Fate Points

[Archivist]

Dark Heresy offers a Fate Chip mechanic where players' have a small pool of fate points they can use to avoid certain death, re-roll, etc. Is there a D100 game that has that mechanic?

[smjn]

14 minutes ago, Archivist said:

Dark Heresy offers a Fate Chip mechanic where players' have a small pool of fate points they can use to avoid certain death, re-roll, etc. Is there a D100 game that has that mechanic?

Yes, several. The BRP Big Gold Book has Fate Points, RQ6 has Luck Points, Legend and OpenQuest have Hero Points.

[Joerg]

RQ2 had the stackable common rune spell Divine Intervention which could be sacrificed for. Each point gave you a cumulative 10 % chance that the god would grant you a miracle to get out of a fix. If the god didn't grant you her favor, you would keep the points for a later try (assuming that you survived the situation which made you attempt the intervention).

[RosenMcStern]

So basically the answer is: ALL. In one way or another...

[Simlasa]

7 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

So basically the answer is: ALL. In one way or another...

No... Call of Cthulhu didn't have them till 7e... Stormbringer and Magic World don't either.

I'd rather forego them in anything like Sword & Sorcery or Horror games... I don't think they suit the mood.

If I did use them I'd rather them be like the Luck points in Dungeon Crawl Classics... which you can spend to help on rolls... but you don't automatically retrieve them... and being low on luck can get you in trouble, such as becoming the target when an archer randomly chooses who to shoot at.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Simlasa

[Claudius]

5 hours ago, Simlasa said:

I'd rather forego them in anything like Sword & Sorcery or Horror games... I don't think they suit the mood.

In the case of Sword & Sorcery, I think that they do fit the mood very well. They would be available to Sword & Sorcery heroes (and big baddies), but not to their companions. In Sword & Sorcery stories, heroes often survive by a nose hair.

[Simlasa]

40 minutes ago, Claudius said:

In Sword & Sorcery stories, heroes often survive by a nose hair.

That can happen without luck points sometimes as well... and there's still the luck check for various situations. 

My experience of luck points hasn't left me too fond of them except for very cinematic representations.

[Sunwolfe]

8 hours ago, Simlasa said:

...Stormbringer and Magic World don't either.

This is quite true, however, they do/did have the "Luck Rolls" which I use in place of Fate Points with great "by the skin of their teeth" effect :-)

Cheers!

[Simlasa]

5 hours ago, Sunwolfe said:

This is quite true, however, they do/did have the "Luck Rolls" which I use in place of Fate Points with great "by the skin of their teeth" effect

My preference for the Luck Roll is that, with Luck Points you pretty much KNOW if you've got enough to make things turn out your way or not... I don't feel 'brave' when I know I'm going to succeed. The Luck Roll can be fickle though... and so that sense of not knowing how things will go is preserved a bit more.

[Baulderstone]

2 hours ago, Simlasa said:

My preference for the Luck Roll is that, with Luck Points you pretty much KNOW if you've got enough to make things turn out your way or not... I don't feel 'brave' when I know I'm going to succeed. The Luck Roll can be fickle though... and so that sense of not knowing how things will go is preserved a bit more.

In RQ6, at least, Spending a Luck Point simply lets you re-roll a die. They don't provide any guarantee of success. 

[Simlasa]

4 hours ago, Baulderstone said:

In RQ6, at least, Spending a Luck Point simply lets you re-roll a die. They don't provide any guarantee of success. 

Yeah, I was speaking in generalities... and not just about BRP... probably more about how the optional Luck rules in CoC 7e work... and remembering a frustrating (non BRP) Deadlands campaign... but the Luck Roll generally suffices for me.

Edited December 28, 2015 by Simlasa

[Baulderstone]

45 minutes ago, Simlasa said:

Yeah, I was speaking in generalities... and not just about BRP... probably more about how the optional Luck rules in CoC 7e work... and remembering a frustrating (non BRP) Deadlands campaign... but the Luck Roll generally suffices for me.

It was a real problem in early Deadlands, especially as they could soak damage as well. If you had a nice pile of bounty chips, you would know that you could simply shrug off a shotgun blast without real risk. They changed the way bounty chips worked in that game to make them random at some point, and the revised version is what carried over into Savage Worlds. 

[Mankcam]

Before I jumped ship to RQ6, I tended to just use the Luck Roll from BRP BGB, except I house ruled for a Power Point cost to be used with that roll.

For generalised Luck rolls as described in BGB, I requested for the player-character to spend a Power Point. This kinda equated with general rolls for which no skill seemed appropriate for, perhaps even a re-roll of a failed non-combat skill, and bog-standard stuff like that. 

Greater expenditure of Power Points beyond this allowed for more 'Extraordinary' Luck Rolls. I can't remember my exact ruling on the amount of Power Points used, except that the more Power Points gambled on the Luck Roll, the more extraordinary the outcome could be determined for succeeding with the Luck Roll. 

I do remember I used to have a scale written down from 1-10 for fantasy/sword & sorcery settings, and 1-5 for Pulp Adventure/Cinematic settings, with the idea that less PP was expended in a Pulp setting, allowing for the mechanic to be used more often.

It seemed to work pretty good, and it gave Power Points a use for non-magical characters. 

I even remember that I formulated a list of Talents/Feats for my Pulp Era game which all followed the same mechanic; basically just allowing a reduction in Power Point cost for use with Luck Rolls associated with particular actions that the character had a knack for. I never got the Talent system off the ground, but I think that would have worked well with this Luck Roll mechanic.

 

Edited December 29, 2015 by Mankcam

[nDervish]

11 hours ago, Baulderstone said:

In RQ6, at least, Spending a Luck Point simply lets you re-roll a die. They don't provide any guarantee of success. 

RQ6 Luck Points can also be used to downgrade a Major Injury to a Serious Injury, essentially making it impossible to kill a character by way of normal damage if they have a Luck Point available.  Of course, you'll still be pretty messed up, probably pass out, and require extended recovery time, but actual character death isn't on the table until the LP run out.  Personally, I think that fits S&S quite well, but others may differ.

[Baulderstone]

18 minutes ago, nDervish said:

RQ6 Luck Points can also be used to downgrade a Major Injury to a Serious Injury, essentially making it impossible to kill a character by way of normal damage if they have a Luck Point available.  Of course, you'll still be pretty messed up, probably pass out, and require extended recovery time, but actual character death isn't on the table until the LP run out.  Personally, I think that fits S&S quite well, but others may differ.

That's a good point, and its certainly debatable. It doesn't bother me as the character is still effectively losing. They are just surviving the loss. Still, if I were playing in someone else's game of RQ6 and they wanted to do away with Luck Points, I would be completely fine with it. 

[Baulderstone]

5 hours ago, Mankcam said:

For generalised Luck rolls as described in BGB, I requested for the player-character to spend a Power Point. This kinda equated with general rolls for which no skill seemed appropriate for, perhaps even a re-roll of a failed non-combat skill, and bog-standard stuff like that. 

I like that. The only potential issue I can see is if its a setting where some character are spellcasters and others aren't. It would seem like non-spellcasters would have little reason not to use Luck as their points would sit idle otherwise, while spellcasters would be sacrificing a points that could be used for spells. 

It depends on the game. In Classic Runequest or Call of Cthulhu, everyone has the same access to magic so it would work fine (assuming you wanted that kind of luck in CoC). A setting with more delineated fighters and wizards could be an issue. 

Actually, I could see it being explained in the setting. Users of magic are often looked on with suspicion in many settings. The fact that wizards often have worse luck than others is seen as a sign of its cursed nature. It's still a little unfair, but in a way that makes magic more interesting. 

[soltakss]

My current players love Hero Points and use them all the time. If they spend 5 Hero Points in a combat then they feel as if that was a difficult/important combat, more so than by just scraping through.

[Baulderstone]

16 minutes ago, soltakss said:

My current players love Hero Points and use them all the time. If they spend 5 Hero Points in a combat then they feel as if that was a difficult/important combat, more so than by just scraping through.

That's a great point. Players feel the use of Hero Points as a consequence. They may not be hurt, but they feel how close they came. 

To drift off-system a little, Savage Worlds allows both PC and Major NPCs to have Bennies, which are basically Luck Points. It was always a debate over whether it was fair to spend Bennies for an NPC to counter PCs. I used counters to represent Bennies, and when players fought a major NPC, I always kept their pile of Bennies right there in the open, letting the players know what it was. I would have the NPC use them to defends himself, which might block a PCs action. The players never felt cheated though, as forcing the NPC to spend Bennies was weakening him, and spending them defend himself was better than spending it to make sure he landed a blow on them. It was a visible sign that they were wearing him down, which added to the excitement. 

[RosenMcStern]

[Formely]BRP Mecha works in the same way, at least in the Superobot variant, except that it states it explicitly: you win by wearing down your opponent's Fate Points. As long as it has some, it will Dodge (and you better keep it on its toes lest it uses them for an attack). Once it is out of FP, it is the time for the killing blow - possibly backed by a few FP to make it a critical.

[Archivist]

Okay, so short answer is that there are a whole bunch of BRP systems that have something like this! Thanks ;-)

[steamcraft]

SteamCraft has fate points.