A question about FATE Core

[Susano-wo]

So, I looked at the online PDF, and decided I liked what I read enough to buy the book to check out the system (no concrete plans to run it, but I figured it could be in the mix of options)
Now that I write that, I don't know if its very relevant, but here we are.

It looks like I'm seeing that only very special gear will have special stats, like its own stunt, or what have you, but it seems like there is very limited effect to even having a weapon out. I get hat a lot of stuff is handled narratively, and drawing your sword has narrative effects, but lets say it gets disarmed. You cant use your sword skill to do anything until you get another, but that really only applies to specifically cutting and/or stabbing. You can still use fight to punch them in the face, assuming your opponent has one, and it really doesn't effect much.

Am I missing something? and if I'm not, is there an elegant solution?

[neonchameleon]

So, I looked at the online PDF, and decided I liked what I read enough to buy the book to check out the system (no concrete plans to run it, but I figured it could be in the mix of options)
Now that I write that, I don't know if its very relevant, but here we are.

It looks like I'm seeing that only very special gear will have special stats, like its own stunt, or what have you, but it seems like there is very limited effect to even having a weapon out. I get hat a lot of stuff is handled narratively, and drawing your sword has narrative effects, but lets say it gets disarmed. You cant use your sword skill to do anything until you get another, but that really only applies to specifically cutting and/or stabbing. You can still use fight to punch them in the face, assuming your opponent has one, and it really doesn't effect much.

Am I missing something? and if I'm not, is there an elegant solution?

If you want slightly gritty rather than pure swashbuckling want weapon and armour ratings from the extras section (http://fate-srd.com/fate-core/more-examples-extras#weapon-and-armor-ratings) which basically gives weapons and armour damage ratings.

[Anonymouswizard]

Disarming somebody would be Creating an Advantage, so you'd be able to Invoke that. Also somebody who began as the combat without a weapon could easily have such an Aspect attached to them until they find one.

You can go with Weapons and Armour ratings if you want them to have more omph, or use Red/Blue Dice from the Fate System Toolkit. But as standard Fare b basically works via a Gear Aspect system, if it's important or impressive you get an Aspect to represent it.

[kyoryu]

So.

There's a few ways to handle things.

First, you could use one of the various weapon/armor solutions for this. Which is actually not what I'd recommend. My favorite "weapon system" though is giving stunts to weapons, allowing them to excel where they should excel. (I recommend weapon/armor ratings in cases where you expect the same character to frequently change what weapon/armor they're using. In most fantasy fare, it's fairly well set and doesn't change, and from experience I think weapon/armor stuff has an overly strong impact on the game in those types of scenarios)

Secondly, you could just not worry about it. In some cases this is what I'd actually recommend - specifically, in a scenario where someone has chosen to be an unarmed fighter.

What I'd normally do is kind of lean into the truth of the matter. Let's say someone has a spear, and someone that is unarmed is fighting them. And with all things Fate, you kinda wanna go "fiction first", that is, start with what's actually happening. So the player says "okay, I punch them."

Really? You want to punch someone holding you at bay with a spear? How are you going to do that, exactly? It's completely valid in this case to say "no, you're at range, they'll stab you first and keep you away from them. What are you gonna do about that?" At that point the answer needs to be something like "knock away the spear", or "slip past it" or something like that.... which would be a Create Advantage action. Once they've established that they're Inside His Reach, then they can attack (since it, you know, makes sense).

So in that kind of way, you pay attention to what's happening in the imagined world, and remember that it's perfectly okay to say that something can't be done if it doesn't actually make sense based on the situation at play.

There's other things you can do as well - if you don't want to completely disallow something, you can let it deal with passive opposition - you can only have one source of opposition (passive or active), but the book doesn't specify when you choose. So in this case, you let the defender choose afterwards, letting the opposition act as a kind of a "floor" on their defense roll. Less well supported by the rules is the idea of applying a "ceiling", but it's a common enough modification.

[Susano-wo]

Thanks for the replies. Sorry its taken me so long to get back to post.

Thanks for the tip about the weapon/armor levels. I hadn't noticed it yet. I had thought about adding damage if armed, but I worried that it would make unbalance the damage mechanic, but adding armor seems to be a good counterbalance if you wanted to do that. (As far as unarmed combatants go, I was thinking specifically of what happens if a person whos attack is tied to their weapon has it disarmed, but can still face punch just as well as they could face stab. It would seem to break the narrative. If the person is already intended to be an unarmed combatant I wouldn't try to penalize them for it.)

Though after seeing how Kyoryu played out the spear vs sword narratively (and adding to the possibility of invoking aspects making possible teeth in addition to the narrative aspects.), I can see how it might seem more prominent in theory than in practice.

Though I'm not sure I understand how applying passive vs active opposition applies here? Do you mean that a disarmed target should in this case be allowed only passive opposition to reflect that they don't have an effective means of defensing against an attack?

[kyoryu]

Thanks for the replies. Sorry its taken me so long to get back to post.

Thanks for the tip about the weapon/armor levels. I hadn't noticed it yet. I had thought about adding damage if armed, but I worried that it would make unbalance the damage mechanic, but adding armor seems to be a good counterbalance if you wanted to do that. (As far as unarmed combatants go, I was thinking specifically of what happens if a person whos attack is tied to their weapon has it disarmed, but can still face punch just as well as they could face stab. It would seem to break the narrative. If the person is already intended to be an unarmed combatant I wouldn't try to penalize them for it.)

Though after seeing how Kyoryu played out the spear vs sword narratively (and adding to the possibility of invoking aspects making possible teeth in addition to the narrative aspects.), I can see how it might seem more prominent in theory than in practice.

Though I'm not sure I understand how applying passive vs active opposition applies here? Do you mean that a disarmed target should in this case be allowed only passive opposition to reflect that they don't have an effective means of defensing against an attack?

Well it should be "fiction first" - you start with what's happening in the world, and go from there.

Passive means that the target isn't doing anything to make it harder, it's just how naturally hard things are. So if someone is disarmed, and being attacked with a sword, I'd expect them to dodge, which is active (and would likely use Athletics).

If you're attacking someone with a sword when you're disarmed, that's hard. So in that case you could either say "nope!", or you could require a maneuver to get in range and allow the attack. Or, you could just say "yeah, that's really tough", and say that there's some passive opposition to it... say, +2. Then, if the defense roll is less than +2, the target would still get an effective defense of +2.

[Vknight]

Look at Dresden and other examples of how to expand on gear

[Eldan]

Been a while since I've done FATE core, so I might be missing things (we're doing our own modification on Dresden Files Accelerated these days), but yeah, things like equipment and being disarmed work very well as situational advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantage: disarmed. Invoke it next time they attack you so they get a penalty on their attack.

[kyoryu]

Been a while since I've done FATE core, so I might be missing things (we're doing our own modification on Dresden Files Accelerated these days), but yeah, things like equipment and being disarmed work very well as situational advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantage: disarmed. Invoke it next time they attack you so they get a penalty on their attack.

Just invokes is a way to handle it for sure. There are others (I spelled out a few of them).

[Eldan]

Yeah, I suppose that's the part where my "mainly FATE accelerated" part comes in. "Just invoke" is like 50% of that system.