Fate System: Do We Need Stairs?

[F.H. Zebedee]

I have been working on a campaign taking place in the 1920's, with kind of a JJBA sort of feel to it (people with quirky powers, over the top action, flavorful time period set dressing). I decided to use the Fate System (specifically the Dresden Files take) because I felt it gave the best combination of flexibility and encouraging players to interact with the environment and aspects of other character's powers to come up with clever solutions.

That said, what almost strikes me as the most complicated rule in the game is the idea of "steps" or "stairs" for skills (e.g., that you need three level one skills to get two level two skills and all that).

Would it horribly snap the game in half if I just said "These are over the top characters, both their skills and weaknesses are more pronounced than the average man on the street", and did away with that rule (while still retaining a skill cap of 4)? I mean, I know it will mean a lot of players maximizing God-skills (likely the to-hit and dodging ones), but I feel that will have a self equalizing effect, and I tend to DM with a very heavy variety of skills in use, so dumping basic skills can turn against them in some pretty unpleasant ways.

(Also, just noting, we are using the swingier "2d6, subtract the second from the first" variant from the system, which also means I kinda want players to be able to reach a little farther in boosting skills, to avoid running into "I have a decent stat, but rolled a -5. This is gonna suck.", and to encourage big dramatic happenings)

[Grod_The_Giant]

You can go down to a skill ladder (ie, "two Good skills, two Moderate skills, two Average skills"), but I wouldn't recommend tossing the requirement out altogether. There is, I think, a virtue in forcing everyone to have at least a somewhat rounded character.

[Knaight]

The skill pyramid isn't particularly complicated, and it makes character generation really fast. That's not to say that you can't get rid of it (Fudge doesn't use one by default, and Fate stole that skill system then made it worse), but it won't simplify the game.

[kyoryu]

During character creation, it's really simple - you just fill in the slots.

There's a huge benefit to running a game - if you know what the peak is, you can much more easily make appropriate challenges. If some players have peaks of +3, and some have +6, good luck with that.

I highly recommend keeping some kind of structure in place - pyramid, column for FAE, whatever. It will make your game much easier to run, and make character creation much more simple as well.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, skill columns encourage characters to be built differently to most games, with skills propping up other skills, although I agree with Fate Core that a character could be allowed to 'break' the column as long as they use their next skill point to fix it.

It's not a strict requirement, but it makes a different type of game. And if you use the official character sheets for core the columns are there and you just slot in your skills (the pyramid is only there to make character creation quicker and easier).

My favourite iteration is Fate Core for being a solid core book for any genre, and my favourite setting is Eclipse Phase/Trashumanities Fate, remember that a game about transhumans has Great mean more than one about cats (my second favourite setting). The idea is literally the opposite of yours, characters are competent and so have basic ability in many things, although potentially only brilliance in a couple (20 skill points gives either the standard pyramid or two complete Great columns).

Character creation without the skill pyramid is relatively easy, skills cost one point per rank and need to be in columns as described. But the idea is that one (generally the pyramid) is standard and the other (generally points) is optional, unlike Fate3 where games told you to use one or the other.

[JBPuffin]

You don’t need stairs, for sure. Honestly? Try whatever you want, and if things go bad, say “Hey, this has gone bad. Can we fix this please?” They’ll know when it falls apart too, and probably want it fixed just as badly.