Scale

When a magical being enters your life, the scale of the game changes. There are three scales in Max
Burst.
Normal Scale
Magical Scale
Divine Scale
Human Scale
This is the default scale the game operates on. Which makes sense, given that the PCs and
everyone around them are human. Everything on Human Scale operates just the way it would
in a regular game of FATE CORE. You use your regular skills to Attack, Defend, Overcome,
and Create Advantages.
Magical Scale
This is the scale for magical things. A girl empowered to crush the minions of darkness. A
creature formed from the negative emotions of one of her friends. The strange creature that
gave her power.
Approaches are your key to see things operating on Magical Scale. Any time you see
something with an Approach, you're looking at something that operates on Magical Scale. The
descriptions become more obviously supernatural, strikes crater the ground, and movement
accelerates faster than the eye can follow.
If two things on Magical Scale are interacting with one another, you use the Approaches of each
and resolve stress as normal. Just as if you were playing Fate Accelerated Edition. If a Human
Scale thing is interacting with a Magical Scale thing, however, the rules change. If a Magical
Scale thing attacks a Human Scale thing and hits, its attack is treated as having a Weapon
Rating equal to the rating on the approach it used. By default, Human Scale things cannot
inflict stress on Magical Scale things.
Divine Scale
There are things in the world stronger than magic. Things that people only whisper about,
capable of sundering the very heavens, or reducing the earth to flames just by appearing.
Things that can turn worlds into deserts and spin life from the air. These, are Gods.
When Divine scale comes into play, the scale shifts again. The Divine Scale should be reserved
for the big finale, for taking out and/or redeeming the final villain. Anything operating at the
Divine Scale will be many times larger than the players. Whether this is represented by the
villains castle fortress, or a great titan of evil energy in a physical form, or even an asteroid in
orbit commandeered by a sinister force. Whatever you choose, players, for the most part, rather
than interacting with these beings directly, will be dealing with the seats of their power. Instead
of using Skills or Approaches, instead, their aspects have ratings. They have no need of skill, or
strategy, when they can simply shatter the world by bringing their nature to bear.

If a Divine Scale thing were to attack a Magical Scale thing, it would use the Aspect's it used
to make the attack as it's weapon rating. When a Divine Scale thing attacks a Human Scale
thing, it means vast destruction. Rather than inflicting stress, a Divine Scale attack changes the
landscape. Things at the Divine Scale are simply immune to damage from Magical Scale
things.
Magical Scale things use their Approaches to Overcome and Create Advantages on the zones
that make up the Divine Scale thing, as they search for the Keystone of each aspect. A
Keystone is something unique to a thing operating at the Divine Scale. Each Aspect will have a
Keystone, something at Magical Scale, that once defeated or destroyed, permanently disables
the Aspect. Only after disabling all of a Divine Scale thing's Aspects, it is defeated.
If your players choose to not interact with Keystones, or you would simply rather have your
apocalypse be human-sized, follow these two guidelines: Whatever their plan is it should cost
the players almost everything, and it should be thematically consistent (Opposing someone
powered by despair with hope, betrayal with unity, etc)
Character Generation
Aspects
CONCEPT
The concept aspect sums up your character's deal in one short phrase. It's how you deal with
problems and the source of most of them. If you're stuck, a
good place to start is the kind
of student you are (like New Kid, or Class Clown); stick an adjective on that (like Hyperactive,
or Shifty) and you've got something interesting
DRIVE
The drive aspect is something that motivates most of your character's actions, like curiosity, a
need for recognition, a terrible fear, a best friend, a worst enemy, or something else. It can be a
source of strength, a cause of trouble, or both! It should also reflect what drove your character
to become a magical girl in the first place,
TROUBLE
Every character has some sort of trouble aspect thats a part of her life and story. If your high
concept is what or who your character is, your trouble is the answer to a simple question: what
complicates your characters existence?
RELATIONSHIP
Your relationship aspect represents how you relate to others. What kind of friend you are, if
you're the one who organizes everything, or the funny one in the room. Or, how they view
relationships, if they're just a stepping stone, or if friendship means the world to them.

TEAM
This is the last aspect you will make in character creation. This is a bond that ties you to
another character at the table. Every team aspect will have another character's name in it, to
represent how your characters know each other before becoming magical. Team aspects are
also unidirectional, meaning that no-one in will have a Team aspect with the same person.

Skills
Pick and rate your characters skills. Once you have chosen aspects, its time to pick skills. Your skills
form a pyramid, with a single skill rated at Great (+4)which well usually refer to as the peak skill
and more skills at each lower rating on the ladder going down to Average (+1):
One Great (+4) skill
Two Good (+3) skills
Three Fair (+2) skills
Four Average (+1) skills
Skill List
Academics: This is simply Lore, renamed.
Athletics: This skill combines Athletics and Physique.
Fighting: Combines Fight and Shoot.
Friends: it's Contacts
Empathy
Rapport
Sneaking: Combines Burglary and Stealth.
Influence: Combines Deceive and Provoke.
Technical. It's crafts.
Perception: Combines Investigate and Notice.
Will: As in Fate Core.
Custom skill: This skill represents a mystic skill your PC has access to as a result of them
becoming magical. It should have two skill uses, in most cases it'll be Overcome and Create an
Advantage, but if you want to go for something like curses, feel free to make it work off of
attack. A good example would perhaps, be Curses, the power to curse another. Obviously one
use is to attack someone. The easiest other use, then, would be to create an advantage. Attacks
can take the form of you causing terrible coincidences to befall them, and advantages. . . pretty
much the same. Another example would be The Place Between Doors, a skill that allows you to
access and navigate an alternate dimension with entrances and exits in every door. You'd use it
as an overcome action to navigate from one door, to another, for instance, running from a posh
office to a visiting room in a prison on the other side of town. You can also use it to defend
against pursuers. One thing you should keep in mind while building yourself a custom skill is

that you should also know how to fail and make that failure interesting. For instance curses
have a pretty obvious fail state. The Place Between Doors, isn't instantly obvious but, well.
What if you go through a door you don't want to, or get lost in there. After all, there could be. . .
well. Things. Between the doors.
Stunts
All characters have three stunts by default, and two Transformed Stunts. For every stunt you have
above the normal maximum (So for instance if you decide to take four starting normal stunts instead of
three), add one point to the GM's Reserve
Stress & Consequences
Every character has a single stress track, Spirit, that starts at three stress boxes. If either your Will or
your Athletics is Good (+3) or higher, you gain an additional stress box. At Superb (+5) or higher you
gain an additional Mild Consequence Slot of the appropriate type (Physical for Athletics, Mental for
Will).
By default all characters have nine Consequence Slots, a Mild, Moderate, and Severe. Each character
will have three sets of each, one Physical, one Mental, and one Magic.
Physical and mental consequences use the following recovery timeline
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.
When taking stress you may choose to take a consequence in either your physical or mental track, so
you can walk away from a fight with Bruised Ego or Literally sick with anger after an argument.
Magic consequences however work a little differently however. There are two methods of handling
recovery from Magic consequences, Magical, and Burst. In both of them, however, you may only take
Magic Consequences while transformed
Magical Consequences
In this method, Magic consequences only apply while transformed. However they do not
recover normally, or, in fact, at all, without improving the world in some way. In this version
Magic consequences represent assaults on your character's beliefs, the things that drive them.
With this interpretation of Magic Stress, consequences might have some physical sign, only
visible while transformed, something like Torn Skirts, or they may represent a general
malaise or tiredness that is only really visible while transformed, Dead on her Feet. Whatever
the case may be, she will not recover from these consequences until she's had some time to

catch her breath, and have a conversation with her friends about the stresses she's been under
(For mild consequences), resolve a problem in her own life (moderate consequences), or
dramatically improve the life of another (severe consequences)
Burst Consequences
With this method of handling consequences, they represent the backlash of magic against you.
Both your magic, and that of the things that you fight stems from an otherworldly source,
unnatural and not native to our reality. Using it, and having it used against you runs the risk of
it altering your body or mind. In this method the consequences recover along the normal
timeline, however they also appear while out of costume.
A few guidelines on consequences. They should be thematic to the situation at hand. For
instance: if a magical girl with mirror powers fights a plant-themed monster, then a consequence
that all reflective surfaces now show the world through a twisted, verdant mirror, and you can
see plants and fungi growing into, and from people in disturbing ways, Lost in the forest
of mirrors, would be an appropriate consequence. You're a Catgirl Now, a consequence
representing your character having grown ears and a tail, would not. The other thing to keep in
mind is that, while consequences should make a character's life difficult, they should not, short
of an extreme consequence, make it functionally impossible to live a normal life. By way of
example, the character suddenly becoming an adult All Grown Up would not be appropriate,
because your character likely has none of the documentation or funding needed to, well, be an
adult. You can't really even take that to anyone either, because of what an unbelievable story
that is.
Transformation
Design your magical girl costume, and, if the group is going for that, a name, and assign approaches.
Choose one approach at Good (+3), two at Fair (+2), two at Average (+1) and one at Mediocre (+1).
The five default approaches are listed here:
Forceful
Quick
Clever
Careful
Flashy
The sixth approach is for you to fill in. Think about what makes your magical girl different from any
other. Choose an approach to reflect that. Make it thematic, so it fits with the character. Remember,
we're talking about magical girls here. They're not usually too subtle. Sample approaches for magical
girls are: Light, Fire, Courage, Truth, and Storms
You also, while transformed have two Transformation Stunts that you will have access to. These will
be, FAE stunts, and while they do not have to stick slavishly to the following format, it will help new
players.

Because I [describe some way that you are exceptional, have a cool bit of gear, or are otherwise
awesome], I get a +2 when I [pick one: Carefully, Cleverly, Flashily, Forcefully,
Quickly, Sneakily] [pick one: attack, defend, create advantages, overcome] when [describe a
circumstance].
and
Because I [describe some way that you are exceptional, have a cool bit of gear, or are otherwise
awesome], once per game session I can [describe something cool you can do].
Give yourself an amount of stress boxes equal to the value of your highest approach. If your highest
approach increases because of a milestone, you add an additional stress box. These stress boxes
represent the power of the magical forces that surround you. The stress boxes may only be used when
you have transformed. All attacks on the magical girl when transformed use this set of stress boxes. If
an attack exceeds your transformed stress boxes and the character would be Taken Out, the stress
instead rolls over to your normal stress boxes. Then you cannot transform for the rest of the scene.
While transformed you may choose to allocate consequences to any of your three tracks, however, only
your magic consequences may be used against you. For instance, if you, say, have Energy Distortion
in your magic track, and your foe lands a powerful blow, you may choose to, for instance, take Broken
Ankle as a physical consequence. However the youma cannot use it against you.
Advancement
When you are able to advance a skill, you may instead choose to advance on of your transformed
approaches. You may not advance an approach higher than the rating of your highest skill.
If you are able to take a new stunt, you may spend that stunt on your transformed state, rather than
your character.

THE GM AND FATE POINTS

At the start of each scene, the GM gains a budget of one fate point per player at the
table. The GM spends these fate points to invoke NPCs and PCs aspects, and to refuse compels on
NPCs aspects. (Compels on PCs aspects do not come out of the budgetthose are paid for out of an
unlimited slush fund.) Any fate points from a scenes budget not spent before the end of that scene
are lost.
The GM can also spend fate points from the reserve to increase their budget by one for any given
scene. By default this reserve starts at zero. However, players add points to the reserve for every one
they have past the starting five. The GM also puts any FATE points from compels on NPCs into the
reserve.