Red Box Fate - Basics & Bodging

Part of the Red Box Fate series.

That was a hell of lot of new rules to add if you're trying to "simplify things", right?

Is all this too much?

Maybe you don't want to go the whole hog and just want to bring some of the tasty Fate treats into your D&D game - how and what to bring over?

Pick and mix from these options - they are most likely to fit into a regular D&D game without disruption, and bring the biggest benefits.

Actions

Create Advantage

This was the first Fate rule that I brought into my D&D gaming. Use this to allow imaginative combat tricks, without needing a set of pre-written situations to look up or memorise.

Adding Aspects

Aspects vs Conditions

Use the style of Aspects to bodge a condition during game play, instead of stopping to look it up. Get into this habit, and games will run smoother, with less rules lawyering.

Stress and Consequences

Let players swap HP damage for Consequences - when dealing damage, absorbing damage, or both. Consequences add drama to combat, instead of the the brutal wearing down of HP.

High Concept

Unlocking the potential of your character concept by just being able to point at your High Concept, rather than having to pick the "right" selection of feats and skills. Of course you know how to read magic writing, you're a Wizard! Of course you can find and remove traps, you're a Tomb Raider! Of course you can acrobatically vault over ledges and walls, you're a Catburglar!

Using High Concept - maybe not even adopting that name, but just adopting the philosophy - means that so much of the crunchier D&D editions' game rules can be set aside for when they might be really important.

Fate Points

Fate Points at their simplest allow for PCs and major NPCs to bend random chance in their favour, or to add drama to scenes that otherwise might play out too straightforwardly.

Adding Fate Points isn't entirely necessary to bring in the rest of the other features, but it helps - lots of features run on the exchange of FP. If you don't add Fate Points, you'll need to come up with some other way to run the powers.

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Credits

I'm indebted to Killershrike's "Pathfinder Fate Accelerated" for the initial idea that this sort of thing could be done - without their groundwork, I'd have been lost.

Of course the Creative Commons access to D&D's engine and FAE are essential as well - D&D is CC-BY-4.0, FAE is CC-BY-3.0

Old School Essentials collects much of the D&D Basic and Expert set rules into one handy SRD, which you can find here.

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Introduction & Index

Red Box Fate - Classes & Customisation

Part of the Red Box Fate series.

Your Class is part of your High Concept, it defines a lot about who you are, and what you can do. 
In this post, we'll look at how the classic D&D Classes can be made using these rules, and how we can customise them, or even build a new class.

Goals: Emulate the classic D&D classes, and allow for customisation and freeform play outside of any narrow definitions. 

Method: Distribute Archetypes & Approaches, define Stunts, define progression through levels.

Format

All class entries will follow this format:

Archetypes, At 1st level; Approaches, At 1st level; Hit points, Hit dice; Special abilities and Stunts; Progression table; 

Any spare Archetype points can be spent on any other Archetype.

Which Approaches you favour is always entirely up to you.

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CLERIC

Archetypes: Dedicated, Martial

Suggested Approaches: Careful, Clever, Forceful

Hit Points: 8 + CON adjustment at 1^st level

Hit Dice: 1d8 + CON adjustment up to 9^th level; from 10^th onwards, +2 hp per level with no CON adjustment

Special abilities and Stunts: Turn Undead; Clerical spells

Progression Table, Cleric

FIGHTER

Archetypes: Martial, any others

Suggested Approaches: Forceful, Flashy, Quick

Hit Points: 10 + CON adjustment at 1^st level

Hit Dice: 1d10 + CON adjustment up to 9^th level; from 10^th onwards, +3 hp per level with no CON adjustment

Special abilities and Stunts: Combat stunts

Progression Table, Fighter

ROGUE

Archetypes: Roguish, Martial

Suggested Approaches: Clever, Flashy, Sneaky

Hit Points: 6 + CON adjustment at 1^st level

Hit Dice: 1d6 + CON adjustment up to 9^th level; from 10^th onwards, +2 hp per level with no CON adjustment

Special abilities and Stunts: Sneak attack

Progression Table, Rogue

Stunt - Sneak attack: Add the listed dice to your damage, or inflict a Consequence on the target.

WIZARD

Archetypes: Arcane, any others

Suggested Approaches: Clever, Forceful, Flashy

Hit Points: 4 + CON adjustment at 1^st level

Hit Dice: 1d4 + CON adjustment up to 9^th level; from 10^th onwards, +1 hp per level with no CON adjustment

Special abilities and Stunts: Metamagic

Progression Table, Wizard

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Customisation

All the classes above follow the progress of the table below - so you can use this format to build any "class" you think of.

Basic Progression Table

For Spells and Stunts - see the Spellcraft & Stunts post, of course.

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Credits

I'm indebted to Killershrike's "Pathfinder Fate Accelerated" for the initial idea that this sort of thing could be done - without their groundwork, I'd have been lost.

Of course the Creative Commons access to D&D's engine and FAE are essential as well - D&D is CC-BY-4.0, FAE is CC-BY-3.0

Old School Essentials collects much of the D&D Basic and Expert set rules into one handy SRD, which you can find here.

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Introduction & Index

Red Box Fate - Crunch & Conversion

Part of the Red Box Fate series, here are the rules for converting existing material written for Basic and Expert set D&D and other Old School material.

THACO

To those folk who learned D&D's original combat rules with its looking up of descending AC on Attack Roll Tables, THACO was a fairly logical shorthand to speed up game play.

To everyone else, coming into the game from the outside, it was opaque and arcane.

When converting D&D BEX material to Red Box Fate, subtract the creature's or character's THACO number from 20 to give their Attack Bonus, then decide which Archetype that bonus comes from.

Attack Bonus = 20 - THACO 

Descending AC scores

Because "1st class armour" is better than "2nd class", the Armour Class of the first few editions of D&D was better when it was lower. However, this was a confusing concept to explain to new starters once the game had evolved to include zero and negative Armour Class, AC 0 and AC -2 and so on. It was especially confusing when we need to apply a bonus to AC - do we call it +1 or -1?

To convert from a Basic & Expert D&D AC score to a Defence bonus in Red Box Fate, subtract the AC from 9. For NPCs and monsters (with fixed Defence Scores), add the Defence Bonus to 10.

Defence Bonus = 9 - AC

NPC's Defence Score = Defence Bonus + 10

Saving throws

Old editions of D&D have a set of Saving Throw target numbers for particular nasty situations:

Death Ray / Poison; Magic Wands; Paralysis / Turn to Stone; 
Dragon Breath; Rod, Staff, or Spell

In play, sometimes these would be used for other situations, rendering their titles fairly pointless. 

Later editions tied "Saves" to more generic concepts - Fortitude, Reflex, Will, or just straight to the Ability Scores. We're going to partially follow that method.

Saving Throws are replaced by the Defend action - describe how you're avoiding or mitigating the trap, the spell, the poison, or whatever it is, and use that to select your Approach, Archetype (if applicable), and any other bonuses (like shield bonus, for example).

Defend action = Saving Throw

Demi-humans as classes

Basic and Expert D&D had one adventuring class each to represent all Dwarves, Elves and Halflings. I always took this to represent those demi-humans who chose the adventuring life - but much of the published material assumed that every single Elf in the elven woods was a fighter and spell caster, and so on.

I think it's safe to split out the demi-humans from their classes, and allow us to play dwarven wizards, halfling clerics, and elvish rogues.

We'll call that "Kin" and deal with it as part of your Background.

Placeholder

This section is for anything else I notice that needs converting as I go through the rest of the project!

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Credits

I'm indebted to Killershrike's "Pathfinder Fate Accelerated" for the initial idea that this sort of thing could be done - without their groundwork, I'd have been lost.

Of course the Creative Commons access to D&D's engine and FAE are essential as well - D&D is CC-BY-4.0, FAE is CC-BY-3.0

Old School Essentials collects much of the D&D Basic and Expert set rules into one handy SRD, which you can find here.

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Introduction & Index

Red Box Fate - Introduction & Index

Plans and expectations

Add Fate's flexibility, keep D&D Basic / Expert / OSR compatibility (and allow for borrowing from later editions).

Translation goals:

• D&D Classes are emulated, and can be customised;
• Attacks, AC, Saving Throws, Thief abilities, etc, replaced by Fate's Archetypes and Approaches;
• D&D's Class features, Spells, etc, brought in line with Fate's Stunts, giving us a template to invent new ones with parity;
• Mechanics remain transparent to D&D, so that D&D material can be used seamlessly.

This post will serve as a index for the other posts where I dive into more detail. 

Core mechanics

1d20 + Ability modifier + Archetype + Approach    - vs -    DC

Archetypes: Martial, Dedicated, Roguish, Arcane, Primal, Social

Approaches: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky

(Aiming for parity with 1d20 + Ability modifier + Proficiency)

More about those Archetypes & Approaches in another post.

Outcomes

Compare the total to a target number, which is either a fixed difficulty or the result of the GM’s roll for an NPC. Based on that comparison, your outcome is:

• You fail if your total is less than your opponent’s total.
• It’s a tie if your total is equal to your opponent’s total.
• You succeed if your total is greater than your opponent’s total.
• You succeed with style if your total is at least 5 greater than the DC or your opponent’s total. "Style" can mean you gain Advantage , or impose Disadvantage on your opponent, or some other benefit or consequences - haggle with the GM.

Now that outcomes have been covered, we can talk about actions and how the outcomes work with them.

Actions

These are the four actions you may be familiar with from Fate, with some short notes on how they apply in this D&D hack.

Create Advantage

Exploiting an Aspect of the scene or characters to gain Advantage (or impose Disadvantage), or creating an Aspect that you can use later.

Attack

The usual D&D attack, but also used for spells, and social struggles.

Defend

Replacing D&D's Saving throws, and active defence taking the place of static AC.

Overcome

Replaces the usual D&D skill check against inanimate things - to open locks, leap over a wall, climb the cliffs.

Aspects vs Conditions 

Fate of course uses its own jargon terms. Almost everything that describes a character or situation can be called an Aspect in Fate, and the game mechanics provide a set of generic ways in which we can interact with those Aspects.

For D&D players, this can be daunting - but those Aspects can easily be thought of as Conditions, and terrain modifiers, and so on - familiar to players of later editions since 3rd onwards. In Fate, we might say a room has an "On fire" Aspect, or that a character has a "Charmed" Aspect. 

Using the mechanics of Fate lets us play around with these situations and conditions, rather than simply apply a fixed set of numbers to our rolls or limits to our actions.

Fate Points

Plenty of d20 games have used Action Points, Hero Points, Force Points and similar to enhance the game play. Fate Points work very much like those familiar systems.

- Like D&D 5th edition's Inspiration, you can use Fate Points to invoke an Aspect of the scene or characters to gain Advantage (without using an action to Create Advantage)

- Some powerful Stunts need a Fate Point

- Reroll a check

You'll regain Fate points by accepting story compels, and with a refresh each session.

More about Aspects & Actions - and using and gaining Fate Points - in another post.

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Abilities

STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA

Generate your ability scores as you normally would for a regular D&D game - either point buying, rolling, or by one of the arrays given in the SRD or PHB.

High concept & Trouble

Fate's High Concept and Trouble Aspects are folded up into D&D's "race" (I'm using Kin for this, cause frankly "race" in RPGs is loaded with baggage), Background, Traits, Bonds and Flaws, and character Class.

As we're aiming for D&D compatibility, we'll approach this with the 5e terminology. 

However, you can invoke your Kin, Class, Background, etc, just like any Aspect - these are the narrative hooks on which your characters' stories hang. 

Kin

D&D's "races" get translated here as Kins, and follow the Aspect style of Fate (1 aspect).

Background

Here I'll show how D&D Backgrounds can be translated as Aspects. (1 aspect)

More about translating High Concept and Trouble in the Backgrounds & Bonds section.

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Classes

First of all, I'll emulate the core D&D classes: Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard.

This will be done by distributing Archetypes (2 at +1 or 1 at +2) & Approaches (2 at +1 or 1 at +2), and assigning an appropriate Stunt (1) for our 1st level, then laying out Progression Tables for the higher levels.

Here, I plan to give the ways in which classes can be customised, and I'll also give the template for making your own custom character without a D&D class.

Find out all about Classes & Customisation in its own post.

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Credits

I'm indebted to Killershrike's "Pathfinder Fate Accelerated" for the initial idea that this sort of thing could be done - without their groundwork, I'd have been lost.

Of course the Creative Commons access to D&D's engine and FAE are essential as well - D&D is CC-BY-4.0, FAE is CC-BY-3.0

Old School Essentials collects much of the D&D Basic and Expert set rules into one handy SRD, which you can find here.

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Index

Introduction & Index (this post)

Crunch & Conversion

Approaches & Archetypes

Aspects & Actions

Backgrounds & Bonds

Classes & Customisation

Spellcraft & Stunts

Basics & Bodging

D&D/Fate project - Back to the Red Box

I'm throwing this project into reverse!

I've come to the realisation that D&D 5e's fiddly foibles are far too much for me to muster the gumption to work with them. My aim was to simplify everything to run with Fate's smooth system of rulings, not to get bogged down with emulating 5e in a Fate framework.

So with that in mind, I give you the new project: Red Box Fate

This will strip back to D&D BEX levels, apply some modernisation (Defence rolls instead of THACO, ability score saves, advantage / disadvantage), and apply Fate's flexibility to allow for smart ideas from later editions to be added to the game.

You want to gain exotic weapon expertise and funky combat moves as you level up? Sounds like a stunt! You want to invent new spells on the fly? Sounds like we've got that covered too - you need to decide which action that spell fits, and roll some dice.

Anyway - some recycling will take place over the next few posts, and I'll get there eventually.