Except for my Wave Dogs in the Vineyard game, I don’t get to play enough RPGs that aren’t D&D. Wait, Ryven, this is a 4E podcast. Yeah, yeah, I know, just run with me on this for a second. There are some mechanics I really want to play from other systems that I’m probably just not going to be able to play, so I’ll just have to port them into 4E, conveniently enough in the next few segments! Power Source folks be warned – some things will be changed after the end of the first arc here in about 6 weeks so pay attention! This week, the FATE point.

Actually, think of this more like Bonus Tokens Part II – Beyond Thunderdome. My original Bonus Token concept was specifically for skill challenges and while I like that option there, I want to expand it. A couple shows back, Jared and I briefly tossed around the idea of a roleplay build for 4E characters and FATE points and so this is really just the result of that discussion. Imagine – after you create your character at level 1, you have 5 Aspects – words or phrases that you use to describe your character. The first two are your race and class. The next three, you create on your own. You get more as you increase in level, but don’t worry about that right now.

At the end of each extended rest, you gain 2 FATE points + 1 per tier. You gain another after each milestone. A Bonus Token is then just sort of a temporary FATE point. You can use a FATE point to do one of four things. First, you can play it to gain a +2 to any d20 roll you’ve already made. Not a bad use, but as we’ll see, there are better. Second, if you spend it on a non-attack roll that goes along with one of your Aspects, you may reroll the d20 with a +3 bonus. Finally, you may spend a FATE point to declare a fact about the game world, again in accordance with one of your Aspects. The declaration can’t directly contradict something the DM has already said, but you can twist it. The DM may also Compel your Aspects, making an event occur because of your character’s habits and such. You may pay a FATE point to deny that event, but if you can’t the event happens and you get another FATE point for your trouble. Need some examples to sort this all out? No problem.

Mircolis is a half-elf star pact warlock. (this guy should be familiar to some of you). He’s level 8 and has 6 Aspects: Half-Elf, Star Pact, Evil-Looking Goatee, Ritual Master, Street Hustler and Love of Comfort. In this situation, he’s trying to pry some information about a cave from a hunter in town. The DM has already specified that the hunter doesn’t trust Mircolis enough to give him the information. Mircolis could try to roll Diplomacy to improve his mood and get a +2 bonus by spending a FATE point. However Street Hustler is one of his Aspects, so instead if he tries to Bluff to gain that trust, he can reroll with a +3 bonus if he doesn’t like the first roll by spending that same FATE point. Even better, though, I can plop down that FATE point and say “Mircolis reads the man’s fortune using his connections to the Far Realms and finds a mistress. Will he tell me if I threaten to expose him to his wife?” The twist opens up all kinds of fun options – maybe the hunter now gives Mircolis false information out of spite, or feels compelled to redeem himself by leading Mircolis to the cave personally. On the other hand, the DM could Compel the Evil-Looking Goatee Aspect to outright deny the information and force Mircolis to go some other route, but I still at least get another FATE point out of it. It’s a quick but robust system and after a couple playtests, I hope to implement it permanently.

Now astute listeners may have noticed that earlier I said four things to do with a FATE point, but I only gave the player three – the Compel is a DM option. That’s because next week we’ll talk about the fourth option for your FATE point purchases – the power stunt.

 
I originally started writing this entry talking about manipulatives, which are any tokens, objects or bits of something that is handled and moved around to signify meaning. But as I wrote it, it really coalesced around skill challenges and one manipulative specifically – the Bonus Token. Don’t go looking in your core rulebooks for this because you’re not going to find it. It’s something I’ve cribbed from other games and ported into 4th Edition D&D.

How often have you been adjudicating a skill challenge and one of your players makes a check that goes beyond a simple secondary skill, in a way that is both creative and reasonable but doesn’t directly contribute to winning the challenge? Many times, you dole out a +2 to the next check and go on with it, but as a DM, I found that got really lame really fast. It increases the odds of the next check succeeding by 10% but if it doesn’t help (or isn’t necessary), the player may not feel particularly inclined to come up with another unique idea later and I definitely want to encourage that sort of thinking. So here’s what I started doing. When one of my players goes in a direction with a skill check that I didn’t expect and passes a level-appropriate DC, I throw them a little chip with the word “Bonus!” on it. (I play mostly on MapTools VTT, by the way, so I can make all sorts of weird virtual stuff). Anyway – it tells the player that I officially recognize the successful skill check and feel that it was somehow appropriate but have no idea how to incorporate that check at this exact moment. I also take particular care to NOT describe that check in the game story when it’s made. In this way, I don’t feel like I ever have to say “no” to anything, but the pressure to come up with the result immediately is lifted. Later on in the challenge, players can ‘cash in’ their tokens for other effects related to the skill check.

Here’s an example – the players are chasing a thief through a busy town. The primary skills are Athletics, Acrobatics, Perception, Endurance and Streetwise. Your player’s Cleric is not trained in any of these things, so she decides to use Religion; she prays to Erathis, the goddess of law and civilization for help. That seems both creative and reasonable, so upon making her check, you throw her a Bonus Token. When the thief is caught, the cleric asks “is the thief part of the evil cult we’re looking for?” and waves her token. If the thief wasn’t already a cultist, but you’re prepared to play it that way you have her return the token and you say “yes, in fact he is and he has the entry password tattooed on his left hand.” Perhaps you don’t want to go just hand your players quite so much information. You could trade that token for “no, he isn’t, but one of the guards that comes to arrest the thief comments that the last couple burglars they’ve caught were dead and marked with a strange sigil in blood.” Now if the PCs were about to botch the challenge and had only one or two failures left, maybe the cleric player could decide to use the token more mechanically, say to add 2 to a check an ally has already failed in the hopes that it would then succeed or grant a new reroll altogether (much like the way the LFR card system works). However you do it, the purpose of the Bonus Token is to teach your players that a unique, creative idea will pay out somehow in a meaningful way. A simple +2 bonus may be the DM’s best friend, but after a few sightings, that Bonus Token will become your players’ best friend.