Important concept for people coming to Fate Core from D&D-like games: Bad touch effects don't win

the
fight for you; you have permission to use bad touch effects because you already won. I admit that I'm mixing my RPG terminology a bit in that I'm using a fan base term from Exalted to describe a related concept from D&D. But it's just so applicable. Because someone stabs you with a poisoned dagger, and the poison bypasses your hit points and does bad things. An undead monster touches you with its immaterial hand, and you lose a level. Etc. The long and short is that someone hits you with the effect (ie they touch you) and it does bad things. Ergo, bad touch. Anyway, it's a thing that comes up a lot in conversations with new Fate players who come from that sort of game. Because it's a thing in some RPGs that you have a potentially huge pile of hit points (or whatever) and they're a measure of one way to defeat you. But! There are ways around your life bar. Someone can remove you from the fight while your HP are in good shape if they use the right spell. This is super pronounced with Rolemaster, where you almost never die of HP loss, because you're too busy having critical hits remove bits of your anatomy. The thing is, Fate doesn't work like that. Your stress and consequences are things you need to get through before you can force someone to be defeated. You can't just slip around those with the right spell or attack and take someone out. If you want to force someone to lose, you have to get through their stress and consequences. Full stop. (I'll note at this point that I keep saying, "Force you to lose," and the like. That's on purpose. Because people can consent to losing without going through their stress and consequences. But you don't get to force someone to lose, against their consent, without beating them into the ground. Unless of course your definition of loss is entirely separate from beating them down at all, which isn't really what I'm talking about right now.) So when someone asks me how you, I don't know, make an attack that turns someone to stone with one hit, I have to explain the answer is simple: You don't. It doesn't work that way. You could make an attack that temporarily inflicted a status ailment in the form of an aspect, which would inconvenience them as much as any other aspect. You could inflict consequences that are more lasting aspects. You could have them concede the fight in some way that turns them to stone. You can even take them out by pounding through their life bar and kill them by having that look like being turned to stone. But you don't get to sneak around their stress and consequences and win by turning them into a statue forever more. This is the point where I imagine some of you are saying, "And?" Well, there really isn't anything after this. Because this isn't for the people for whom that's already obvious. it's for the people who've been wondering how to do bad touch effects, or who might wonder that at some point soon, and who don't realize that it's the wrong question. It's a sort of public service message, if you will.

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28 comments

Robert Hanz
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

I also call this "To take someone out, you have to take them out". This comes into play with all sorts of things, not just 'bad touch' effects, but in things like throwing people off of cliffs, etc. I think it actually also touches upon the idea of stress/consequences not being 'damage', as many of those types of things would, logically bypass damage. Instead, looking at stress/consequences as a combination of pacing and modeling the longer-term effects of the conflict.

Julien Harroch
Jun 14, 2013

Well actually if you can deal enough stress on one hit that they are unable to do anything but be taken out... That means at least a 14-hit roll.

Robert Hanz
Jun 14, 2013

16-stress attack, for NPCs with a three stress track. (6 Severe Consequence, 4 Major, 2 Minor, 3 Stress, and one more over the top). 24 for a PC (due to the Extreme Consequence). More if they have a high enough Will/Physique to grant more stress. And, of course, minions are much, much easier to take out.

Stefan Shirley
Jun 14, 2013
+ 3 4 3

PCs throw an NPC off a cliff they better be damn sure all that stress and all those consequences are full, full, full. Villains have a nasty habit of surviving falls like that. Be interesting to see the game where "turned to stone" was a consequence and not a concession.

Robert Hanz
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

Well, here's the thing. If you're down a steep cliff, you're not in the conflict any more. You've been Taken Out. So.... yeah. To do that, gotta burn through the stress/consequences. I realize that we're talking about slightly different things, though :)

Julien Harroch
Jun 14, 2013

Well yeah it is not really likely that it would happen ^^ That is a good question though. How would you throw someone off a cliff? PC or NPC.

Stefan Shirley
Jun 14, 2013

I would let my PCs do it. "Body never recovered..." is a fine aspect, consequence, take your pick.

Robert Hanz
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

You'd Attack them with an appropriately narrated Attack. If you manage to Take them Out, you narrate that as them flopping down the cliff. This is a good example of exactly what +Michael Moceri is talking about. In D&D, you do something to knock the character down a cliff, and then they take damage. In Fate, you Take them Out, and you can choose to narrate the result of that as them flopping down the cliff. It's exactly the same inversion as the 'bad touch' spells. This really is a situation of Fate being simpler than people giving it credit for. If you want somebody Taken Out, you Attack them. When you get through their stress/consequences, they're Taken Out. If you manage to Take them Out, you get to narrate what that means. That doesn't change because there's a cliff by, or because you're using spells, or because the moon is full. That's just how you do it.

"Body never recovered" sounds more like the NPC conceded, to be honest.

Julien Harroch
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

It feels kind of backward to me. In the fiction you throw people off the cliff in the hope to take them out, not the other way around. You can "attack" them using the Aspect Dangerous Cliff to gain boni on your roll.

Joshua O'Kelley
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

Just to stir the pot: It is theoretically possible to take someone out of a fight without ever attacking by piling on enough create advantages until a character cannot reasonably act against you at all. Shoes Untied, Blinded, Gagged, Dizzy, Upside Down, Covered In Grease,Over A Fire Barrel, Naked, Unarmed, Locked In A Cage, In An Empty Room,And I Got Your Dog, Too would a pretty comprehensively impossible situation to reasonably escape from. It'd be hilariously unlikely to be accomplished in the context of a conflict, but POSSIBLE.

Sam O'Reilly
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

+Joshua O'Kelley Didn't Jackie Chan do that to someone in one of his films?

Michael Moceri
Jun 14, 2013

No matter how many aspects you pile onto someone, no matter how much it might boost their difficulty in resisting you, you still can't take someone out without taking them out. You still have to get through their stress and consequences before you can force them to lose.

Robert Hanz
Jun 14, 2013

+Joshua O'Kelley: Good point, but they can still theoretically interact ;) +Julien Harroch: That's a good point, but it also doesn't happen that the hero walks up in the first moments of the climactic scene, and throws the villain off of the cliff... it happens after the Big Climactic Battle... IOW, when stress/consequences have been burned through. That said, there's still plenty of reasons to choose that as a way to take someone out...

Paul Kiehauer
Jun 14, 2013

+Julien Harroch It all depends on how you incorporate it. Why would the cliff suddenly help you to hurt your opponent more? Well, you could say that he is not so much concerned with you hitting him and more concerned with getting away from the cliff. If you hit him in the process, that's fine by him, as long as that doesn't shove him closer to the edge. And that's where he takes a consequence to avoid that fate.

Michael Moceri
Jun 14, 2013
+ 5 6 5

Stress and consequences are pacing mechanisms that measure how much drama someone can take directly to their face before they don't get to dish out any of their own any longer. So of course a cliff doesn't just kill someone. It's the same as why a gun doesn't just kill someone. Falling off the cliff to your death is the same as being shot to death. You don't get to say, "I throw them off the cliff, and they die," any more than you can say, "I shoot them in the heart, and they die." Not until you've gone through their stress and consequences first. Being thrown off a cliff to your death, shot in the heart, turned to stone permanently, etc are results of being taken out. They're not some secret backdoor that can get you around this process. That's kind of my point with this thread.

Julien Harroch
Jun 14, 2013
+ 1 2 1

I think I understand that. If I am to be able to truly explain it to new players I have to take it appart and see how it works on the inside. Say a PC grapple an NPC near this Sheer cliffs overlooking the Ocean. And say this hypothetical PC's player ask "Well I have him in a goof hold thanks to my Grappled Aspect. Now I try to throw him using that Cliff Aspect. What do I roll?" I would be tempted to let him try the throw but if he does not take the NPC out right away have him hanging by a root or something. But it feel artificial.

Max Besaw
Jun 14, 2013
+ 3 4 3

"Well I have him in a good hold thanks to my Grappled Aspect. Now I try to throw him using that Cliff Aspect. What do I roll?" He would roll an Attack. If successful and it was enough to take the baddie out, off the cliff the baddie would go. If the baddie wasn't taken out, then the player's attempt [to throw the baddie off the cliff] failed. Even though he couldn't quite manage to throw the baddie over, he could narrate the successful attack as maneuvering the baddie ever closer to the edge. If the player succeeded with style, the player could slap a Sheer Panick Aspect on the baddie as he realizes the character's intent.

Paul Vencill
Jun 14, 2013
+ 3 4 3

It really sound like a wrestling match at the edge, to me. You should take all kinds of Scraped and Bruised * or *Broken Arm Consequences until the las is filled before getting thrown off the cliff, and it would be perfectly believable. Note also that for quick kills, you should be handing your players mooks with no Stress and one Consequence. The can chuck those dudes off the cliff until the gorge is Filled With Corpses

Nicholas Reale
Jun 14, 2013

+ 2 3 2

What +Max Besaw is describing is how I'd do it. Think of all of the movies where the hero and villain are struggling on the edge of the cliff. It's rare that the moment they reach the cliff, someone spills over. No, the grapple and struggle against each other, pebbles fall off the edge, someone slips (but not enough to fall) and has that sheer moment of terror when they look down... They're probably going to be near the edge for at least a good half-minute before someone ends up taking a tumble. Characters (as opposed to mooks), rarely have a sudden reversal of fortune where they go from safe to off the edge in the span of 10 seconds, or even straight from grappled to off. In some genres, "sudden death" may be appropriate, but then you're probably operating on 2 stress boxes and reduced-strength consequences (-1,-2,-4, perhaps), so it becomes easier to force that. But really, even in a story that draws more from noir than pulp, are you generally going to want to turn any cliff-side/roof-top fight into "first person to succeed on a throw roll wins"? Mooks, on the other hand, can go over without any warning--that's what makes them mooks after all. They don't have consequences to take, and the weakest mooks will be sent on a long dive with just a normal success on an attack, as it should be. One interesting option I see here, particularly for games on the pulpier side of things, is for the unlucky sap who's being pushed to the edge to realize that he's in danger and take the concession that he falls...but non-lethally: he fell into water (since pulp water doesn't hurt), he had his fall slowed by the brush/awnings/random clotheslines/graspable bamboo shoots/dramatically fluttering wuxia curtains, or maybe he just got lucky and landed on something soft and fluffy.

But, yes, main point of all this: my guiding rule for Fate is that it works like the movies. Things that can happen suddenly in movies of the appropriate genre can happen suddenly in game; things that get drawn out in the movies get drawn out in game.

James R
Jun 14, 2013

Compels are also a useful tool here.

James R
Jun 14, 2013
+ 2 3 2

Also, you can totally throw someone off a cliff without taking them out, with the proviso that they aren't, you know, taken out. They're still in the fight. There have to be ways they can get back into the fray on

their next move. Falling off of stuff happens all the time. Mild consequence: plummeting towards "certain" death.

Richard Bellingham
Jun 15, 2013
+ 2 3 2

You can do the equivalent of a Bad Touch with the fractal, though. Someone locks eyes with the Medusa and it starts the process of turning them into stone. Can they kill her and end the effect before they become a statue? The GM creates an NPC called "Petrification" which attacks the player every turn with a Great skill, resisted by the player's Physique. Consequences are things like stiff joints, stony skin and so on. The same is true of the poisoned dagger you mentioned. Hit them with that and it creates a "Poisoned" NPC that attacks every turn (either with a skill representing the potency of the poison or the original attacker's relevant skill). This sort of thing is quite nasty because essentially it makes poison and similar 'bad touch' effects a force multiplier. Poison someone and then both you and the poison will be attacking them every turn from then on.

Michael Moceri
Jun 15, 2013

Richard -- Those things aren't bad touch in Fate. Those are just, "You've got a second character attacking you." They're not particularly mechanically different than the big bad's lieutenant following you around and stabbing you a bunch of times. I mean, sure, you can't outrun poison. And you can't just medically treat Dude-with-a-knife-itis. But those are just characters attacking you which can be defeated according to their particular vectors. Bad-touch just beats you if it hits. Which isn't any of those things you talked about.

Robert Hanz
Jun 15, 2013

I think that by "Bad Touch" +Michael Moceri is mostly referring to the effects in D&D that are commonly characterized as "Save or Die" or "Save or Suck". Effects that, if they land, effectively take you out of the fight in a single shot.

James R
Jun 15, 2013

Yeah, FATE's not too big on one shots. It's a color generator. One shots are pretty rare, but that's really where compels can shine.

Michael Moceri
Jun 15, 2013

"Save or die," and, "Save or suck," effects are pretty typical of bad-touch. Although I'm coming at this thread from an Exalted perspective in my terminology. In terms of Exalted, bad-touch effects typically do things like turn you into a duck or cut off some limbs.

Richard Bellingham
Jun 15, 2013
+ 1 2 1

Oh I agree that there's no one-hit bad touch in Fate, but I wanted to stress that you can achieve somewhat similar effects that are a lot more fun than one-hit kills. The epitome for the bad touch for me is the pinnacle Wood Dragon form charm in Exalted. If you're touched with that your soul falls off and you die. There is no defence other than not being hit in the first place.

James R
Jun 15, 2013
+ 3 4 3

The nice thing is you can totally do the if it hits you, you die! thing. As long as you don't narrate them getting hit as a consequence of an attack. stress then represents other effects of the fight. Taken out can be any number of things too, you're never forced to have the soul stealing dragon actually steal their soul. Just like you're never forced to have someone shoot them in the head with a shotgun.