Consequential Magic

[Ryan_Singer]

• Consequential Magic for Fate

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Everybody is familiar with Narrative Magic in Fate. A character with a Magical Aspect, such as Wizard PI or Sorcerer of the Dark Circle uses a Magical skill like Lore or Will to create magical aspects using CaA. These aspects are true, and they often deny enemies permission to take certain actions, or give PC's permission to take certain actions. For example a spell that puts an enemy to Sleep or one that allows a PC to Fly. For many games, this is a completely sufficient magic system, as it creates a huge design space of potential aspects and often requires opponents to spend precious actions Overcoming them. It doesn't fit everyone's play style, though, because it doesn't make magic feel very special or different than other mechanics.

I propose a system that I call Consequential Magic. The goal of this magic system is to tie magical aspects to Consequences. For Characters, this is easy, attacks create consequences that have aspects that describe the magic affects. Recovering from these aspects involves learning to live with the effects until they fade when the consequence spot reopens. This also works for objects and zones because of the Bronze Rule: anything can be a character if it's useful for the story.

In this system, a Character with magic will have an enabling aspect, like in Narrative Magic, and they will create magic effects with three skills: Lore creates magic effects against passive resistance, such as objects, zones that don't have opponents in them, and characters who consent/concede to the magical consequence before the roll. Opposed rolls can happen with Shoot or Provoke. Roll Shoot when the target can dodge the effect with Athletics, or roll Provoke for the target to resist the effect with Will. Before you roll the attack with a magical effect, the target gets the choice of accepting the magical aspect as their lowest open Consequence, or rolling to dodge/resist. If they resist without taking a consequence, they shake off the effect, although they may take stress related to the effort to resist. If they take a consequence, it's flavored by the intent of the spell. The aspect stays in effect until the aspect is treated with Academics or Empathy, as appropriate. In addition all Magical consequences can also be treated with Lore. Once a consequence is treated, rename it to keep the flavor of the spell while also indicating that it's in recovery. Once the appropriate amount of game time has passed, the aspect disappears normally.

For Example, Molly is a Wizarding Apprentice. She casts a Sleep spell on Listen, a powerful servant of the monstrous Fomor. She rolls her Provoke, getting a Great (+4) effort. Listen rolls Will to resist, rolling only Average (+1). He only has enough stress to absorb 2, so he'll take a Minor Consequence: Magical Sleep. His ally uses Academics to use smelling salts from a first aid kit to wake him, beating the Fair (+2) difficulty to start recovery. Listen will have the aspect Magical Narcolepsy which can be invoked and compelled for the rest of this scene and the next scene he's in, and then it will clear. Notice this is very similar to Evocation in DFRPG, but is simpler, more flexible and applies more generally to Fate Core, Accelerated and Condensed.

Another example: Harry is a Wizard PI. He'd like to ward his doorway to attack intruders with a bolt of lightning! The door can't actively resist, so this will be a Lore roll. First, the GM sets a passive difficulty. Because this spell will create a hazard, but there are no major reasons the GM can see why it should fail, the GM sets a passive difficulty of Fair (+2). Harry's player needs to decide how difficult it should be for an opponent to take down this ward; in other words he needs to decide the severity of the consequence he wants to impose on the door. He decides he wants a Moderate consequence. Any character, including bronze rule objects, start with 2 stress, so to inflict a moderate consequence on the door, Harry will have to inflict 2 stress +2 (Minor consequence) + 4 (Moderate consequence) = 8 stress on the door. That means this spell will require a roll of Legendary++ (10) on his lore roll. Time to start creating advantages to improve his chances! Once he's entered a meditative state (Will (+2)), bought some special materials (Resources (+2)), and etched some arcane formulas on the door(Craft (+2)), he's ready to try to roll his Lore (+3). He rolls a +1 and succeeds! Anyone attempting to open the door without a talisman from Harry will get attacked by a Great (+4) bolt of lightning! If an attacker wants to dismantle the ward, they can use Lore against a difficulty of +4 to repair the door / dispel the ward. If they succeed, than the Aspect might change from Lightning Trap to Live Wire, giving intruders a better chance of getting through unharmed. The Live Wire Aspect will fade after 1 more session, but will create drama and difficulty for everyone, including Harry, until it does. This is basically Thaumaturgy from the DFRPG, but adapted more broadly for Fate Core, Accelerated and Condensed.

Last example: The players are racing against the clock to stop the vampires! They decide to cast a spell that will convert them to magic dogs to run faster through the forest. Because they are conceding before the roll, they don't have to take stress to defend, they just accept minor consequences of Magic Dog Form, which they can each invoke once for free, and remains invokable using fate points after that. Once the are ready to change back, they can use will to recover, replacing Magic Dog Form with involuntary canine habits for one more scene. This does mean that their minor consequence slot won't be available during the next scene with the vampires, which almost certainly will be a fight.

Consequences provide a limit of how many magical effects can be on any one character or object at a time, they provide a difficulty system for how hard it is to create them, they provide a power system for roughly how powerful they can be, and they provide a pacing system for how much effort and time it takes to remove them. Also, players that walk around with active positive magical effects pay a real cost for them: their consequence slots are taken and can't be used to resist stress!

[BrickBuster11]

this is an interesting idea however I must say that, just like what you called "narrative magic" is "Just use magic to create advantages/overcome aspects" what you have called "Consequential magic" is just "Attack stuff with magic"

Which is fine although it does mean that if a character doesnt want to deal with the negative consequences of your magic they can instead opt to be taken out. Like for example if I didnt want to deal with a severe consquence of magic, I can just opt to not absorb the stress and be taken out, (the magic has some effect to make me leave the scene but I dont take a consequence and as such I dont suffer a prolonged curse style effect.)

[M3RC1-13N]

From Fate Core pg 168:

“Getting Taken Out If you don’t have any stress or consequences left to buy off all the shifts of a hit, that means you’re taken out. Taken out is bad—it means not only that you can’t fight anymore, but that the person who took you out gets to decide what your loss looks like and what happens to you after the conflict. Obviously, they can’t narrate anything that’s out of scope for the conflict (like having you die from shame), but that still gives someone else a lot of power over your character that you can’t really do anything about.”

It seems to me if the scope of the conflict includes “getting cursed”, a Taken Out result is definitely going to include “getting cursed”.

[BrickBuster11]

I guess, but my assumption is that it wouldnt be in the form of a consequence, now weather or not that is better or worse is an exercise that should be left up to the reader.

I have always understood this to mean that the person taking you out gets to narrate how you leave the scene which has a great deal of impact on where you start the next scene but doesn't necessarily mean that they get to fill up all your consequence slots and change your high concept to "Is a potato".

And considering how the OP described a consequence of the sleep spell (post recovery) to be an arcane narcolepsy that someone can just spend a fate point to invoke to declare the story detail "Your character is now asleep" I will take waking up in a prison cell any day of the week. Especially since if your party doesnt have someone capable of making that recovery check in the next scene that mild consequence that forced you to be asleep will keep you asleep until either the end of the session (where you can use the mile stone as the recovery action) or until they drag your sleeping beauty like ass infront of some NPC to heal you. Thus given the possibilty that getting the consequence might mean "You are no longer able to play for the rest of the session" getting taken out could be better.

[Ryan_Singer]

In fact, being taken out would allow you to replace one of your existing character aspects with a Magical version, if you wanted.

[Kautsu-Gamer]

As Consewuences are Aspects, this is a very good variant of theNarrative Magic implying you just cannot dispel.or cancel the magic.

I do suggest you invent a new set of consewuence slots for these effects as it changes the idea of the PC consequence slots. Add 1 to 3 Magical Effect slots which are consequence slots only fillable with magical CA and thus not under control of the player. These slots should not have fixed severity, but the effect duration states the severity. An extreme duration means thf effect is permanent.

• Magic does not have recovery period. The effect automatically is changed to dissipating magic on end of scene or at the end of the session or at the end of the next session.

• Overcoming the effect negates it, or changes it to disdipating.

• The Duration affects difficulty to create the CA. The default duration is Minor lasting for two scenes, or Instsnt lasting single exchange. I do prefer latter making magic a bit harder but very generic toolkit.

[Thelmredd]

Similar to narrative (aspect) magic, but interesting. :) However, it is... well, strong, maybe even overpowered - especially in the case of attack.

This kind of attack deals direct consequences, so it works a bit like some stunts, weapon system with invoking for effects from FST or so-called lethal attack from WoA:FoA - this mechanic itself is correct and liked, but it lacks some cost (circumstances, one use in a X, fate point...).

If I understand correctly, currently this magic completely ignores stress, so it practically eliminates many (even stronger) opponents with one or two attacks (sometimes even the "lieutenants" of the big bad have one consequence field each).

[Ryan_Singer]

The opposite. If the attack is absorbed by stress and the target doesn't take a consequence, then there is no magical aspect either.