Fate Core Cheat Sheet And Vet Guide
Fate-Core-Cheat-Sheet-and-Vet-Guide
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CHEAT SHEET
The Ladder (p. 9)
+8 Legendary
+7 Epic
+6 Fantastic
+5 Superb
+4 Great
+3 Good
+2 Fair
+1 Average
+0 Mediocre
–1 Poor
–2 Terrible
Game Time (p. 194)
• Exchange: time for every-
one to get a turn
• Scene: time to resolve a
situation
• Session: a single sitting
• Scenario: an episode
• Arc: a season
• Campaign: the entire game
in a particular setting
Skill Roll (p. 130)
Roll four Fate dice and add to skill rating. Compare to
opposition. For each step on the ladder greater than your
opposition, you earn a shift.
Opposition Types (p. 131)
• Active: another character rolls against you
• Passive: a static rating on the ladder
Four Outcomes (p. 132)
• Fail: fail your action or succeed at major cost
• Tie (0 shifts): succeed at minor cost
• Succeed (1–2 shifts): succeed with no cost
• Succeed with style (3+ shifts): succeed with addi-
tional benet
Four Actions (p. 134)
o Overcome: get past an obstacle
c Create an Advantage: invoke an aspect for free
a Attack: harm another character
d Defend: prevent attacks or advantages on you
Mitigating damage (p. 160)
Fill in one stress box greater than or equal to the value of an
attack, take one or more consequence, or ll in one stress
box and take consequences—if you can’t do one of these
three things, you’re taken out.
Consequences (p. 162)
• Mild: –2 to attack value
• Moderate: –4 to attack value
• Severe: –6 to attack value
• Extreme: –8 to attack and permanent character aspect
Recovery (p. 164)
• Mild: overcome Fair (+2), one whole scene
• Moderate: overcome Great (+4), one whole session
• Severe: overcome Fantastic (+6), one whole scenario
Aspect Types (p. 57)
• Game aspects: permanent, made
during game creation
• Character aspects: permanent, made
during character creation
• Situation aspects: last for a scene,
until overcome, or until irrelevant
• Boosts: last until invoked one time
• Consequences: last until recovered
Invoking Aspects (p. 68)
Spend a fate point or free invoke. Choose one:
• +2 to your skill roll
• Reroll all your dice
• Teamwork: +2 to another character’s
roll versus relevant passive opposition
• Obstacle: +2 to the passive opposition
Free invokes stack with a paid one and each
other.
Compelling Aspects (p. 71)
Accept a complication for a fate point.
• Event-based: You have ____ aspect
and are in ____ situation, so it makes
sense that, unfortunately, ____ would
happen to you. Damn your luck.
• Decision-based: You have ____ aspect
in ____ situation, so it makes sense
that you’d decide to ____. is goes
wrong when ____ happens.
Refresh (p. 80)
At the start of a new session, you reset your
fate points to your refresh rate. If you ended
the last session with more points, you keep
the extra. At the end of a scenario, you reset
to your refresh rate no matter what.
Spending Fate Points (p. 80)
Spend fate points to:
• Invoke an aspect
• Power a stunt
• Refuse a compel
• Declare a story detail
Challenges (p. 147)
• Each obstacle or goal that requires a
dierent skill gets an overcome roll.
• Interpret failure, costs, and success of
each roll together to determine nal
outcome.
Contests (p. 150)
• Contesting characters roll appropriate
skills.
• If you got the highest result, you score
a victory.
• If you succeed with style and no one
else does, then you get two victories.
• If there’s a tie for the highest result, no
one gets a victory, and an unexpected
twist occurs.
• e rst participant to achieve three
victories wins the contest.
Conflicts (p. 154)
• Set the scene, describing the environ-
ment the conict takes place in, cre-
ating situation aspects and zones, and
establishing who’s participating and
what side they’re on.
• Determine the turn order.
• Start the rst exchange:
ˏ On your turn, take an action and
then resolve it.
ˏ On other people’s turns, defend
or respond to their actions as
necessary.
ˏ At the end of everyone’s turn,
start again with a new exchange.
• Conict is over when everyone on one
side has conceded or been taken out.
Earning Fate Points (p. 81)
Earn fate points when you:
• Accept a compel
• Have your aspects invoked against
you
• Concede a conict
VETERANS’ GUIDE
is is a new version of Fate, which we developed to update and streamline the
system. Here’s a guide to the major changes to the system from previous versions like
Spirit of the Century and e Dresden Files Roleplaying Game.
Game and Character Creation
• Game creation is a variant of Dresden’s city creation, but very pared down. At
minimum, you only make two aspects called issues to dene your game, with the
option to drill down if you want to add aspects to faces and locations.
• ere are fewer aspects in this edition than other Fate games. We cut down the
number of phases to three—a signicant adventure, and two guest appearances.
We found that it’s easier to come up with ve good aspects than seven or ten.
And because there are game aspects and you can make situation aspects, you
shouldn’t be short of things to invoke or compel!
• If your game is going to use a lot of extras, or you have specic elements in your
game that you want every character to describe with aspects (such as species
or nationality), you can raise the number of aspect slots. We don’t recommend
going higher than seven character aspects—after that, we’ve noticed that many
of them don’t tend to pull their weight in play.
• If you’ve played e Dresden Files RPG, you know that we use skill columns for
that instead of the pyramid. In this build of Fate, we wanted character creation
to be as quick and accessible as possible, so we went with a Great (+4) pyramid
as standard. If you want to use the columns, go ahead—you get 20 skill points.
e skill column didn’t completely go away. It’s just reserved for advancement
(p. 258).
• 3 refresh, and 3 free stunts. Stress boxes work exactly like e Dresden Files RPG.
Aspects
• In other Fate games, free invocations were called “tagging.” We thought this was
one bit of jargon too many. You can still call it that if you want—whatever helps
you and your table understand the rule.
• You might have seen player-driven compels referred to as “invoking for eect.”
We thought it was clearer to just call it a compel, no matter who initiates it.
• Free invocations now stack with a regular one or stack together with other free
invocations on the same aspect. Further, an aspect can hold more than one free
invoke at a time.
• Invoking an aspect attached to another character gives them a fate point at the
end of the scene.
• Compels are subdivided into two specic types: decisions and events. is isn’t
a change in how compels work, so much as a clarication, but it’s worth noting.
• Scene aspects have been renamed to situation aspects, to clear up some confusion
over how exibly they can be applied.
Actions and Stu
• e list of actions has been greatly reduced from previous Fate games down to
four: overcome, create an advantage, attack, and defend. Movement is now a
function of the overcome action, create an advantage subsumes assess/declare/
maneuver from previous games under one banner, and blocks can be handled a
number of dierent ways.
• e game is no longer based on a binary pass/fail. Now there are four outcomes:
fail or succeed at cost, tie (succeed at minor cost), succeed, and succeed with
style. Each outcome now has a mechanical or story-driven eect, based on what
action it’s attached to. Succeeding with style is basically taking spin from previ-
ous versions of Fate and applying it across the board.
• Challenges and contests have been greatly simplied and redesigned.
• Zone borders have been replaced by the use of situation aspects to determine if
it’s even worth rolling for movement. Moving one zone with an action is always
free if there’s nothing in the way.
• On that note, supplemental actions and skill modiers are completely removed
from the system. Either something is interesting enough to roll for, or it isn’t.
• Teaming up is greatly simplied from previous games—everyone who has at
least an Average (+1) at the same skill adds +1 to the person with the highest
skill level.
Scenario Creation
• e advice is way better.
Extras
• ese exist. Whereas each previous Fate game had a specic way of dealing with
powers and gadgets and stu, now there are a variety of options for you to choose
from (as bets the toolkit nature of the system).
