Introduction
Look for a character sheet here.
Fate characters are competent, dramatic, and willing to engage with the adventures ahead.
Your character is made up of several elements:
- Aspects: phrases describing who your hero is
- Skills: your hero’s areas of relative expertise
- Stunts: remarkable things your hero does
- Stress: your hero’s ability to keep calm and carry on
- Consequences: the wounds, physical and mental, your hero can endure
- Refresh: a measure of your hero’s narrative agency
- Finishing Touches: your hero’s personal details
Aspects
Aspects are short phrases that describe who your character is or what is important to them. They can relate to your character’s physical or mental qualities, history, beliefs, training, relationships, or even particularly important equipment.
The first thing to know about them is: Aspects Are Always True. For example, if your character has the Never Walked Without a Cane aspect, that is true. You cannot simply sprint away or perform acrobatic feats without first addressing that fact, and any attempt to act as though it does not exist contradicts the fiction.
You’ll also use aspects in play to change the story. They give you permission to improve your dice rolls and establish facts about the world. Lastly, aspects can earn you fate points if they create complications for your character—so to make the most versatile aspects, you should aim for ones that are double-edged, working both for you and against you.
To begin, you’ll give your character five aspects: a high concept, a trouble, a relationship, and two free aspects. Start with the high concept and go from there. You could start with just crucial ones and come up with other as you play.
High Concept
Your high concept is a broad description of the character, covering the vital bits. It’s how you would open your pitch for the character when telling a friend about them.
Examples: Good Detective with Questionable Ethics, Nomad Outcast with Hands of Gold.
Trouble
Next is your character’s trouble—something that makes your character’s life more complicated. It could be a personal weakness, family entanglements, or other obligations. Pick something you’ll enjoy roleplaying!
Examples: Always Owes Someone a Favour, Everyone Thinks I Am a Fraud.
Relationship
Your relationship describes a connection or obligation your character has with another person or people. It reflects bonds that influence your decisions, shape your motivations, and can both support and complicate your actions. They may already know one another, or have just met.
It could be an interesting and adventurous story you got involved in the past—maybe how you and some other PCs crossed paths through it, or how you became part of theirs. Did you come out on good terms, or was there bad blood between you and the other characters involved? And what would they think of you now?
Examples: Gotta Look Out for My Brother, Was Covering for Tony on the Station, Jane Got Me into the Big Leagues.
Free Aspects
You can make your character’s last two aspects anything you want—there are no restrictions beyond the obligation to fit the setting. Choose anything which you think will make your character more interesting, more fun to play, or better connected to the world they occupy. Significant personality traits or beliefs, an important possession or noticeable feature, titles, reputations, or obligations the character may have, problems, goals, or issues the character is dealing with.
(Option 1) Skills
While aspects define who your character is, skills show what they can do. Each skill describes a broad activity your character might have learned through study and practice or simply have an innate talent for.
Skill list can be completely different for each game, but you can view the standard one here.
Each skill has a rating. The higher the rating, the better the character is at the skill. As a whole, your character’s skills will show you what actions they are built for, which ones they’ll get by on, and which aren’t their forte.
You’ll choose your character’s skill ratings, arranged in a pyramid with the highest-rated skill at Great (+4), as follows:
- One Great (+4) skill
- Two Good (+3) skills
- Three Fair (+2) skills
- Four Average (+1) skills
- All other skills at Mediocre (+0)
(Option 2) Approaches
Approaches are a simpler alternative for skills. They are descriptions of how you accomplish tasks.
Everyone has the same six approaches, they are listed here.
You’ll choose your character’s approach ratings, arranged in a diamond. Each approach is rated with a bonus:
- One Good (+3) approach
- Two Fair (+2) approaches
- Two Average (+1) approaches
- One Mediocre (+0) approach
Difficulty Ladder
In Fate all ratings are organized into a ladder of difficulties, shown here.
Refresh
Your refresh is the minimum number of fate points your character begins with at the start of each session. Your character begins with a refresh of 3.
Each session, you start with fate points at least equal to your refresh. Be sure to keep track of the fate points you have left at the end of each session of play—if you have more fate points than your refresh, you’ll start the next session with the fate points you ended this session with.
Stunts
Stunts are the cool techniques, tricks, or bits of equipment that make your character unique and interesting. Where skills are about a character’s broad competencies, stunts are about specific areas of excellence; most of them give you a bonus only in particular circumstances or let you do something that other characters simply can’t.
Your character begins with three free stunt slots. You don’t have to define them all right away, and may fill them in as you play. You may purchase more stunts by spending 1 refresh each, to a minimum of 1 refresh.
You write your own stunts when building a character. If you’re having trouble coming up with a stunt, give the Stuntmaker a go. It will generate random stunts to inspire you! Just be sure to vet them with the table before using them.
Broadly, there are two types of stunts:
Bonus-granting Stunts
The first type of stunt gives you a +2 bonus when you use a named skill within certain parameters, usually limited to a specific type of action and type of narrative circumstance.
Write this type of stunt as follows:
Because I [describe how you are amazing or have a cool bit of gear], I get a +2 when I use [pick a skill] to [pick one: overcome, create an advantage, attack, defend] when [describe a circumstance].
Example:
Because I am an Arcane Expert, I gain a +2 when I use Lore to create an advantage, when situation has specifically to do with the supernatural or occult.
Rule-changing Stunts
The second type of stunt changes the rules of the game. This is a broad category that includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Swapping which skills are used in a given situation. For instance, a researcher might use Academics to perform a ritual, while anyone else would use Lore.
- Using an action with a skill that isn’t normally used with it. For instance, allowing a character to use Stealth to backstab an opponent from the shadows (which would typically be a use of Fight).
- Giving a character a different kind of bonus to skills that’s roughly equivalent to a +2. For instance, when a skilled orator creates an advantage with Rapport, it gets an extra free invoke.
- Allowing a character to declare a minor fact is always true. For instance, a survivalist always has survival items like matches on their person, even under unlikely circumstances. This type of stunt establishes that you do not need to invoke for story details for the given fact.
- Allowing a character to make a specific rules exception. For instance, a character might have two more stress boxes or another mild consequence slot.
Write this type of stunt as follows:
Because I [describe how you are amazing or have a cool bit of gear], I can [describe your amazing feat], but only [describe a circumstance or limitation].
Example:
Because I know Riposte, I can inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost, but only when I succeed with style on a Fight defense action.
Stress and consequences
Stress with Skills
Stress and consequences are how your character withstands the mental and physical toll of their adventures. Characters have at least three one-point boxes for physical stress and at least three one-point boxes for mental stress. They also get one slot each for mild, moderate, and severe consequences.
Your rating in Physique affects how many total physical stress boxes you have. Will does the same for your mental stress. Refer to the following table:
| Physique/Will | Physical/Mental Stress |
|---|---|
| Mediocre (+0) | [1][1][1] |
| Average (+1) or Fair (+2) | [1][1][1] [1] |
| Good (+3) or Great (+4) | [1][1][1] [1][1][1] |
| Superb (+5) and higher | [1][1][1] [1][1][1] and a second mild consequence slot specifically for physical or mental hits |
Stress with Approaches
If you use approaches instead of skills, then according to the rules your stress boxes could act slightly different. You would have only three of them and both physical and mental share them. Those shared stress boxes have values of [1][2][3]. You can only check one stress box for any single hit.
Consequences
Consequences are new aspects that you take to reflect being seriously hurt in some way. Your character sheet has three slots where you can write consequences. Each one is labeled with a number: 2 (mild consequence), 4 (moderate consequence), or 6 (severe consequence). This represents the number of shifts of the hit the consequence absorbs. You can mark off as many of these as you like to handle a single hit, but only if that slot was blank to start with. If you already have a moderate consequence written down, you can’t take another one until you do something to make the first one go away!
A major downside of consequences is that each consequence is a new aspect that your opponents can invoke against you. The more you take, the more vulnerable you are. And just like situation aspects, the character that creates it (in this case, the character that hit you) gets one free invocation on that consequence. They can choose to let one of their allies use the free invocation.
If you’re unable to absorb all of a hit’s shifts—by checking a stress box, taking consequences, or both—you’re taken out.
Clear Stress and Consequences
At the end of each scene, clear all of your stress boxes. Recovery from a consequence is a bit more complicated; you need to explain how you recover from it—whether that’s an ER visit, taking a walk to calm down, or whatever makes sense with the consequence. You also need to wait an appropriate length of time.
- Mild consequence: Clear it at the end of the scene, provided you get a chance to rest.
- Moderate consequence: Clear it at the end of the next session, provided it makes sense within the story.
- Severe consequence: Clear it at the end of the scenario, provided it makes sense within the story.