? You’ll note that I’m staying away from Action Point usage or Fate-specific things like tagging and compels. There will be a third part where I’ll deal with those and also with using this system with Essential characters. In the meantime, let me know what you think and what you want answers to.
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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Interesting. I’ve never played a FATE game, but have been looking for a way to integrate the Burning Wheel style traits/beliefs mechanism into old-school D&D. This is an intriguing way to combat the whole “4E discourages roleplay” argument.
@ Jamie – Lol! That’s cause everyone was used to having a book to tell them how to do it. When the training wheels come off, a lot of people tend towards nervousness. When they see others “getting it” they get angry.
Pretty typical human behavior, if annoying.
A few questions or comments: 1) Are you considering allowing the ‘Aspect Powers’ to be used in combat? If so can they buff an attack roll? Would they then be minor actions or free? 2) I wonder how often someone would give up a Daily for +4 to a skill and maybe an extra success. Maybe if it was an automatic extra success it’d be more tempting. 3) I know it fits the pattern and attaching Aspects ot Enc/Daily with Desire/Action is really good, but why attach the at-will “I am” to a power? The power chosen may be arbitrary and it’s never expended, so maybe PCs just get an ‘extra’ Aspect Power for the I am called whatever the Aspect is, “I am a guardian”. 4) Maybe not limiting the At-will Being Aspects to 1 would help develop nuanced characters: ie. “I am a guardian.” “I am overly interested in women”, “I am a light sleeper: bothersome conscience”, “I am awesome with a blade”, “I am a trained soldier”, “I am a heavy drinker”, “I am the son of Dimitri the Just”. “I am not my brother.” It wouldn’t really hurt much to have so many at-will +1′s in applicable cases, especially if everybody had a bunch. As a DM using Fauxspects as presented so far, I would want to encourage multiple At-will “I am”s. What do others think of this?
I am just getting into 4e, so could you please explain this statement?
“Be warned that this system applies to non-essentials characters only.”
I have been going back and forth between Essentials books and the hardcover books looking for differences and so far I see only errata updates. Then again I am a 4e newb. I hail from the 1/2e days. ;o)
That’s interesting, and definitely a positive step, but what I really want to see is using Aspects as ways to draw abilities out. i.e., your Aspects act as wider categories which you can draw specific abilities from.
This is a great and easy houserule to roll with, though.
@Jamie a lot of 4e discouraging roleplaying IMO is a strange rumor that has unfortunately spread. I agree with Donny. 44 encourages roleplaying but doesn’t give you rules for it generally. I like these rules because they give IMO elegant hooks for RPing, but they aren’t mandatory or necessary for it for any means.
This may help convince those who believe there’s no RP in 4e that there can be though, and there’s value to that.
@atminn 1) I would probably discourage combat use, as there are plenty of ways to get bonuses in combat besides. 2) I think that in a skill challenge that is important enough, players would be will to expend that Daily. I’ve seen it in plenty of SCs I’ve run with just a flat bonus. 3 &4 ) we’re not trying to enumerate all nuances and quirks –we’re trying to define the character in a simple, powerful, high-level concept. If you have a lot of those aspects, you’re going to have players scanning over their sheets for advantages and bonuses rather than focusing on playing. Minimize choices to the most meaningful! Lots of little choices don’t add up to a few big choices. I purposely built that “pyramid” to keep choice simple and meaningful.
@baraka essentials classes do not have uniform power structure. Martial characters don’t have dailies but arcane classes do. Since a big part of this structure entails linking the statements to the powers you have, I need to do some restructuring to get it to fit well., Shouldn’t be too difficult though.
@andy That’s a good use, but I didn’t go there because my aim was simplicity. If you get much larger you really need to get into the core of the game and redesign it; I think this snaps quickly over it.
Thanks everyone for stopping by!
Simple and elegant! Well worth the wait.
I’m not sure that’d I’d want to split Aspects into three levels, though that might just be me staying unnecessarily attached to FATE’s effective 2 (Aspects and High Concept). I think that–and again this may be a quality of PbP play that isn’t as enforced in tabletop–I simply expect my players to always be employing things at the +1/at-will level in describing their skill checks. I’m also more comfortable with Aspects having some limit or cost associated with them…because if a player can get a +1 every turn it feels to me like DCs would need to inflate to compensate.
By the same token, actually, it feels that if players have these Aspects to use as encounters, they’ll feel that they must always use them in skill challenges, which might lead to more shoehorning than I’d want to see. “You must understand, Throgg feels very strongly about his time as blacksmith. Hence Throgg’s elaborate analogy about the hammering of metal, which he is using to increase his diplomacy roll while talking to this guard!”
I do like the variance in power between encounter and daily aspects, though, but I wonder if it might work to tie them into penalties rather than per-x uses (and I know we’re moving away from FATE a bit here). If a player tries to invoke his base Aspect to convince the guard via diplomacy, and the roll fails, it…something. Generates a failure regardless of the skill? Increases the success ceiling necessary? Provides penalties on that character’s future rolls? If the players aren’t spending an economy that carries over from encounter to encounter (outside of Dailies being used, natch) I think I’d want there to be a sense of consequence associated with the Aspects.
Also, any thought about how augmens work with this system? At first blush it seems like they’re at a disadvantage, never being able to get the +2. Was your intent that having an extra at-will makes up for that?
I could see letting psionic characters flat-out expend power points for some sort of deeper understanding of themselves (boosting an at-will to an encounter for 1 PP, but not being able to use that at-will again), especially if said power points don’t come back for 2 extended rests.
Great insight as always, and I’m definitely interested in seeing if I can tweak it to something I’m a mite more comfortable with.