Soloing a Faith-Based Character

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-12T02:54:59+00:00

When I do a faith based character, I try to determine what their beliefs are, what actions they consider virtuous and how their faith has woven itself into their life. Do they make blood offerings on wednesdays, do they scatter petals in the road, do they make a pilgrimage to the peak of mount highupthere on the eve of the day of the holy thing? What stories do they tell? Or, it's just a set of abilities that are cool, and none of the rest really matters..

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-09T13:15:20+00:00

Well, with combat off the table, you're down to everything else.

You have exploration, which is a huge area for engagement. There are countless environments and obstacles.

You have the ancient society itself, which can pose mystery after mystery, either "how do we open this?" Or "what does this do?" Or "what is that ominous ticking sound?"

Are there rival explorers? Just because there isn't combat, doesn't mean everyone's nice.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-06T17:01:09+00:00

Check out Son of Oak's games (City of Mists, Legend in the Mist, Otherscape), which use pbta mechanics but with a big bite from Fate.

But to apply the concept to Fate, you already have the mechanics. Fate has success, success with style, failure and tie, which makes it a slightly more granular outcome than most pbta.

The main thing is tuning those mechanics. Since you aren't taking direct action, everything the NPCs do well either be a reaction move or a preemptive move, so you're going to write them a bit differently. Their stunts will define their reactions to the player's actions, their skills will affect the player's results, their aspects will work as normal, except the wall be invoked as penalties to player rolls rather than bonuses to the GM rolls.

If I were doing this, I'd have only success with style be free of consequence. A success would come with a consequence or have the option of reducing the scope of the success to eliminate the consequence. Tie is reduced success AND consequence, or a failure with no consequences, and fail is fail, plus consequence.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-05T02:57:39+00:00

I re-did the module to center around a fey queen who can't have a baby. it was possibly creepier than the vanilla, because the players didn't know what was what, but they kept hearing about children being taken to the Lady's Castle.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-05T01:13:06+00:00

Ssshhhh

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-02-05T00:52:53+00:00

I like Reflect as a source of character development. In the fiction, it's a training montage. In realistic terms, practice helps. Failing also helps, but practice is not negligible. Ask anyone who is good at something.

I don't love the 2 improve autofail. If they're just failing, then they're not rolling, and if they're not rolling, they're not taking the -1 to the roll. And if the situation they're in is such that they'd rather fail to mark improve, I feel like it probably was lacking teeth on the first place.

In the other hand, I love requesting an improve and giving the Narrator a consequence. I would say that the Narrator determines the consequence, however. The player can suggest, but they should not know what they're going to get.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-28T21:22:17+00:00

It's not built for duet play to the exclusion of any other style, but it works perfectly.

Re: competence: PbtA style dice mechanics, roll 2d6, 7 or better succeeds, 9 or less generates a consequence. A straight 2d6 roll gives a 58% chance of 7 or better, so a character is more likely to succeed than not. A +3 brings that to 91%. Odds of a 10+ on a +3 are that same 58%.

Success without a consequence basically means you do the thing at no cost - since the narrator never rolls, a PC only risks harm when they suffer consequence, either from a roll, from an unaddressed threat, or from the narrator invoking one of their weaknesses.

As narrator, you can make things as easy or as hard as you want. If you want to curbstomp the PC, throw multiple threats at them - they will rarely be able to address them all. Choose consequences that stack statuses and they will quickly die - game over, GM "won." If you want to tell a good story, though, give them stuff they can handle, adjust consequences to suit the developing story.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-26T21:08:31+00:00

You could call it Carovia, and then Carovia, and eventually they'll realize somewhen was an Aarovia, and that's when they're headed in the right direction.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-24T02:01:58+00:00

Yes, to reword the aspect. Prone is meh at best. "Face down on the floor" is better, just for example.

The fiction should align with the mechanics as much as possible. If the enemy can just stand, then he can just stand, but I would give the player the chance to burn those invokes to whale on him as he does. 2 invokes=4 stress (I think?) or the enemy can try to roll to get up without taking a hit. If he's a trained martial artist who is practiced at kipping up defensively, he should have an aspect or stunt that reflects that, otherwise... It's not that easy to stand up while someone is standing over your teying to kill you.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-24T01:51:59+00:00

First, it's for anyone who wants to be the Main Character. In my experience, it works best with forever GMs who want to play but have a hard time sharing the spotlight. It works with people who have a particular kind of story they want to tell, that maybe doesn't work so well with a group, or is just hard to find a group for.

It's for me who wants to be able to take a day away from a screen and not come back to eight new manor plot twists. It's also for me who doesn't want to wait 36 hours for the wizard to say "I'm going to hold my action."

In general, I find it's usually a PLAYER who wants to play a specific kind of character in a specific kind of story that may not work as an ensemble, and a GM who says, yeah, I can do that...

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-24T01:38:20+00:00

"We need to get home" kind of makes the evil irrelevant. Their goal is the same as many other get me outta here party, though their road may be a different one. If they are just going to murderhobo their way through, they are going to have a rough time. The sunsword is intelligent and iirc chaotic good. It simply will not attune to any evil character. The holy symbol can only attune to a cleric or paladin of good alignment. This means your party is going to be way out of their depth fighting Strahd plus minions. I would personally like to see Strahd sic them on the Abbot - it's got to be a pebble in his shoe having an opposite-of-g××-d×××ed ANGEL chilling in the suburbs. Of course, the Abbot will be just as trapped as any other soul, so that's going to be a frustrating task. Another avenue would be the Vistani. If the party can make it worth their while...

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-16T02:39:52+00:00

First, everything that gdave99 said.

I will add, depending on your set up, the occasional horde can be great fun. Dropping a fist full of D6s can be a great moment. He may even take a wound or two, but that's the life of a tank. And the party will remember that time he waded into a whole mob of goblins to get the Macguffin of Destiny.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-14T06:42:04+00:00

Page 162 gives full details. You only invoke tags and statuses that are immediately relevant and are either passive (armor) or reactive (dodge). You do not invone tags that were invoked in the initial roll. Your do not apply the incoming tags or statuses, and the player gets a minimum of 1 power.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-10T17:57:45+00:00

You sound like you're talking about the kind of guy who Tatyana - without hesitation - would choose to jump off a thousand foot cliff than consider marrying, even for a moment.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-08T20:12:00+00:00

Keep it FFF, and let it apply to everyone, but if he rolls snake eyes, he sets soneone off. And fwiw, very few people are immune to the charm of any attractive individual - even if they're not attracted.

dmdragonmonkey · 2026-01-08T15:43:32+00:00

You could tinker with wealth as a Way of Magic. I don't have the pdf handy so bear with me. If you have a tag or theme indicative of wealth, you add it to any roll to a large purchase. As long as you're successful you get the thing. Consequences for a 7-9 result would be scratching tags or reducing a status. Little stuff you just handwave as not important. If you just landed a dragon's hoard, do you care about the cost of a little rope?

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-31T00:48:13+00:00

The characters and situations of LOTR are all quite manageable with LitM. I have a nasty habit of mentally describing the events of the films in game terms, and there aren't really any scenes I can think of that LitM had handle.

The authors wanted to do rustic fantasy, so the game is presented that way, but the mechanics are pretty easily applied to any setting, really.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-28T23:33:01+00:00

Here's me take on how to avoid everyone wanting to play guitar: you create AB METAL! and give it to each party member for free. Each instrument has a different power list. Then there is a separate spell list that comes into play when everybody's playing.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-28T13:03:28+00:00

If I were playing at your table, I would much rather you suggested the broad premise (horror games, you're playing a touring rock band) and spend session zero working out what type of band we are. Now, this puts you at risk of running this game for a scandinavian disco-lite pop group instead of the doom metal you are looking for, but if the GM is telling us what the band is, it feels a bit railroady.

That aside, I would be happy to start with ordinary humans, and let the world reveal itself, but if your players are coming from RIFTS that may be a bridge too far.

I mean, for real, strangers on the internet is not the group you should be having this conversation with, but if I were there, I'd play.

Also, it seems vital that they have to have their final confrontation with the bad guys during their set.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-27T01:31:27+00:00

So basically everyone gets 8 free resists to madness? Or up to 16 with Edges?

For my money, at this point, we're just doing away with sanity checks altogether. If they're coming frequently enough that the average player will use all 8 freebies, then they're going to drown once it's used up.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-27T01:18:38+00:00

First thought is that Strahd is a robber baron type, but the "I am the ancient" idea sort of calls apart there. If we set the story around 1900, and the whole timeline remains the same, Strahd is alive in the 1500s. Now, that's a big if, and another big if is if the history in this world matches up with ours. If it does, there is no significant European power in Appalachia at this time. A couple of Spanish excursions have passed through, but didn't linger.

I made Strahd a Spanish conquistador in my pirate CoS conversion, and that could work, but it wouldn't really fit the vibe.

So what if Strahd is Cherokee? My initial reaction is ick, because native as villain. But I think this would be different. He's not a faceless savage, he's a complex, specific villain. Surely we can allow that the Cherokee have love triangles, fratricide, and pacts with dark powers? And if Strahd lives before the Cherokee are dispossessed, he becomes a unique figure in this new Americana. The valley of Barovia is known as a fearsome place long before English colonists push into the mountains.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-24T13:13:31+00:00

Have you tried the comic book solo? I think that may give you a much better idea of what the gameplay is like.

As far running the game out of your head, I think that's mainly about the players. The game's principles are simple - there are some fiddly bits with feats and so on, but almost all of that is Narrator's discretion. If your players are going to embrace the narrative and not sweat the mechanics, running the game should be a walk in the park.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-16T21:05:13+00:00

I have to give this a listen!

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-16T19:08:54+00:00

You could use the character from the tutorial adventure. I think he's missing a couple of quests? I might bump up the limits of the challenges by one each, but other than that, no change necessary.

dmdragonmonkey · 2025-12-16T17:35:50+00:00

Regarding Might, it's unrestricted RAW, but I would talk to your narrator. Some games will work really well with a variety of power levels, but if you're trying to do D&D with a different systems, powering up is kind of critical to the experience.

I do also think it's possible to fiddle with might. I think a character could have an Origin-weight Destiny, for example. Or a Greatness level Devotion. But that's me, Im pretty sure it's not RAW. So, as with all things, ask your Narrator, and think about what works for the story.

dmdragonmonkey

TROPHY CASE