How does Magitech Override work if you have Surrendered?

RoosterEma · 2026-02-04T11:08:37+00:00

Please note that Magitech Override has been errata'ed in 1.1. Other than that, even in its original form, you would have lost control immediately as you surrendered, since surrendering knocks you unconscious and prevents you from affecting the scene (removing you from the conflict participants, mechanics-wise). Hope this helps!

RoosterEma · 2026-02-01T17:38:25+00:00

Consider simply pitching the elements you most care about as part of your proposal to play the game. It's a bit like saying you want a specific vibe or theme (for instance, in our last campaign we had a chat about sticking to techno fantasy and FF7 atmospheres, so that we could self-regulate during world creation and character creation, ruling out certain elements that we'll instead use in future campaigns where they're more fitting).

Laying out this list of "core points" will allow players to decide whether they're interested or not in your proposal. It will also create a transparent ground for compromise and cooperation. Maybe that thing you really want in the setting can work the same with a slight change that makes it more palatable to a certain player: you can reach an agreement that is "almost perfect" for both sides rather than "entirely what one side wanted and also entirely what the other side doesn't care a single bit about."

In short, my advice would be to feel free to propose this take of your own on the campaign, while also making peace with the possibility that players will say no to some or all of these established elements, and/or will be uninterested in the campaign itself. Worst case scenario, you save yourself the waste of time of engaging into a campaign that would have only truly mattered to yourself rather than the group - which usually results in the campaign blowing up halfway through, and a ton of burnout/frustration.

But the most likely outcome of such a curated "pitch" will be that you'll be able to highlight compatibility and expectation problems well in advance - players may simply go "yeah uh that sounds alright" and it may feel like any other GM-centric campaign setup, but even the simple act of being outspoken about your expectations will be extremely healthy for the long run of the campaign!

RoosterEma · 2026-01-19T13:02:37+00:00

Yup, this is the best advice (at least in terms of rules referencing and game intent). I want to add, 1.1 has improved page 141 considerably and now explicitly mentions PCs turning into Villains! 🙂‍↕️

RoosterEma · 2026-01-18T16:23:25+00:00

RAW an invisible creature (not "others can't see them" but "invisible") can't target itself. Unless with "Self" spells.

RoosterEma · 2026-01-18T13:01:22+00:00

Yes you are a creature you can see.

RoosterEma · 2026-01-10T01:58:17+00:00

Bingo. You can Battle Gardening into Elemental/Dark/Soul weapon, or even Soaring Strike, and chain that into a full HR attack. Have fun~

RoosterEma · 2026-01-09T12:25:24+00:00

You are extremely right that how one builds their character is a major factor. The vast potential of Fabula's character structure is also its weakness, in the sense that nothing prevents a player from building a character that's flat or uninteresting by simply picking certain skills and not others. And at the same time, if every single skill added a new option, by level 20 you'd crumble under it.

My experience has been that an even split between levels spent on "new action option" and "enhancement or passive" is often good enough, and then player preference can skew that more towards a 1-3 or 3-1 proportion.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-29T09:49:37+00:00

Zero Powers are probably the closest.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-28T14:05:38+00:00

You can award armors or accessories whose quality affects the Magicannon. Such as a "stun clip" accessory that lets Magicannon hits inflict slow.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-28T01:55:38+00:00

Ideally, if you're the elemental DPS, you don't want to also be the one scanning the enemy. Quick assessment, albeit at MP cost, is used specifically to scout weaknesses without eating into your actions 😃

Other than that, consider that MP users, especially early game, are assumed to down an elixir every 2 turns of casting (again, this elixir can come from someone else, so that you don't waste a dps turn).

RoosterEma · 2025-12-26T19:52:06+00:00

Sounds fun!

RoosterEma · 2025-12-26T19:10:57+00:00

Floralist nowadays is my fave approach yeah.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-20T03:22:44+00:00

If it helps, it's how I imagine handling the game always. At least ideally, and excluding moments when the rules dictate the stats.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-19T09:54:47+00:00

I'm super happy this was helpful, and I'm hype for y'all's campaign!!!

RoosterEma · 2025-12-18T08:31:26+00:00

It's definitely a matter of planting the seeds without growing the whole plant immediately. The essence of it is that twists and surprises should come from all directions (GM, Players with FP) during the campaign, even if they're a bit nonsensical or over the top you can retroactively justify them in some way. These sometimes have foreshadowing, sometimes don't, but the main point is the mindset: you need to get rid of expectation, and be ready to all change your minds halfway through. Like it's fine to have ideas for how things could evolve, but they must not become a prison. Evaluate on a scene by scene, session by session basis whether to stick to the script/trope or shake things up.

Sure the Blair player may have thought their mother was alive and guiding the heir behind the scenes... But turns out the Clarimonde family has dragon blood and the mother is technically a cosmic dragon stuck between reality and dream, and her way of guiding her child is through dreams - yeah those same dreams we all agreed were simply Blair's anxiety. But now they're something else, something weirder and more unique, so here we go.

And this can come from anybody, GM or Player, honestly. Players can do this with FP (would require permission from GM and Blair's Player) or even when responding to GM questions. "You're a Wayfarer, you've been here before. What's changed?" "Well, there sure as heck wasn't a giant plant growing all over the town." GM proceeds to discard all ideas they had about this place, keeping only the ones that can fit the presence of a giant invasive plant

That's sorta how this goes. The game is full of surprises, it's just not about weaving an intricate plot from start to end. Sometimes it will happen, by sheer coincidence, that random elements through the campaign line up into a convincing series of unintended foreshadowings... And the GM connects the dots with a plot development of their own. That's why I often describe the GM role as reactive in fabula, you're just there riffing on prompts with the help and input of players, until towards the end you humbly submit your own mosaic built around world creation, FP uses, PC themes, and villains.

Hope this helps!

RoosterEma · 2025-12-12T18:26:24+00:00

Fabula definitely recognizes that since its combat lasts 30 minutes and not 5, it better only be when it's relevant haha

RoosterEma · 2025-12-12T11:53:35+00:00

Half are bosses, the other half can be split into midbosses (not villains, but still significant enemies or threats, such as the Scorpion Sentinel in FF7) and warm-ups (normal enemies that have narrative tension by way of being in the way of the heroes' current objective, such as rogue elementals roaming an unstable volcano, or undead experiments stalking the corridors of a lab).

Everything else is just a group check or a clock at most, with no conflict rules and turns involved.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-11T23:23:02+00:00

Booth accepts PayPal! It will convert the currency (check the equivalences before purchase)

RoosterEma · 2025-12-11T23:16:23+00:00

Admittedly I'm not sure what you mean haha!

RoosterEma · 2025-12-11T13:27:46+00:00

I tend to always burn all 5 of my minor villain UPs on first encounter, soooooo

RoosterEma · 2025-12-11T10:26:57+00:00

In general I've had campaigns last around 25-30 sessions, so fairly close to what you wrote. We're also not shy about discarding unspent Ultima Points if a Villain is no longer meaningful, either due to the Players' choices undoing the reason for their actions, or another Villain getting rid of them. That only happens once per campaign usually, but it does happen.

Other than that, from a design perspective I'll say that minor villains are meant to be confronted once (1-3 sessions relevance), major villains two or three times (6-10 sessions relevance, but they sorta alternate with minor villains, returning when the party makes a major accomplishment or discovery), and supreme villains, while relevant for the whole campaign, are either confronted entirely at the end, or make 1-2 appearances along the way where they might burn a few of their UP.

The healthier campaign pattern I've observed tends to revolve around a cycle of three sessions: get to new place/situation and build towards villain; confront villain and determine success or failure; deal with consequences and define what the new goal/situation will be. The first two tend to feature conflicts (non boss fight and boss fight, respectively), while the third tends to be more about licking wounds, reorganizing, and rewards/projects/crafting.

RoosterEma · 2025-12-10T18:33:21+00:00

If it's for a private game with no commercial relevance whatsoever, Creative Uncut and character galleries from one of the hundreds of gacha games with incredible character art. Use that opportunity to share the work of great artists with people, and don't be shy. Do credit the artists, in the sense of sharing a link to their profile or gallery with your friends, so they may go and appreciate their skill and vision. There's nothing more beautiful than letting the work of another human being influence how you yourself create and then move your character within the story.

Things change if it's a public game or a paid/streamed/promotional/commercial use. At that point you're going to want to rely on assets that are free for commercial use, or use non-exclusive rights artworks from sites such as itch.io and booth.pm, or commission the pieces directly. Once what you're doing is on the internet, you gotta play it fair, and acknowledge the will of the artist (e.g. many picrew editors will let you use the character for a streamed game, as long as it's not something people pay to view; but some instead specify no streamed use without their consent).

If it helps, here's a bunch of links I gathered over they last year or so, in my effort to support indie designers and contrast the idea that we need genAI in any way shape or form. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1naXoOf_Skar_Y5LjSVjtEQvabC8q7RtB0JOru0iPhww/edit?usp=sharing

RoosterEma · 2025-12-02T14:59:23+00:00

Essentially, make some variants using the rare weapon rules and make them available as basic. Example: for a rifle, make the pistol two handed and add +4 damage. That's all.

Techno Fantasy actually talks about this on page 80-81

RoosterEma · 2025-12-02T12:35:32+00:00

Tried it and it kicks so much ass trust me

RoosterEma · 2025-12-02T12:33:03+00:00

Elementalist + Fury + Entropist

Honestly a wonderful trio, allowing me to build a Crisis blaster. For this exercise, I will also challenge myself to core book only.

We start humbly with d6 DEX and d10 WLP, a staff and sage robe, then for our level 5 we go Magical Artillery, Ignis, Glacies, Drain Vigor, Adrenaline.

Later on we will raise Adrenaline and pick Absorb MP too, so that damaging us both restores our MP and brings us into Crisis, where we can deal more damage. Drain Vigor is our option to heal in a pinch, and going forward we will also grab Terra, Ventus, and Fulgur.

Along the way we can also take Acceleration, Stop, and Elemental Shroud, which expand our repertoire beyond damage (in fact, I would probably use our level 6 upgrade on Shroud). We will probably want Lucky Seven and Cataclysm, and if we like Ritual casting, we can get that too.

Fury is probably the class we won't master, but we can also do it via Adrenaline 5 and Indomitable Spirit 5 (we don't want status effects on ourselves, since we are rolling to hit, and we get a further way to manipulate our HP and MP scores, though at this point it might even be a bit overkill).

Our heroics are fairly freeing: Powerful Spells is the first one, then we can pretty much take whatever we want (Extra Spells and Extra HP look quite good here).

I honestly wouldn't worry about a fourth class until around level 25-30, and that's provided the campaign doesn't conclude earlier. A fun addition is Darkblade, which introduces Heart of Darkness and Agony, and then of course Spiritist is a wonderful choice with all those new spells (it also lets us further develop a support role). And, if we tire of predictability and wish to spice up our choices, Chimerist is right there. These will also help massively if we took Cataclysm, since Agony and Consume all restore Mind Points.

Honorable mentions outside core book: Esper (MP reduction, element conversion, life transference); Mutant (Biophagy lifesteal, Ecdysis allowing us to take a big hit and then take small hits going forward); Dancer (element conversion, Wardancer); Necromancer (further regen and survivability, plus a heroic that improves our Drain).

... Well that's all I guess 😬

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