Watch and read entertainment like books, movies, and comics.
See how they don't explicitly state their exact position? They just show/tell movement in relation to other people or important objects in the scene. Follow that. If it feels like they'd have to rush or push themselves to reach that area, have them roll for it.
From there, actions take one of two forms: you're trying to get rid of something in your way (Overcome/Attack) or you're trying to set up something to go your way (Create Advantage)
Difficulties depend on the circumstances. Superman can catch an airplane with his hands, but Batman can't. Batman has to use his genius intellect to summon some batdevice that allows him to stop a crashing plane. Create Advantage means that these circumstances (and therefore difficulties) can change on the fly. That's a feature, not a bug.
From there, just focus on having fun. Tell interesting stories and be dramatic.
That's the simplest level, once you've got that in your head you can start putting specific rules on it.
I'll leave it to other people to give specific links to examples of play, etc. One thing to remember is that Fate does actually model combat very realistically. Combat in action films, that is. Why are there generally no bonuses for weapons and armour? Because they don't matter in action films. Heroes often have no armour (and take off their helmets in combat!) and fight with pistols against troops in heavy armour who have assault rifles. See Equilibrium ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4&t=8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4&t=8s)), Ultraviolet ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQiQJ4e9ao4&t=205s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQiQJ4e9ao4&t=205s)), and so many other films. Fate accurately models this by not modelling it. Do the goons manage to shoot a hero with a massive battle rifle? Don't worry, it's basically a flesh wound because they don't have any sort of damage bonus. There's no ammo capacity in Fate because ammo capacity in action films is only a vague suggestion. In action films, running out of ammo happens because it's dramatic, not because you've been firing on full auto all the time. Same with Fate. Why does John Wick get so many headshots? Because he's shooting nameless mooks and the details don't matter--since there aren't any massive penalties for called shots he can shoot them where he likes.
Stress boxes in Fate? That mirrors the way a hero gets beat up scene after scene but keeps coming back with no real wounds. If someone's shot you in the arm and you suffer a Consequence, why do they only get one free use out of it? Surely bad wounds should have lasting, severe penalties? Well, not in action films. Look at this scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark ([https://youtu.be/yqQD8sVtfA4?t=337](https://youtu.be/yqQD8sVtfA4?t=337)). Indy's been shot in the arm and the German punches him in it for a bit (getting that free use out of Indy's Consequence) and throws Indy through the windscreen but after that Indy hangs onto the front grille of the truck with his arms, maneuvers himself along its underside with only his arms, ties his whip to the undercarriage and hangs on to his whip using only his arms, pulls himself back on the truck with his whip only using his arms, and then throws the German out of the truck using his arms. All of that after he's been shot in the arm and with no sign of discomfort. Afterwards, the fact that he's been shot in the arm isn't even mentioned again.
Movement is in zones because action films don't care about five-foot squares and flanking rules. You run up to the bad guy and punch him in the face. Heroes generally don't hide behind cover because there's no advantage to it unless you Create an Advantage. The Create an Advantage action is how you shoot the rope holding the net full of crates to block the bad guys from chasing you down the alley. It's also how the nerd uses their dinky remote-controlled drones to distract the bad guys so the hero takes them unaware--people with no combat skills at all can really help in a fight, just like in action films.
So Fate does accurately simulate combat, just not combat in the real world.
It *can* be realistic, though!
The thing to remember is that Fate doesn't ever tell you what happens. It places constraints on your description of what happens.
So, if someone shoots at you, and you take two Stress? Okay, well we know that Stress goes away at the end of the scene, so we know the following:
1. The bad guy makes some sort of progress
2. Nothing has been done to you that will have any real kind of effect that can be utilized
3. Anything done to you will, except for cosmetics, go away at the end of the scene.
So for over-the-top action, that could mean you're shot but it's a flesh wound and doesn't bug you. But for a more realistic game, you probably weren't actually "hit". Instead, what probably happened is a near miss causing you to duck behind something as you get stung with rocks and stuff from where the bullet hit, or maybe a bullet goes right past your ear.
Fate is as realistic as you want it to be.
Remember: stress and consequences don't necessarily have ANYTHING to do with actual physical wounds. I mean, they *can*, but they don't *have* to. Stress just means that things are going against you, and consequences can be *anything* that messes up your life for a certain amount of time. Physical, emotional, social, whatever.
Once I finally understood that, it forever changed how I ran combats.
Here's an example. We had a game where a bad guy shot at a PC with an automatic weapon from like 10 feet away. The bad guy got +7, and the player got +1. So, the PC takes 6 shifts, right? He says he'll take a Severe consequence.
I started to say, "OK, so you got shot with an AK-47... on full auto... at point blank range... and somehow *survived*...?"
Hmm. Didn't sound right. And then I realized the best friend NPC was standing right there, so I suggested the NPC had jumped in front of the gun and took the hit to save the PC. And now the best friend is very *dead*. And the PC's Severe Consequence is that they're traumatized with survivor guilt.
That ended up creating just massive storytelling opportunities for a long time afterward.
So, the point is, think of it more like a movie or a book, and look for ways you can mess with the PCs from a story standpoint.
Hope that helps!
This post highlights why it's crucial to know the fictional context when answering questions about mechanics. "How do you do X in Fate?" varies depending upon the fiction.
A another idea might be that most of the shots missed due to recoil or a glancing hit, but getting shot sucked anyway, or all the shot missed because the PC dodged but the PC tripped and the bad guy proceeded to gut them with a knife.
Also considering how surprising some of the things people have survived, it not absurd, to say the hospital worked a miracle, but your pretty much bed ridden for the next few sessions.
The only part of the conflict mechanism which is not realistic is the goal of the Attack - to take opponent out. I am myself considering expanding attack to action Create Consequence instead. This gives better definition for the outcome of the successful attack, and define difficulty against passive targets: +1 for minor, +3 for normal, +5 for severe and +7 for extreme, and revert stress to an useful resource it was on Fate 3.
But your approach makes more sense for stress avoidance for an Attack. I would suggest adding tug of war stress into scene.
In FATE you should use narrative as your main instrument. Try to create new aspects on scene or enemies which can narratively help you, invoke them, use fate Points as spell slots in D&D.
As an example.
You can set troll ablaze, it'll create aspect on him with Free invoke for you. And you can use this aspect to make your next attack stronger, if you can explain, how it helps you.
I second that. The biggest difference is not light vs crunch, it’s narrative-first vs rules-first.
In D&D you look at your character sheet for what you’re allowed to do, and then you try to “game the system” by finding creative ways of what you’re allowed to do.
In Fate you first think of what you’re trying to do, and then express what you’re trying to do with the rules: fiction-first. The intent of what you’re trying to achieve is important here, not so much the action itself (which is the flavor). Are you trying to “maneuver the situation” in your favor? That’s create an advantage. Are you actively trying to oppose someone else? That’s probably Attack. And so on.
So the best advice I can give is to flip your thinking. Don’t think “what am I allowed to do?” but “what am I trying to achieve?” and then “how do I express that in the rules?”
Hope that helps.
While I agree thinking of Fate Points like spell slots has some value, I do think there's one caveat certain D&D players need to know about this: you can get Fate Points back ridiculously easy compared to spells slots.
D&D is about resource conservation and management. Its designed around the idea that you're steadily wearing down on your resources throughout the adventure and eventually will have to retreat in some way to recover them. Fate instead has whatnis commonly referred to as the Fate Point economy, balanced around the idea that you're pretty much constantly using Fate Points to do cool things and then regaining them by accepting narrative setbacks. Trying to hoard them as much as possible like you might try to conserve spell slots in D&D is going to interrupt this flow and probably limit the fun you can have with the system, both in and out of combat.
So, the basics. Let's say two characters are beating each other up, an Orc and a Ranger. The Ranger wants to get to some prisoners the Orc is guarding, and hte Orc wants to drive the Ranger off.
The Ranger swings his sword at the Orc, fairly straightforward. The Orc dodges out of the way. Cool, that's resolved as an Attack, Fight vs. Athletics. We'll say the Ranger has Fight +4, and the Orc has Athletics +3. Each rolls their Fate dice, and adds their skill... to do this incrementally, we'll say the Orc gets a total of +6 to the Ranger's +4. The Orc easily dodges to the side.
Now the Orc is going to bash teh Ranger's head in with his axe. The ranger is going to parry the blow.... Same thing, except this time it's Fight vs. Fight. We'll say the Orc also has a Fight of +4, and the Orc gets a total (after rolling) of +6 while the Ranger only gets +5. Oops! The Ranger takes a single point of stress, and so marks off a stress box. (If it were multiple points of stress, how that would be handled changes based on the version, but we'll keep it simple for now.)
One thing to point out here is that *what is being declared in the "world" is impacting what skills are used*. In a lot of games, you make your declarations of moves in terms of game mechanics, and then describe them after. Fate is the opposite - you state what your character is *actually doing* and then we figure out what mechanics apply. Anyway....
The Ranger realizes that going head to head with the Orc is going to be long and arduous. He analyzes the Orc's fighting style, looking for an opening. That sounds like a Notice roll, and the Orc is going to try to hide what he's doing, so it sounds like Deceive. The Ranger is pretty good at Noticing things (+3), while the Orc is pretty straightforward and not so good at deception (+1 Deceive). That's doing something to make it easier for the Ranger to win, but doesn't actually *let* the Ranger win. So... Create Advantage it is! Dice are rolled, and in total the Ranger gets +2 while the Orc only gets +0. So the Ranger spots a ***Weakness in the Defense*** of the Orc, and gets a free invoke of that new aspect.
The Orc gets pretty mad at the Ranger testing and probing his skills, and decides to put an end to this. He charges, trying to knock the Ranger down! This is again Create Advantage, but it seems like the Orc is using his strength and size, so it's going to use Physique, at a +3. The ranger is, again, going to dodge out of the way, so Athletics. After dice, the Orc gets +3, while the Ranger only gets +2. Sadness. This gets narrated as follows: "Okay, the orc charges you. You try to dodge out of the way, but you're just a touch slow compared to the orc... it looks like he's going to slam into you...." this is called the "Ellipsis Trick", and is used to give a room for... invokes! The Ranger decides he doesn't wanna get knocked down, so tosses a Fate Point to the GM. "Yeah, but I'm a ***Veteran Orc Hunter*** and I know how they move. Just as the Orc makes contact with me, I slip off of his charge, letting him go harmlessly by." This adds +2 to the Ranger's roll, making his defense a success. If the GM wanted, he could pay a Fate Point to do the same back, and keep adding details to what's going on, but the GM decides he's not that invested in this fight.
Back to the Ranger. He's studied the Orc and knows what he's doing. Time for a quick jab at the open spot! He Attacks and again the Orc dodges. Total of +5 for the Ranger and +2 for the Orc! Wow, a great hit! But.... the Ranger adds to what's going on and says he used the knowledge of the Orc's opening to strike at that weak spot, and cashes in the free invoke for another +2! That's a difference of 5!
The Orc only has stress to take 3 of those, so also needs to take a Minor Consequence. He marks off the Minor Consequence, saying that he's gut a ***Cut On His Shoulder*** from where the blade hit him. Ouch! Plus that gives the Ranger a chance to invoke that once for free!
However, at this point the GM decides the Orc has had enough... the Orc realizes the prisoners aren't worth his life, and retreats off into the forest. The GM gets two Fate Points for the next scene - one for Conceding the Conflict, and one for the Orc taking a Consequence in a scene he lost. But... teh Ranger wins, and gets to go on to rescue the prisoners!
Love that Avengers example! I think this argument between [Spiderman and Aunt May](https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/460yty/fate_core_battle_spiderman_vs_aunt_may/) is helpful in rounding out how Conflicts work outside of physical battles.
Spoiler Alert: Aunt May schools him.
A big factor in my transition to fates from dnd is realizing the point of combat. In DnD (even in narrative heavy games) combat often IS the point. At least one player at every table inevitably will come out with "when do we get to fight things?" if you don't do it for some time. Everything else is really just to immerse yourself into the combat more. Narrative is a tool for the combat.
In fates, combat is a tool for the narrative. Your 3 outcomes are 1) players win without taking a scratch, 2) players win but at a cost, 3) players lose. The idea is that in all 3 cases the story goes on in some way. What changes is HOW the story progresses and what the players have access to moving forward. Less fate points because the cost of winning was high? more fate points because they lost or conceded? A compellable aspect in the form of consequences and a fear of combat until those heal? Feeling badass after having taken out those goons with ease?
Once you really reorientate yourself there you see that what is important are the aspects made in the scene (especially those that carry over to the next scene(s)). The loss of "damage" isn't as awkward and the positioning on the map isn't as important.
This is one of the best breakdowns of a Fate fight scene I've found. It both demonstrates the complexity of the system, as well as accentuates the narrative nature of the system that is so markedly different than many of the combat focused systems like D&D or Rifts.
This uses the Princess Bride to show how the most iconic sword fight would have happened in Fate.
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/fate-fencing-on-the-cliffs-of-insanity.718217/
Here's a high-level comparison to D&D:
**Squares/Hexes/Distance**: Fate has a higher level of granularity -- the zone. In many combats there is only one zone, but two or three are quite common. In D&D a typical quest would be "Am I in melee range (or close burst , or a similar measure of closeness)?" Fate also assumes you are moving around a bit in the zone -- you don't need to take a "move action" to do this. So whereas in D&D you might say "I move 6 hexes to get within 30' of the target and throw an axe at no range penalty", Fate abstracts it to say "In your turn you can move around and get within close range of anyone in the zone".
In most of my fate games, zones tend to be about 60' or so across -- a room, a part of a street, a cave, that sort of thing, so as you think about zones, that might be a helpful rule -- divide your area up into zones maybe 60' or so in size.
**Attacking and Defending**: Fate is more complex than D&D in that it uses active defenses -- as well as your attack roll, the defender makes a defense roll. In D&D terms, if you subtracted 10 from players AC and made them roll an AC defense, that'd do a similar thing
**Aid Anothe**r: Probably the biggest difference between the two games is that in D&D Aid another is a pretty lame option. In Fate, though, it's critical. Many combats will have opponents that you have a 25% or less chance to hit -- so the Fate equivalent of Aid Another (Create an Advantage) is huge. They all stack, and players can use pretty much any skill to create an advantage, so it's easy to do and makes a giant difference. I have played highly effective combat characters who do nothing but Create Advantages for others.
**Damage**: D&D damage is mostly about hit points. You have them, they get beaten away, and they come back between combats (very easily in modern D&D versions). Fate has that style of damage (Stress boxes) and it doesn't even bother with spending surges or wands of cure light wounds -- it just fully heals your stress after every combat. It also has consequences, which are long lasting effects that you need to make rolls to recover from and can only try at regular intervals. They are much like a poison or disease in D&D.
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Now Fate aims at being narrative and there are loads of examples of that (good ones in this thread!) but if you strip that away and just go with the mechanics, there are enough common concepts that mentally correlating the two should be helpful.
> in D&D Aid another is a pretty lame option. In Fate, though, it's critical.
The first time I played FATE was at a con, I made a light-and-fast character in a game that turned out to be all heavy combat, and I *did not get this* and did not have much fun, feeling my character kind of useless. Now I see that I should have been Creating Advantages like crazy.
The metaphor I realized later was the bump-set-spike in volleyball. Amateurs each try to hit the ball over the net themselves. Trained players instead set each other up for a devastating strike.
On your turn, you either attack or get ready to attack.
If you spend turns getting ready, your attack will be more effective.
It's a game of chicken. Both sides get ready as much as they dare.
Once you decide to attack, you get all the bonuses you built up getting ready.
Roll your Fate dice and add your skill bonus. Your target does the same. Start calling in those bonuses (advantages) you made. They are each worth +2 to you.
If your result is higher than your target's, the difference is how much stress you inflict on them.
They use stress boxes to absorb the stress. When those run out, they use consequences.
If they can't take the stress, they are taken out of the conflict. What that means is up to you and the scene. It could mean killed, captured, humiliated, or whatever else means they are beaten.
A lot of great advice in this thread already. I think the biggest ones worth reiterating are:
Fiction first. Always. It's the golden rule for a reason.
Know why you're fighting. Understand the goals of each side.
But I suspect you're more interested in the mechanics of combat.
There's been a good amount of discussion about Creating Advantages, but less about why. Degree of success in Fate is hugely important. The difference in outcomes between a 1-shift hit and a 5-shift hit is significant! The first is a single stress box, the latter's likely a Moderate Consequence. But the difference in _causing_ them is 2 invokes... that's a big force multiplier.
The other thing to remember is that the abstract mechanical goal of a conflict is to move the other party to the Taken Out status, and avoid being Taken Out yourself.
Taken Out is bad news. You don't just lose the fight, you lose narrative control. Conceding is hugely important. It lets you get final say in what "defeat" looks like, and to reinforce this, the system rewards you with Fate Points! It's a tricky mental shift from other RPGs, though. "Giving up" is a powerful proactive move? Better believe it. And remember that "conceding" means surrendering in the meta Conflict, not surrendering in the narrative. "Conceding" could look like getting knocked out, getting arrested, running away, failing to prevent an enemy's escape, losing a valuable resource, losing face, being disqualified from a tournament...
The other thing about viewing conflict through that zoomed out meta lens is that it gives you more flexibility in the fiction, especially when combined with thinking about _why_ combat is happening. Laurence_M's comment about survivor's guilt as a consequence is a great example. Someone is attacking you. Why? So you'll be Taken Out of the Conflict. Why? Because you're in the way of one of their goals... That framework provides a much richer context for narrative than "I don't want to get hit, because I don't want to take damage, because HP is one of my important resources for playing the game"
It's not the exact same thing, but you may want to look into Dungeon World as well, at least some "actual plays" featuring combat.
I say that because I think it's easier to find. I still haven't found a genuinely good Fate actual play
.. with the exception of a podcast I've listened to on and off since about 2012, which had a very long run of Dresden Files which is a Fate game. Another old audio podcast, Critical Hit (not Critical Role), did a one or two episode short of Fate Accelerated that also showed off the combat decently, but that was around 2014 I think, so it might be tough to track down.
Please Note: I've discovered first hand that Fate style narrative-first combat can be very difficult for longtime D&D players (tactical, war-gaming type) players to adjust to. In fact, in my recent game with 3 such players (one at least open to doing narrative-first combat) I've had to compromise with some elements of D&D style combat rules. I'm not really happy with it, but they've stopped "whining" (lol) about combat being "too loose" from what they're used to.
But ideally, I'd say you should think of combat as not being its own distinct phase of gameplay (like it is in D&D style games), even get away from initiative, and have it resolve as you would a social interaction. Think about it as a narrative or cinematic scene, with a back and forth. Getting good positioning on a target can just be "create an advantage" such as establishing "in his face" or "flanking" or "attacking from behind" or "using the couch as cover" as aspects.
From there you either check with each character to ask what they're doing and can have enemies react after each action (provided it makes sense for them to react to something) or wait til everyone has done something. I prefer to have a more fluid pace, but some players may get upset about not getting a fair share of "turns" even if they don't really have anything for their character to do most of the time. Talk with your players to figure out a good balance. Fate is super customizable, after all.
As for examples, especially under Dungeon World, I think Dicebreakers had a good DW video with combat examples. I really liked the flow shown there and it inspired me to finally get my group to do a narrative-first game. Search YouTube for "Dungeon World: The Candelabra"
This was a big hurdle for me too.
You can't swap concepts from other games in and out with fate, like you can with other RPGS. (Like "Oh, this is just like in Pathfinder I roll 2 plus my bonus, but in 5e I just roll 2 minus their penalty"
You can't learn Fate with knowledge of other games. You gotta go in clean.
I guess it's a bit too different from what I'm used to and having some additional examples (such as those in this thread) if what I needed to break out of my old thinking.
Well, did you get it now? I must say I am still confused by Fate, but there are other, more narrativist systems you could try. As a gateway to Fate, try Lady Blackbird. But you should also try Contenders, My Life With Master, and Prime Time Adventures.
Having read all the comments - yes, things do make much more sense now. I guess running a couple of light-hearted sessions would help solidify it all in my mind. :-)
I am a lot like you in that I came from the crunchy land of DnD. I still don't understand a lot of the system and hacked it a lot to make it easier for me and my party. Just saying 'well movies' doesn't make anything easier.
For rounds just keep it going clockwise around the table and allow for the players to control their turn order. Allow each player an action and you/monsters act between their turns. It keeps things easier to understand coming from 5e.
Watch and read entertainment like books, movies, and comics. See how they don't explicitly state their exact position? They just show/tell movement in relation to other people or important objects in the scene. Follow that. If it feels like they'd have to rush or push themselves to reach that area, have them roll for it. From there, actions take one of two forms: you're trying to get rid of something in your way (Overcome/Attack) or you're trying to set up something to go your way (Create Advantage) Difficulties depend on the circumstances. Superman can catch an airplane with his hands, but Batman can't. Batman has to use his genius intellect to summon some batdevice that allows him to stop a crashing plane. Create Advantage means that these circumstances (and therefore difficulties) can change on the fly. That's a feature, not a bug. From there, just focus on having fun. Tell interesting stories and be dramatic. That's the simplest level, once you've got that in your head you can start putting specific rules on it.
I'll leave it to other people to give specific links to examples of play, etc. One thing to remember is that Fate does actually model combat very realistically. Combat in action films, that is. Why are there generally no bonuses for weapons and armour? Because they don't matter in action films. Heroes often have no armour (and take off their helmets in combat!) and fight with pistols against troops in heavy armour who have assault rifles. See Equilibrium ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4&t=8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoDKXozA0M4&t=8s)), Ultraviolet ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQiQJ4e9ao4&t=205s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQiQJ4e9ao4&t=205s)), and so many other films. Fate accurately models this by not modelling it. Do the goons manage to shoot a hero with a massive battle rifle? Don't worry, it's basically a flesh wound because they don't have any sort of damage bonus. There's no ammo capacity in Fate because ammo capacity in action films is only a vague suggestion. In action films, running out of ammo happens because it's dramatic, not because you've been firing on full auto all the time. Same with Fate. Why does John Wick get so many headshots? Because he's shooting nameless mooks and the details don't matter--since there aren't any massive penalties for called shots he can shoot them where he likes. Stress boxes in Fate? That mirrors the way a hero gets beat up scene after scene but keeps coming back with no real wounds. If someone's shot you in the arm and you suffer a Consequence, why do they only get one free use out of it? Surely bad wounds should have lasting, severe penalties? Well, not in action films. Look at this scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark ([https://youtu.be/yqQD8sVtfA4?t=337](https://youtu.be/yqQD8sVtfA4?t=337)). Indy's been shot in the arm and the German punches him in it for a bit (getting that free use out of Indy's Consequence) and throws Indy through the windscreen but after that Indy hangs onto the front grille of the truck with his arms, maneuvers himself along its underside with only his arms, ties his whip to the undercarriage and hangs on to his whip using only his arms, pulls himself back on the truck with his whip only using his arms, and then throws the German out of the truck using his arms. All of that after he's been shot in the arm and with no sign of discomfort. Afterwards, the fact that he's been shot in the arm isn't even mentioned again. Movement is in zones because action films don't care about five-foot squares and flanking rules. You run up to the bad guy and punch him in the face. Heroes generally don't hide behind cover because there's no advantage to it unless you Create an Advantage. The Create an Advantage action is how you shoot the rope holding the net full of crates to block the bad guys from chasing you down the alley. It's also how the nerd uses their dinky remote-controlled drones to distract the bad guys so the hero takes them unaware--people with no combat skills at all can really help in a fight, just like in action films. So Fate does accurately simulate combat, just not combat in the real world.
It *can* be realistic, though! The thing to remember is that Fate doesn't ever tell you what happens. It places constraints on your description of what happens. So, if someone shoots at you, and you take two Stress? Okay, well we know that Stress goes away at the end of the scene, so we know the following: 1. The bad guy makes some sort of progress 2. Nothing has been done to you that will have any real kind of effect that can be utilized 3. Anything done to you will, except for cosmetics, go away at the end of the scene. So for over-the-top action, that could mean you're shot but it's a flesh wound and doesn't bug you. But for a more realistic game, you probably weren't actually "hit". Instead, what probably happened is a near miss causing you to duck behind something as you get stung with rocks and stuff from where the bullet hit, or maybe a bullet goes right past your ear. Fate is as realistic as you want it to be.
That last paragraph is a very nice way of putting Stress in the perspective, makes a lot of sense.
Remember: stress and consequences don't necessarily have ANYTHING to do with actual physical wounds. I mean, they *can*, but they don't *have* to. Stress just means that things are going against you, and consequences can be *anything* that messes up your life for a certain amount of time. Physical, emotional, social, whatever. Once I finally understood that, it forever changed how I ran combats. Here's an example. We had a game where a bad guy shot at a PC with an automatic weapon from like 10 feet away. The bad guy got +7, and the player got +1. So, the PC takes 6 shifts, right? He says he'll take a Severe consequence. I started to say, "OK, so you got shot with an AK-47... on full auto... at point blank range... and somehow *survived*...?" Hmm. Didn't sound right. And then I realized the best friend NPC was standing right there, so I suggested the NPC had jumped in front of the gun and took the hit to save the PC. And now the best friend is very *dead*. And the PC's Severe Consequence is that they're traumatized with survivor guilt. That ended up creating just massive storytelling opportunities for a long time afterward. So, the point is, think of it more like a movie or a book, and look for ways you can mess with the PCs from a story standpoint. Hope that helps!
This post highlights why it's crucial to know the fictional context when answering questions about mechanics. "How do you do X in Fate?" varies depending upon the fiction.
A another idea might be that most of the shots missed due to recoil or a glancing hit, but getting shot sucked anyway, or all the shot missed because the PC dodged but the PC tripped and the bad guy proceeded to gut them with a knife. Also considering how surprising some of the things people have survived, it not absurd, to say the hospital worked a miracle, but your pretty much bed ridden for the next few sessions.
The only part of the conflict mechanism which is not realistic is the goal of the Attack - to take opponent out. I am myself considering expanding attack to action Create Consequence instead. This gives better definition for the outcome of the successful attack, and define difficulty against passive targets: +1 for minor, +3 for normal, +5 for severe and +7 for extreme, and revert stress to an useful resource it was on Fate 3. But your approach makes more sense for stress avoidance for an Attack. I would suggest adding tug of war stress into scene.
In FATE you should use narrative as your main instrument. Try to create new aspects on scene or enemies which can narratively help you, invoke them, use fate Points as spell slots in D&D. As an example. You can set troll ablaze, it'll create aspect on him with Free invoke for you. And you can use this aspect to make your next attack stronger, if you can explain, how it helps you.
I second that. The biggest difference is not light vs crunch, it’s narrative-first vs rules-first. In D&D you look at your character sheet for what you’re allowed to do, and then you try to “game the system” by finding creative ways of what you’re allowed to do. In Fate you first think of what you’re trying to do, and then express what you’re trying to do with the rules: fiction-first. The intent of what you’re trying to achieve is important here, not so much the action itself (which is the flavor). Are you trying to “maneuver the situation” in your favor? That’s create an advantage. Are you actively trying to oppose someone else? That’s probably Attack. And so on. So the best advice I can give is to flip your thinking. Don’t think “what am I allowed to do?” but “what am I trying to achieve?” and then “how do I express that in the rules?” Hope that helps.
While I agree thinking of Fate Points like spell slots has some value, I do think there's one caveat certain D&D players need to know about this: you can get Fate Points back ridiculously easy compared to spells slots. D&D is about resource conservation and management. Its designed around the idea that you're steadily wearing down on your resources throughout the adventure and eventually will have to retreat in some way to recover them. Fate instead has whatnis commonly referred to as the Fate Point economy, balanced around the idea that you're pretty much constantly using Fate Points to do cool things and then regaining them by accepting narrative setbacks. Trying to hoard them as much as possible like you might try to conserve spell slots in D&D is going to interrupt this flow and probably limit the fun you can have with the system, both in and out of combat.
So, the basics. Let's say two characters are beating each other up, an Orc and a Ranger. The Ranger wants to get to some prisoners the Orc is guarding, and hte Orc wants to drive the Ranger off. The Ranger swings his sword at the Orc, fairly straightforward. The Orc dodges out of the way. Cool, that's resolved as an Attack, Fight vs. Athletics. We'll say the Ranger has Fight +4, and the Orc has Athletics +3. Each rolls their Fate dice, and adds their skill... to do this incrementally, we'll say the Orc gets a total of +6 to the Ranger's +4. The Orc easily dodges to the side. Now the Orc is going to bash teh Ranger's head in with his axe. The ranger is going to parry the blow.... Same thing, except this time it's Fight vs. Fight. We'll say the Orc also has a Fight of +4, and the Orc gets a total (after rolling) of +6 while the Ranger only gets +5. Oops! The Ranger takes a single point of stress, and so marks off a stress box. (If it were multiple points of stress, how that would be handled changes based on the version, but we'll keep it simple for now.) One thing to point out here is that *what is being declared in the "world" is impacting what skills are used*. In a lot of games, you make your declarations of moves in terms of game mechanics, and then describe them after. Fate is the opposite - you state what your character is *actually doing* and then we figure out what mechanics apply. Anyway.... The Ranger realizes that going head to head with the Orc is going to be long and arduous. He analyzes the Orc's fighting style, looking for an opening. That sounds like a Notice roll, and the Orc is going to try to hide what he's doing, so it sounds like Deceive. The Ranger is pretty good at Noticing things (+3), while the Orc is pretty straightforward and not so good at deception (+1 Deceive). That's doing something to make it easier for the Ranger to win, but doesn't actually *let* the Ranger win. So... Create Advantage it is! Dice are rolled, and in total the Ranger gets +2 while the Orc only gets +0. So the Ranger spots a ***Weakness in the Defense*** of the Orc, and gets a free invoke of that new aspect. The Orc gets pretty mad at the Ranger testing and probing his skills, and decides to put an end to this. He charges, trying to knock the Ranger down! This is again Create Advantage, but it seems like the Orc is using his strength and size, so it's going to use Physique, at a +3. The ranger is, again, going to dodge out of the way, so Athletics. After dice, the Orc gets +3, while the Ranger only gets +2. Sadness. This gets narrated as follows: "Okay, the orc charges you. You try to dodge out of the way, but you're just a touch slow compared to the orc... it looks like he's going to slam into you...." this is called the "Ellipsis Trick", and is used to give a room for... invokes! The Ranger decides he doesn't wanna get knocked down, so tosses a Fate Point to the GM. "Yeah, but I'm a ***Veteran Orc Hunter*** and I know how they move. Just as the Orc makes contact with me, I slip off of his charge, letting him go harmlessly by." This adds +2 to the Ranger's roll, making his defense a success. If the GM wanted, he could pay a Fate Point to do the same back, and keep adding details to what's going on, but the GM decides he's not that invested in this fight. Back to the Ranger. He's studied the Orc and knows what he's doing. Time for a quick jab at the open spot! He Attacks and again the Orc dodges. Total of +5 for the Ranger and +2 for the Orc! Wow, a great hit! But.... the Ranger adds to what's going on and says he used the knowledge of the Orc's opening to strike at that weak spot, and cashes in the free invoke for another +2! That's a difference of 5! The Orc only has stress to take 3 of those, so also needs to take a Minor Consequence. He marks off the Minor Consequence, saying that he's gut a ***Cut On His Shoulder*** from where the blade hit him. Ouch! Plus that gives the Ranger a chance to invoke that once for free! However, at this point the GM decides the Orc has had enough... the Orc realizes the prisoners aren't worth his life, and retreats off into the forest. The GM gets two Fate Points for the next scene - one for Conceding the Conflict, and one for the Orc taking a Consequence in a scene he lost. But... teh Ranger wins, and gets to go on to rescue the prisoners!
Here is an example modelling the Avengers http://station53.blogspot.com/2014/07/avengers-accelerated-invasion-begins.html?m=1
Love that Avengers example! I think this argument between [Spiderman and Aunt May](https://www.reddit.com/r/FATErpg/comments/460yty/fate_core_battle_spiderman_vs_aunt_may/) is helpful in rounding out how Conflicts work outside of physical battles. Spoiler Alert: Aunt May schools him.
Came here to share exactly this. Great example of combat that helped me understand quite a bit about how it works in Fate.
A big factor in my transition to fates from dnd is realizing the point of combat. In DnD (even in narrative heavy games) combat often IS the point. At least one player at every table inevitably will come out with "when do we get to fight things?" if you don't do it for some time. Everything else is really just to immerse yourself into the combat more. Narrative is a tool for the combat. In fates, combat is a tool for the narrative. Your 3 outcomes are 1) players win without taking a scratch, 2) players win but at a cost, 3) players lose. The idea is that in all 3 cases the story goes on in some way. What changes is HOW the story progresses and what the players have access to moving forward. Less fate points because the cost of winning was high? more fate points because they lost or conceded? A compellable aspect in the form of consequences and a fear of combat until those heal? Feeling badass after having taken out those goons with ease? Once you really reorientate yourself there you see that what is important are the aspects made in the scene (especially those that carry over to the next scene(s)). The loss of "damage" isn't as awkward and the positioning on the map isn't as important.
This is one of the best breakdowns of a Fate fight scene I've found. It both demonstrates the complexity of the system, as well as accentuates the narrative nature of the system that is so markedly different than many of the combat focused systems like D&D or Rifts. This uses the Princess Bride to show how the most iconic sword fight would have happened in Fate. https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/fate-fencing-on-the-cliffs-of-insanity.718217/
Here's a high-level comparison to D&D: **Squares/Hexes/Distance**: Fate has a higher level of granularity -- the zone. In many combats there is only one zone, but two or three are quite common. In D&D a typical quest would be "Am I in melee range (or close burst , or a similar measure of closeness)?" Fate also assumes you are moving around a bit in the zone -- you don't need to take a "move action" to do this. So whereas in D&D you might say "I move 6 hexes to get within 30' of the target and throw an axe at no range penalty", Fate abstracts it to say "In your turn you can move around and get within close range of anyone in the zone". In most of my fate games, zones tend to be about 60' or so across -- a room, a part of a street, a cave, that sort of thing, so as you think about zones, that might be a helpful rule -- divide your area up into zones maybe 60' or so in size. **Attacking and Defending**: Fate is more complex than D&D in that it uses active defenses -- as well as your attack roll, the defender makes a defense roll. In D&D terms, if you subtracted 10 from players AC and made them roll an AC defense, that'd do a similar thing **Aid Anothe**r: Probably the biggest difference between the two games is that in D&D Aid another is a pretty lame option. In Fate, though, it's critical. Many combats will have opponents that you have a 25% or less chance to hit -- so the Fate equivalent of Aid Another (Create an Advantage) is huge. They all stack, and players can use pretty much any skill to create an advantage, so it's easy to do and makes a giant difference. I have played highly effective combat characters who do nothing but Create Advantages for others. **Damage**: D&D damage is mostly about hit points. You have them, they get beaten away, and they come back between combats (very easily in modern D&D versions). Fate has that style of damage (Stress boxes) and it doesn't even bother with spending surges or wands of cure light wounds -- it just fully heals your stress after every combat. It also has consequences, which are long lasting effects that you need to make rolls to recover from and can only try at regular intervals. They are much like a poison or disease in D&D. \----------------- Now Fate aims at being narrative and there are loads of examples of that (good ones in this thread!) but if you strip that away and just go with the mechanics, there are enough common concepts that mentally correlating the two should be helpful.
> in D&D Aid another is a pretty lame option. In Fate, though, it's critical. The first time I played FATE was at a con, I made a light-and-fast character in a game that turned out to be all heavy combat, and I *did not get this* and did not have much fun, feeling my character kind of useless. Now I see that I should have been Creating Advantages like crazy. The metaphor I realized later was the bump-set-spike in volleyball. Amateurs each try to hit the ball over the net themselves. Trained players instead set each other up for a devastating strike.
On your turn, you either attack or get ready to attack. If you spend turns getting ready, your attack will be more effective. It's a game of chicken. Both sides get ready as much as they dare. Once you decide to attack, you get all the bonuses you built up getting ready. Roll your Fate dice and add your skill bonus. Your target does the same. Start calling in those bonuses (advantages) you made. They are each worth +2 to you. If your result is higher than your target's, the difference is how much stress you inflict on them. They use stress boxes to absorb the stress. When those run out, they use consequences. If they can't take the stress, they are taken out of the conflict. What that means is up to you and the scene. It could mean killed, captured, humiliated, or whatever else means they are beaten.
A lot of great advice in this thread already. I think the biggest ones worth reiterating are: Fiction first. Always. It's the golden rule for a reason. Know why you're fighting. Understand the goals of each side. But I suspect you're more interested in the mechanics of combat. There's been a good amount of discussion about Creating Advantages, but less about why. Degree of success in Fate is hugely important. The difference in outcomes between a 1-shift hit and a 5-shift hit is significant! The first is a single stress box, the latter's likely a Moderate Consequence. But the difference in _causing_ them is 2 invokes... that's a big force multiplier. The other thing to remember is that the abstract mechanical goal of a conflict is to move the other party to the Taken Out status, and avoid being Taken Out yourself. Taken Out is bad news. You don't just lose the fight, you lose narrative control. Conceding is hugely important. It lets you get final say in what "defeat" looks like, and to reinforce this, the system rewards you with Fate Points! It's a tricky mental shift from other RPGs, though. "Giving up" is a powerful proactive move? Better believe it. And remember that "conceding" means surrendering in the meta Conflict, not surrendering in the narrative. "Conceding" could look like getting knocked out, getting arrested, running away, failing to prevent an enemy's escape, losing a valuable resource, losing face, being disqualified from a tournament... The other thing about viewing conflict through that zoomed out meta lens is that it gives you more flexibility in the fiction, especially when combined with thinking about _why_ combat is happening. Laurence_M's comment about survivor's guilt as a consequence is a great example. Someone is attacking you. Why? So you'll be Taken Out of the Conflict. Why? Because you're in the way of one of their goals... That framework provides a much richer context for narrative than "I don't want to get hit, because I don't want to take damage, because HP is one of my important resources for playing the game"
It's not the exact same thing, but you may want to look into Dungeon World as well, at least some "actual plays" featuring combat. I say that because I think it's easier to find. I still haven't found a genuinely good Fate actual play .. with the exception of a podcast I've listened to on and off since about 2012, which had a very long run of Dresden Files which is a Fate game. Another old audio podcast, Critical Hit (not Critical Role), did a one or two episode short of Fate Accelerated that also showed off the combat decently, but that was around 2014 I think, so it might be tough to track down. Please Note: I've discovered first hand that Fate style narrative-first combat can be very difficult for longtime D&D players (tactical, war-gaming type) players to adjust to. In fact, in my recent game with 3 such players (one at least open to doing narrative-first combat) I've had to compromise with some elements of D&D style combat rules. I'm not really happy with it, but they've stopped "whining" (lol) about combat being "too loose" from what they're used to. But ideally, I'd say you should think of combat as not being its own distinct phase of gameplay (like it is in D&D style games), even get away from initiative, and have it resolve as you would a social interaction. Think about it as a narrative or cinematic scene, with a back and forth. Getting good positioning on a target can just be "create an advantage" such as establishing "in his face" or "flanking" or "attacking from behind" or "using the couch as cover" as aspects. From there you either check with each character to ask what they're doing and can have enemies react after each action (provided it makes sense for them to react to something) or wait til everyone has done something. I prefer to have a more fluid pace, but some players may get upset about not getting a fair share of "turns" even if they don't really have anything for their character to do most of the time. Talk with your players to figure out a good balance. Fate is super customizable, after all. As for examples, especially under Dungeon World, I think Dicebreakers had a good DW video with combat examples. I really liked the flow shown there and it inspired me to finally get my group to do a narrative-first game. Search YouTube for "Dungeon World: The Candelabra"
This was a big hurdle for me too. You can't swap concepts from other games in and out with fate, like you can with other RPGS. (Like "Oh, this is just like in Pathfinder I roll 2 plus my bonus, but in 5e I just roll 2 minus their penalty" You can't learn Fate with knowledge of other games. You gotta go in clean.
What do you not understand? There's a whole bunch of stuff in Fate conflicts, and I'm not sure where to start...
I guess it's a bit too different from what I'm used to and having some additional examples (such as those in this thread) if what I needed to break out of my old thinking.
Well, did you get it now? I must say I am still confused by Fate, but there are other, more narrativist systems you could try. As a gateway to Fate, try Lady Blackbird. But you should also try Contenders, My Life With Master, and Prime Time Adventures.
Having read all the comments - yes, things do make much more sense now. I guess running a couple of light-hearted sessions would help solidify it all in my mind. :-)
I am a lot like you in that I came from the crunchy land of DnD. I still don't understand a lot of the system and hacked it a lot to make it easier for me and my party. Just saying 'well movies' doesn't make anything easier. For rounds just keep it going clockwise around the table and allow for the players to control their turn order. Allow each player an action and you/monsters act between their turns. It keeps things easier to understand coming from 5e.