Multiverse: Dungeoncrawler

Chamomile
118
Credits
Written by Chamomile
Layout and formatting by Megan Bennett-Burks
Cover illustration by David North
Interior illustration:
Custin, David North, DeckyDraws, Fukamihb, Jraijin, Lekshmibose, Nelnes, PastellePrince
This work is based on Fate Core System and Fate Accelerated Edition (found at http://www.faterpg.com/), prod-
ucts of Evil Hat Productions, LLC, developed, authored, and edited by Leonard Balsera, Brian Engard, Jeremy
Keller, Ryan Macklin, Mike Olson, Clark Valentine, Amanda Valentine, Fred Hicks, and Rob Donoghue, and
licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/3.0/).

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Table of Contents
The Laws of Fate pg. 3
Playing Dice With Fate: Core Rules pg. 3
Game Creation pg. 8
Character Creation pg. 9
Fated to Battle: Contests and Conflicts pg. 12
Changing Fate: Positioning pg. 13
Changing Fate: Harm, Healing, and Armor pg. 14
Will, Physique, and Armor pg. 16
Changing Fate: Fighting Crowds pg. 17
Changing Fate: Weapons, Vulnerability, and Resistance pg. 18
Changing Fate: Chases pg. 21
Changing Fate: Sieges pg. 22
NPCs pg. 25
Skills pg. 26
Distant Fate: Character Advancement and Campaigns pg. 41
Milestones pg. 41
Scenes, Sessions, Scenarios, and Arcs pg. 42
World Advancement pg. 44
Ancestry pg. 44
The Big Five pg. 46
Celestials pg. 48
Fey pg. 53
Fiends pg. 57
Undead pg. 60
Other Monsters pg. 68
Profession pg. 88
Additional Content pg. 106
Backers pg. 111

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The Laws of Fate
Playing Dice With Fate: Core Rules
The sections “Playing Dice With Fate,” “Choose Your Fate,” “Fated to Battle,” and “Distant Fate” are based
closely on the Fate Core SRD, which is released under a CC-BY 4.0 license. If you are familiar with the Fate
Core rules, you can mostly skip this, except for sections labeled “Changing Fate.” For example, Changing Fate:
Harm And Healing is a significant change to how stress and consequences work in Fate Core, written to reflect
the specific tropes of the fantasy genre where characters (in the tradition of Lord of the Rings) tend to accumulate
fatigue and despair slowly over the course of long journeys, as opposed to heroes of most other genres, who are
usually able to shrug off anything short of broken bones at the end of a fight scene.

Fate Dice
Systems powered by Fate, like this one, are played with Fate dice. Fate dice are six-sided dice, two sides of which
are marked with a - symbol, two sides are marked with a + symbol, and two sides are marked with an = or 0
symbol. The last one is sometimes left blank altogether. If you’re rolling digitally, the dice notation recognized by
most rollers is 4df (or some other number, if you’re rolling more or less than the standard set of 4).
If you’re playing physically and don’t want to buy new dice, a regular set of d6s works, you can count 1-2 as
a negative, 3-4 as even, and 5-6 as positive, or you can modify the dice yourself with a pen using the pips as a
guide: 4 and 6 are =, 2 and 3 are -, 5 is a +, and you have to free-hand the second + over the 1. If you are a dice
goblin just getting into fate now, then Evil Hat sells some fairly cheap Fate dice to get you started and Etsy, of
course, has $40 gothic style gold-on-obsidian Fate dice that you will, now I have told you about their existence,
inevitably skip a few meals to save up money to buy (and yes, of course there is also a glitter version, why would
you even ask).
When you make a roll in Fate, it is almost always 4df, giving you a result of -4 to +4 with an average result of +0.
You’ll add your skill bonus to this, and sometimes also bonuses from Fate Points and/or stunts (don’t worry about
those for now). This means that if you have +3 to a skill, your average result on rolls made with that skill are 3.
Then you’ll compare your value to a Target Number, or TN. For example, if the TN of a skill check is 4 and your
skill is +3, then you need a total of +1 on the dice to get 4 total and match the TN. If your Fate dice results are
++0-, then that is +1 on the dice, +3 from your skill, for a total of 4. On the other hand, +-00 would be +0 on the
dice, +3 from the skill, for a total of 3, below the TN.
The difference between a TN and a dice roll is called shifts. If your total roll is 3 and the TN was 2, you beat the
TN by one shift. If your total roll had been 4 instead, you would have beaten the TN by two shifts.

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Actions and Outcomes
All your rolls in Fate will be made with one of four actions and will have one of four outcomes. The four actions
are Attack, Defend, Create An Advantage, or Overcome. The four outcomes are Failure, Tie, Success, and Suc-
cess With Style. Failure, Tie, and Success are straightforward: If your roll’s total is less than the TN, it is a failure.
If it is more than the TN, it is a success. If it is exactly equal to the TN, it is a tie. Success With Style means you
beat the TN by three or more shifts.
An Attack action seeks to damage a target. All Attack actions are opposed by Defend actions, and the TN for
each is set by the other. When you fail at an Attack action, you deal no damage, and also the target must therefore
have succeeded at their Defend action. If they succeeded with style, that’s extra trouble for you, see the section on
Defend actions below for details.
• If you tie an Attack action, you do not damage your opponent, but you do get a boost. A boost can be
consumed by you or an ally for a +2 against the target (but not on other enemies). A boost expires at the end
of your next turn, so all of your allies (who aren’t incapacitated somehow) will have a chance to use the boost
between the end of your current turn and the start of your next, and you will have a chance to use the boost
during your next turn, but after that, it’s gone. Use it or lose it!
• When you succeed at an Attack action, each shift of success deals one point of damage. So, if you roll
an Attack at 3 against a TN of 1, you succeed with two shifts and deal two points of damage.
• If you beat the TN by at least three shifts, this also means you succeed with style. When you succeed
with style on an Attack, you can sacrifice one point of damage to get a boost. The effects of a boost (see Create
An Advantage for details). You don’t have to take this trade - you can keep the extra damage instead.
Every Attack action is opposed by a Defend action. Some Create An Advantage actions are also opposed by
Defend actions, but not all of them (see Create An Advantage for more details about that). When you Attack an
NPC, they roll an appropriate skill to Defend, and when an NPC attacks you, you roll an appropriate skill to
Defend. This means that every successful Attack action is also a failed Defend action, and every successful Defend
action is also a failed Attack action.
• When you fail at a Defend action, it necessarily means the enemy has succeeded at their Attack
action, which means you will take damage. If they have succeeded with style, you’ll suffer additional problems,
as covered in the Attack section.
• When you tie at a Defend action, you do not take damage, but the attacker does get a boost on you.
Boosts are covered in the Create An Advantage action.
• If you succeed at a Defend action, you take no damage.
• If you succeed with style on a defend action, not only do you take no damage, but you get a boost on
the attacker. A boost can be consumed by you or an ally for a +2 against the target (but not on other enemies).
A boost expires at the end of your next turn. Because you get Defense boosts on the attacker’s turn, it’s possible
that not all of your allies will have a chance to use the boost before your turn comes up, but you will always
have a chance to use the boost before the end of your turn.
When you attempt to Create An Advantage, you are trying to set yourself or someone else up for future success,
providing a buff or debuff. You can try to Create An Advantage against an enemy to provide bonuses on Attacks
made against them or to Defend actions made against their own Attacks, or you could Create An Advantage for
an ally to provide bonuses on their own Attack, Defend, or Overcome rolls. You can even target Create An Ad-
vantage rolls on the environment or static obstacles. Regardless of the target, Create An Advantage seeks to give
+2 bonus to another roll, and is usually done because you can Create An Advantage with a much stronger skill
than you can use to directly Attack or Overcome the target.
• When you fail to Create An Advantage, you get no bonus. If an enemy was Defending against this ac-
tion, they might get some extra benefits on you if they succeeded with style, see the Defend action for details.

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 • If you tie when Creating An Advantage, you get a boost. A boost can be consumed by you or an ally
for a +2 against the target (but not on other enemies). A boost expires at the end of your next turn, so all of
your allies (who aren’t incapacitated somehow) will have a chance to use the boost between the end of your
current turn and the start of your next, and you will have a chance to use the boost during your next turn,
but after that, it’s gone. Unlike sturdier buffs, you have to use it or lose it. If you are Creating An Advantage
outside of conflict, there is not a strict turn order, but instead the boost must be used on whoever is making
the next roll to solve the problem you were Creating An Advantage for, even if they are also Creating An
Advantage.
• If you succeed when Creating An Advantage, you create a situation aspect. A situation aspect always
comes with a name describing it. If you Created An Advantage on an enemy, it might be a debuff, like Dis-
tracted, Flanked, or Blinded By Sand. If you Create An Advantage on yourself or an ally, they might be Inspired
By Martin’s Battlecry or Invigorated By Stolen Blood. If you Create An Advantage on an area, it might be Flooded
or Covered In Fog.

When you succeed at Creating An Advantage, not only do you create a new situation aspect, you also get a
free invoke on that aspect. This means you or an ally can, at any time while the aspect is still in effect, get a
+2 to any roll that might plausibly be assisted by the situation described in the aspect. It’s easier to attack an
enemy who is Distracted, but also to sneak past them, for example. The situation aspect only comes with one
free invoke, but once it’s gone, you can still pay for additional invokes using your Fate Points, which will be
described later. You cannot invoke the same aspect more than once for the same roll, so even if you cannot
stack the bonuses of a free invoke with a Fate Point.

Situation aspects don’t go away until the narrative justifies them going away, which usually happens either at
the end of the scene or when someone uses Create An Advantage to create a new situation aspect that overrides
the old one, for example, using magic to create Pouring Rain to put out the Raging Fire someone else had
started by smashing a lantern on a hay stack.
• When you succeed with style at Creating An Advantage, you get two free invokes on the situation as-
pect. You still cannot use the same aspect twice for the same roll, so you cannot stack the free invokes together,
but you can use them on two separate rolls before you have to resort to Fate Points.
An Overcome action is used for any of the miscellaneous things accomplished by skills, and is usually a dead sim-
ple roll against a static TN. It’s the bog standard skill check you use to roll Athletics to swim across rough waters
or to roll Lore to see if you recognize this magic sigil or whatever.
• When you fail an Overcome action, you do not do the thing you were trying to do. The GM may
offer you a devil’s bargain, a way to succeed in spite of your low roll, but at some terrible cost, and you may
propose such a bargain yourself. Regardless of who proposed the bargain, both you and the GM must accept
it. Otherwise, you just fail.
• When you tie on an Overcome action, you can choose whether to succeed at what you were trying
to do in exchange for one point of physical or mental HP, whichever is more appropriate to the task. The GM
can propose an alternative bargain, but unlike with failure, you always have the option of succeeding at the
cost of 1 HP (although the GM does have the last word on what kind of HP, but it’s usually obvious from
context which it should be).
• When you succeed at an Overcome action, you do the thing you were trying to do at no cost.
• When you succeed with style at an Overcome action, you not only do what you were trying to do,
you get a boost. This boost gives you or an ally a +2 on the next roll that might reasonably be influenced by
having done an extremely good job at the thing you were attempting with the Overcome action. If you can’t
think of any other way a thorough success might help on a future roll, it can be a +2 to the next roll you make
purely because your character is full of self-confidence after their success. If no one has used the boost by the
end of the scene, it expires.
This is a little bit more loose than the rules for a boost in conflict, and note that if you are actually in conflict, the
rules for that do still apply: You must use the boost before the end of your next turn.
Sometimes you’ll succeed with style on an Overcome action that ends the scene and the boost will expire immedi-
ately. Hopefully the GM will be a good sport about describing how cool you look doing the thing, but there’s no
mechanical effect. C’est la vie.

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Fate Points
Using Fate Points As A Player
Fate Points can be spent to get a +2 on a roll or to reroll completely. You usually want the +2, but if you get -3 or
-4 on the dice, the reroll is usually better. Regardless of whether you’re spending a Fate Point for a +2 bonus or to
reroll, you can only spend a Fate Point by invoking an aspect, which means justifying why that aspect is helping
your character succeed.
Any kind of aspect can be invoked by spending a Fate Point, including situation aspects, character aspects,
consequences, or anything else. There is almost always an aspect available to use, so the main limiter on your
ability to invoke aspects is almost always your finite supply of Fate Points, not your ability to find an appropriate
aspect. Finding an appropriate aspect instead serves as a creative prompt to describe how your character uses the
environment, their special equipment, or their unique background and skills to get an edge.
If you have Fate Points but someone else doesn’t, you can pay a Fate Point to invoke an aspect on someone else’s
behalf. This is especially true for situation aspects representing environmental affects, or temporary buffs that
have been applied to the character but run out of free invokes. If Gareth is out of Fate Points but is still in a zone
Covered By Fog, then Alistair’s player might spend a Fate Point to invoke that aspect to give Gareth +2 on a roll to
Defend against ranged attacks. Alistair the character had nothing to do with it, but the fog could still plausibly
make Gareth harder to hit - Alistair was just providing the Fate Point.

Acquiring Fate Points Through Refresh

Every player character starts with a number of Fate Points equal to their refresh. For example, a character with
3 refresh (the standard for new characters) starts the game with 3 Fate Points, and will be reset to 3 Fate Points
every time they trigger their refresh. This usually means regaining Fate Points up to 3, but if you’d stockpiled
extra Fate Points, you lose them when refresh is triggered. A lot of special character powers are also usable once per
refresh or when you refresh, which refers to when refresh is triggered. Triggering refresh varies based on game, but
the most common ways to refresh are:
• Whenever you take a week-long rest,
• At the start of each new quest or scenario, or
• At the start of each session.
A campaign will almost always have only one refresh trigger, not all three. I recommend the week-long rest by
default, because it means players with no Fate Points will want to find a place to stop and recuperate, which
helps align them with their characters, who’re running low (or out) of heroic effort and cunning. It’s important
to note here that a week-long rest doesn’t usually mean sitting in bed all day for seven days straight (although if a
character is seriously mangled, it might actually mean that), but is more like taking a week off of work for a stay-
at-home vacation. Extroverted characters might even be drinking and partying during this time.

Acquiring Fate Points Through Trouble

If you’re running low or are entirely out of Fate Points and you want to have more going into a finale, you can
try and get Fate Points by getting into trouble. Any aspect, whether situation aspects that arise in play, character
aspects generated during character creation, consequences received as a result of conflict, or anything else, can
potentially be compelled. A compel is when the story is moved automatically in a different direction as a result of
an aspect in such a way as to be bad for the character being compelled. Usually this is when a character’s character
aspects, which describe their personality, backstory, special skills, and so on, are being used to compel them to do
something disadvantageous.
This is different from having an aspect invoked against you. When an aspect is invoked against you, it refers to
a character aspect (something permanently attached to your character) which someone else pays a Fate Point to
invoke and then gets a +2 bonus to use against you. If you have a character aspect like Deadly Vampire Swordfight-
er, and it’s been established that vampires are weakened but not destroyed by sunlight, then the GM might invoke
that aspect against you by paying a Fate Point to get a +2 to attack you while you’re in direct sunlight.

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A compel, on the other hand, alters the story in a way that is bad for you, giving you a Fate Point in exchange. A
compel must always be agreed upon by the GM and the player being compelled. For example, if the GM wanted
to compel the Deadly Vampire Swordfighter aspect, they might propose that the sun will rise on a scene that had
otherwise been night time, giving them the opportunity to invoke that aspect against the vampire in the future,
or they might propose the vampire be overcome by thirst and be driven to feed at an inopportune time. If you
are a well-traveled bard who’s Welcome In Every Tavern, you might be recognized by a fan in the evil Baron’s guard
while you’re trying to sneak in, one who isn’t willing to let you break into the place just because they like your
music. The player can refuse the compel and get nothing, or they can accept the compel for a Fate Point.
Only the player being compelled and the GM have to agree on a compel, but anyone can propose one. If you’re
low on Fate Points as a player, or if you want to stock up early on while the stakes are low, look for ways you can
offer a compel to the GM.
You can also ask for a Fate Point in retrospect if you realize after the fact that you’ve done something that was
inconvenient because it was the in-character thing to do and you’ve got an aspect saying so, or if you’ve been
inconvenienced by one of your aspects in such a way as wouldn’t have happened to someone who didn’t have that
aspect. The GM isn’t required to agree to a compel-in-retrospect like this, but it’s usually pretty clean-cut.

Refusing Compels Works Differently And That Is Intentional

FATE Core seems to assume some kind of PvP, with rules to guard against players being able to propose compels
against each other for the purpose of draining each other’s Fate Points. I don’t know why draining each other’s
Fate Points is a thing that a normal, healthy player would want to do. The way FATE Core runs compels also
allows the GM to force a character to act against the player’s wishes if the player is out of Fate Points to resist
compels with, which makes it very dangerous to run out of Fate Points. This version of the rules instead assumes
that players will mainly be looking for a chance to compel themselves in order to get Fate Points out of the deal,
which I find encourages them to build characters with troublesome aspects that can be used to get Fate Points out
of a wide variety of situations, rather than trying to minimize the extent to which their character aspects might
be used against them by the GM.
This is based on my experiences with Fate, and I would be very surprised if the original rules were not based on
Evil Hat’s experiences playtesting Fate, so you might find the original compel rules (or some third set) work better
for your table.

Using Fate Points As A GM

As the GM, you get a number of Fate Points equal to the number of players in every scene. Your NPCs can use
these to invoke aspects (situation aspects, their own character aspects, invoking player character aspects against
them, whatever) just like players do. Unless all your players have reduced their refresh down to 1 (presumably
buying stunts, see Character Creation for details), they will start with quite a bit more Fate Points than you, but
yours refresh every single scene. Don’t be afraid to toss out Fate Points with the goal of forcing players to counter
with Fate Points of their own. Players low on Fate Points are more eager to find and accept compels, which helps
make things exciting and escalates the danger without you having to do anything directly.

Choose Your Fate: Session Zero

Fate works best with a session zero in which the players and GM hash out what the game is going to be like, with
the expectation that this will take an entire game session. This is true of a lot of RPGs, but it’s especially true of
Fate, because the GM has a game creation process that is parallel to character creation, and while it’s possible for
the players and GM to create their characters/game blind without consulting one another, things tend to mesh
much, much better if these things are decided collectively.

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Game Creation
Scope
A major reason to hash out a game in session zero is because this allows you to choose your scope as a group.
This has no direct mechanical implications, but a GM who came with issues, faces, and places scattered across
an entire continent is going to disappoint players who tied half their character aspects to a single city. Your scope
might be one city, a single kingdom, an entire continent, or a multi-planar cosmos. Not all of these scopes will be
appropriate to all genres - a western can take place in a single town or be an odyssey spanning Texas to California,
but it probably doesn’t involve other planets or dimensions (you could make a space western or a weird western or
something, but then you wouldn’t just call it “a western” and leave it at that).

Issues
The GM is going to want to make at least one, usually two, and no more than three major issues to begin with.
These are the plot threads that players are expected to interact with the most, either an ongoing state of affairs
that is bad, like Tyrannical Rule of the Inquisition, or else something bad that is threatening to happen, like
Invading Armies of the Inquisition. Those examples are pretty up front about exactly who the villains are, but if
your campaign has a mystery element, one of your issues might be Mauled Bodies Down By The Docks, which
then evolves into Serial Killer Stalking The Streets, and then Aristocratic Blood Cult as the players uncover more and
more of what’s behind the initial issue.
As the italics imply, the major issues are aspects, just like character aspects and situation aspects and so forth. This
means you can pay Fate Points to invoke them, and players can receive a Fate Point for accepting a compel in
which one of these issues intrudes upon the current session in an unpleasant way.
The GM has final say over the issues the same way that players have final say over their character aspects, but it’s
particularly important to be collaborative about the major issues of the game because they come up a lot (not so
often invoked or compelled, but they do a lot to set the opposition of the game).

Faces and Places

Faces and places are important characters or locations implied by the setting’s major issues and the character
aspects the characters come up with (see Character Creation below). Yet another reason why session zero is a good
idea in Fate is that you want faces and places informed by both.
There’s no specific number of faces and places you should write down before the end of the session, but try to put
a name and a face to as much conflict as possible, and to establish a couple of different locations for use as back-
drops for that conflict. Antagonistic organizations implied by your issues can have leaders or champions, locations
can be controlled by them, threatened by them, or safe from them (for now…). Character aspects might suggest
rivals, allies, home towns, or hostile territories. Write them down as your faces and places.
Don’t worry about how fleshed out they are (in particular, don’t be afraid to write down “Alistair’s old neighbor-
hood” or “Gareth’s swordfighting rival” or other working names), just get some building blocks of a shared setting
down. Ideally you want all of these faces and places to have both a name and an aspect describing them, but it’s
fine to leave them half-finished and it’s fine if some of them end up withering in play as they turn out to be less
engaging in practice than they seemed in concept.

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Character Creation
Fate characters have three main components: Skills, stunts, and aspects. This section is generic, to be reprinted
in every book that needs it, so it doesn’t have a list of any of those things, but you’ll find specific lists later on in
other parts of the book.

Skills
Your specific list of skills will vary based on your genre or setting (unless something’s gone terribly wrong, there’s
going to be a skills section somewhere else in this book that gives you the list), but there’s about 18 of them and
you start with a skill pyramid: Four skills at +1, three skills at +2, two skills at +3, and a capstone at +4.
It’s also possible to start with a low-powered game where your capstone is +3, which means you only get two skills
at +2 and three at +1. While even a +1 is enough to represent basic competence, +0 skills are outright weaknesses,
and any given character under this model starts with twelve skills at +0. Likewise, while +1 is enough for basic
competence, it takes +3 for a skill to be reliably good, and the low-power pyramid gives you only one of those,
so you have exactly one way of interacting with the world and story in a reasonably reliably effective way. The
low-power pyramid borders on mook tier, so use with caution.
Alternatively, you can have a high-power game where your capstone is +5, which means you have two skills at +4,
three at +3, four at +2, and five at +1, leaving only three skills at the default +0 mediocre rating. This is a good
pyramid for one shots or very small parties (two or even one players - one player and one GM is very doable in
Fate!), because individual characters have almost no serious weaknesses and reliable competence in a full third of
the skill list.
This also affects the starting skill cap, which is big for an extended campaign. Getting a second skill up to the
capstone level (i.e. +4 on the standard pyramid) is going to take a couple of sessions, but it’s relatively easy. Get-
ting a skill to above the starting capstone (i.e. +5 on the standard pyramid) requires a Major Milestone, which are
significantly more rare. See the Character Advancement section for details.
It may also be worth considering campaign length. Every time you finish a scenario/quest/episode/whatever you’re
calling it, you can increase a skill by one point. This means the height of your starting pyramid also determines
at what point your skills are maxed out. It takes just shy of 30 sessions to go from the +5 pyramid to a maxed
out character sheet (the point at which it is impossible to increase skills any further, although due to the way in-
creasing skills works, this means you’ll still have skills at +1, +2, etc.). A standard +4 pyramid has over 40, and the
low-power +3 pyramid over 50. A little under 30 is still quite a lot, so it’s usually not a major consideration, but
if you plan on a very long campaign, it’s worth considering a lower pyramid (particularly if you were considering
the +5 pyramid, a +4 may be more conducive to a longer campaign).
When in doubt, use the +4. It’s standard for a reason.
Stunts
Stunts are cool powers and abilities that your character has, with a specific mechanical effect. They are the
crunchy bits of your character that take the character aspect Necromancer’s Apprentice and turn it into “Reani-
mate: Roll Necromancy and reanimate a number of skeletal or zombie minions equal to the result” (and the full
Reanimate stunt has a lot more detail on what your skeletal and zombie minions can actually do, and how to
reanimate ghouls).
You begin the game with three stunts and three refresh, which resets you to three Fate Points every time you
trigger your refresh. You can decrease your refresh by one to buy a fourth stunt, or by two to buy a fifth stunt, but
your refresh can never be zero.
In Multiverse, stunts usually have aspect prerequisites. You don’t have to phrase the prerequisite aspect in the
exact same way, and you can rephrase an aspect to qualify for two or more stunt pools at once (Orc Raider), or to
get the aspect pulling double duty to associate with a specific organization or another player character or similar
(Marcy And I Studied Runes Together). If you get to stunts and have blank aspects left, you might fill in a blank
with an eye towards qualifying for stunts. On the other hand, if you’ve already got a full set of aspects you like,
but you want to qualify for more stunts, you can try to rewrite an existing aspect so that it qualifies you for stunts.
Some stunt pools are also sorted into classes. A class, in addition to having an aspect prerequisite, will usually have
an associated class skill. This is a special skill whose primary function is that it gets rolled for lots of stunts. Like
the Necromancy example above, while it might have some niche use as a skill unto itself (presumably you know a
lot about interring and preserving the dead, and what different types of undead do), its main purpose is that you
can use it for Necromancer stunts like Reanimate, Necrotic Curse, and Poltergeist.

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Aspects
Character aspects are aspects that can be invoked or compelled. Unlike situation aspects, they don’t expire at
the end of a scene or get changed with a skill check. They follow your character around, change rarely, and when
you’re looking for an aspect to invoke to save you from a bad roll, your character aspects are usually where you’ll
find them.
All player characters have at least three aspects, preferably five. The first is the high concept. The high concept has
special mechanical protection: It is particularly hard to change, and having your high concept changed against
your will is usually equivalent to character death from a storytelling perspective (from an in-universe perspective,
the character is technically alive, but so radically changed as to be unrecognizable - like being mutated beyond
physical or mental recognition). Your high concept is the core of your character, the phrase you use to describe
them to other people. You’re a Deadly Gunslinger, The Clockwork City’s Most Brilliant Golemist, or a Necromancer
Driven Mad By Grief. If you’re stuck for a high concept, then your high concept is probably a race/class combo
like Elven Ranger or something.
The second aspect of a player character is their trouble. There’s nothing mechanically special about the trouble,
it works just like any other aspect in terms of nuts and bolts, but its main purpose is to be compelled. With the
high concept and the three regular character aspects, you tend to gravitate towards cool stuff your character has
done and can do. With the trouble, focus on your character’s flaws, and in particular on things you can do to get
Fate Points. A compel has to cause trouble, and it has to be a kind of trouble your GM agrees to give you a Fate
Point for, so it’s best to have a trouble like Quick Temper, More Magic Than Sense, or How Hard Could It Be? which
make for easy drama. If the GM offers you a compel on your easily-compelled aspect that you don’t want to take,
you can just say no, so there’s no point in being cautious.
A trouble doesn’t have to be a character flaw necessarily, just something that’s easy to compel. You know all those
things people stereotypically avoid putting in their backstories for fear that the GM will use them against you? In
Fate, that’s your trouble and you get Fate Points if the GM targets it. I Love My Wife And Kids, I’ll Do Anything
For The Old Rogue Who Raised Me, My Home Town Is Intact.
The remaining three character aspects have no specific type. They can be anything that fleshes out your character
further. If you have a specific ancestry or class or other stunt set you want to qualify for and your high concept
doesn’t cover it, character aspects are a good place to put those: Weekend Alchemist, Five Years Ago I Fell In The
Lethe, I Was A Cavalier In The War.
It’s usually best to make sure everyone in the party knows at least one other person in the party, and that there is
a complete network connecting everyone, so that there’s no awkward question around why three to six strangers
suddenly become an inseparable adventuring party after one bar fight, and you can use aspects like Gareth And I
Fought The Mithril Wars Together. You can also use aspects to give your character affiliations with greater organi-
zations (organizations which, since we’re still in session zero, you might propose to the group specifically for the
purpose of incorporating them into an aspect).
If you’re still having trouble getting up to a full set of five character aspects, you can leave two of them blank,
starting with just your high concept, your trouble, and a single ordinary character aspect, and fill in the other
two as you go. You can swap an aspect at the end of every session (as explained in the Character Advancement
section), and while that normally doesn’t see much use, it means you can fill in blank character aspects later. With
the GM’s permission, you can fill in a blank character aspect mid-session, as soon as you think of something
(even if it’s purely to give yourself something to invoke a Fate Point for - you only get two blank aspects, so it’s
not like you’ll break the game doing this).

11
Fated to Battle: Contests and Conflicts
There are three ways of acting in opposition to someone else in Fate. The first is a simple opposed roll, where the
TN for an action is set by the result of a different action. This doesn’t merit much description, the highest roll
wins. The other two, more complex means of opposition are contests and conflicts.

Contests
Contests happen when two or more teams are in opposition to one another, the competition is narratively
important enough to be worth more than one roll, but no one is trying to harm one another directly. The most
obvious contest is the race: The racers are all competing against each other, but nobody is shooting at each other.
Contests are broken down into exchanges. In each exchange, the contestants each make a roll on an appropriate
skill (in the case of the race, it might be Athletics or Drive/Ride). The highest roll wins the exchange and marks
one success. If the highest roll is three or more shifts higher than the nearest competitor, they succeed with style
and mark two successes. The best length for a contest is usually first to three successes, which is long enough to
build tension but not so long that it starts to drag.
A contest is ultimately just several opposed rolls duct-taped together, so if something is narratively important
enough to run longer than a three-success contest would last, it’s usually better to build out a more specific system
for it. In the race example, you might make a specific track, with different zones of the track having different floor
TNs and bad side effects if you don’t hit the floor TN, like damaging your vehicle or getting a Stuck In The Mud
aspect with a free invoke that your rivals can use against you in the next exchange. You might further detail the
racing system with rules for modifying vehicles or training mounts, interfering with other racers, writing special
rules for how success with style might move you ahead of the pack over and above giving the usual boost for
succeeding with style on an Overcome roll, and so forth.
But if you only expect the campaign to have one race, or if you need a system for racing right now because your
players took a sudden interest in it after you off-handedly mentioned the existence of dinosaur racing while mak-
ing up background detail and of course the party immediately jumped on that detail and now want to participate,
contests are a readymade system for any kind of confrontation that doesn’t involve direct attacks.

Conflicts
Conflicts are for when two or more teams are in opposition to one another and they are making direct attacks on
each other. Fate has both physical and mental HP, and its conflict rules cover both physical and mental battles.
Mental conflicts aren’t merely debates or games of strategy like Chess (that would be a contest), but conflicts in
which the goal is to inflict mental damage, often with rumor-mongering, intimidation, or the direct hurling of
insults. Rapport and Deceive are (barring stunts) never used to make mental Attacks, only Provoke.
Before a conflict begins, the GM sets the stage. This mostly involves sorting out who is involved in the conflict
and whether or not they’re in the same zone (the answer is usually “yes”), which is explored further in the section
on Positioning. The GM can also establish any number of situation aspects representing cool parts of the envi-
ronment that characters might interact with. These aspects do not come with free invokes, but they say to players
“hey, if you’re gonna spend a Fate Point, why not spend it cutting down this Precariously Positioned Chandelier or
doing a backflip off of this Balcony Overseeing the Ballroom Floor?” And if the players don’t take up the offer, the
GM can spend their own Fate Points on it.
A conflict proceeds in a series of rounds. During each round, everyone in the conflict takes turns based on their
initiative, which is set based on their Notice skill, with the highest going first. Ties are broken by Athletics. On
each character’s turn, they can take one action (i.e. Attack, Defend, Overcome, or Create An Advantage). Combat
continues until only one side is left, whether the other side has fled the scene, Conceded, or been Taken Out (see
Harm and Healing for details on what these terms mean - in short, running out of HP is bad).

12
Changing Fate: Positioning
Fate conflicts take place in zones, large-ish regions that can hold a full melee unto themselves. At the start of a
conflict, usually all characters will be in the same zone, and additional zones are defined as necessary if characters
try to move into different locations. For example, a ranged character might want to retreat to another zone to
avoid being pulled into a melee, or one side might try to retreat to a chokepoint to prevent their front line from
being overwhelmed by numbers.
The characters in a zone don’t have exact grid positions relative to one another, but they can form a front line
for melee characters, a reach line for characters with reach weapons, and a back line for characters with ranged
weapons or who are staying out of the fight altogether. Each side has a separate reach line and back line. The front
line is effectively the same location in terms of game mechanics, however when lining your minis up on a table or
your tokens up on a VTT, it is usually best to still separate them out into two different front lines, because that
makes it easier to keep track of which side is outnumbered and by how much.
Characters on the front line can fight other characters on the front line with any weapon and can fight characters
on the enemy reach line with a reach weapon. You can fight with a ranged weapon in the front line, but enemies
always get a boost when defending against you (even if they’re in the enemy back line or a different zone entirely),
giving them +2 to their Defend roll. Each side has a frontage on the front line, which is, by default, the number
of characters they have on the front line. If you have three characters on the front line, you have three frontage.
Some stunts give you extra frontage, and a zone might have a maximum frontage, putting a cap on the number of
characters each side can put on the front line and turning it into a chokepoint.
You can ignore the enemy front line as long as your side already has twice as many characters on the front line as
the enemy. If you ignore the front line to make melee (not reach) attacks against an enemy on the reach line, the
target is moved from the reach line to the front line. If you don’t have enough allies on the front line to ignore it,
you cannot target enemies in the reach or back lines with melee attacks.
Characters on the reach line can attack characters in the front line or the enemy reach line as long as they have a
reach weapon, and if you don’t have a reach weapon you can’t be on the reach line (situations where you would
want to be are so niche and the rules for explaining how it would work are so complicated that it’s better to just
say you can’t be on the reach line without a reach weapon). You can’t move to the enemy reach line the way you
can move to the shared front line, so it’s impossible to have them outnumbered on it, however you can ignore
the enemy reach line if it’s totally empty, including if you’ve overwhelmed the front line and then dragged all the
enemies on the reach line to the front line. If the enemy reach line is empty, you can target enemies in the back
line in melee, dragging them into the front line.
Characters on the back line can’t make melee attacks even with reach weapons, but they can make ranged attacks
against the enemy back line, reach line, and into the front line (characters aren’t literally lined up in rows like
a JRPG from 1998, so back “line” characters can actually be climbing up to vantage points and getting on the
flanks to get a good line of sight on enemies in the melee).
If you want to move to a different zone (perhaps the one you’re in is being targeted by AoE attacks, or has some
nasty ongoing effect in it, or the enemy is making ranged attacks on you from an adjacent zone and you’d rather
fight in melee), you can usually move to any adjacent zone in addition to your action for the turn. If you want
to move multiple zones, or if the zone you’re moving to has a special effect making it hard to get into, you will
have to make an Overcome roll, usually with Athletics. Being an action (specifically, the Overcome action), this
takes your turn. For example, maybe the balcony overlooks the courtyard, and getting from the balcony to the
courtyard risks damage but always works, but getting from the courtyard to the balcony requires an Overcome
check rolled with Athletics.
The default TN for moving two or more zones is the number of zones you’re moving through, and if you succeed
with style on the check, you can take another action when you arrive, as long as it does not involve moving again.

13
 Grid-Based Positioning
If you want to play Fate with grid-based positioning, you can! Like, you can just do that, and for all that people
react with amazement when I tell them I can convert Fate to work with grid-based combat, it is actually so
simple that I struggle to articulate how you do it. Like, you move around on the grid, and you can make melee
attacks against creatures who are adjacent to you, and you can make ranged attacks if you have line of sight, and
reach weapons can attack enemies a certain limited number of squares away, usually 2. Y’know. Grid combat.
We all know how this works.
Potentially you are concerned about how many squares characters should move in the game. The number of
squares characters should move is more to do with the size of the map than the game mechanics, and map mak-
ers the world over have been using characters with six squares of movement as their default for decades now, so
use six squares as the default. You can, if you want, have character movement be something like 4 + Athletics, or
add penalties from wearing heavier armor. But if you are using grid-based combat, it’s probably because you are
coming from D&D, so you are overwhelmingly likely to use the same movement speeds as in D&D even if you’ve
sworn off buying new D&D books, because you already have the common movement speeds memorized.

Changing Fate: Harm, Healing, and Armor

Harm
Characters have physical and mental HP. Both physical and mental HP start at 3 and can be raised with Physique
(for physical) and Will (for mental). When a character takes damage from a successful Attack, they lose HP of
the appropriate type (usually mental HP from Provoke or physical HP from Fight or Shoot, but stunts can make
things go screwy). If a character’s HP would be reduced to 0 by an attack, they must take a consequence to get
themselves back into the positives. Characters can have three consequences, one mild, one moderate, and one
severe. A mild consequence gives them 2 HP, a moderate consequence gives them 4 HP, and a severe consequence
gives them 6 HP. This can take a character above their starting HP, which can be as low as 3 (and is 3 for a lot of
characters). Consequences are shared between both HP bars, and you can use the extra HP from consequences in
either HP bar or split them up between both of them.
However, consequences are also aspects, and they’re things like Bruised and Battered or Cracked Ribs that are much
easier for your enemies to spend Fate Points on than for you. More importantly (since, after all, it’s usually pretty
easy to find something to spend Fate Points on so long as you’ve got some), every consequence inflicted comes
with one free invoke automatically. You can take any number of consequences in a single hit, so theoretically
you could take your mild, moderate, and serious consequence all on your first hit and immediately gain 12 HP.
It’s just not a good idea, because then you immediately give your enemies three free invokes on three different
aspects, which means they can stack all of them onto one Attack roll, and all you’ve gotten in return is a bunch of
HP…which you could’ve gotten out of your consequences one at a time whenever you needed it without opening
yourself up to a turbo attack.
If your HP is reduced to 0 or less and you have no consequences left to lose, you are Taken Out. A character who
is Taken Out is removed from the scene and is probably not going to have a good time in the next one. The GM
can decide what happens to your character when they are Taken Out. Maybe you’ve been captured, or your repu-
tation in court is completely ruined. It’s generally expected that the GM would like to put your character in some
desperate situation where they have to escape an enemy dungeon armed only with a rusty prison bar they pried
from the window of their cell, rather than killing them outright, but the GM can kill them if they decide that’s
the only reasonable way this could play out (whether because the final blow against you involved falling into lava
or just because the victorious enemies are ruthless and thorough).
There’s a way to guard against being Taken Out, however: Any time you take a blow that does not result in you
being Taken Out, you can immediately concede. Conceding doesn’t stop you from taking any of the damage from
the blow, but it does allow you to immediately exit the scene with no further harm. Your character runs away, or
is knocked unconscious and mistaken for dead, or whatever.

14
Conceding means the other team is going to win the confrontation and get what they want, kidnapping the
prince you were supposed to protect, or burning down the village you were defending, or forcing the village
blacksmith to pay the ransom on the kids they’d taken hostage and which you were supposed to be rescuing. By
the time you’ve come to, your enemies have achieved their goal. However, once you concede, you are protected
by game rules and narrative law from taking any further personal harm. Enemies are forbidden from looting
your unconscious body or taking parting shots as you run away (successfully, at least, the GM can describe them
shooting and missing if they want, but you wouldn’t roll dice for it - once you’ve conceded, further attacks fail
automatically).
Sides don’t have to concede all at once, and in fact, they usually can’t, since you can only concede when your
character in particular has suffered damage, and most attacks are single target. If your character concedes, others
in your party may fight on, and if they win, your enemies are thwarted even though you conceded. It’s only once
all members of one side or another have either conceded or been Taken Out that the fight is over. Once you’ve
conceded, however, you can’t back out of it - you’re out of the scene, even if the rest of your party is still fighting
(it’s usually best to talk to the other players about conceding before you do it so that you don’t spend 30 minutes
twiddling your thumbs).

Why Not Stress Boxes?

Characters in Fate Core don’t have HP, they have stress boxes, which serve a similar broad function but which
are mechanically different. Partly the reason for this switch is because stress boxes are hard to explain or represent
on a VTT token out-of-the-box. Evil Hat themselves switched over to an HP bar for Fate Condensed, presum-
ably because the shorter explanation helped with condensing things.
But also, the fantasy genre in particular is rooted in no small part in Lord of the Rings, first the books and later
the films. LotR is a story about an epic journey and the attrition it causes over time, very slowly wearing its pro-
tagonists down with fatigue and despair, while only inflicting serious injuries on them very irregularly. The use
of HP, and in particular of pushing automatic HP recovery from every scene to only when refresh is triggered, is
not intended as a broad break from Fate mechanics for all genres, but as a genre-specific alteration for purposes
of this specific book.
Similarly, the odd way that armor works is driven purely by the tropes of the fantasy genre specifically, and is not
recommended for most others. In fantasy, it’s expected that wearing full plate armor will make you noticeably
harder to kill than the same character wearing a tunic and breeches. This means that the effects of armor had
to be tied into Fate’s method of making characters more durable, the Physique skill. This same system works well
for any genre where some of the characters are expected to seek out and wear heavy armor, like knights or space
marines, but if you are seeking to mod Fate on your own, I absolutely do not recommend using this armor-and-
HP system for genres like westerns or most sci-fi and space opera (excepting those sci-fi/space opera where space
marines are expected to wear pauldrons so big they have different postal codes from one another).

15
Will, Physique, and Armor
You can have additional HP by increasing your Will and Physique. In fact, you can have quite a bit of additional
HP. If you have +1 Will, you gain +1 mental HP, for 4 total, if you have +2 Will, you gain 2 additional mental
HP on top of that, for 6 total, and so on, up to a total of 18 mental HP at +5. Once you are at +5, the additional
HP tapers off to 1 HP per extra Will point, so you have 19 mental HP at +6 and 21 mental HP at +8. This is
listed in the chart below.
Physique works slightly differently. You get +1 physical HP for each level of Physique, period, which means at
+5 you have 8 HP. However, each level of Physique from 2 to 5 allows you to wear heavier armor. Light armor,
available at +2 Physique, gives you 1 physical HP, medium armor is available at +3 and gives you 3 physical HP,
heavy armor is available at +4 and gives you 6 HP, and superheavy armor is available at +5 and gives you 10 HP.
This means that a character wearing the heaviest possible armor is exactly as durable physically as a character with
equivalent Will is mentally. Since characters are almost always wearing the heaviest armor they can in combat,
this means physical and mental HP work the exact same way in practice, unless a character is in the unusual situ-
ation of being forced to fight without their armor. In that case, their physical HP will be equal to the Unarmored
HP column of the table, not the Total HP column.
Will/Physique Total HP Unarmored HP Armor
0 3 3 None (0 HP)
1 4 4 None (0 HP)
2 6 5 Light (1 HP)
3 9 6 Medium (3 HP)
4 13 7 Heavy (6 HP)
5 18 8 Superheavy (10 HP)
6 19 9 Superheavy (10 HP)
7 20 10 Superheavy (10 HP)
8 21 11 Superheavy (10 HP)

If you have an aspect justifying it, you might instead have natural armor. Natural armor gives you the same total
HP that you’d get wearing the heaviest armor your Physique allows. For example, if you are a Physique 3 drag-
on-y sort of fellow, you have 9 HP in or out of armor. Maybe you’re a barbarian type and walk around shirtless
everywhere but have done so many push-ups that you nevertheless can absorb blows as though you were wearing
chainmail - stranger things have happened in fantasy. You can’t stack natural armor and worn armor, but natural
armor is of such minimal help that you don’t need to burn a stunt on it as long as you’ve got an aspect justifying
it, because the reality is that adventurers who use worn armor are almost never caught without it in a fight.

Healing
There are a number of stunts that can stretch your HP and consequences further, but the only automatic recovery
is refresh. In order to heal a consequence, you must rest a number of weeks equal to one less than the amount
of HP the consequence gives by default (effects which increase the HP given by consequences do not increase
recovery time automatically). This means healing a mild consequence takes 1 week for bruises to fade, healing a
moderate consequence takes 3 weeks for cuts and burns to heal, and healing a severe consequence takes 5 weeks
for broken bones to set. Your HP is always restored to maximum after 1 week’s rest.

16
 Alternative Healing
The healing system presented above assumes that you care whether or not the party has to hole up in a safe
stronghold for one week or five before moving on. Presumably, the enemy is moving armies around or the cult
will summon their terrible god when the stars are right or something. An alternative method is to use the Lore
skill as a medical skill and make rolls with it to heal every time you refresh. The TN for the healing is equal to
the HP given by the consequence you’re trying to heal: 2 for mild, 4 for moderate, and 6 for severe. This gener-
ally causes wounds to heal faster, although that depends on whether the party has a high Lore skill or not, and it
is, in any case, possible to go a very long time without healing a consequence, especially a severe one, as TN 6 is
nothing to mess around with.

Changing Fate: Fighting Crowds

Crowds are formed of some number of mooks with 1 HP and a relevant +1 skill. Enemies with more than 1 HP
or who are using a skill at +2 or higher can’t join crowds. The effective skill of a crowd goes up as its size increases
triangularly: “Crowds” of 1 or 2 still have +1 and are not crowds, crowds of 3-5 have +2, and crowds of 6-9
have +3. Crowds aren’t allowed to have ten units or more in them, so they can never reach +4. When a crowd is
targeted with an attack, each shift of that attack defeats one mook. So, mooks join crowds to increase their attack
bonus, but as a tradeoff, one attack can now defeat several of them if it gets enough shifts. Exactly how many
mooks should join a crowd versus remain independent is an optimization problem, but don’t worry about it, just
have mooks form crowds whenever possible because that is a much more fun option and is plausibly better than
the alternative.
Just like fighting crowds one unit at a time, these crowds are much more dangerous at the beginning when there
are many of them, and they get much easier to manage and much less threatening as they thin out, but being one
crowd whose skill level decreases as it takes damage makes it much easier to manage.

Better Crowds
Unlike other rule changes in this document, it’s not genre-specific - I think combining Fate Core’s Teamwork
rules and their mob rules is just a good idea. Under original Fate Core rules, mooks joining a mob has no effect
except to make them more vulnerable. The GM does it anyway because they don’t want to spend four rounds
winnowing down a mob of goblins any more than the players do, but in the new version of the rules, the mob
gets more effective the bigger it is, so while it might not necessarily be a good tradeoff, there’s a tradeoff at all and
it makes the mooks come across less like they’re lining themselves up for the slaughter.

17
Changing Fate: Weapons, Vulnerability, and Resistance
Damage Types
There are a total of twelve damage types. Every physical Attack has a damage type associated with it. When a
creature is immune to that damage type, they can’t take damage from that attack, no matter how many shifts of
success the Attack roll gets. When a creature is resistant to that damage type, they get an automatic boost to all
Defend rolls made against Attacks of that type, giving them a +2. If a creature is vulnerable to a damage type,
all Attacks made against them using that type get an automatic boost, giving them a +2. The amount of damage
inflicted is otherwise unaffected (i.e. a successful attack against a vulnerable creature deals two extra points of
damage because it got a +2 from the boost, but the damage is not doubled on top of that).
The damage types are split into five tiers based on their rarity, but the tiers don’t have any inherent mechanical
effect. Force damage is tier 5 because nothing in the entire world resists force damage, which makes it much more
powerful than tier 1 weapon damage, which is fairly commonly resisted. However, force damage does not do any
additional harm to creatures nor is it any harder to avoid.
Tier 1 is weapon damage. Bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing. These three damage types are extremely common,
which makes resistance against them very valuable. On the other hand, many mid-level threats have access to
some kind of poison or elemental damage, and are able to get around resistances to weapon damage.
Tier 2 is poison damage. Poison immunity is common amongst entire creature types, like constructs, undead,
fiends, and celestials. Poison damage is also very common amongst monsters and adventurers can usually get
access to it by slathering green goo on a longsword. Poison damage is the easiest way to get around resistances to
weapon damage, but it’s also a relatively common immunity.
Tier 3 is elemental damage. Acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder. These generally occur naturally only in
mid-level threats with an elemental theme, and on Team Adventurer they are usually the domain of casters. Even
amongst the mid-level threats, it’s rare for something to resist all five of these, so being able to deal damage in all
five elements will usually allow you to get around any resistance or immunity.
Tier 4 is spirit damage. Necrotic and radiant. Necrotic is dealt and resisted (or immune’d)
almost exclusively by undead, and radiant by celestials. You will generally be aligned
with one, which means the other is only going to appear as your enemy, and
creatures that deal/resist that damage type run the gamut from low-level
mooks to high-level iconic antagonists. If you are Team Blue, radiant
damage is more powerful by virtue of the fact that none of your ene-
mies resist it, and if you can get a teammate with necrotic resistance,
that’s useful because it’s a damage type dealt by ghouls and
liches and which people on your team usually don’t resist.
If you are Team Red, necrotic damage is likewise your
friend, and radiant resistance is precious because you
don’t usually get it but your enemies have ready access
to radiant damage.
Tier 5 is force damage. Nothing ever resists force
damage.

18
Damage Caps
Any weapon that increases damage is basically a stunt, and is therefore worth a point of refresh, the thing that
only gets handed out at the end of a plot arc. Straight damage increases are extremely valuable. Likewise, armor
that provides +2 to Athletics when defending against physical attacks is basically a stunt (there are stunts that do
exactly that), and is equally hyper-valuable. You can have weapons and armor that do this, but they’d be big-deal
magic artifacts with names and probably a backstory or something. A sword with +1 damage is not like a +1
sword in D&D, it’s Excalibur.
Luckily, there’s a less drastic toggle: Damage ceilings. While proper military-grade field weapons like arming
swords and halberds do not have damage ceilings, weaker weapons have a maximum amount of damage they can
deal with any one Attack.
Weapons with a damage ceiling of 1 would generally be things that you’d require a ton of effort to kill someone
with, even if it’s hypothetically possible, including bare fists, improvised weapons like a chair leg, and weapons
that are basically a stick like a quarterstaff or club. Being unable to ever do more than one damage on an attack
strongly encourages you to fight with anything else.
Weapons with a damage ceiling of 2 are things which are clearly and quickly lethal but not military grade, like
a dagger, short sword, hatchet, or throwing knife. These weapons are more or less fit for purpose, especially in a
pinch, but if you use them as a primary armament, you will frequently be confronted with their limitations.
Weapons with a damage ceiling of 3 are military-grade weapons that are, for some reason, kind of shoddy, like an
old notched arming sword or a rusty great axe. It’s possible to succeed with style using these. They kill people and
that’s what matters, but you will probably notice their inadequacy now and then. They’re good enough that you
might be tempted to hang onto them indefinitely, but sooner or later they’ll deprive you of a 4+ hit. “I knew I
should’ve replaced this dinged up old piece of junk!”
Weapons with a damage ceiling of 4 probably don’t need to exist, as a damage ceiling this high is unlikely to ever
come up. A weapon whose only limitation is to kill the buzz when you get a 5+ damage hit on a foe basically
exists exclusively to ruin a cool moment.
The default is that everyone has uncapped damage because everyone is wielding a properly maintained military
grade weapon. Regular old swords and spears are uncapped, so even NPC mooks rarely have to worry about this,
and while the party Necromancer’s primary weapon might hypothetically be a ritual dagger with a damage ceiling
of 2, that’s because they usually have better things to do with their turn than attack with it. Anyone expected
to make physical attacks as a staple of their combat performance, whether that’s the Assassin or Hunter with
longbows, the Chaos or Rune Knights with their demonic/runic blades, or the Reaver with an axe and shield or a
glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive or whatever, they are all using weapons with uncapped damage.

Weapons
The primary distinction between weapons in Multiverse: Dungeoncrawler are its damage type, its damage cap, how
many hands it requires, and its range. Some weapons also have special properties, indicated with an asterisk (*).
Additionally, some stunts require a weapon have certain properties to be used. For example, Blade Finesse can
only be used with hilted, one-handed weapons.

19
 Weapon Hands Damage cap Range Damage type
Light mace 1 +2 Melee Bludgeoning
Rondel dagger 1 +2 Melee Piercing
Shortsword 1 +2 Melee Slashing
Lead slug, weighted staff 1 +2 Reach Bludgeoning
Throwing knife, short- 1 +2 Reach Piercing
spear
Throwing axe, whip 1 +2 Reach Slashing
Sling 1 +2 Ranged Bludgeoning
Shortbow 2 +2 Ranged Piercing
Mace 1 – Melee Bludgeoning
Epee, spear 1 – Melee Piercing
Arming sword, battle axe 1 – Melee Slashing
Longsword* 1 1/2
– Melee Any*
Maul 2 – Melee Bludgeoning
Longspear, lance** 2 – Melee Piercing
Greataxe 2 – Melee Slashing
Lucerne hammer 2 – Reach Bludgeoning
Pike 2 – Reach Piercing
Halberd, zweihander 2 – Reach Slashing
Warbow 2 – Ranged Piercing

*: A longsword can deal any of bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage and can be wielded either one or two
handed, however it is a one-and-a-half handed weapon and does not count as a heavy, two-handed weapon for
purposes of the stunt Heavy Blow nor as a hilted one-handed weapon for purposes of Blade Finesse.
**: Lances can be wielded one-handed when mounted and function as a longspear when dismounted.

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Changing Fate: Chases
A chase happens anytime one party wants to catch another party. It usually happens for one of two reasons: One
of the two parties flees immediately upon encountering the other, or one of the two parties decides to retreat from
combat without each individual member conceding. Since you can only decide to concede after taking a hit, if
it’s your turn and you don’t want to risk another hit, you can flee, but unlike conceding, this gives the enemy a
chance to pursue.
Chases proceed in exchanges just like contests, but rather than accumulating successes, the goal is to increase or
decrease distance. Chases have five ranges, although two of them signal the immediate end of the chase. From
closest to furthest apart, the ranges are caught, short range, long range, extreme range, and escaped.

Short Range
Chases usually begin at short range, where the pursuer has their eyes continuously on the quarry, but the quarry is
nevertheless out of tackling/collision distance. The quarry begins by selecting the TN of a stunt, which they can
describe however they want, and which will almost always be rolled with either Athletics (on foot) or Ride (when
mounted). If the quarry fails to meet their own TN, they fail immediately, without the pursuer even having to
roll.
If the quarry meets the TN, then that is the TN the pursuer must hit to keep up. Alternatively, the pursuer can
select a TN three points higher (basically challenging themselves to succeed with style or fail), and if they can hit
that, they are able to cut the quarry off with an even more impressive stunt, and the quarry is immediately caught.
If the pursuer fails to hit the TN (whether they selected the same TN as the quarry or tried to cut them off with a
higher one), the chase moves to long range.
If either the quarry or the pursuer succeeds with style, they get a boost on their next roll in the chase.
If one party is mounted and the other party is not, the mounted party succeeds automatically after the first
exchange. That is, if the pursuer is mounted and the quarry is not, the quarry has exactly one die roll to move
the chase to long range, otherwise they’re caught. Likewise, if the quarry is mounted and the pursuer is not, the
pursuer must catch the quarry immediately or else the chase moves to long range. When one side is mounted and
the other isn’t, there is no scenario where both hit the basic TN and maintain pace with each other.

Long Range
A long range chase is one where the pursuer can sometimes see the quarry, but sometimes can’t. The quarry is far
enough ahead that when they take a corner, they are out of view for at least a second or two. This gives them
a chance to either put on a burst of speed to take another corner and get out of sight entirely, or else take the
opportunity to hide.
If the quarry chooses to put on a burst of speed, this works the same as a short range chase: The quarry sets their
own TN for an Athletics or Ride roll (depending on whether or not they’re mounted), and the pursuer can either
try to match it or try to hit a TN three ranks higher. If the quarry fails their own TN, they’ve botched their stunt
and the chase moves to short range without the pursuer even having to make a die roll. If the pursuer makes the
same TN as the quarry, they maintain pace, and if they choose the TN three points higher and succeed, they close
distance to short range. If the pursuer fails their TN (whether they tried to match the quarry’s TN or chose the
TN three ranks higher), the quarry breaks off to an extreme range chase.
If the quarry decides to hide instead, it works mostly the same, except that the quarry rolls either Stealth (to phys-
ically conceal themselves) or Deceive (to blend in with a crowd), and the pursuer must roll Notice or Empathy
(respectively) to catch them. The quarry still picks a TN, and the pursuer still chooses to either match that TN or
try to get three ranks higher.

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Extreme Range
An extreme range chase is one where the pursuer can’t see the quarry at all, and is trying to track them using
footprints or asking witnesses which way someone went or whatever. The pursuer always rolls Investigation, but
the quarry can decide whether to roll Contacts, Deceive, or Stealth (though some options may be cut off by the
narrative situation - if the extreme range chase is across the wilderness, then lying about your identity or asking
your friends to provide misleading answers to the pursuer won’t really help). If the quarry increases distance at
extreme range, they have escaped. The trail has gone cold and the pursuer has no hope of catching up with them.
The pursuer can just give up at any stage of a chase, and especially going from long range to extreme range, they
often do so, particularly if they have a low Investigate skill (especially a +0).

Multiple Quarries and Pursuers

If you have multiple quarries and multiple pursuers in a chase (which is usually the case, since usually the entire
party is involved), pair the quarries and pursuers off into separate chases. Quarries can decide to stick together,
all picking the same TN and the same skill to roll on it, but this also means that if one of them fails the TN, the
others have to stay behind to stick together (although quarries who pick the same TN as each other in hopes of
sticking together can still split up at the last moment if the quarry who made the TN decides to abandon the one
who didn’t).
If you have a chase where the quarries outnumber the pursuers, the quarries can scatter, the pursuers have to
pick some number of them to abandon, and those quarries escape automatically. If you have a chase where the
pursuers outnumber the quarries, then the extra pursuers can double up, which means if one of them falls behind
but the other keeps pace, that other one can continue the chase while the pursuer who’s fallen behind moves to
a longer range and waits there until all pursuers have been pushed to that distance (or they catch up after the
quarry is caught, if that happens first).

Changing Fate: Sieges

A siege is a kind of contest in which one side is trying to breach the defenses of the other using the Siegecraft
skill. A siege is ultimately resolved by a regular combat, but how much opposition you face in that combat
depends on the rolls made leading up to it.
A siege proceeds in three phases: The artillery phase, the breaching phase, and the melee phase.
In the artillery phase, the defenders on the walls need to be suppressed so that they can’t shoot at attackers, which
is accomplished with catapults, ballistae, or just lots of attacking archers. In the breach phase, some means of
breaching the wall is pulled up. Sometimes it’s a ramp, sometimes it’s a battering ram used to smash open a gate
or through the relatively thin walls of a tower, hopefully it’s not a bunch of ladders because those are easy to
knock down but if it’s all you’ve got it’s not totally doomed. Either way, the breach requires bringing up slow and
unwieldy siege engines to the defenses in multiple places. Finally, once the breach is accomplished, the melee
begins, in which attackers enter the breached defenses and fight the defenders hand-to-hand.
If the artillery phase has gone well, lots of siege engines will have reached the walls in different spots, and if the
breaching phase has gone well, those siege engines will all breach the wall at more-or-less the same time, which
means the outnumbered defenders will be unable to hold all the choke points, allowing the attacker to bring their
numbers to bear.
In practice, the attacker will have an army to start with, which hopefully outnumbers the defender, because the
attacker will almost always suffer much heavier losses.
Troops with a +3 or +4 Fight or Shoot (or possibly another skill, if they use something unusual as their primary
combat skill) count as two attackers/defenders, those with +5 to +6 count as eight, and those with +7 or +8
count as sixteen. A relatively small number of superheavies like trolls might trade much better than you would
think from a naive estimation of their numbers. In general, though, having the vast majority of troops be regular
+1/+2 orcs or goblins or elves or whatever is usually expected anyway. Mixing in some interesting and powerful
enemy monsters is good, but reserve them for fighting the player in the breach and melee phase - when you put
cool monsters on the table, players usually don’t want to be told in the aftermath that a bunch of friendly archers
longbow’d it to death while they were doing something else.

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 Scale
The siege system depletes d6s of attackers and defenders from either side. You can make this completely literal,
with a castle defended by 40-50 troops on average, and the attacker wanting about twice as many troops to
make up for the losses. This is generally a good range to operate in, because it’s big enough that a party trying to
assail the fortress by themselves will have to fight several dozen foes with a significant terrain advantage, which is
probably going to go poorly, but if they bring an army of their own, they can still make a meaningful difference
to the fight by personally killing some number of defenders. If you take the scale any lower, the fights are now
small enough that you can probably assign each individual enemy a token or mini or whatever and fight a
regular combat. As the scale gets larger, the ability of the party to make any personal impact dwindles away in
the face of an enemy army of thousands or tens of thousands.
If you want that bigger scale, though, you can just say that each “attacker” or “defender” actually represents
ten or a hundred or a thousand individual attackers or defenders. Double the losses to either side in the breach
phase to make up for the fact that the party’s combat encounter in that phase will face a trivial number of foes,
and instead of basing the breach phase combat on the number of enemies remaining, set up whatever combat
encounter you like for that phase, the details don’t matter because the party will not inflict serious casualties
against the enemy anyway.

Artillery
Once they arrive at the target of their siege, the attacker begins constructing siege weapons. Whoever is in charge
of this will make a Siegecraft check to construct catapults and ballistae (which hopefully have superior range on
whatever the castle defenders have) to suppress the enemy in the artillery phase. This requires a full seven days. If
the attacker doesn’t like their result on the check, they can reroll it by taking another 7 days.
The Siegecraft check in the artillery phase is an opposed roll, and the result depends on how much the attacker
succeeds by (if you’re the defender, you invert this - the attacker failing by three or more shifts is the same as the
defender succeeding by three or more shifts).
Attacker shifts Result
-3 or lower Siege engines are totally ineffective and defenders are poorly suppressed resulting in heavy
casualties to siege crews approaching the wall. 16d6 attackers are lost.
-1 to -2 Siege engines are poorly positioned and few in number, resulting in an archer battle that
heavily favors defenders with better cover. 12d6 attackers and 1d6 defenders are lost.
+0 Siege engines do an adequate job suppressing the walls, but archer support is still necessary
in places and some defenders are able to make attacks on approaching siege crews. 8d6
attackers and 2d6 defenders are lost.
+1 to +2 Siege engines suppress enemies without the need of unshielded archer support, but the de-
fenders are not completely suppressed at all times, resulting in minor casualties to the siege
crews. 4d6 attackers and 3d6 defenders are lost.
+3 or higher Perfectly positioned and timed assaults leave defenders in disarray and allow siege crews to
advance in total safety. No attackers and 3d6 defenders are lost.

The defenders can attempt a sally during the artillery phase if they like, riding out to try and catch the attackers
unawares. If they do so, the party (or 1d6 attackers, if the party are on the defending side and therefore part of
the sally party) must fend off an attack from the sally party. The defenders can decide how large the sally party
is, up to a maximum of 14 (or perhaps larger, if the castle has multiple sally ports or the sally port is particularly
large). An additional 2d6 attackers arrive at every odd-numbered round except the first, so the tide will turn
towards the attackers over time, and the defenders will probably want to retreat before the end. The defenders
hope to cause outsize fatalities with their temporary numerical advantage (and possibly a higher concentration
of powerful units - cavaliers, beefy monster units like trolls or giants, etc.) before retreating, while the attackers
might hope to trade evenly (a win for the numerically superior attacker) or crush the sally party outright.

23
Breach
During the breach phase, the attacker must try to breach as many locations as possible as simultaneously as possi-
ble. This is another opposed Siegecraft roll. “The attacking party” refers to the party if they are the attackers, but
if the party is defending, it instead refers to some kind of champion or vanguard force.
Attacker shifts Result
-3 or lower The breaches happen so far apart that the defender is able to pick them off one by one,
never having to respond to more than one at once. The attacking party must fight the entire
remaining defense force alone. There is no melee phase. If the attacker is able to cut through
the outermost defenses single-handedly, there will be nothing left to stand in their way.
-1 to -2 Two positions are breached (for example, the gate is smashed open at the same time as lad-
ders go up the walls) and the defenders are forced to defend them both simultaneously. The
attacking party and 1d6 attackers must fight half the defense force to complete the breach.
3d6 attackers and 1d6 defenders are lost at the other breach.
+0 Three positions are breached at once (perhaps the gate is broken, a tower smashed in, and
the walls scaled all at once). The attacking party must fight a third of the defense force to
complete the breach. 4d6 attackers and 2d6 defenders are lost at the other breaches.
+1 to +2 Constant pressure across the defenses prevents the defenders from concentrating force at all.
The attacking party must fight only a quarter of the defense force to complete the breach.
5d6 attackers and 4d6 defenders are lost at the other breaches.
+3 or higher The defenders are so totally overwhelmed on all points that the breach phase is skipped
completely. Proceed directly to melee.

Melee
With the breach secured, attackers can pour into the opening and meet the defenders in more-or-less open battle.
This final melee is always a combat consisting either of all remaining attackers and defenders or, if there are more
than 36 combatants total (across both sides, and including the party), it is a combat consisting of 35 or 36 com-
batants, divided up depending on the ratio of attackers to defenders according to the table below (note that the
table below is provided for convenience - the ratio is just math). If the defenders outnumber the attackers by this
point, you can use the reverse ratio (i.e. if the defenders outnumber attackers by 3:2, there are 14 attackers and 21
defenders in the melee).
Ratio Combatants
1:1 18 attackers, 18 defenders
3:2 21 attackers, 14 defenders
2:1 24 attackers, 12 defenders
3:1 27 attackers, 9 defenders
4:1 28 attackers, 7 defenders
5:1 30 attackers, 6 defenders

24
NPCs
NPCs come in three varieties: Mooks, supporting characters, and major characters. None of these characters need
a full character sheet. You can leave slots of their skill pyramid blank and fill them in as they come up, and you
can leave them with as few as a single aspect (the high concept).

Making Mooks
Mooks are cannon fodder, the kind who don’t get names in the script, usually for the PCs to thresh through.
Mooks don’t follow the usual HP rules for player characters. They have no consequences - once they run out of
HP, they’re finished. They have a single unified HP track, not split into physical and mental. They often have
less than 3 HP maximum, and most importantly, they don’t get extra HP from Physique and Will (although they
might still have ranks in Physique/Will to help them Defend against poison and disease/mental domination and
so on). While mooks wearing armor, especially heavy armor, should get one or two extra HP for it, they don’t get
nearly as much as PCs or more important NPCs.
The weakest mooks are +1 mooks. They have a +1 in a single skill and 1 HP.
Tougher mooks - still nameless, but they’re less goblin militia and more veteran orc warriors - might have a +2
skill pyramid, with one +2 skill and two +1 skills (though remember you can fill in NPC skills as you go - good
pacing matters more than being thorough). +2 mooks usually have 2 HP, although they have more room for 1 if
they’re particularly frail or 3 if they’re particularly durable.
Proper elite mooks have a +3 skill pyramid with one +3, two +2s, and up to three +1s. They might have an addi-
tional character aspect besides their high concept, and they usually have at least 3 HP, sometimes 4 or 5.

Supporting NPCs
Supporting NPCs are named characters. They are fundamentally built the same as player characters. Their skill
capstone might be as low as +3 but can go as high as +6. They have a high concept at minimum, but could have
as many as four other aspects (including a trouble). They have two different HP tracks, physical and mental, and
they can take consequences.
Because supporting NPCs have regular Physique scores, they may have huge piles of HP. Because of this, it’s
important to remember that an NPC can always concede. If a fight is beginning to drag on because a supporting
NPC has lots of HP to chew through despite clearly being on the losing end of the fight, have them concede and
run away. This is especially the case if you have a defensive-heavy tank NPC who’s run out of friends to tank for.

Major NPCs
Major NPCs are like supporting NPCs, except that they get to completely ignore how skill columns work. While
all NPCs should feel free to leave blank spots on their skill columns to be filled in later (or not, if they die before
it comes up), for supporting NPCs and mooks, that’s a matter of expediency: It’s better to keep things moving
rather than take five every time you get caught off-guard by the need for an NPC character sheet (for that matter,
it’s better to save yourself some prep time if an NPC’s highest skill is the only one likely to come up).
Major NPCs, however, can ignore skill columns freely. They’re usually boss monsters, either plainly superhuman
creatures like dragons or else full of plainly superhuman power like if they’ve been blessed by some kind of dark
god. Either way, they’re capable of reaching heights of powers the PCs can’t on their own, and thus require a party
to take down (although early game major NPCs might actually just be warriors and wizards of exceptional skill,
because +6 is a pretty intimidating skill rank against PCs with a +4 cap, even though the PCs can theoretically get
to +6 eventually).
Major NPCs, like supporting NPCs, can also concede. However, an arc villain is virtually always a major NPC,
and the climactic encounter of an arc is usually a battle to the death. For this reason, it’s important that major
NPCs not be built with too much emphasis on defense. They might be physically resilient but mentally vulnera-
ble or vice-versa, but not both. A major NPC with +7 Physique might still have +3 Will, but they shouldn’t have
both at +7. They can already extend their HP by 12 points using consequences.

25
Speaking of consequences, a better way of extending major NPC durability is usually to give them more conse-
quences, rather than more HP. Consequences protect the physical and mental tracks simultaneously, but they also
give free invokes when inflicted, which helps feel like progress is being made. Doubling up a major NPC’s conse-
quence slots (so they have two each of mild, moderate, and severe consequences) gives them similar longevity as
four extra ranks of both Physique and Will, but inflicting consequences regularly helps the party feel like they’re
making progress against the boss.

Half-Page Bestiary
Below is a table of skill ranks in three broad categories of Combat, Stealth, and Social, with an example of an
average creature at each level. Naturally, these are averages, intended as guidelines for quickly creating NPCs (es-
pecially unnamed ones). A no-name goblin probably has +1 in any combat stat, but a named NPC or PC goblin
can have combat skills as high as +6 (theoretically, a major NPC goblin can have +8, but skill columns prevent a
PC from ever getting that high - although stunts can give a PC a +8 bonus at a specific application of a skill).
Combat Stealth Social
+1 Elf, goblin Beastfolk Beastfolk, orc
+2 Orc Orc Goblin
+3 Beastfolk Elf Elf
+4 Minotaur Goblin Merfolk
+5 Troll Nymph Satyr
+6 Fire giant Ghost Efreeti
+7 Balor Mimic Balor
+8 Dragon Dragon Dragon

Skills
A player character’s skills begin ranked from +0 to +4. The way the math on skill advancement works out, a player
character can, one distant day, have one skill at +7, two at +6, and three at each other rank down to +1 (although
you will have to invest significant points into junk multiclass skills taken purely as scaffolding - these junk skills
will end up outside the three “real” columns). It takes well over 40 scenarios to max out the columns like this.
For practical purposes, the skill chart goes from +0 to +6, with an extra +2 to account for stunts, Fate Points, or
NPCs intended to serve as solo boss encounters, for +8 total.
The official Fate skill chart uses the following steps:
-2: Terrible
-1: Poor
+0: Mediocre
+1: Average
+2: Fair
+3: Good
+4: Great
+5: Superb
+6: Fantastic
+7: Epic
+8: Legendary

26
The first thing to note is that +0 is mediocre, and +1 is average. +0 skills indicate a character’s weaknesses, and
it’s not until +1 or +2 that you reach skills they are okay with. It’s only at +3 that we begin to reach a character’s
standout strengths. Starting characters do have several standout strengths (especially their +4 Great skill), but only
a few.
But also, a lot of these descriptors kinda blur together. It’s not too difficult to keep track of Fantastic being better
than Superb being better than Great, people totally get that ranking memorized with a minimum of fuss, but it’s
a lot harder to, as a GM, try to figure out whether climbing a glacier in a blizzard is merely Great or as high as
Fantastic. It’s definitely not the realm of ordinary competence (which would be Good) and it doesn’t seem like it’s
the kind of feat that only some kind of demi-god could pull off (that’s Epic or Legendary), but that still means it
could be anywhere from +4 to +6. The following skill charts should help provide you some guidance for this sort
of thing.
The skill charts begin at +1. That’s because you should generally assume characters can accomplish TN 0 and
lower tasks without having to roll. Even someone with mediocre athleticism and physique can (speaking from
experience) hike one mile in thirty minutes while carrying twenty pounds, so such a short jaunt doesn’t merit
rolling for, if only to keep the number of die rolls called for from choking the game.

Athletics
Attack: No.
Defend: All physical attacks.
Athletics has two primary uses: To get from point A to point B using your own physical body, and to avoid
physical harm whether at range and in melee, and whether it’s from active enemy attackers rolling Fight or Shoot
at you or a trap or other unmanned hazard with a static TN.
Roll Descriptor Result
+1 Average Climb a wall with plenty of good handholds (equivalent to one of those rock-climbing
walls you get in modern gyms), swim in calm waters.
+2 Fair Climb a wall with unevenly spaced handholds (your average good climbing spot in the
wild), swim in rough waters.
+3 Good Climb a treacherous cliff face with few and unevenly spaced handholds, swim in a mild
storm.
+4 Great Climb a cliff face that slopes outwards and has few and unevenly spaced handholds,
swim in a fearsome storm.
+5 Superb Climb a cliff face with handholds barely large enough to fit a finger into, swim in a
hurricane.
+6 Fantastic Climb a cliff face that has gone fully horizontal, swim in a full force hurricane.
+7 Epic Climb a cliff face that is nearly smooth, swim in a historically ferocious hurricane.
+8 Legendary Climb rain into the clouds, swim underwater for multiple hours like Beowulf.

27
Burglary
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Burglary is the skill of popping locks, picking pockets, and disabling traps. It doesn’t cover sneaking around, that’s
Stealth.
Whether or not Burglary succeeds or fails depends on how perceptive the person trying to spot your sleight of
hand is, or how intricate the lock or trap is. As such, the example TNs include both sample guards who might
spot your sleight of hand (who are probably rolling Notice as an opposed check at the appropriate rank) and
sample locks/traps (who probably have a static TN equal to the appropriate rank).
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average An apprentice’s lock, a hurried trap, a militia guard
+2 Fair A journeyman’s lock or trap, an ordinary guard
+3 Good An ordinary dwarven lock, goblin trap, or elven guard
+4 Great A master lock/trapsmith’s work, a perceptive ranger
+5 Superb A magical lock or trap, the supernatural senses of a nymph in their home
+6 Fantastic A fire giant lord’s locks, an efreeti’s keen senses
+7 Epic The traps of a powerful fiend, the senses of a powerful celestial
+8 Legendary A dragon’s burning gaze

Contacts
Attack: Not usually.
Defend: Not usually.
Contacts is a skill that represents your network of pre-existing connections. You roll Contacts not to make
contacts, but to already have them from offscreen interaction. You don’t need to roll Contacts to call on contacts
you made onscreen (i.e. if you met a friendly wizard, you can just go visit him), although you may need to roll
Contacts to determine whether or not they’re available to help. Mostly, though, you roll Contacts to have made a
friend offscreen the same way you roll Lore to have learned a fact offscreen.
To take Contacts at higher than +0, you must connect it to an aspect, indicating who you have contacts with. It
might be an aspect like Scholar of Arcane University or Journeyman of the Fixers’ Guild, indicating membership in
or connections to a specific organization, or it might be an aspect like Charming Socialite or I Performed With A
Traveling Circus For Years, which might plausibly have given you lots of contacts.
You do not have to spend any Fate Points invoking the aspect to roll Contacts, but the aspect informs what your
Contacts are, so be sure to double check with your GM that the aspect you’re picking matches the scale of the
campaign. Member of the Baron’s Court is a good Contacts aspect if the campaign is confined to the barony and
its immediate neighbors, but if it’s a globe-spanning epic quest, you will quickly find yourself struggling to justify
new connections, at which point something more like Pirate Feared Across The Seas might do better, giving you
plausible connection anywhere even remotely near a port.
Contacts can sometimes be used to Attack or Defend, particularly in conflicts that revolve around rumor-monger-
ing and reputation, but it usually can’t be used to Attack or Defend even in social conflicts (although it’s easy to
imagine it being used to Create An Advantage in a social confrontation).

28
The TN for a Contacts roll consists of two things: How powerful someone is, and how well they like you.
Combine the TN for the two of them together to get the final TN. For example, if you wish to roll to see if you
know any adventurers in town, the default TN is 3 to see if you know any at all, but if you get a +4 on the roll,
not only do you know one, you know one who’s willing to share rumors and potential leads with you, if you get a
+5, they’re willing to provide immediate assistance in dangerous situations (like one of the ubiquitous fantasy bar
fights), and if you get a +6, they’re willing to help you with your current mission.
A contact’s willingness to help you isn’t unlimited, no matter how high you roll. Getting a +6 might mean you
know an adventurer willing to help you out with one expedition, but that doesn’t mean they’ll keep showing up
forever. Once you’ve rolled them up, they’re a regular NPC and their patience with you might run out quickly if
you expect them to act like a hireling. Additionally, the more powerful the contact you’re trying to roll up is, the
greater the chance there is that there’s simply no room in the setting for such a person. If the city already has a
ruler accounted for in the story, you can’t roll a new one into existence with Contacts. Just like Lore allows you to
know things, but not to write new information into the setting, Contacts allows you to know people who might
plausibly exist, but not to write new NPCs into parts of the setting where all the major movers and shakers are
already established.
Roll You know…
+0 A street-level goon or peasant.
+1 A small-time merchant (not one who moves in the kinds of markets adventurers do), a street-level
official like a town guard or town crier, a street-level criminal or someone else whose profession is not
common knowledge.
+2 A street-level officer like the sergeant in charge of a town guard shift, a master artisan like a blacksmith
or tanner with their own shop, or a very minor aristocrat.
+3 A mid-tier officer like a judge, an adventurer, a tavern owner, a ship’s captain, an ordinary member of
an extraordinary profession like a necromancer or assassin.
+4 A prominent local figure like a banker, the owner of a magic item shop, the captain of the town guard,
the chief justice of the area, or the head of the local criminal underworld.
+5 A powerful adventurer, merchant prince, or ruling aristocrat

Roll They like you…

+0 Enough to talk with you, and do regular business with you (although if they are a powerful archmage,
“regular business” might include leveling a city block in exchange for an enchanted ruby).
+1 Enough to share rumors and gossip with you, including guarded secrets, some of which are even true.
+2 Enough to provide discounts, give you a place to hide from danger, and lie to dangerous people to
cover your tracks, but expect you to move on quickly rather than sticking around to bring danger to
their door.
+3 Enough to give you a long term safehouse and provide services or take significant risks for you free of
charge. You go way back!

29
Deceive
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Deceive is a skill virtually always rolled against an opposed Empathy check. The table below lists the skill check
for potential opposition.These are averages based on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability.
Named characters or those whose occupations make them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these
baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Beastfolk, orc
+2 Fair Goblin
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Merfolk
+5 Superb Satyr
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

Empathy
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Empathy is a skill you can roll in order to determine what another character’s aspects are, usually opposed by De-
ceive (which they roll regardless of whether or not they are trying to actively deceive you, so you can’t immediate-
ly tell if they’re hiding things from you just by seeing which skill they roll on a VTT). NPCs often roll it in order
to see whether or not they fall for a PC’s Deceive checks, although this doesn’t work in reverse - there are abilities
that let you detect lies and the Empathy skill by itself is not one of them. The reason why PCs get to roll Deceive
against NPCs is because the GM is usually privvy to almost every important thing any of the PCs have ever done,
which makes lying to the GM unfairly difficult (nearly impossible, often). Some lies are really obvious when you
know what an NPC’s aspects are, though (an Infiltrator For The Empire is probably not being super sincere about
their proclamations of loyalty to the rebellion).
There’s almost never static TNs for Empathy, so the TN chart below instead lists standard skill ranks for various
kinds of opposition. These are averages based on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability.
Named characters or those whose occupations make them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these
baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Beastfolk, orc
+2 Fair Goblin
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Merfolk
+5 Superb Satyr
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

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Fight
Attack: Melee physical attacks.
Defend: No.
Fight is the skill used to inflict physical harm in melee.
Fight is rolled against opposition basically all the time, so the following TN chart lists the Athletics ability of
some standard opponents. These are averages based on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability.
Named characters or those whose occupations make them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these
baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Elf, goblin
+2 Fair Orc
+3 Good Beastfolk
+4 Great Minotaur
+5 Superb Troll
+6 Fantastic Fire giant
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

31
Investigate
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Investigate is used for carefully scrutinizing an area for clues and details. It isn’t used to counter Stealth, that’s
Notice.
You generally only get to make one Investigation roll per scene. This isn’t a hard-coded rule or anything, but if
you want to sweep a large building for clues, you cannot make a bunch of rolls at lower difficulty by going room
by room. If you’re so lucky as to have a specific room which is obviously the crime scene (which is reasonably
common), then the difficulty of finding clues will be much lower, but if all you know is that the crime occurred
somewhere in this castle, you’ll have a much harder time and you can’t get around it by splitting the dining room
and the bedchambers into separate rolls.
Investigate checks are often rolled for degrees of success. That is, there might be one clue at the baseline TN of 2
for searching a single room, but a second clue at TN 3 and a third one at TN 4.
The TN for an Investigate check might also be increased if you have to search quickly, or decreased if you can
search very slowly. If you sweep a single room for clues in just a few minutes, that’s probably the standard TN 2,
but if you tear the place apart over the course of multiple hours, that might be TN 1 or even TN 0 instead. If a
player fails an Investigate check but could’ve succeeded if they were willing to take more time, it’s appropriate for
the GM to tell them they’ve found nothing after their first search, but to then ask how much time they’re willing
to sink into thoroughly searching for clues. Usually if you’re investigating a crime scene, it’s because there is an
active criminal, so spending all day searching one room might give that criminal a significant head start or allow
them to commit more crimes. On the other hand, letting clues slip through your fingers can end up wasting even
more time. A well-designed mystery has multiple clues leading to the same conclusion, but there is nevertheless
always the risk of missing all of them.
Roll Descriptor Result
+1 Average Determine whether a wound was from a slashing or piercing weapon. Determine the
size of a creature from half-printed footprints. Scan a single small area, like one table, for
clues.
+2 Fair Determine exactly what sort of weapon dealt a wound. Scan a small shop or one room of
a tavern for clues.
+3 Good Recreate who was standing where when a wound was dealt based on footprints, blood
splatters, and the position of the corpse. Scan a small building, like a tavern or a guard-
house, for clues.
+4 Great Scan a mid-size building, like a guild hall or large workshop, for clues.
+5 Superb Determine the ancestry (orc, elf, etc.) of a victim from only their blood splatters and
footprints. Scan a large building or area, like a marketplace, castle, or an entire city street
and adjoining buildings, for clues.
+6 Fantastic Discern the difference between riverbank mud and mud from a road further inland, thus
proving that the suspect’s alibi about being at the riverbank at the time of a murder is a
lie.
+7 Epic Scan an entire very large area, like a city block, for clues.
+8 Legendary Determine the exact identity of a creature you’ve met before based only on a bloodstain
they’ve left behind.

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Lore
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Lore covers your knowledge of academic subjects broadly, including arcane or occult subjects, like how magic
works, the geography of both the mortal world and other planes, and so on. Lore covers the identification of
spells, but not casting them - that is done through stunts.
Lore depends a lot on what counts as “familiar” or “nearby” as opposed to “foreign” or “distant.” What counts
as “familiar” varies from character to character, but nobody lives in immediate proximity to all locations and
cultures. Lore represents things you learn from books, so the point where Lore ends and Contacts begins is the
point when a person or location is sufficiently obscure that you have to be personally familiar with them rather
than reading about them in annals or (assuming the city has access to printing press technology making them
practical) newspapers.
Roll Descriptor Result
+1 Average Recall the basic geography (names of major towns and cities, coastlines, geographic fea-
tures, etc.) and prominent figures (rulers, celebrities) of familiar areas, identify common
spells.
+2 Fair Recall detailed geography (specific street names, minor villages, etc.) and moderately
prominent figures (local celebrities, prominent adventurers, ministers, etc.) of familiar
areas.
+3 Good Identify uncommon but not unheard of or forbidden magic spells, artifacts, and crea-
tures, recall the basic geography and prominent figures of neighboring or ancient areas.
+4 Great Identify obscure magic spells, artifacts, and creatures, recall detailed geography and
moderately prominent figures of neighboring or ancient areas.
+5 Superb Identify forbidden magic spells, artifacts, and creatures, or identify the properties of
unique or otherwise novel magic from first principles, recall the basic geography and
prominent figures of distant areas, even extraplanar ones, or of primordial times.
+6 Fantastic Recall detailed geography and moderately prominent figures of distant areas, even
extraplanar ones, or of primordial times.
+7 Epic Recall details about extremely obscure or secretive people, places, or events.
+8 Legendary Recall details known only to primordial creatures like angels, demons, and gods.

33
Notice
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Notice is usually rolled against Stealth to avoid being ambushed, though it can also be used in other cases
where it’s important to notice something immediately, rather than after careful investigation (there’s a separate
Investigation skill for that). Since Notice is typically rolled against someone making a Stealth check, the following
table lists the average roll for various creatures. These are averages based on a combination of cultural trends and
supernatural ability. Named characters or those whose occupations make them especially capable (or incapable)
will vary from these baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Gnoll
+2 Fair Orc
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Goblin
+5 Superb Nymph
+6 Fantastic Ghost
+7 Epic Mimic
+8 Legendary Dragon

Physique
Attack: No.
Defend: Yes.
Physique is the skill of being physically healthy and resilient. It can be used to Defend against certain physical
attacks like poison or disease that aren’t really dodged so much as survived. Its main use is that it gives you extra
HP and allows you to wear heavier armor, which gives you even more HP. See the section on Changing Fate:
Harm and Healing for details.
The TN chart below is for resisting various diseases and poisons, although these are just average cases. Particularly
in the case of brewed poison, the skill of the brewer factors in quite a bit to how deadly the poison is.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Disease from generically filthy conditions.
+2 Fair Common rogue’s poison.
+3 Good Giant spider poison, ghoul fever.
+4 Great Average assassin poisons like magebane, malice, or midnight tears, wyvern
poison.
+5 Superb Black plague, mummy’s curse.
+6 Fantastic Naga poison.
+7 Epic Black lotus poison.
+8 Legendary Dragon’s poison, lich’s curse.

34
Provoke
Attack: Yes.
Defend: No.
Provoke is a social skill used to make people scared or angry. It covers both intimidation and taunting, and its
main uses are as an Attack on mental HP or to Create An Advantage through fear.
The following TN chart lists the ability of some standard opponents to resist Provoke attacks. These are averages
based on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability. Named characters or those whose occupations
make them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Goblin
+2 Fair Beastfolk, orc
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Pixie
+5 Superb Drider
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

35
Rapport
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Rapport is the skill of making people like and trust you. Rapport isn’t mind control (there are stunts that actually
are mind control, and if you want to control minds, you should take those), but it can push people who are on
the fence into acting in your favor and get people to open up about things they might have intended to keep
secret or agree to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have. However, once out of your presence, the effect will fade
quickly - just because you can get a promise out of someone doesn’t mean they’ll stick to it if they realize after
the fact they’ve been fast talked, nor will someone bamboozled into over-sharing important secrets with you feel
any need to protect you from the consequences of your snooping. People don’t automatically dislike you for using
Rapport on them (Rapport is, after all, the skill of making people like you), but they will certainly notice after the
fact if you talked them into a clearly bad deal.
Rapport’s effects are mostly pretty short term. If you convince someone to help you and that works out really well
for them, they will probably be better disposed towards helping you in the future, but usually if you want long
term friends and allies, you want to use Contacts.
If someone commits to not paying attention to anything you say, that will prevent you from using Rapport on
them, period. People usually only do this if they’ve been fast talked at least two or three times by the same person,
but organizations with a high enough degree of commitment from their members can train guards or bureaucrats
to follow rules strictly, and the losses in efficiency might be worth it if it proofs the operation against Rapport
rolls.
A Rapport roll’s TN depends on a combination of factors: How much the target creature likes you in the first
place, how much you’re asking of them, and how good the target is at resisting fast talk to begin with. The fol-
lowing TN chart lists the ability of some standard opponents to resist Rapport fast talk. These are averages based
on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability. Named characters or those whose occupations make
them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these baselines. Another chart is provided for how the TN is
increased based on how much you’re asking for.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Goblin
+2 Fair Beastfolk, orc
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Pixie
+5 Superb Drider
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

36
 Roll Result
+0 Convince the target to do something they are on the fence about, but not heavily opposed to.
+1 Convince the target to act slightly more friendly than they normally would, like convincing someone
who already likes you alright to take a risk on your behalf, or convincing someone indifferent to you to
share secrets they really shouldn’t.
+2 Convince the target to act significantly more friendly than they would, like convincing someone with
no reason to like you one way or another to take a risk on your behalf, or convincing someone hostile
and in a position to harm you to just walk away instead.
+3 Convince someone who hates you to act in a mildly helpful way, like sharing important information to
you.
+4 Convince someone hostile to you to switch sides mid-fight, at least for one round.

Resources
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
The Resources skill represents your wealth, your ability to acquire (or to already have, in the same way Lore
represents knowledge you already have) valuable items.
Resources represents spare cash, not the resources needed to maintain the usability of your other skills. If you
have good Burglary, then you’ve probably got lockpicks. If you have any points in Fight, you’ve probably got a
proper melee weapon. If you have enough Physique to wear heavy armor, you have heavy armor to wear. You
don’t need to make a Resources roll to find out if you can find a local inn to sleep in as opposed to sleeping in the
gutter, because it’s assumed you have enough money to cover basic living expenses (it’s a +2 roll to pay for room
and board for the night, but that assumes you’re paying for some NPC - your own room and board is usually
automatic). The GM might confront the party with a setup like “you are so low on money that you will be
unable to pay for food if you don’t get a big score soon,” but absent that, your ability to pay for basic necessities is
assumed (and GMs, beware that if you do confront the party with a setup like that, someone with 3+ Resources
might very plausibly roll some dice and say “no we’re not”).
Each level on the table below is approximately ten times more valuable than the level above, which means if you
want ten times as much of a thing, the TN is one rank higher. For example, if something’s happened to your
weapon and you need to replace it right away, you might make a TN 3 Resources check to buy a new one. If
you’re looking to arm a posse, TN 4 will get you ten weapons, and TN 5 will get you a hundred.
Regardless of what you roll, you can only buy things which are for sale, something which becomes more and
more pressing an issue as you get further down the table. A large, heavily fortified castle takes about ten years
to build and is almost never for sale once built, so even if you can hypothetically hit a TN 7, there’s probably
nothing to buy. Similarly, being able to afford a wyvern-rider’s panoply doesn’t mean there’s someone around who
knows how to ride a wyvern in battle.
Roll Descriptor You can afford…
+1 Average A drink.
+2 Fair Room and board for the night.
+3 Good A good weapon, light armor, skirmisher’s panoply, a riding horse.
+4 Great Heavy armor, heavy infantry panoply, a warhorse, a healing draught or magic scroll, a
small shop or farm.
+5 Superb Cavalier’s panoply, a griffon or wyvern, the average magic item, a large farm or roadside
inn, a week’s services for a mercenary company or adventuring party.
+6 Fantastic Wyvern-rider’s panoply, a magic item that is rare even as magic items go, a guildhall,
temple, library, or other large building in a city, a small keep in the country.
+7 Epic A large, heavily fortified castle, a market town, a city block.
+8 Legendary The services of an archmage, an entire city.

37
Ride
Attack: No.
Defend: Yes.
Ride is used primarily in two ways, first, to avoid physical harm while riding a horse, wyvern, or other mount.
Second, to catch up to enemies in a chase while riding a horse, wyvern, or other mount. Chase scenes are usually
an extended contest of some kind, but if one side is on a mount and the other is not, then the unmounted party
generally has exactly one chance to catch the mounted party and jump on or drag them off, and the TN for it
tends to be quite high. On the other hand, if both are mounted, it’s an ordinary chase scene, and almost certainly
the skill rolled for it will be Ride.
The creatures listed in the TN table below are mounts, not riders, even though riders are the ones who make the
rolls. If you attempt to ride a mount and you don’t hit that mount’s floor TN, then you and the mount are not
getting along in some important way, and your maximum result is 0. As such, anyone riding a mount habitu-
ally will always have a skill rank of at least the mount’s floor TN, usually 1-2 points higher to provide insurance
against an ornery wyvern trying to buck them off mid-flight.
Roll Descriptor Mount floor TN Mount floor TN +2 (level at which mount can be trusted not to
try and throw you in a chase)
+0 Mediocre Donkey –
+1 Average Horse –
+2 Fair Griffon Donkey
+3 Good Wyvern Horse
+4 Great Hydra Griffon
+5 Superb Tyrannosaur Wyvern
+6 Fantastic Roc. Hydra
+7 Epic – Tyrannosaur
+8 Legendary – Roc

38
Shoot
Attack: Yes.
Defend: No.
Shoot is the skill used to inflict physical harm at range.
Shoot is rolled against opposition basically all the time, so the following TN chart lists the Athletics ability of
some standard opponents. These are averages based on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability.
Named characters or those whose occupations make them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these
baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Elf, goblin
+2 Fair Orc
+3 Good Beastfolk
+4 Great Minotaur
+5 Superb Troll
+6 Fantastic Fire giant
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

Siegecraft
Attack: Not usually.
Defend: Not usually.
Siegecraft is the art of creating and employing siege weapons against fortified positions, or conversely, of building,
maintaining, and manning fortified positions against siege. Siegecraft is basically always rolled as an opposed
check during a siege, so the example opposition is the average skill rank based on what kind of defenses or siege
weapons they have. A named character might have lower or higher Siegecraft than the equipment they’ve been
given indicates (presumably because someone else made it for them).
You can also use Siegecraft for the operation of siege weapons, for example, firing ballistae or trebuchets against
kaiju, or manning cannons on a galleon.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Hastily dug earthworks, ladders and pavises.
+2 Fair A palisade and ditch, battering ram.
+3 Good A stone keep, ballistas and mangonels..
+4 Great A full castle with both keep and outer walls, siege towers.
+5 Superb A castle with round towers and multiple layers of defense, trebuchets.
+6 Fantastic A walled city with several layers of defense, cannons.
+7 Epic Walls or weapons made from supernaturally effective materials.
+8 Legendary Walls or weapons made from materials that are particularly rare even by the standards of
supernaturally effective materials.

39
Stealth
Attack: No.
Defend: No.
Stealth is almost always rolled in opposition to someone else’s Notice for the purpose of sneaking past them. It
isn’t used to pop locks or pick pockets, that’s Burglary, but it is used to hide from guards, predators, and other
dangers.
The following TN chart lists the Notice ability of some standard opponents. These are averages based on a com-
bination of cultural trends and supernatural ability. Named characters or those whose occupations make them
especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Orc
+2 Fair Goblin
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Werewolf
+5 Superb Nymph
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Deva
+8 Legendary Dragon

Will
Attack: No.
Defend: Yes.
Will is the skill you roll to resist mental attacks, both mundane taunting or intimidation from the Provoke skill
and magical compulsions powered by stunts.
The following TN chart lists the Provoke or Rapport ability of some standard opponents. These are averages based
on a combination of cultural trends and supernatural ability. Named characters or those whose occupations make
them especially capable (or incapable) will vary from these baselines.
Roll Descriptor Opposition
+1 Average Beastfolk, orc
+2 Fair Goblin
+3 Good Elf
+4 Great Merfolk
+5 Superb Satyr
+6 Fantastic Efreeti
+7 Epic Balor
+8 Legendary Dragon

40
Distant Fate: Character Advancement and Campaigns
Milestones
Milestones are how Fate characters become more powerful over time.
At the end of every session is a minor milestone. Minor milestones do not increase your character’s power, but
rather give you a chance to swap your build around laterally. At a minor milestone, you can do one of:
• Swap the rank value of any two skills within one rank of each other, for example, swapping a +3 skill
with a +2 skill, or a +0 skill with a +1 skill.
• Swap a stunt out for a different stunt.
• Buy a new stunt for 1 refresh (you still can’t go below 1 refresh).
• Change a character aspect other than your High Concept and which isn’t locked.
Two important things to note: First, you cannot trade stunts out for extra refresh, so no, you cannot trade
stunts back in to increase refresh near the end of a scenario, trigger refresh and get your Fate Points, then trade
the stunts back out. Second, aspects can only be changed if they aren’t locked, and aspects imposed by external
circumstances like mutation are often locked.
At the end of every scenario is a significant milestone. Significant milestones increase your power gradually, by
allowing you to raise one skill by one level. However, you cannot raise any skills higher than the current cap, and
you need to keep your skills properly “stacked.” This means you must always have at least as many skills of a lower
rank as you do the rank one level up. If you have four skills at +1, you can only have a maximum of four skills at
+2. Fate character sheets make this easy to keep track of by arranging your skills into a grid, with rows of the grid
corresponding to skill rank, so the first row is +1, the second row is +2, and so on. Using this layout, it’s obvious
when you have more skills at a higher rank than you do at the rank below, as this will cause the skill to “float”
above an empty cell in the grid.
Starting with the standard pyramid with a +4 cap, for example, you can’t immediately promote one of your +3
skills to +4, because that would leave the new +4 skill floating above the empty cell where it used to be at +3.
Instead, you need to promote a +2 skill to +3 to lay a foundation - but then you have the same problem one level
down. In order to raise a +3 skill to +4, you need to start by adding a new +1 skill, then promoting a +1 skill to
+2, and so on, until you’ve made enough space in your pyramid to promote your +3 skill to +4. Alternatively,
you could walk a skill from +0 all the way up the pyramid to +4, but if you left a skill at +0 in character creation,
it’s probably because you don’t plan to use it very much, and would rather promote one of your more important
skills.
All significant milestones also count as a minor milestone, so you can pick one of the minor milestone options in
addition to increasing one skill by one point.
At the end of every arc is a major milestone. Major milestones increase your power by quite a bit. When you
reach a major milestone, you can do as many of the following as you like (but no more than one of each):
• Increase a skill (past the cap, if you’re able to).
• Increase your refresh by one. You can use this refresh to immediately buy a stunt if you like.
• Rename your character’s high concept.
A major milestone also counts as a minor milestone. It doesn’t count as a significant milestone, increasing a skill
by one is one of the options for a major milestone anyway (and with the restriction on busting the cap lifted).
If you increase a skill past the skill cap, that increases the skill cap for the entire party. If only one character is in
a position to increase a skill to +5 at the campaign’s first major milestone, and they do so, then the other party
members can then increase skills to +5 using significant milestones.

41
Scenes, Sessions, Scenarios, and Arcs
A Fate game is broken up into four time segments: Scenes, sessions, scenarios, and arcs.
A scene is a stage and filmmaking term, referring to a segment of the play or movie which takes place in a specific
location. It was a money thing: More scenes means more set design, more location scouting, and so forth. You
can get a (very) rough estimate for the cost of a production just by knowing how many different scenes it has and
the size of the cast, though obviously a scene of two characters talking in a coffee shop will cost more than a scene
of two characters dogfighting in starfighters with a CGI space fleet battle in the background.
But the point of all this trivia is just to hopefully make it easier to remember what the boundaries of a “scene” are.
A scene takes place in a distinct location from scenes occurring before and after, and something that lasts “until
the end of the current scene” will last until you timeskip your way to a different location. A new scene might
come when you walk to the other side of town to meet with a contact in their manor, but not if you step from the
street right outside directly into the foyer. The scene changes when you set sail and thus move the action from the
docks to aboard the ship in the harbor, but not if you’ve just walked up a gangplank onto the ship while it’s still
docked.
In The Fellowship of the Ring’s screenplay, the Mines of Moria section has six scenes: The Moria Gate where
they’re attacked by the Watcher in the Water, the Cemetery Cavern where Gandalf and Frodo have their “all we
can decide is what to do with the time that is given to us” conversation, the Tomb of Balin where the troll fight
happens, the Dwarrowdelf Chamber when the goblins surround them and then get scared off by the approaching
Balrog, the Stair of Khazad-Dum where nobody tosses the dwarf, and the Bridge of Khazad-Dum where Gandalf
confronts the Balrog (I’m skipping over a few very short scenes between the Moria Gate and the Cemetery Cav-
ern because they serve as the vehicle for a single line of dialogue and this paragraph is long enough already). From
this you can see that a dungeoncrawl can definitely be comprised of multiple scenes, and that each individual
scene is mostly equivalent to a single dungeoncrawl encounter, but it’s possible to string multiple encounters
together into one big scene if players move directly from one to another without pause or timeskip.
Side note if you’re familiar with film screenplays: You do not automatically need a scene change when going from
outdoors to indoors or vice-versa, because you aren’t actually filming, which means you never need to worry
about keeping the time of day consistent from one shot to another. Just like you don’t need to declare an entirely
new scene every time the camera follows someone out of one room and into the hall, you don’t need to declare
a new scene when someone walks out of doors. It matters to Peter Jackson that EXT. MORIA GATE - NIGHT
means he needs to schedule a shoot when it isn’t raining but INT. MORIA GATE - NIGHT can be whenever
because it’s on an indoor soundstage, but the hard divide between interior and exterior shots doesn’t matter when
you control the weather.
(And also these distinctions are pretty vestigial even in screenplays - the INT./EXT. divide was important when
the formatting of screenplays was established and cemented, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of allegedly exteri-
or scenes end up shot on interior sound stages that are very big and full of trees)
But don’t get too bogged down in the screenplay trivia. You’ve read books, you’ve seen movies, you know what a
scene is, and usually the border between one scene and another will be obvious. Don’t get it into your head that
you should be planning scenes in advance in a specific order like a scriptwriter, either. The definition of a scene is
basically the same from movies to tabletop RPGs, but how you set up and perform them is very, very different.
All this screenwriting information is (kind of self-indulgent on my part, but besides that) about when a scene
begins and ends, because that works the same across both mediums, not about how a scene should play out or
what scene should come next, because that is very different between the two mediums.
A session is dead simple to keep track of: It is one actual real world session of game time. If you wrap up for the
day and don’t pick up again for another week, that is the end of a session. Sessions are an important unit of time
to keep track of because some things should be done between sessions, and you want some changes to have had
a chance to settle in during gameplay before making another, so those changes are limited to once per session or
similar.

42
A scenario is a single quest, mission, or similar. A scenario usually takes at least one session, and sometimes
two or three. A scenario has a goal, and while that goal isn’t always apparent right away, it’s usually easy to spot
the end of a scenario because there’s been some kind of finale. The solution to a mystery, a final boss, reaching a
destination, a quest ATM handing out a reward.
The scenario breakpoint is important because it’s a good place to take a week-long rest to trigger refresh (if you’re
using the rest-based refresh rules - if you’re not, completing a scenario may trigger refresh automatically), so “once
per refresh” can mean “once per scenario” for all practical purposes, unless the party takes it upon themselves to
try and do two scenarios on a single refresh. As such, it’s important that stopping for a week in the middle of a
scenario is usually a bad idea, but that stopping for a week between scenarios usually works out. A scenario might
only be available for a specific week (the evil Baron is marching on the innocent village of Haplet!) or it might be
that the scenario will wait around for a while, but once they’ve been attacked, taking a week off means they will
reinforce, accelerate the timetable for their nefarious deeds, or withdraw altogether and take their loot with them.
Some scenarios might remain available for round two after the party takes a week to rest and refresh, but there’s
some kind of overall countdown to something terrible happening that the party has to stay on top of, so they
can’t bang their heads against one scenario for too long or it’ll count down to zero.
A scenario is also an important breakpoint because finishing one gives you a skill point (as discussed below). A
skill point isn’t as dramatic an increase in power as a full D&D level, but it’s not nothing, either.
Don’t be afraid to keep a scenario contained in one session (that’s usually ideal, in fact, although also hard to
do consistently), but try to avoid letting them run longer than three. Usually it’s best to aim for one session to a
scenario if everything is tight, but expect two sessions for a realistic amount of dicking around on the part of the
party.
If you’ve GM’d a lot of games, you probably have an intuitive feeling for where scenarios begin and end, even
in a relatively open campaign structure with lots of plot hooks lying around and no fixed order or entry point
for a scenario, so don’t be afraid to rely on that instinct. Like with the section on scenes, the five paragraphs I’ve
written here are mostly caffeine-fueled obsessive thoroughness trying to document the rough edges when finding
the end of a scenario might be harder.
The Fate Core rules say that an arc is roughly equivalent to a TV series season, and recommend the average arc
length be about 3-4 scenarios, from which we can glean that Evil Hat are big fans of the BBC. How long you
want your arc to be depends a lot on how long you want your entire story to be, because at the end of an arc,
you raise your skill cap, and (assuming a starting cap of +4, the standard) you can do that a grand total of three
times maximum, and realistically speaking you probably won’t be building the multiclass scaffolding needed to
accomplish that.
Now, not every arc has to end with raising the skill cap, and another thing you get with an arc is an extra point of
refresh, which can be recycled into stunts, which players like, and which there’s a lot more room for as compared
to increasing the skill cap. Players start with three stunts and might reasonably want as much as seven or eight
before their character is maxed out, which means there’s room for at least four or five arcs within a single story.
You could certainly have as many as ten arcs in your complete story, especially if you’re following Evil Hat’s advice
to have a single arc last just three scenarios, although giving players a total of 16 refresh is certainly going to be
pushing the limits of the system.
I have always found it very difficult to make anything that could be called an “arc” fit into such a small amount of
time. This is an artifact of my own storytelling style and preferences, as I tend to gravitate towards arcs that are at
least six or seven scenarios long, and often well over a dozen. For some people, an entire campaign might not run
a full dozen scenarios, but I tend towards very long-running games, and this seems to be the standard, judging by
the length of popular adventure paths.

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World Advancement
Minor, significant, and major milestones are also a good chance for the GM to take stock of how the world has
changed. There’s rarely anything to keep track of from a minor milestone (maybe some locations have had aspects
swapped around, but that probably happened during play and doesn’t need to be noted between sessions).
After a significant milestone, however, you might need to update your faces and places with anything you want
to introduce in the next scenario. This is the core of scenario planning in a Fate game, designing a set of faces and
places to interact with, connecting them to one another so that characters interacting with one will get drawn
into a conflict or mystery or whatever involving the others, and leaving some plot hooks to draw the players into
one of the entry points. Some GMs prep scenarios exclusively by adding new faces and places in this way.
After a major milestone, odds are pretty good that one of the world’s major issues has been resolved, or at least
radically altered in some way. Rename it, and if the renaming suggests it’s not very important anymore (for exam-
ple, if Tyrannical Rule of the Inquisition has become Bitter Memories of the Inquisition, that suggests they’re pretty
much finished as a going concern), consider introducing an entirely new issue to replace it. It’s better to rename
issues (for example, Tyrannical Rule of the Inquisition is replaced by A Shaky and Unstable Rebel Government),
though, so that the new situation feels like a consequence of the last arc, rather than coming from nowhere.

Ancestry
Universal Stunts
The following seven stunts represent an extraordinary (usually supernatural) capability that is very common
amongst a wide range of ancestries. For example, Potence is a stunt for creatures with extraordinary strength,
whether they are orcs, minotaurs, vampires, or giants. These stunts require a specific aspect be taken to justify
them, usually an ancestral aspect. Each ancestry comes with a specific list of universal stunts they qualify you for.
You might also qualify for universal stunts with other aspects, if, for example, you are an Alchemically Enhanced
Superhuman or Blessed By The God Of Winds or something.
Authority: You can give a supernatural command by rolling Provoke against a target’s Will. If you succeed, the
target is compelled to obey the command. The command must take no more than a few words to communicate,
and must be doable within a few seconds of time. For example, “hold still” would prevent someone from moving
for a few seconds, but would not paralyze them forever.
When you succeed on your Provoke check to use Authority, you can spend a Fate Point to mesmerize the target.
Spending a Fate Point to mesmerize the target does not allow you to reroll or add two shifts to the Provoke check
(although you can spend another Fate Point on an aspect to do so as normal). While the target is mesmerized,
you can implant a more complex and longer term command in them.
This command is added as an aspect, where you should also note the result of the Provoke roll used to implant it,
as this will be the TN for future Will rolls to resist it. The aspect remains until the command is fulfilled or some-
one does some kind of curse-breaking ritual or they overcome the command with the power of love or something.
The command can only take hold outside of direct sunlight, but it persists no matter how much time the target
spends in daylight. The command can lie undetected for an indefinite amount of time, and when an opportunity
to fulfill the command arises, they will begin doing so without really thinking about it.
If obeying the implanted command causes them to do something strongly contrary to their motivations (but not
their identity), they get a second Will check against whatever Provoke roll you used to implant the check, and if
they fail, they continue to mindlessly obey despite the sacrifice/danger.
Celerity: You have +2 when using Athletics to avoid harm.
You can spend a Fate Point on Celerity to immediately act again at the end of your turn.

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Discernment: Your supernatural senses allow you to make uncannily accurate deductions about someone’s
emotional state, and you can pick up even very subtle details with a quick sweep of an area. Your keen sense of
hearing and smell mean that your Notice is not impaired even if the thing you are noticing is entirely hidden
from view (i.e. on the other side of a wall). You can roll Notice instead of Investigate to search an area for clues,
and can roll Notice to detect lies.
If you successfully roll Notice against someone’s Empathy, you can spend a Fate Point to read their mind outright,
not only detecting lies, but learning one or two specific things they know (by default, whatever they’re thinking
about right now, but you can instead grab a brief snippet of memory or learn the answer to a quick question).
Fortitude: You are considerably more durable, gaining 1 extra HP for every rank in Physique you have.
You can spend a Fate Point to call upon the powers of your blood to invigorate you, instantly restoring your
physical HP to maximum (but not healing any consequences). It must be your turn to use your blood healing, so
you cannot use it reactively to prevent yourself from taking a consequence.
Magnetism: Your supernatural beauty and charm give you +2 to Rapport checks made to draw and keep
attention, including compelling people to follow you in the literal, physical sense of moving to remain in your
presence, or alternatively to repel someone with shame, causing them to flee your presence.
You can spend a Fate Point to capture the absolute and undivided attention of absolutely everyone who can see
or hear you, rolling Rapport against the Will of any characters important enough to care about and automatically
succeeding against any others. For the rest of the scene, people enraptured will watch and listen to you silently
and intently, doing nothing to interfere with you unless doing so would contradict one of their motivations, in
which case they get another Will roll against whatever your Rapport result was to enrapture the crowd. Enrap-
tured people may, but do not have to, move or speak in response to a prompt from you to do so. People who can
no longer see or hear you cease to be enraptured after a few seconds.
Potence: You can climb directly up walls with no need to make an Athletics check to do so. If you hit an enemy
with a melee attack, you deal one extra shift of damage.
You can spend a Fate Point to deal an additional three shifts of damage to a target, for four total, or to instantly
demolish a physical barrier or obstacle up to and including stone walls about three feet thick.
Veil: You have +2 to any Stealth roll to hide in shadows. This requires that shadows be present, and while there’s
almost shadows somewhere nearby, a patch of well-lit space between where you are and where you’re trying to be
might rob you of your bonus. This also requires the creatures trying to see you be affected by shadows in the way
that vampires, for example, are not.
You can also spend a Fate Point to become completely invisible. While invisible, people can’t detect you, period,
unless they take an action to roll Notice against your Stealth actively. You remain invisible until the end of the
scene.

Ancestries
Each of the ancestries below has a certain number of universal stunts they have access to as well as one or some-
times more unique ancestry stunts representing either the biological differences of the ancestry or the special skills
taught in the cultural upbringing of that ancestry.
Ancestry stunts require an aspect as a prerequisite. This ancestral aspect is given an evocative name like Carved
From Stone or Mad Visions, but you don’t have to use that aspect word-for-word, and using the name of the an-
cestry itself implies all the effects of the ancestral aspect, so if you are a Dwarven Troll-Hunter, you implicitly have
all the effects of the dwarven Carved From Stone ancestral aspect wrapped up in that aspect (along with whatever
implications come from being a troll-hunter). An aspect like Raised By Dwarves would qualify a character for
cultural stunts, but not biological ones. Universal stunts are biological unless stated otherwise (often as a result of
being physically large or small), but the unique ancestral stunts are usually cultural. Some “ancestries” are actually
transformations that happen partway through life, like becoming a vampire, but mechanically these are the same
thing: A collection of stunts you can take if you have an aspect justifying it.

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The Big Five
Your bog standard fantasy races. You may or may not wish to include the non-human ones at all.

Dwarves
Ancestral Aspect: Carved From Stone. Dwarves move with such organic fluidity that they’re often mistaken for
fleshy beings at first glance. After all, many skin colors not found amongst humans are found amongst the other
races, why not grey? But dwarven grey is the grey of stone, for they are carved from it. Adapted to the under-
ground, dwarves see easily in the dark. They are often carved to look like they are wearing armor, especially if they
are intended as soldiers, but they need not wear any to benefit from the maximum additional HP of Physique.
Dwarves do require food, drink, and air to live (you can tell the difference between a statue and a dwarf by check-
ing for breathing), but they are immune to poison and disease unless it specifically affects dwarves. Despite being
carved from stone, dwarves do count as living creatures, not constructs.
Universal Stunts: Fortitude.
Dwarven Crafting: You are specialized into one of the four crafting specialties of the dwarves: Brewing, masonry,
smithing, or gem cutting and jeweling. You have a +2 to any Burglary, Notice, Investigate, Lore, or Resources
check relating to your chosen crafting specialty.
Tunnel Fighting: You are specialized into the fifth way of the dwarves: War. You have a +2 to any Fight checks
made using a polearm in a tunnel that’s ten feet wide or less, as you are adept at using the reach of pikes and
halberds to control long but narrow spaces.

Elves
Ancestral Aspect: Song of the Sidhe. Elves are sung into existence by powerful fey called the sidhe. Some of
them are sung into existence in Reverie to serve as the sidhe’s friends and entourage, but sidhe singing idle songs
will cause elves to arise in the natural places of the mortal world. Elves are naturally adept with magic and can tell
when a place is particularly flush with or devoid of magical power, though the vast majority of them are not full
sorcerers. All elves are keen of eye and ear, but only dark elves of the underground caverns have darkvision.
The elves are naturally adept for different natural environments, depending on the sort of song that sung them
into existence:
• Dark elves are nocturnes of the underground caverns.
• Grey elves are elegies of between places - coastlines, crossroads, thresholds, and the Astral Sea.
• High elves are arias of the mountains.
• Sea elves are shanties of the seas and oceans.
• Wild elves are ballads of the alpines.
• Wood elves are rhapsodies of the forests.
Universal Stunts: Authority (dark), Celerity (wild), Discernment (all), Fortitude (grey), Magnetism (high),
Potence (sea), Veil (wood)
Elfsong: You can sing a bit of the song of the sidhe, and the natural world moves in response. You can roll
Rapport against plants and animals of the environment your type of elf is naturally adept in (i.e. high elves in
mountains, wood elves in forests), and while they can’t understand you directly, they’ll get the gist and may act in
response, including behaviors that would seem far beyond their abilities, like mice sewing or a tree getting up and
moving out of the way. You can learn one additional song of the sidhe for every rank in Perform you have, up to
all five if you have +5 Perform.

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Halflings
Ancestral Aspect: Tall Tale of the Short Folk. Halflings reproduce by telling stories about a family member until
that family member shows up. Halflings swap stories of old Uncle Bilbert, or Cousin Lenny, or their Granny Sue,
and if enough stories accrue, the halfling in question will return from holiday or an adventure or what-have-you.
The stories can be adventure stories of Uncle Bilbert and the Ring or they can be dire warnings about Old Man
Lenks by the swamp and the terrible things he does to trespassers or wistful memories of the food Farmer Betty
used to cook before she took off for the big city. Which means if you’re a halfling, you’re a story, and your aspect
should be something like They Say I Won A Magic Ring In A Riddle Contest or They Say My Cooking Is To Die For
or They Say I Bake Misbehaving Children Into Pies. Depending on how long you’ve been around, you might not
have ever told any riddles, baked anything, or encountered a child, but the story about you informs who you are
and what you can do anyway, and might even come with some handy props.
Universal Stunts: Veil.
Last Chance: When you spend your last Fate Point, it gives you +3 instead of +2. If you use it to reroll, you get
+1 on top of the reroll. You can only use this ability once per refresh, even if you later get a Fate Point back by
accepting a compel from one of your aspects.

Humans
Ancestral Aspect: -
Universal Stunts: -
Humans are boring, having no ancestral aspect, no access to universal stunts, and no special stunts. On the other
hand, this means you don’t have to take any aspects or stunts to represent being a human, leaving you with more
refresh to spend on class stunts or to leave as a giant pile of Fate Points.
While humans work exactly the way regular real world humans do (except in that they can learn magic and get
magic superpowers that way, which is what a class is), sexual reproduction is an unusual trait. Many animals have
it, as do humans, which means humans are sometimes associated with animals by other intelligent creatures. Hu-
mans do not generally appreciate this very much, and are usually in a position to make other humanoids regret
getting on their nerves, because the efficiency of sexual reproduction at filling in spaces below their population
cap means that humans are everywhere and are usually the dominant species.

Orcs
Ancestral Aspect: Born From Battle. Orcs emerge from the churned and bloodsoaked earth of a fresh battlefield.
Small skirmishes can create just one or two orcs, who must find out what to make of the world alone or with each
other, while large battles can lead to entire warbands emerging from the ground and roving the countryside. If
an orc horde fight a battle and win, they can recruit fresh orcs from the battlefield. If they lose, the enemy army
can cut the orcs down as soon as they emerge, but if they’re clever, they’ll recruit the fresh spawned orcs for them-
selves! What does a newly spawned orc care if their comrades-in-arms are other orcs or not? But whether they are
part of an orc horde, a minotaur’s minions, or a human army, orcs are naturally drawn to battle and bloodshed
with the ever-present pressure of a reproductive instinct.
Universal Stunts: Potence.
Bloodlust: Orcs emerge from corpse-strewn battlefields and have an inherent instinct to create more of them.
To qualify, the field must be the site of a battle, and that battle must have resulted in corpses to strew about the
place. When orcs fight, they fight to kill. You have +2 to all Fight rolls to attack a target who has suffered at least
one consequence. When you inflict a consequence on a target, you can spend a Fate Point to immediately attack
again.
Orcish Determination: Whenever you would be reduced to 0 HP and take a consequence, you can spend a Fate
Point to be reduced to exactly 1 HP without taking any consequences.

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Celestials
Celestials are not mortal beings, but rather made of pure soulstuff. They have no organs or muscle tissue or the
like, so though they feel much the same as mortals do to the touch, there are no organs inside to fall victim to
poison or disease unless it specifically affects celestials in general or the specific type of celestial they are. They do
not count as living creatures, undead, nor constructs - they are outsiders.

Devas
Ancestral Aspect: Emissary of the Heavens. Devas are the primary agents of the will of the Heavens in the
mortal world. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing consistent about devas, and nobody has any idea what the will
of the Heavens actually is or how different devas advance it. Different devas claim they are all working towards
the same grand design, but this doesn’t stop them from working at seeming cross-purposes to one another:
Taking different sides in the same war, one leading a crusade against tyranny in all its forms while another leads a
crusade for order at any cost, one claiming to deliver a message that a certain ruler’s coronation is blessed by the
Heavens, another delivering a message that the ruler’s coronation is not blessed and that the crown should pass
over the oldest child to a younger sibling instead, and they will both insist that both of the messages are true and
honest messages delivered on behalf of the Heavens. Sometimes they offer explanations as to how these seemingly
irreconcilable goals serve some greater plan, other times they say “the Heavens work in mysterious ways,” refuse to
elaborate, and leave.
Devas appear as humanoids (though often with skin of silver, gold, milky white, or jet black) with feathered
wings and a “halo,” a ring of keratin (the same material horns are made of ) that sprouts from their forehead and
forms a loop over their head. The joined ring glows with bright light and puts them into constant communica-
tion with the Will of Heaven and all other devas who are themselves joined to the network. When their halo is
broken, the fragments left behind no longer glow and resemble horns of one shape or another, and they can no
longer communicate with the Will of Heaven or other devas.
A deva’s wings aren’t functional on their own, but their heavenly
nature allows them to hover and fly anyway, and their
wings can be used for maneuvering. This means
that a deva with damaged or bound wings can
still hover off the ground, but their maneu-
verability is significantly impaired.
Devas whose halos are intact cannot
tell direct lies, and can detect any
direct lie spoken in their presence,
but they do not have to tell the
full truth and can be misleading
with technically true statements,
and likewise they cannot detect
when someone is keeping
secrets or providing mislead-
ing half-truths. Their radiant
nature also makes them immune
to radiant damage, and causes
them to cast light in all directions
around them. They cannot turn
this light off.
Devas with broken halos are resistant
to radiant damage still, getting a +2
bonus to all Defend rolls against it, but
are no longer immune. They can tell lies,
but cannot detect them. The light they cast is
significantly dimmed, and they can turn it off
completely if they wish.

48
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism.
Battle Meditation: You can use the telepathic aura of your halo to unite all creatures in battle to fight as one.
When you do so, you roll Will to Create An Advantage, and get +2 for any creature who is particularly receptive
to the divine network of the halos, including other devas with intact halos but potentially also other celestials,
particularly devout mortals, and so on. You can pay a Fate Point to Create An Advantage for any number of crea-
tures in the same zone. Each creature affected gets a separate situation aspect with a separate pool of free invokes.
When multiple creatures have a Battle Meditation aspect with free invokes left on it (whether because you spent
a Fate Point to give it to several creatures at once or because you spent multiple turns Creating An Advantage for
multiple creatures individually), those creatures are all aware of what other creatures in the network see and hear.
Creatures who use all the free invokes on their aspect lose this ability, though they can still spend Fate Points to
invoke the aspect like any other situation aspect.
Divine Communion: You are in constant communication with all other devas, and adept at sifting through this
firehose of information to remember things that other devas know. You can roll Contacts instead of Investigate to
discover any piece of information that any deva has ever known.
Shield of Light: Your divine radiance helps to shield your allies from harm. When in melee, you count as a
number of combatants equal to your Will. Any creatures of your choice in the melee with you gain +2 to Defend
against radiant damage.
Sword of Light: You shine with the light of Heaven. You can deal radiant damage with a brilliant sword of light
or bolts of the same, using either Fight or Shoot. You have +2 on all attacks made with your radiant weapons
targeting one of undead, fiends, or fey. You may pick any of the three, but once selected, you cannot change it
(except by swapping stunts out entirely).

Hound Archons
Ancestral Aspect: Guardians of the Heavens. Hound Archons are the
Heavens’ goodest of boys. Canine warriors, they are famous for their
loyalty and commitment to whatever cause the Heavens are supporting
right now. Like all celestials, most of them are loyal to the Will of the
Heavens, a concept which nobody really understands, least of all the
hound archons, but this does not shake their faith that following it
will always serve a greater good in the end. While hound archons
can serve as a vanguard or stormtroopers when necessary, they
are most at home in a role as loyal protectors and guardian
angels.
Hound archons have a very keen sense of smell and are not
impaired by invisibility at all as long as they can still smell the
target creature.
Universal Stunts: Discernment, Fortitude, Potence.
Canine Determination: Whenever you would be reduced to 0 HP
and take a consequence, you can spend a Fate Point to be reduced
to exactly 1 HP without taking any consequences.
Squirrel!: You have +2 to Notice for purposes of determining
initiative order.

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Lantern Archons
Ancestral Aspect: Guiding Light of the Heavens. Lantern archons are intelligent orbs of glowing light of various
colors, and serve as the guiding lights of the Will of the Heavens. Like with most celestials, they don’t provide a
whole lot of insight into what the Will of the Heavens actually is. Lantern archons provide advice and guidance
to mortals, but the goals they guide mortals towards don’t seem to add up to any coherent plan. Most lantern
archons freely admit that they don’t understand why the objective they’ve been given contributes to the Will of
the Heavens, rather, they’re told by some higher celestial to make sure X mortal accomplishes Y task and they do
their best to facilitate that.
Lantern archons do not have a natural connection to the halo network that (allegedly) communes with the
Will of the Heavens, but they can plug into it when resting in celestial lanterns. These lanterns are literal (albeit
magical) lanterns, and it’s possible for corporeal creatures to pick them up and carry them around, but a lantern
archon is usually found without one, since they are often sent to guide mortals in situations where a deva or
similar personally intervening is deemed unnecessary - no deva means no one to carry the celestial lantern down
to the mortal world.
Lantern archons are fully incorporeal and cannot be harmed by bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing attacks, nor by
any kind of poison and disease. They resist (and thus get +2 to defend against) but are not immune to acid, cold,
fire, lightning, and thunder damage. They have no resistances against necrotic or force damage.
Being made of pure light, lantern archons give off light continuously, and being hovering balls of light, they can
hover around at-will. Lantern archons cannot pass straight through solid objects, but they can pass through any
gap that is not airtight. Lantern archons have no ability to interact physically with the world besides casting light
upon it, unable to so much as lift a mote of dust.
Universal Stunts: Discernment.
Shield of Light: Your divine radiance helps to shield your allies from harm. When in melee, you count as a
number of combatants equal to your Will. Any creatures of your choice in the melee with you gain +2 to Defend
against radiant damage.

Ophanim
Ancestral Aspect: Burning Eye of the Heavens. An ophanim is a burning eye of white fire surrounded by wheels
within wheels each covered in eyes themselves. Each of the wheels and the wheels within wheels are glowing halos
that plug the ophanim into the halo network of the celestials. Unlike devas, who can be non-fatally cut off from
the halo network, breaking one of the wheels of the ophanim kills them immediately, which means all ophanim
are plugged into the celestial network.
The role of the ophanim is to discover information on behalf of the celestial halo network, and as such they tend
to work with mortals to a much more limited extent than many other celestials. Instead, they are usually found
roving the countryside looking for something, or they descend from the heavens to search through a building
for something, not bothering to inform nearby mortals of what they’re looking for or why unless they find their
progress blocked and are forced to call upon locals for assistance.
An ophanim is not usually a very maneuverable flier, but they can hover at-will (it’s the only way they can get
around).
Ophanim cannot tell direct lies, and can detect any direct lie spoken in their presence, but they do not have to
tell the full truth and can be misleading with technically true statements, and likewise they cannot detect when
someone is keeping secrets or providing misleading half-truths. Their radiant nature also makes them immune to
radiant damage, and causes them to cast light in all directions around them. They cannot turn this light off.
An ophanim’s central, core eye has truesight - it automatically sees through any illusion and can detect invisible
creatures. Ophanim can also fire rays of sustained light from their core eye. This is a Shoot attack dealing radiant
damage.

50
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism.
All-Seeing (requires Discernment): You can spend a Fate Point to make your gaze particularly penetrating.
For the rest of the scene, your vision goes straight through solid objects up to 60 ft. away, and you can use the
mind-reading ability of Discernment without paying any additional Fate Points.
Divine Communion: You are in constant communication with all other celestials in the halo network, and adept
at sifting through this firehose of information to remember things that other devas know. You can roll Contacts
instead of Investigate to discover any piece of information that any celestial in the network has ever known.

Seraphim
Ancestral Aspect: Steward of the Heavens. The seraphim refer to themselves as the stewards of the Will of the
Heavens, though they don’t seem to be distinguishable from rulers of other angels. They dispatch the ophanim
and the sword archons and the hound archons on their missions to reveal or destroy or protect, they send devas
and lantern archons to specific mortals to accomplish specific goals. They claim to be executors of the Will of
the Heavens and that they are all acting in concert, although like all the other celestials, this does not stop them
from working at cross-purposes to one another. Further confusing the issue, lesser celestials will sometimes leave
the service of one seraph for another, apparently with the approval of both the seraphim involved, even if they’re
actively opposing one another.
Seraphim can take on many forms, but they can never conceal their identity. Anyone who looks at them instantly
recognizes them, even if they’re of a radically different form from previous interactions, and likewise, if a creature
is meeting a new seraph, they know with supernatural certainty that they have never met that seraph before, even
if they don’t know about this power. A seraph’s form always has six feathered wings, and it is common for them to
take either a humanoid form or the form of a great eye in the center, but it can be anything.
Like many celestials, seraphim have a halo whose radiant light plugs them into a network with all other celestials
with functioning halos. Unlike many other celestials, their halo is purely ephemeral and cannot be broken. It is
not a ring-shaped object that shines with light, but a ring of light.
A seraph’s wings aren’t functional on their own, but their heavenly nature allows them to hover and fly anyway,
and their wings can be used for maneuvering. This means that a seraph with damaged or bound wings can still
hover off the ground, but their maneuverability is significantly impaired.
Seraphim cannot tell direct lies, and can detect any direct lie spoken in their presence, but they do not have to
tell the full truth and can be misleading with technically true statements, and likewise they cannot detect when
someone is keeping secrets or providing misleading half-truths. Their radiant nature also makes them immune to
radiant damage, and causes them to cast light in all directions around them. They cannot turn this light off.
Seraphim have truesight. They automatically see through all illusions and can see invisible creatures plainly.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Magnetism, Potence.
Battle Meditation: You can use the telepathic aura of your halo to unite all creatures in battle to fight as one.
When you do so, you roll Will to Create An Advantage, and get +2 for any creature who is particularly receptive
to the divine network of the halos, including other devas with intact halos but potentially also other celestials,
particularly devout mortals, and so on. You can pay a Fate Point to Create An Advantage for any number of crea-
tures in the same zone. Each creature affected gets a separate situation aspect with a separate pool of free invokes.
When multiple creatures have a Battle Meditation aspect with free invokes left on it (whether because you spent
a Fate Point to give it to several creatures at once or because you spent multiple turns Creating An Advantage for
multiple creatures individually), those creatures are all aware of what other creatures in the network see and hear.
Creatures who use all the free invokes on their aspect lose this ability, though they can still spend Fate Points to
invoke the aspect like any other situation aspect.
Divine Communion: You are in constant communication with all other devas, and adept at sifting through this
firehose of information to remember things that other devas know. You can roll Contacts instead of Investigate to
discover any piece of information that any deva has ever known.

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Divine Healing: You can heal a creature using your divine power. Spend a Fate Point to heal all HP of both types
and a single consequence of the lowest severity on a living creature other than yourself (for example, if a creature
has only a severe consequence, you can heal that consequence, but if a creature has a mild and a severe conse-
quence, you would have to heal the mild consequence instead).
Shield of Light: Your divine radiance helps to shield your allies from harm. When in melee, you have frontage
equal to your Will. Any creatures of your choice in the melee with you gain +2 to Defend against radiant damage.
Seraphic Healing (requires Divine Healing): You can heal a living creature completely with divine grace. You
can spend a Fate Point to heal all HP of both types and all consequences for a creature other than yourself.
Sword of Light: You shine with the light of Heaven. You can deal radiant damage with a brilliant sword of light
or bolts of the same, using either Fight or Shoot. You have +2 on all attacks made with your radiant weapons
targeting one of undead, fiends, or fey. You may pick any of the three, but once selected, you cannot change it
(except by swapping stunts out entirely).

Sword Archons
Ancestral Aspect: Swift Sword of the Heavens. The sword archons are the elite assault troops of the Heavens.
Like all celestials, they claim to serve the Will of the Heavens, but that doesn’t stop them from committing acts
that seem to be at cross-purposes even with other sword archons. “The Heavens work in mysterious ways” is the
usual refrain, although sword archons are less prone to it, because when they arrive, it is usually to kill or destroy
some specific target and then depart without saying a word. Sword archons do sometimes pledge themselves to a
longer term military campaign and are perfectly capable of talking under these circumstances, but even then they
are often reluctant to speak about why their actions allegedly serve the Will of the Heavens, and instead leave it at
“because that is the Will of the Heavens” without further elaboration.
Sword archons are humanoids with pale skin, often a pale blue, green, or amber color. They can shapeshift their
limbs into weapons, and human anatomy being what it is, this usually takes the form of turning one or both arms
into a sword.
A sword archon’s wings aren’t functional on their own, but their heavenly nature allows them to hover and fly
anyway, and their wings can be used for maneuvering. This means that a sword archon with damaged or bound
wings can still hover off the ground, but their maneuverability is significantly impaired. Sword archons are im-
mune to radiant damage, and their shapeshifted limbs can deal any type of physical damage or radiant damage.
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Potence.
Divine Fire: Your radiant weapons can instead deal fire damage. You can spend a Fate Point to consume an entire
zone with divine fire, making an attack dealing either fire or radiant damage to every creature (including allies!)
within the zone.
Divine Lightning: Your radiant weapons can instead deal lightning damage. You can spend a Fate Point to fire a
lightning bolt at a single enemy dealing either lightning or radiant damage. The attack gets a +4 bonus and deals
an additional two shifts of damage if it hits.
Sword of Light: You can deal radiant damage with bolts of brilliant light using Shoot as well as your shapeshifted
weapons. Your bolts always deal radiant damage. You have +2 on all attacks made with your radiant weapons
targeting one of undead, fiends, or fey. You may pick any of the three, but once selected, you cannot change it
(except by swapping stunts out entirely).

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Fey
Changelings
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Another Life. As fey, changelings are born from a dream. Specifically, the dream
of another life, to live in a way you don’t now. Like most fey, the word “dream” here is very broad - there exist
changelings called into existence by nightmares of another life that someone hopes they don’t ever experience.
But the changeling is the subject of the dream, not the dreamer’s will, which means a changeling called forth by a
nightmare will still seek out the nightmare life dreaded by the dreamer.
The mutable nature of a changeling also means they get recycled more than other fey. All fey can migrate into a
new dream if they’re a good fit, but since changelings’ essence is to have a different life now than the one they had
before, they’re a good fit for a lot of different dreams. A changeling may spend just a few hours in one role and
centuries in another, but sooner or later they will feel the call to change again.
This means the heart of a changeling is the desire to change. They can literally change their appearance (they’re
not as good at disguising mannerisms, but they frequently have an uncanny charm that helps them paper it over),
and are famous for doing so in order to replace someone they’ve kidnapped in order to experience something they
never have before. There’s a reason why this tends to happen specifically with children, though: The experience
of being raised in mortal human society is really hard to just walk into. Changelings will sometimes mimic entire
human families to be part of human society, but to get the experience of being a human child requires having
human parents, and that requires some aggressive creativity.
Fortunately for changelings, most experiences don’t come with such heavy prerequisites. A changeling who wants
to know what it’s like to be a sailor will just show up at the docks, spend a few years at sea, and then vanish, never
to be heard from again, while a changeling who wants to know what it’s like to be a carpenter might have to
resort to some skulduggery to get the skills out of a guild, but once they’ve done that they can shapeshift, show
up at a town that needs a carpenter, and start peddling their trade (and if a changeling wants the experience of
running a carpentry shop more than doing actual carpentry, they might skip the guild infiltration and conduct
their carpentry entirely at night using weird fairy magic).
Universal Stunts: Magnetism, Veil.
Convincing Shapeshifter: The average changeling tends to stick out as clearly fey, but you’ve managed to shake
that at least partially. You have +2 to Deceive rolls made to convince people that you are whoever you’re shape-
shifted into.

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Hags
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Revenge. As fey, hags are dreamed into existence. Hags are specifically dreams of
vengeance by outcasts and the oppressed. Being that they are in Reverie and don’t necessarily have any direct con-
nection to the dreamers, hags only rarely intervene directly, but they inherit from the dreams that created them a
vengeful nature and a deep, sometimes preemptively homicidal suspicion towards those who hold wealth, power,
or status, or even have its trappings.
Exactly what raises a hag’s hackles varies from hag to hag. Some hate beauty as a sign of a privileged upbringing
and lifestyle, others despise displays of wealth like carriages or silk clothes. Some hate specific trespasses, like
refusing to share food with beggars or literal trespassing on the private property of those who live in remote places
and wish solitude. Hags can even be benevolent figures to those who, despite their privileged appearances, avoid
wronging the hag and instead treat her with generosity and respect. Famous is the fairy who takes the form of a
bedraggled old woman and asks for food or money from passers-by, doling out fairy wonders to those who do so
and placing terrible curses on those who refuse.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism, Veil.
Baleful Polymorph: You can roll Lore against a target’s Physique to Create An Advantage by turning them into
something small and harmless, like a ferret or a robin. If you succeed, one free invoke is burned at the start of
each of the target’s turns, and when they run out of free invokes, they turn back to normal. You can still pay Fate
Points to invoke the aspect by using the echo of animal instincts against them, for example, distracting someone
recently transformed into a rat with cheese. If you succeed with style on Creating An Advantage with polymorph,
you can pay a Fate Point to make the curse permanent. The cursed creature remains transformed until trans-
formed back (usually by killing or coercing the hag who placed the curse, i.e. you, or by breaking the curse with
some curse-removing magic).
Hag’s Curse: You can roll your Lore against a target’s Will to place a curse on them. This curse is an aspect, but it
does not give free invokes the way a standard Create An Advantage action does (for that, use a hex). Instead, the
curse can be either a curse of spite, a curse of failure, or a curse of misfortune. A curse of spite causes the target to take
shifts of mental damage equal to the number of shifts they get when they succeed on any check. A curse of failure
causes the target to take mental damage equal to the number of shifts they fail a check by. A curse of misfortune
inflicts a mental consequence on the target whenever they exactly tie a check. With the GM’s permission, you can
instead lay a curse that deals one shift of mental damage any time the target breaks a specific taboo, like attacking
a specific creature, attacking any creature, changing zones, telling a lie, or speaking a word with the letter “e” in
it. You can decide exactly what kind of mental consequences (fear, madness, despair, etc.) are inflicted by your
curses. The curse lasts until broken by some kind of divine magic, and the TN for doing so is equal to the Lore
roll you made to inflict it in the first place (write it down in the curse aspect).
Hex: You can roll Lore against a target’s Will to Create an Advantage by hexing an enemy. You can decide exactly
what to call the hex, and it doesn’t have to be the same hex each time. You can inflict a Blinding Hex, a Frightful
Hex, and a Nauseating Hex all on the same enemy, and while it would take you three actions (any one of which
might fail if the enemy makes their Will save), you could then use the free invoke on all three of them at once.
When you succeed with style while placing a hex, the aspect comes with three free invokes instead of two.
Poisonier: When you refresh, you can roll Lore to concoct poisons, and get one dose of poison for each point of
the result. You can use one dose of poison to simultaneously Attack and Create An Advantage on the target. The
aspect created by the advantage can be generic poison nausea, or it can be something like blindness or hallucina-
tions.
If you spend a Fate Point while concocting poisons, one dose of the poison is the infamous Black Lotus Poison. If
it hits, Black Lotus Poison inflicts the Dying From Black Lotus Poison aspect on the victim. This counts as a serious
consequence except that it does not provide extra HP and the victim can have it inflicted even if they already
have a serious consequence. The victim loses 1 HP at the start of each of their turns as long as they’re Dying From
Black Lotus Poison. By default, healing someone who is Dying From Black Lotus Poison requires a TN 6 Lore roll,
although stunts which cure poisons automatically do work. Even when healed, however, the aspect is swapped out
for Recovering From Black Lotus Poison, which still counts as a serious consequence.

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Nymphs
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Distant Desire. Nymphs are fey, dreamed into existence. They are specifically the
dreams of desire for things which are distant (closely related are the satyrs, dreams of more immediate desires,
though not necessarily safer ones). Nymphs are associated with natural features of the world like trees (dryads),
streams, ponds, and other bodies of water (naiads), underground caverns (lampads), mountains (oreads), and so
on. In Reverie, every single natural feature has a nymph associated with it, although they rarely bother to make
themselves known, and many natural features in the mortal world have nymphs as well.
Nymphs have a few automatic abilities based on what kind of nymph they are. Dryads are natural climbers,
naiads are natural swimmers, lampads can see perfectly in the dark, and so on.
Universal Stunts: Magnetism, Veil.
Wild Empathy: You can talk to animals and plants. When attempting to persuade an animal or plant to do
something, you always roll Rapport, even if the skill roll would usually call for Deceive or Provoke.

Pixies
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Wonder. Pixies are fey, dreamed into existence. They are specifically dreams of
wonder and excitement. All pixies have some kind of theme, a specific focus of fascination that dreamed them
into existence, like Dark Pixie or Winter Pixie or Flower Pixie. Pixies are prone to wonder and excitement them-
selves, and gravitate towards people and places that are adventurous and unpredictable. If they can’t find one,
they tend to get up to (even more) mischief in order
to try and force the issue.
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Veil.
Pixie Conjuration: You can roll Will as though
it were Resources at any time to conjure an item
using pixie dust, however, if you fail, your Will
is decreased by one until you refresh as you
exhaust your magical might. Conjured items
must be thematically relevant to your pixie
aspect (i.e. Dark Pixie, Winter Pixie, Flower Pixie,
etc.), but that likely puts no meaningful restraint
on what you can conjure besides appearance.
Pixie Dust: You can roll Will to Create An Advantage
for someone by sprinkling them with pixie dust. As long as
the aspect you create for them persists, they are able to fly.
The aspect name should also reflect the theme of your pixie
aspect (i.e. Dark Pixie Dust, Winter Pixie Dust, Flower
Pixie Dust, etc.). The situation aspect created by pixie
dust can be invoked (with free invokes or Fate Points)
for any kind of magical effect plausibly to do with that
theme.

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Satyrs
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Deadly Desire. Satyrs are fey, dreamed into existence. They are specifically dreams
of danger and excitement, but they aren’t changelings, who are dreams of an entirely alternate life, nor are they
nymphs, dreams of the distant and unattainable. Rather, satyrs are the dreams of things someone could do, if
only they had the courage (or were more foolish). This makes satyrs courageous to the point of recklessness and
hedonistic to the point of shortsightedness.
Universal Stunts: Potence, Magnetism, Veil.
Pan Pipes: You can use your Rapport skill to play pan pipes. Playing the pan pipes allows you to make Attacks
on mental HP, to Defend against any mental attack that uses fear or dread, and Create An Advantage by driving
allies or enemies into a frenzy. You can pay a Fate Point to Create An Advantage on all creatures in the same zone
as you.

Treants
Ancestral Aspect: Dreams of Foreboding. Treants are fey, dreamed into existence. They are specifically dreams
of places of vast and incomprehensible beauty and power, of a landscape that thrums with majesty and potence.
They are also made of wood, and frequently quite large, which makes them strong and durable, but not all treants
are large enough to benefit from these qualities.
Universal Stunts: Fortitude, Potence, Veil.
Reinforced Body: You are made entirely of thick, resistant wood like oak, rather than softer, thinner trees like
aspens or pines. You resist bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, giving you +2 to all rolls made to Defend
against such damage.
Wild Empathy: You can talk to animals and plants. When attempting to persuade an animal or plant to do
something, you always roll Rapport, even if the skill roll would usually call for Deceive or Provoke.

56
Fiends
All fiends are outsiders, made of pure soulstuff with no internal organs despite a fleshy exterior, and therefore not
living mortals, nor undead, nor constructs. This makes them immune to poison and disease. Their Hellish nature
makes them immune to fire damage. Fiends are not inherently vulnerable to radiant damage.

Bloodletter
Ancestral Aspect: Marauders of Hell. Bloodletters are fiends of rampage and slaughter, who maraud across the
planes seeking pillage and battle. They are often used as the shock troops of Hell by other, higher-ranking fiends.
Bloodletters are stocky humanoids with reverse-joint legs, deep red skin, a barbed tail, and a fang-filled mouth.
Universal Stunts: Fortitude, Potence.
Demonic Determination: Whenever you would be reduced to 0 HP and take a consequence, you can spend a
Fate Point to be reduced to exactly 1 HP without taking any consequences.
Hell Blade: Your fiendish blade creates horrible wounds that are extremely difficult to heal. Any damage or
consequences you deal cannot be healed except by resting.
Horned Charge: When you enter a zone and then attack with Fight, you can make a horned charge. This gives
you a +2 to the Fight roll for the attack.

Concubus
Ancestral Aspect: Hell’s Hunger. Incubi and succubi are fiends of hunger and desire. Though most often asso-
ciated with a desire for sex, incubi and succubi desire all experience and sensation. They are outsiders, not living
creatures (nor are they constructs or undead), which means they do not have to eat or drink to survive, but they
do so anyway whenever there is food or drink worth consuming. What counts as “worth consuming” varies from
one concubus to another, with some having very specific tastes and others being ravenous for anything above
mediocre.
Concubi are shapeshifters - they are identified as incubi or succubi based on current or preferred form, but there’s
nothing stopping one from becoming the other on a whim. They frequently shapeshift wings, horns, and tails
onto themselves, but they don’t particularly have to. If they shapeshift themselves wings, however, they can use
them to fly.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Magnetism, Veil.
Convincing Shapeshifter: Most concubi shapeshift themselves for purely aesthetic reasons, but you can use your
power to adopt specific identities. You have +2 to Deceive rolls made to convince people that you are whoever
you’re shapeshifted into.
Demonic Fire: You can shoot demonic flame from your fingertips using Shoot. If you pay a Fate Point, you can
make a Shoot attack against an entire zone, attacking every creature in that zone.
Seductive Form: You can use Deceive to change your form to appeal to a target while supernaturally weakening
their will, and thus use Deceive to Attack a target’s mental HP. Your disarming beauty can also be used to use
Deceive to Defend against any attack, as the attacker hesitates to harm someone so perfectly formed.

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Horned Devil
Ancestral Aspect: Hell’s Enforcers. The horned devils are the enforcers of Hell: Large, vaguely draconic
humanoids with dark red scales, large bat wings, and many horns growing from their head and shoulders. Their
imposing physique means they frequently find employ as bodyguards, field captains, and elite shock troops, when
they do not strike out on their own as warlords. Known for their level-headed ruthlessness, horned devils are per-
haps most stereotypically used as judge, jury, and executioner by governments which are tyrannical or stretched
extremely thin (and in the latter case, they often perform as admirably as they do for the tyrants - so long as
they’re appropriately compensated, horned devils get the job done, whatever it is). Horned devils are greedy and
envious creatures, and accept plain old treasure as payment more readily than most fiends, purely for the joy of
having what others want.
A horned devil’s enormous wings can be used to lift even their hefty bulk off the ground.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Fortitude, Potence.
Demonic Fire: You can shoot demonic flame from your fingertips using Shoot. If you pay a Fate Point, you can
make a Shoot attack against an entire zone, attacking every creature in that zone.
Dreadful Aura: You give off an aura of cruel authority which frightens those nearby you. You can use Provoke to
Defend against attacks as long as you have taken no damage in the current scene. Your dreadful presence makes
enemies shy away from attacking you, but this illusion of invulnerability is shattered at the first sign of harm.
You have +2 when using Provoke to Create An Advantage by cowing a creature in the same zone as you with your
authority (including when using Stupefying Terror, if you have that stunt).
Friendly creatures get a free
boost whenever they Defend
with Will while in the same
zone as you - they’re as
scared of you as they are
of enemies!
Stupefying Terror:
When you Create An
Advantage using Provoke
to instill fear in someone,
they are entirely paralyzed
with fear and awe of you. At the
start of each of their turns, one free invoke on
the aspect is consumed, and they skip their
turn. They can take their turn normally
once the aspect no longer has free invokes,
even if the aspect is still on them. You can
pay a Fate Point to terrify everyone in the
same zone as you to Create An Advantage
in this way, making one Provoke check
against the Will of all other creatures
(including allies!).

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Imp
Ancestral Aspect: Keepers of Hell’s Secrets. Imps are small, red-skinned, bat-winged humanoids with forked
tails - the spitting image of the standard demon, but in miniature. They are the keepers of Hell’s secrets, taking it
upon themselves to use their powers of shapeshifting and invisibility to learn hidden things which they can then
trade to others (demonic or mortal) for other secrets. Imps will sometimes make investments of knowledge into
mortals, sharing some of the sorts of secrets that are fairly well-known and low-value to demons but more scarce
and valuable amongst mortals, serving as an advisor in hopes of learning new secrets from someone engaged in
intrigues and/or pushing the limits of arcane knowledge.
An imp’s small wings are nevertheless strong enough to allow their tiny bodies to fly.
Imps have limited shapeshifting powers, able to shapeshift into a few specific animal forms, usually some combi-
nation of a rat, bat, centipede, spider, or raven.
Universal Stunts: Discernment, Veil.
Demonic Fire: You can shoot demonic flame from your fingertips using Shoot. If you pay a Fate Point, you can
make a Shoot attack against an entire zone, attacking every creature in that zone.
Fiendish Bargain: You have +2 to Rapport used to convince a creature to agree to a deal with you.
Secret Knowledge: You can pay a Fate Point to roll Lore in place of any other skill, provided you can justify how
your obscure secret knowledge enables you to complete the task at hand.

Marilith
Ancestral Aspect: Hell’s Hunters. Mariliths are pure killers. Though not mindless or indiscriminate, they have
a fixation with ending lives that makes them amongst the most feared of demons. Fortunately, this fixation is
frequently tempered with specific tastes. Some mariliths like to target well-protected targets, others a specific type
of creature like trolls or driders. Some prefer to kill with specific methods, like only killing targets who are armed
and ready to do battle, or only killing targets who never even knew they were in danger. Some kill a single more-
or-less randomly selected creature every day, snapping a hummingbird’s neck
one day and impaling a human being in the streets the next.
Physically, mariliths have the top half of a six-armed humanoid and the
bottom half of a giant snake. They are omnidexterous across all six
of their arms, making them fearsome opponents when properly
trained. Unlike many fiends, mariliths have no wings and cannot
fly.
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Magnetism, Potence, Veil.
Demonic Fire: You can shoot demonic flame from your fingertips
using Shoot. If you pay a Fate Point, you can make a Shoot
attack against an entire zone, attacking every creature in
that zone.
Six-Armed Strike: You can attack up to three different
creatures at once in melee. If instead you focus all of
your attacks on a single target, you have a +2 to Attack
with Fight and a +2 to Defend against any physical
attacks that creature makes against you until the start
of your next turn.

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Undead
All undead are immune to poison and disease unless it specifically affects undead in general or the specific type of
undead they are (i.e. ghost, ghoul, vampire, etc.). They are totally immune to Attacks dealing necrotic damage,
but vulnerable to attacks dealing Radiant damage, meaning such attacks get a +2 bonus against them.

Ghosts
Ancestral Aspect: Echoes of the Mortal Coil. You died, and you’re upset about it. Maybe you have some unfin-
ished business and you cannot depart for the afterlife until it has been laid to rest. Maybe you’re just real stubborn
in general. Either way, being a ghost means you can float (some ghosts use this power by walking on air as though
it were stairs or solid ground), and being completely incorporeal means you are immune to all bludgeoning,
piercing, and slashing damage, and resistant to all acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage, getting +2 to
Defend against all Attacks dealing those damage types. Force damage is unaffected by your incorporeality.
Universal Stunts: Veil.
Ghostly Curse: You can roll your Provoke against a target’s Will to place a curse on them. This curse is an aspect,
but it does not give free invokes the way a standard Create An Advantage action does (for that, use a hex).
Instead, the curse can be either a curse of spite, a curse of failure, or a curse of misfortune. A curse of spite causes the
target to take shifts of mental damage equal to the number of shifts they get when they succeed on any check. A
curse of failure causes the target to take mental damage equal to the number of shifts they fail a check by. A curse of
misfortune inflicts a mental consequence on the target whenever they exactly tie a check. With the GM’s permis-
sion, you can instead lay a curse that deals one shift of mental damage any time the target breaks a specific taboo,
like attacking a specific creature, attacking any creature, changing zones, telling a lie, or speaking a word with the
letter “e” in it. You can decide exactly what kind of mental consequences (fear, madness, despair, etc.) are inflicted
by your curses. The curse lasts until broken by some kind of divine magic, and the TN for doing so is equal to the
Provoke roll you made to inflict it in the first place (write it down in the curse aspect).

Ghouls
Ancestral Aspect: Undead Cannibal. Like most undead, ghouls must sustain themselves on the vital energies
of the living. Vampires get their sustenance from blood, ghosts and mummies by directly sucking the life force
out of the living, and ghouls by consuming flesh. Not just the flesh of the living, but flesh of creatures at least
somewhat similar to what the ghoul was in life. Rat flesh and human flesh are different, and rat flesh will not
sustain a ghoul.
Ghouls have flawless night vision allowing them to read fine print by starlight. Ghouls are clearly rotted, and
while this does not weaken them due to their undead vigor, it does mean they’re fairly easy to identify and fairly
hard to look at, and might have their ghoulish aspect invoked against them easily.
The ghoul aspect can also be compelled to gain Fate Points due to ghoulish hunger, which means a ghoul’s Fate
Points also represent how well fed they are. Ghouls are already eating as much flesh as they can easily get their
hands on, which is why they have Fate Points when they refresh, so they can’t get more Fate Points by just making
the rounds with their usual cemetery supply - they have to go to some trouble for the extra flesh. As with vam-
pires, mummies, and so on, narrative law and game mechanics demand that if a ghoul wants to top off on supply
of flesh, it can’t be easy, although flesh being very hard to grow back (even allowing for supernatural regenera-
tion), that’s not very surprising.
A ghoul with three or more Fate points is swollen and bloated in that way corpses often get early in the process
of decay, when putrescent soup and gas have filled up the insides but not yet popped them. A ghoul with two
Fate Points is well fed but not totally satiated. They look very lean, but their mood is not yet affected. At one
point, the ghoul is feeling peckish for sure, potentially resulting in a more irritable or impulsive mood that might
cause trouble. A ghoul with no Fate Points left is skeletally thin, ravenously hungry, and particularly likely to do
something desperate and unwise to get some.

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Universal Stunts: Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Potence, Veil.
Body Colony: Your body is filled with a swarm of some kind of arthropod. You can use your body colony to
Attack or Create An Advantage using Physique. When you do so, the colony exits your body, bringing some
amount of physical HP with it. You can decide how much of the physical HP your body colony departs with, but
it can be no more than your maximum (so if you take consequences to get your HP above your maximum, that
doesn’t increase the maximum size of your body colony). Your body colony does not get rolls separate from you,
but it does provide separate frontage from you, though it counts as only a single creature despite being made up
of a swarm of hundreds. Enemies can ignore the frontage provided by your body colony by taking one shift of
physical damage as they enter the stinging swarm to get an advantageous position.
Your body colony can remain in the same zone as you no problem, but going into other zones quickly strains
your ability to sustain control over them. Your body colony can move one zone closer to you without rolling, but
every time your body colony tries to move to a zone further away from you than it already is, or to a zone equally
far away from you as it already is, you must make a Physique roll of TN 2 times the number of zones away (i.e.
TN 2 to go one zone away, TN 4 to go two zones away, etc.). If you fail, the colony can’t get that far away from
you and that is your die roll for the turn. If you tie, the colony can’t get that far away from you, but you can make
another die roll this turn. If you succeed, the colony is able to enter the zone, but that is your die roll for the turn.
If you succeed with style, the colony is able to enter the zone, and that does not count as your die roll for this
turn.
Your body colony can consist of any of the below creatures, but you must pick one:
• A swarm of flying locusts that deal piercing damage.
• A swarm of crawling spiders which deal either piercing or poison damage (your choice).
• A swarm of flying hornets which deal either piercing or poison damage (your choice), but which
inflict one shift of physical damage every time they exit your body.
• A swarm of crawling centipedes, which deal either piercing or poison damage (your choice) and
inflict one extra shift of damage whenever they succeed or succeed with style on an Attack, but which inflict
one shift of physical damage every time they exit your body.
Ghoul Claws: Your body is infested with ghoul fever. Your ghoulish claws can be used as weapons with no
damage cap, and when you successfully Attack a creature with them, you can roll your Physique against theirs to
Create An Advantage on the same turn. The advantage created is always Ghoul Fever. You can invoke Ghoul Fever
on a slain creature to bring them back as a ghoul. Like most situation aspects, Ghoul Fever normally goes away
at the end of the scene, but unlike most situation aspects, Ghoul Fever remains as long as it has at least one free
invoke left on it.
Free invokes of Ghoul Fever can be healed by taking a consequence of any tier called Recovering From Ghoul Fever.
If there is only one free invoke on Ghoul Fever, it can be a consequence of any level, if two, it must be moderate
or severe, and if three or more, it must be a severe consequence. Any ability or item that can heal consequences
can therefore be used to heal Ghoul Fever by turning it into a consequence to get rid of its free invokes and then
immediately using the item/ability to heal the consequence.

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Plaguebearer (requires Ghoul Claws): You are infested with a number of the below diseases equal to your
Physique score. You can choose to inflict any one of them (or the standard ghoul fever) with your ghoul claws.
Like ghoul fever, these diseases persist so long as they have free invokes on them and can only be healed by either
having the free invokes spent and then waiting until the end of the scene or by converting them into consequenc-
es and then healing the consequences.
• Blinding Sickness which, as the name implies, causes vision to blur to the point of uselessness and
makes light cause such intense headaches as to encourage wearing a blindfold anyway. While afflicted with this
disease, the victim is blind, which means any efforts to see something automatically fail.
• Cackle Fever, causing cackling fits of coughing. This disease can be invoked to interrupt an action,
causing it to fail completely as the victim instead spends the turn hacking and cackling.
• Mindfire, a burning brain fog that makes focus and concentration nearly impossible. While afflicted
with this disease, the victim takes one point of mental damage every time they cast a spell, end their turn while
maintaining a spell, or otherwise do something requiring focus.
• Red Ache, causing blistering of the skin that is painful by itself and extremely sensitive. While the
victim is still afflicted with this disease, they are vulnerable to all forms of damage.
• The Shakes, causing the victim’s extremities to shake and tremble uncontrollably. This disease can be
invoked to cause the victim
to drop anything they’re
holding.
• Slimy Doom,
causing the victim’s
body to slowly dis-
solve into a soup. This
disease can be invoked to
make a free physical attack
dealing necrotic damage to the
victim, using the Physique of the
plaguebearer who infected them (even
if someone else is invoking the aspect).
Write down the Physique score of the
plaguebearer in the slimy doom aspect to make
it easy to remember.

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Mummies
Ancestral Aspect: Undying Priest-King. The ancient cities and kingdoms ruled over by necromancer priest-
kings preserved their dead for future reanimation. They preserved as many of these corpses as they were able to,
not just the kings themselves, but the aristocrats, their families, their personal guard, their household servants,
and so on. What mummies (mostly) have in common is that they are well-preserved undead, they are from the
necromancer kingdoms that practiced mummification at all, and they were close enough to a royal or noble
household for someone to bother mummifying them. Even the servants and soldiers of such households often
had at least some understanding of necromancy.
Mummies are very withered creatures by default, but they can suck the health and vibrancy out of living creatures
to make themselves appear more lifelike and vital. The extent to which a mummy’s vitality has been depleted can
be tracked with Fate Points. A mummy with three or more Fate Points is indistinguishable from a living human
in their prime without magic. A mummy with two Fate Points looks withered, but only in the way that a living
but old person might. With only one Fate Point left, a mummy is showing signs of outright decay. They are
rail-thn and their skin has become leather. When completely out of Fate Points, a mummy has entirely reverted
to their blatantly corpse-like form, with no eyes, no nose, and a rictus grin. The mummification process is so
effective at preservation that an animate mummy even with no Fate Points can appear as though a living person
who has suffered some severe, mutilating disease, but anyone who knows what a mummy is can probably guess
what’s going on and even a naive observer can tell that something is seriously wrong with them (indeed, a naive
observer would think their condition is much, much worse).
Game mechanics and narrative law demand that if a mummy wants to gain Fate Points by draining life from
someone, it must be inconvenient and dramatic to do so. A mummy’s touch withers the living, but not necessar-
ily fatally, so mummies can sustain themselves with the assistance of friendly mortals, but a mummy is presum-
ably already doing that to the extent that they are able to (that’s why they have new Fate Points every time they
refresh), and any additional life draining will require some kind of drastic measures.
Because of their withering touch, mummies can deal necrotic damage using Fight in melee.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Fortitude, Magnetism.
Mummy’s Curse: You can roll your Lore against a target’s Will to place a curse on them. This curse is an aspect,
but it does not give free invokes the way a standard Create An Advantage action does (for that, use a hex).
Instead, the curse can be either a curse of spite, a curse of failure, or a curse of misfortune. A curse of spite causes the
target to take shifts of mental damage equal to the number of shifts they get when they succeed on any check. A
curse of failure causes the target to take mental damage equal to the number of shifts they fail a check by. A curse of
misfortune inflicts a mental consequence on the target whenever they exactly tie a check. With the GM’s permis-
sion, you can instead lay a curse that deals one shift of mental damage any time the target breaks a specific taboo,
like attacking a specific creature, attacking any creature, changing zones, telling a lie, or speaking a word with the
letter “e” in it. You can decide exactly what kind of mental consequences (fear, madness, despair, etc.) are inflicted
by your curses. The curse lasts until broken by some kind of divine magic, and the TN for doing so is equal to the
Lore roll you made to inflict it in the first place (write it down in the curse aspect).
Life Drain: You are adept at very rapidly sucking the life out of other creatures. When you attack someone with
your mummy’s touch using Fight, it is both an Attack dealing necrotic damage and Creating An Advantage.

63
Skeletons
Ancestral Aspect: Old Bones. Unlike mummies shut in their tombs, ghosts tied to their haunts, or relatively
fresh ghouls, skeletons have usually been around forever, and are fairly mobile and active while doing so. Mindless
skeletons, of course, might spend their entire unlives guarding some necromancer’s catacomb, but intelligent skel-
etons, having no need for food or water and no vulnerability to sunlight, can pick up stakes and leave anyplace
any time they want to, and often do. Skeletons have been around, and they tend to have a wide knowledge of the
world from the combination of their age and travels.
Skeletons are also incredibly durable. Not in the sense that they can’t be knocked to pieces, that’s actually very
straightforward, but in the sense that they pretty much have to be ground into powder in order to actually die.
All parts of a skeleton’s body are separately animate and under the skeleton’s control at all times. Only the head
can see and hear, which makes controlling detached body parts a bit of a trial-and-error process, but it can be
done. All skeletons have an extreme consequence slot that gives 8 HP when filled, and which can only be filled
with a consequence like Completely Shattered or similar (this consequence slot cannot be used at all against attacks
that would not inflict such a consequence).
This consequence does not recover automatically with rest, but instead only if the skeleton or their allies are able
to gather up the lost body parts and put them back together. In the meantime, the skeleton can still recover HP
and other consequence slots as normal, but they cannot be Completely Shattered again unless they have been com-
pletely reassembled, and they continue to suffer the drawbacks of missing whatever body parts weren’t reassem-
bled. If a skeleton’s skull is the only part the party was able to recover, the character might be rendered nearly-use-
less until other body parts can be recovered. Worse, if a skeleton has been Completely Shattered but then partially
reassembled, their severe consequence slot can now be something like Reshattered, which, like being Completely
Shattered, can only be recovered from after being reassembled at least as far as they were prior to being Reshattered.
The severe consequence slot can still be filled with regular mental consequences, however, so it doesn’t act exactly
like the Completely Shattered extreme slot does.
The structure of a skeleton’s body makes them naturally resistant to piercing damage, as spears and arrows tend to
glance off their bones. They have +2 to Defend against any such attacks. On the other hand, their brittle bones
are easily smashed by bludgeoning attacks. Bludgeoning Attacks made against them get +2. They respond normal-
ly to slashing attacks, and to all other types of damage (except the standard undead vulnerability to radiance and
immunity to necrotic).
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Fortitude.
Been Around The Block: The breadth of your experience means you have all kinds of weird knacks and tricks
that you picked up from that one time you struck a deal with a blacksmith to help him forge stuff at night in
exchange for having a place to hide out any time the townsfolk formed an angry mob or the Inquisition showed
up or whatever. Whenever you spend a Fate Point on your skeletal aspect on a skill you have at +0 or +1, you can
roll that skill at +2 (for +3 total, if the skill is a +1 on your sheet) for the remainder of the scene without paying
any additional Fate Points. Your actual skill rating reflects your broad ability in that field, but it just so happens
you once spent a few years doing the exact specific thing you’re doing right now, and you’re much better at that
particular task.
Immune to Pain: You don’t feel pain, period, and are adept at rolling with the punches when your ribs are
cracked or your arm gets torn off. When a consequence is inflicted on you by physical damage (i.e. something
that would otherwise be absorbed with physical HP), the consequence does not come with any free invokes.

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Vampires
Ancestral Aspect: Nocturnal Aristocrat. A vampire is created when an existing vampire drains a mortal of all
their blood, then feeds them some of their own, creating the spark of unlife. Vampires come in several different
strains, but common to all of them is the need to feed on mortal blood. Not only mortal blood, but blood of
creatures at least somewhat similar to what the vampire was in life. Rat blood and human blood are different, and
rat blood cannot flow through a human vampire’s veins (they vomit it back out the same way anyone consuming
large quantities of rat blood will).
Vampires have flawless night vision allowing them to read fine print by starlight. Vampires are empowered by
moonlight, which means you can invoke your vampire aspect for basically anything when in direct moonlight,
but they are also weakened by sunlight, which means your aspect can be invoked against you for basically any-
thing when in direct sunlight. Being a vampire also comes with several weaknesses. They cannot cross running
water, enter a home without an invitation from an inhabitant, and garlic is poisonous to them. Vampires also do
not cast a reflection, which is sometimes inconvenient but mostly a concern because it’s a test for vampirism that
delivers obvious results and requires nothing more than a bowl of clear, still water.
The vampire aspect can also be compelled to gain Fate Points due to vampiric thirst, which means a vampire’s
Fate Points also represent how well fed they are. Vampires are already drinking as much blood as they can easily
get their hands on, which is why they have Fate Points when they refresh, so they can’t get more Fate Points
by just making the rounds with their usual blood supply - they have to go to some trouble for the extra blood.
Narrative law and game mechanics demand that if a vampire tries to find extra blood supply mid-scenario, it will
never be as easy as just popping into a local pub and biting someone in a dark corner unnoticed.
A vampire with three or more Fate points is flush with blood. They can, but do not have to, beat their heart to
send blood circulating, warming their body and bringing color to their cheeks, allowing them to pass easily for
living as long as they are not subjected to specific vampire tests like crossing running water. A vampire with two
Fate Points is well fed but not totally satiated. The striking, deathly pale countenance and room temperature skin
of the vampire are no longer optional, but there is no significant impact on mood. At one point, the vampire is
feeling peckish for sure, potentially resulting in a more irritable or impulsive mood that might cause trouble. A
vampire with no Fate Points left is craving blood and is particularly likely to do something desperate and unwise
to get some.
Every vampire has a particular strain, a bloodline. The type of vampire they are depends on the blood their freshly
exsanguinated corpse was fed to reanimate them. Usually, when a vampire awakens, the first thing they see is their
sire, who, if they have not done so already, explains to them how vampirism works and becomes their mentor
(and often, lord) indefinitely. Regardless of how involved a sire is in their childe’s unlife, however, they pass on
certain abilities, represented in a stunt. The stunt can take a while to grow in, but there are no generic vampires
(although there is a stereotypical vampire - it’s the strigoi) - every vampire develops the powers associated with
their strain eventually.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Magnetism, Potence, Veil.
Alu (requires Veil): All vampires are creatures of darkness, but none more so than the alu, who command the
shadows themselves.
You can command the shadows to reach out and grapple someone, allowing you to both Attack and Create An
Advantage using Stealth, so long as the target is in a zone with deep shadow (look for ways to turn out the lights).
So long as the target is still Grappled by your shadow tendrils, they cannot leave the zone, even if the aspect has
no free invokes left.

65
Camazotz (requires Celerity or Potence): Vampires of any sort are associated with bats, but the camazotz take
on batlike features when they get too thirsty or when they are feeding. With one Fate Point remaining, camazotz
not only grow peckish and irritable, but develop bat fangs, snout, and ears when particularly perturbed. At zero
Fate Points, hiding these features at all takes considerable effort.
As a camazotz, you can grow bat wings which you can use to fly, you can use Shoot to shoot fire from your
fingertips as a ranged attack dealing fire damage, and you can transform into a bat or a bat-vampire hybrid war
form. You get +2 when you roll Physique to Create An Advantage for yourself by turning into a bat or a bat/
humanoid monster form. This roll is made against a default TN of 2. If you still have free invokes left on your Bat
Transformation aspect, you can switch back and forth between the forms at-will. Once you have run out of free
invokes on the aspect, you remain transformed until you choose to revert or are Taken Out, at which point you
can only transform back when Creating An Advantage again.
Mara (requires Celerity or Veil): Even when flush with blood, mara are deathly pale. Even non-white mara have
skin that looks washed out beyond what you’d expect simply from being a bloodless corpse, and mara who had
light skin to begin with end up shock white. Mara have the power to turn into mist.
Turning to mist ordinarily requires about a minute’s worth of effort both to decorporealize and recorporealize.
While mist, you are incorporeal, making you totally immune to all bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage,
and resistant to all acid, cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage, giving you +2 to all Defend rolls against
Attacks using those damage types. As mist, you can seep through any barrier that isn’t airtight.
For a Fate Point, you can transform into mist instantly. If you do this while being targeted by a physical attack,
you ignore that attack outright, no matter what it rolls. You can also choose to recorporealize for an immediate
counterattack. You get a +2 on this counterattack, but it must be against the creature who attacked you and you
cannot decorporealize again without spending another Fate Point or taking a full minute to do so. If you spend a
Fate Point to decorporealize while in the direct light of the moon, roll an unmodified 4df. If you get at least a +2,
you get back the Fate Point you spent.
Nosferatu (requires Discernment or Magnetism): While most vampires are eternally beautiful, the nosferatu
look like ruin and plague. Their hands are gnarled claws, their ears bat-like and pointed, their scalps have no trace
of hair, and they retain a corpselike pallor regardless of how well-fed they are.
You have the power to speak to small, vermin or vermin-adjacent animals, like rats, ravens, or bats, and you have
+2 to any Deceive, Empathy, Provoke, or Rapport checks used against such creatures.
You are immune to all poison and disease, period, even ones that ordinarily affect undead in general or vampires
in particular.
When you roll Provoke to Create An Advantage, you can spend a Fate Point to fill an entire zone (not necessarily
the one you’re in) with flames that cause supernatural terror. You must have some sort of source of fire like a torch
or lantern to start the flames, but they spread with supernatural tenacity. Every creature (including allies!) in the
zone rolls Will against your Provoke, and anyone who fails gets an aspect like Frightened applied to them, with
free invokes just like they’d been individually targeted by Create An Advantage. The fire does not automatically
Create An Advantage on any creatures entering the zone after it is created, but it does remain as a situation aspect.
Penanggal (requires Fortitude): Every piece of the penanggal strain is separately animate, and they can trans-
form their body parts. Pennangalan are known to take advantage of this by, for example, sprouting wings and
flying their upper half off of their lower half to allow them to squeeze into tighter spaces and use their intestines
as a reach weapon. They can also recycle their body mass into other body parts, consuming their organs (which,
as undead, they don’t use anyway) to drastically extend the length of their tongue in order to lap up blood from a
safe distance. This also allows them to get around the vampire weakness against entering a home - tongues don’t
count, apparently.
You can roll Physique to Create An Advantage for yourself by warping your body. As long as the total mass
doesn’t change, anything is possible. Your body remains warped until you choose to revert it, even if you run out
of free invokes for the warp. Like any aspect, this one can potentially be invoked against you, but beware that the
traditional penangalan form also has a traditional and somewhat obvious weakness: The exposed organs. Even
though you don’t particularly need them to live, they tend to dangle and can be caught on branches, thorns, and
the like.

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You can also warp the bodies of other people to Create An Advantage by rolling your Physique against theirs. If
you succeed, you can pay a Fate Point to add a locked character aspect, not a situation aspect, which cannot be
their high concept or trouble. If they already have a full set of five aspects, the new aspect replaces one of their
non-high concept, non-trouble aspects, as the victim’s body and mind are permanently distorted by the flesh
warping. If all three of the non-high concept, non-trouble aspects of a creature are changed by penanggal flesh
warping, their high concept changes to Flesh Warped Penanggal Thrall as their identity is completely rewritten to
serve the penanggal’s purposes.
Strigoi (requires Authority or Magnetism): The strigoi are the consummate aristocrats of the night, the vam-
pire’s vampire. Though vampires are usually associated with bats, the strigoi have the hypnotic gaze and the ven-
omous fangs of the snake. Strigoi venom induces euphoria in those bitten, which makes it very easy for strigoi to
feed without having to restrain or subdue their victims, nor negotiate some kind of exchange for blood. Instead,
strigoi can and do seduce mortals into giving up their vitae.
You can Attack someone’s mental HP using Rapport or Deceive by hypnotizing them so that their will is weak-
ened, and you can use Authority with any of Deceive, Rapport, or Provoke. If someone has a consequence or
situation aspect (i.e. from Creating An Advantage) as a result of your hypnosis, you can use Rapport or Deceive
to simultaneously make both a melee physical Attack on them and Create An Advantage on them by causing
them to hold still while you sink your fangs in, delivering a dose of your strigoi poison. You can choose any kind
of poison (i.e. Blinding Poison, Nauseating Poison, etc. etc.), but if you choose Euphoric Poison, it also counts as an
aspect resulting from your hypnosis and can be used to satisfy the prerequisite for further physical attacks with
Rapport and Deceive.
If you have mesmerized someone with Magnetism, your checks to command them with Authority are made at
+2.
Tsuchigumo (requires Potence): All vampires have bloodsucking fangs, but for the tsuchigumo, these are the
fangs of a spider, draining the precious vital fluids from creatures ensnared in their webs.
You can roll Deceive to Create An Advantage by weaving illusions. You can weave illusions over an entire zone to
Create An Advantage as a situation aspect on that zone, which can be invoked against any creature in that zone
(including allies, although if you create an illusion sufficiently weighted towards your team, enemies might have
trouble finding ways to use it against you).
You can roll Physique to Create An Advantage by spitting poison at a creature. The situation aspect caused by
the poison can be anything (i.e. Blinding Poison, Nauseating Poison, etc. etc.), but if you choose Paralyzing Poison,
the target creature is paralyzed for as long as there are still free invokes on the aspect. At the start of each of their
turns, one free aspect is consumed, and their turn is skipped.
You can also use Physique to Create An Advantage by covering an enemy with webs. You can attempt to Create
An Advantage in a zone as long as that zone has sufficient structure needed to spin webs across the entirety of it
(for example, being indoors with walls on all sides, or a forest with lots of nice, tall trees to use as anchor points).
The default TN for this is 2, although it may be higher if the area’s anchor points are sparse. The situation aspect
created by spinning webs on the zone can be invoked against any creature in the zone.
You are immune to having webs used against you in any way, and can climb on them as adeptly as walking on
level ground.

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Other Monsters
Beastfolk
Ancestral Aspect: Animal Passions. The beastfolk are a mutant off-shoot of humanity created by Chaos muta-
tion, which exaggerates their instincts and passions. This shortens their lifespans and makes them more impulsive,
but also increases their physical capabilities and makes them more committed and more ideologically motivated
rather than economically motivated.
There are four kinds of beastfolk in this document, and you could add more: Caprines, harpies, horned folk,
and minotaurs. An aspect that identifies a creature as any one of these ancestries (or “ancestries,” if they were the
result of a Chaos mutation after birth) carries the implications of the Animal Passions aspect, but unlocks specific
universal stunts and unique ancestry stunts.
Universal Stunts: Celerity (caprine, harpy), Fortitude (minotaur), Magnetism (harpy, horned folk), Potence
(caprine, minotaur), Veil (horned folk).
Airborne Attacker (harpies): You have a +2 to Shoot attacks made while flying.
Chaos Bolt (harpies, horned folk): You can spend a Fate Point to fire a chaos bolt at a single enemy. The attack
can use either Lore or Shoot and deals force damage. The attack gets a +3 bonus and deals an additional shift of
damage if it hits.
Flesh Warp (caprines, horned folk): You can roll Lore to Create an Advantage by mutating a target creature.
The TN is 2, unless the target resists, in which case they resist with Physique.
You can pay a Fate Point to cause a more extensive mutation in addition to the usual effects of creating an advan-
tage. If you tie when you do this, the target creature gets a random mutation by rolling 4df with no modifiers on
the table below. If you succeed, you can nudge the result by one shift in any direction. If you succeed with style,
you can nudge the result by two shifts.
Mutations which give aspects can be worked into an existing aspect (especially one already describing physical
appearance), and it can be added to a creature with less than five aspects, but otherwise it replaces one of the
three non-high concept, non-trouble aspects. Two different mutations cannot affect the same aspect, and a new
mutation cannot replace an old mutation’s aspect. When an aspect comes with a stunt, removing the aspect (or
changing it to exclude the mutation) also removes the stunt. These free stunts do not cost a point of refresh. If a
creature gets three separate mutation aspects, their High Concept changes to Mindless Chaos Spawn.

68
Mutations which inflict consequences get bumped up to the next higher consequence if the target creature already
has a consequence at the appropriate level. If a serious consequence is increased in tier in this way, the creature
takes two consequences (of any tier available) instead. These consequences do not give any extra HP.
Roll Result
-4 The creature takes the serious consequence Arm Withered Away.
-3 The creature takes the moderate consequence Cancerous Tumors.
-2 The creature takes the mild consequence Haunted By Nightmares.
-1 The creature takes necrotic damage as though your Create An Advantage roll was also an attack.
0 The creature’s appearance is radically altered, but their size and basic configuration of limbs stays the
same.
+1 The creature gains the locked aspect Catlike Eyes permanently.
+2 The creature gains the locked aspect Corrosive Blood permanently. They gain an accompanying stunt
for free that allows them to spend a Fate Point to make an immediate attack with Physique against any
creature who deals at least one shift of physical damage to them in melee.
+3 The creature gains the locked aspect Extra Arms permanently. They gain an accompanying stunt for free
that gives them one free invoke on their Extra Arms aspect every time they refresh Fate Points.
+4 The creature gains the locked aspect Wings permanently. They gain the Airborne Attacker stunt for free.

Horned Charge (caprines, minotaurs): When you enter a zone

and then attack with Fight, you can make a horned charge.
This gives you a +2 to the Fight roll for the attack.
Horned Vengeance (minotaur): A combination of
your own injury and an enemy’s invigorates you,
your anger at your own wounds turning to adrenal
satisfaction when they are returned. If you have a
mild consequence, you gain 1 HP (of either type) any
time you inflict damage with an attack. If you have
both a moderate and a mild consequence, you gain 2
HP, and if you have a mild, moderate, and severe
consequence, you gain 3 HP.

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Deep Ones
Ancestral Aspect: Mad Visions. Deep ones were created haphazardly by watchers and plugged into the cosmic
subconsciousness basically just to see what would happen. More information passes through a deep one’s mind on
a second-to-second basis than they could possibly hope to process. This makes them bad at distinguishing what’s
going on here through psychic impressions of events thousands of miles away or even on other planes, making
them distractible and unfocused. It also makes them appear insane, as they attempt to hold conversations with
people who aren’t there or react to events that are happening nowhere near their actual body, and which may be
in the future or past. Still, everything they see is true, and has happened, is happening, or will happen somewhere
in the multiverse, and they can attempt to focus their visions on useful information.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment.
Psionic Visions: You can roll Will to Create An Advantage by creating psychic links with your allies, or by scan-
ning potential futures to see what the enemy is going to do next. You can pay a Fate Point to roll Will with a TN
based on the table below to see a vision of a distant event.
TN Target
1 Happening now on the other side of a wall or otherwise within your natural perceptions (if not
clearly, i.e. sound is muffled but you can hear the conversation with your regular ears)
2 Happening now to someone you know well
3 Happening now to someone you can identify by name and face, but are not well acquainted with
4 Happening now to someone you can identify by name or face, but not both
5 Happening now to someone you are familiar with only contextually, i.e. “whoever’s hair this is” or
“whoever that goblin meant by ‘the boss’”
+1 Happening more than a hundred miles away
+2 Happening on another plane of existence
+1 Happened in the past
+2 Will happen in the future (except to the extent that receiving the vision has altered the timeline)

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Draconics
Ancestral Aspect: Blood of Dragons. All draconic creatures, from kobolds up to real actual dragons, have inher-
ited a certain affinity for fire, a certain love of gold, and a certain mastery of magic. You can also get most of these
powers by drinking the blood of dragons. Unlike most “bloodlines,” where “blood” is used as a metaphor for
genetic inheritance and speciation (or fascist delusions of grandeur, depending on who you’re talking about), for
dragons the “power of blood” is that their blood is literally magical and you can use it in alchemy or drink it for
superpowers, and being a natural source of that blood means you have natural access to those magical abilities.
Dragons reproduce by pouring blood across treasure. When a gem (the bigger, the better) is surrounded by
precious metals, especially gold, and then the whole thing is soaked with blood, the game metamorphoses into a
draconic egg. Depending on the size of the gem, the amount of metal surrounding it, and the amount of blood
dumped on it, the resulting egg can be for a kobold, a dragonborn, a half-dragon, or a true dragon. The specific
type of blood used, whether cows’ blood or kings’ blood, makes no difference to what is spawned, but there is a
rumor that the resulting dragon’s personality is influenced by the type of blood spilled across the hoard. This is
what leads to sacrificial fads, like using only the blood of virgins, or only the blood of royalty, or only the blood of
heroes. Whatever effect different kinds of blood have on the personalities of the resulting draconics, it’s not a big
enough difference for any conclusive proof of it to have cropped up in history, and it’s probably just an excuse for
powerful, amoral dragons to flex on helpless mortals.
The dragonblooded don’t hatch from eggs. They’re humanoids who drank a bunch of dragon blood or who are
descended from someone who drank a bunch of dragon blood (in the latter case, they must specifically be hu-
mans or one of the handful of other humanoid species that reproduce sexually - it’s not common, except in terms
of biomass, in which case its efficiency at filling space means that most intelligent life is human).
Draconics come in five varieties: Kobolds, dragonblooded, dragonborn, half-dragons, and true dragons. As a
general rule, the more draconic you are, the more stunts you get access to, so being a kobold is mostly just less
magical than being a true dragon. Stunts still cost refresh, though, so a half-dragon isn’t automatically drowning
in powerful sorcery unless they have the refresh to pay for it all.

Color-Coded Dragons
This document assumes by default that all your dragons breathe fire. If you want to do the color-coded dragons,
you totally can, and there’s pretty good justification for a lot of them. White dragons who breathe blasts of lethal
cold are an obvious variant to have in contrast to your standard fire-breathing red, blues who fire lightning bolts
from their mouths are a cool and evocative concept (and my personal favorite), and once you’ve got those three,
you need to do something with the green dragon. You can make greens relatively weak by giving them no breath
weapon, or you can follow the world’s most litigious roleplaying game in giving them poison breath, which has
some mythological grounding in Norse sagas.
Black dragons are already starting to stretch the limit a bit, and feel a lot like a designer wanted to include
black dragons because black scales are cool, and this obligated them to find out what kind of breath weapon
they would have. Then things fall apart badly when you reach metallic dragons, because almost no one can keep
copper, brass, and bronze dragons straight, and even gold and silver dragons feel like alignment-swapped expies
of reds and whites/blues. That’s not cause for invention of new dragon types, it’s just drawing attention to why
making all dragons single-alignment creatures is bad. Just let there be good red dragons. Gem dragons lean on
psychic powers, which could potentially differentiate them, but no one’s ever really invested the work into fully
fleshing them out - even MCDM, who certainly gave it a good shot, have done a lot to make them visually dis-
tinct but have struggled to give them sufficiently evocative powers that people easily remember, the way everyone
knows that red dragons breathe fire and blue dragons shoot lightning.
Still, you could add in metallic and/or gem dragons as easily as you could the other color-coordinated dragons by
just swapping out where things say “fire” for some other element. It’s not like I’m going to drive to your house
and try to beat you up just because I think they’re too niche to be worth bothering with personally.

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Universal Stunts: Authority (half-dragons, true dragons), Celerity (kobolds, true dragons), Discernment (all),
Fortitude (dragonborn, half-dragons, true dragons), Magnetism (dragonblooded, dragonborn, half-dragons, true
dragons), Potence (dragonborn, half-dragons, true dragons), Veil (kobolds, dragonblooded, true dragons)
Adamant Claws (true dragons): You have a +2 to Fight attacks made with your natural weapons.
Airborne Attacker (half-dragons, true dragons): You have a +2 to Shoot attacks made while flying.
Arcane Might (dragonblooded, half-dragons, true dragons): When you pay a Fate Point to use magic, whether
using an aspect (including your ancestral aspect) for a bonus or when using a magical stunt or other effect that
requires a Fate Point to activate, your Fate Point is refunded if you succeed with style on the associated roll. If
there is no associated roll, roll 4df unmodified. Your Fate Point is refunded if you get +2 or higher on the dice.
Breath Weapon (dragonborn, half-dragons, true dragons): You can use Physique to make a ranged attack with
your fiery breath. You can pay a Fate Point to engulf an entire zone in flames, making a ranged attack against
every creature (including allies!) in the zone. This also leaves a lingering situation aspect like Burning Debris on
the zone, although it does not come with any free invokes.
Fiery Nature (all): You have +2 to Defend with any skill against any source of fire damage. When you pay a Fate
Point using your ancestral aspect to enhance magic using fire, you get a +3 or a reroll at +1 instead of the usual +2
or unmodified reroll.
Impervious Scales (true dragons): All incoming damage targeting physical HP is decreased by one. Attacks
which would normally deal 1 physical damage instead count as a tie and give the attacker a boost on you. Attacks
which tie your defense roll still get a boost on you (so this is not equivalent to having +1 to Defend against physi-
cal attacks, although it’s close).

The Might of Dragons

A true dragon at full power has thirteen stunts, assuming they have no class stunts (which they probably don’t
need when they have so many ancestral stunts). If they are a player character with one Fate Point, that means
they have a total of fourteen refresh, which would require eight major milestones. This isn’t totally beyond all
possibility, but it’s pretty extreme. Kobolds, dragonblooded, and dragonborn, meanwhile, have four, five, and
six, respectively, even when maxed out, and you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be maxed out or nearly
maxed out the way you would a true dragon. That’s enough to nearly or completely replace class stunts, but it’s an
amount that a player character can have. True dragons and half-dragons are more intended to be major NPCs,
and the total number of stunts assigned to them doesn’t even try to be manageable to someone whose refresh
comes from major milestones rather than pure GM fiat.

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Driders
Ancestral Aspect: Blessed by the Spider Goddess. A drider is someone who’s been blessed (or cursed, depending
on your perspective) by the spider goddess with the bottom half of a giant spider. Stereotypically, driders are cre-
ated from dark elves, but it’s within the power of the spider goddess to make a drider out of a dragonborn or an
ophidian or whatever. Having the bottom half of a giant spider means that driders are able to walk on walls freely
(no Athletics checks needed), are totally unimpeded by webs, and makes them naturally stealthy despite usually
having a legspan well in excess of eight feet. They also have a supernatural ability to speak with and understand
spiders of any size, and spiders tend to be well-disposed towards them, recognizing them as blessed by the spider
goddess, though this does not necessarily mean the spiders will obey a drider’s commands. Driders can spin webs,
though without the appropriate stunt, it takes them 10-15 minutes to cover a corridor spanning ten feet, making
it impractical to web up a place in-combat. Even driders lacking the Web stunt can set aside a weekend to cover
any area they’re staying in long term with webs, though.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism, Veil.
Spider Minions: You can use Provoke to assert your control over any spiders, who resist with Will. If you suc-
ceed, the spiders get the aspect Dominated By A Drider and become loyal to you for the remainder of the scene.
Being a roll that slaps aspects on a creature, this is a Create An Advantage roll, and you can use the free invokes
from it against the spider (if it tries to shake the aspect) or for its benefit.
If the spider tries to shake the aspect on its turn, it does so by trying to Create An Advantage with Will opposed
by your Provoke, turning the aspect into Freed From A Drider if it succeeds. It inherits any free invokes left on the
aspect if it succeeds as well as adding its own on a success or a success with style (but you are, of course, free to
use any free invokes left on the aspect for your own Provoke roll to resist its attempt to Create An Advantage).
Wall Crawler: You are especially agile when clinging to walls. If you are stuck to the wall while being targeted
by a ranged attack, or by a melee attack from an enemy who cannot climb walls automatically, you have +2 to
Defend rolls. If you are hiding in the darkness while stuck to a wall, you have +2 to Stealth.
Web: You can use Physique to Create An Advantage by covering an enemy with webs. You can attempt to Create
An Advantage in a zone as long as that zone has sufficient structure needed to spin webs across the entirety of it
(for example, being indoors with walls on all sides, or a forest with lots
of nice, tall trees to use as anchor points). The default TN
for this is 2, although it may be higher if the area’s anchor
points are sparse. The situation aspect created by spinning
webs on the zone can be invoked
against any creature in the zone (even
allies, although you yourself, being a
drider, are immune to having webs
used against you).

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Genies
Ancestral Aspect: Genie Power. Genies are exceptionally powerful elemental beings who are totally impossible to
kill. If they “die,” their souls leave their bodies, just like with mortals, and are then pulled towards their ultimate
destination in the non-mortal planes, just like mortals. Unlike mortals, their soul’s destination is always one of
the elemental planes, where they can reconstitute their bodies out of nearby elements. Genies like to have their
bodies crafted into the absolutely finest specimens of the human form, but strictly speaking all they need is to slap
some material of the right element into a more-or-less functional shape and that’s enough to get going again. This
is the reason why people tend to stick genies in lamps or other imprisoning objects: As long as you can keep the
lamp safe in your wizard tower or wherever, it will get a genie out of your way indefinitely.
Genies have extraordinary magical affinity, probably more so than even dragons (though they lack the many other
extraordinary powers of dragons). They also have a culture of hubris towards mortal creatures. Genies all pre-date
mortals, can never die, and the cultural assumption is that between these factors and their magical power, they are
entitled to rulership over mortals. Most genies are tiny sovereigns of independent fiefdoms centered on palatial
estates. The genies enslaved by lamps or rings are exceptions to this rule, and such magical artifacts are famous
precisely because the wizards who create them must achieve incredible arcane mastery to turn the tables on the
sorcerous might of genies.
There are four different types of genie, based on which elemental plane they originate from: Dao from earth,
efreeti from fire, djinni from air, and marids from water. Some stunts refer to specific elements or are only avail-
able to genies of a certain element. Additionally, genieblooded mortals called genasi draw on the same ancestral
stunts and aspects. Genasi have access to all the same stunts as full genies, but tend to have many fewer of them.
While genies don’t necessarily have all the stunts they satisfy the prerequisites for (they’re often missing some
universal stunts, for example), it’s perfectly typical for a genie to have well over the five stunt maximum a player
character can start with. A genasi, on the other hand, might have just one or two universal or ancestral stunts, or
even none at all.
Universal Stunts: Any.
Arcane Might (all): When you pay a Fate Point to use magic, whether using an aspect (including your ancestral
aspect) for a bonus or when using a magical stunt or other effect that requires a Fate Point to activate, your Fate
Point is refunded if you succeed with style on the associated roll. If there is no associated roll, roll 4df unmodi-
fied. Your Fate Point is refunded if you get +2 or higher on the dice.
Banshee Shriek (Djinni only): You can Create an Advantage with magical noise using Will. You can also spend a
Fate Point to let out a shriek so loud it harms those too near it. When you do so, you make an Attack using Will
opposed by Physique, targeting all creatures in the same zone as you (including allies!).
Cacophony (Djinni only): You can make magical ranged attacks dealing thunder damage using Will. When you
roll to Create An Advantage, you can spend a Fate Point to fill an entire zone (not necessarily the one you’re in)
with noise that cause supernatural terror and rage. Every creature (including allies!) in the zone rolls Will against
your Will, and anyone who fails gets an aspect like Frightened or Frenzied applied to them, with free invokes just
like they’d been individually targeted by Create An Advantage. The Cacophony does not automatically Create any
Advantages on people who enter it, but it remains a situation aspect on the zone until the end of the scene.
Conjuration (all): You can roll Will as though it were Resources at any time to conjure an item from nothing,
however, if you fail, your Will is decreased by one until you refresh as you exhaust your magical might.
Fireball (Efreeti only): You can make magical ranged attacks dealing fire damage using Will. You can spend a
Fate Point to make a Lore attack targeting every creature in a zone (including allies!).
Flames Of Panic (Efreeti only): You can Create An Advantage with magical fire using Will. When you roll to
Create An Advantage, you can spend a Fate Point to fill an entire zone (not necessarily the one you’re in) with
flames that cause supernatural terror. Every creature (including allies!) in the zone rolls Will against your own
Will, and anyone who fails gets an aspect like Frightened applied to them, with free invokes just like they’d been
individually targeted by Create An Advantage. The fire does not automatically Create An Advantage on any
creatures entering the zone after it is created, but it does remain as a situation aspect.

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Flesh To Ice (Marids only): You can Create An Advantage with magical water or ice using Will. When you
Create An Advantage on someone using Will and succeed (but not tie), they are Frozen Solid. Every time they
would take an action, their turn is skipped and you expend one of the free invokes. Once the aspect runs out of
free invokes, the aspect changes to something like Freezing Cold and works like a normal situation aspect.
Frost (Marids only): You can make magical ranged attacks dealing cold damage using Will. You can spend a Fate
Point to blast a cone of cold from the backline or the front line. If you are on the backline, you hit every other
creature in the zone. If you are on the front line, you hit one creature from the enemy front line, two from their
reach line, and three from their back line. You roll Will against all the targeted creatures (even allies, if you blasted
from the back line), and any who take at least one shift of damage are also frozen in place. Creatures frozen in
place cannot leave the zone and can no longer hold the line, although they can still be on the front line. Frozen
creatures remain so until the end of the scene.
Illusions (all): You can roll Lore to Create An Advantage by weaving illusions. You can weave illusions over an
entire zone to Create An Advantage as a situation aspect on that zone, which can be invoked against any creature
in that zone (including allies, although if you create an illusion sufficiently weighted towards your team, enemies
might have trouble finding ways to use it against you).
Stoneskin (Dao only): You can Create An Advantage with magical stone, dirt, or acid using Will. You can roll
Will to cover someone’s skin in a rocky crop of stone, giving them extra physical HP equal to the results of your
Will roll. This HP is tracked separately from their regular HP, and is depleted before their regular HP. If you try
to give stoneskin to someone who already has it, the new stoneskin HP replaces the old, rather than adding to it.
Any remaining stoneskin breaks off and falls away at the end of the scene.
Vitriol (Dao only): You can make ranged attacks dealing acid damage using Will. You can spend a Fate Point to
launch an acid missile at a single enemy. This is both an Attack and Creating An Advantage.

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Goblinoids
Ancestral Aspect: Mutable Form. Goblinoids are an artificial species created by wizards to be easily transformed.
Give a goblin a protein-heavy diet and they will grow several feet in height into either a hobgoblin or a bugbear,
depending on how much bodybuilding they do during the process. A goblin who goes swimming every day will
develop into a kol’ksu with webbed feet and gills. Specific goblin tribes will sometimes develop unique adapta-
tional mutations, like a cliff-dwelling goblin tribe developing long, spindly limbs to become spider goblins.
While environmental adaptation makes a noticeable difference to goblinoid forms, the most significant compo-
nent is diet. Goblinoids who eat exclusively dumb animals will lose the capacity for higher thought. Sometimes
goblinoids don’t eat intelligent creatures for long enough that they go feral, but any goblinoid who becomes in-
telligent gets a vested interest in staying that way, and will resort to cannibalism to maintain their consciousness.
A single dead human can serve a goblin’s dietary needs (at least so far as brains are concerned) for several years,
and humans have a convenient habit of dying on their own, so goblins don’t necessarily have to resort to murder.
“Redcaps” visit battlefields, plague camps, or other places where the dead are commonplace to drag them off for
consumption.
Goblinoids don’t have to preserve their food. They can eat and grow and eat and grow until they are out of food
to eat, then shrink back down as they burn through the accumulated mass, able to eat through an entire banquet’s
worth of food in one sitting and then subsist off of it for the next six months. When a goblinoid has eaten
enough, and gotten big enough, they become trolls. Trolls are necessarily either of animalistic intelligence or else
have eaten a lot of people, as there’s no other way to sustain such massive size.
Individual limbs, guts, and other component pieces of a troll can crawl away autonomously if separated from
the whole, and eventually develop into goblinoids themselves. A troll that gets big enough (in excess of twenty
or thirty feet, depending on how stocky its diet has been) eventually crushes its own bones under its weight, at
which point the shattered viscera splits into dozens of goblinoids. The reproductive process can occur in smaller
goblinoids as well, but not naturally, and only if, for example, a hobgoblin is split into two very equally small
pieces, such that each one has enough mass to form a common goblin. Most injuries leave the goblinoid with
insufficient mass to create any new goblinoids (and if split three or more ways, all the pieces may be too small to
recover and die).
While a High Concept can reference being a goblinoid, references to specific forms like the goblin, hobgoblin,
or bugbear must be in one of the three non-High Concept, non-Trouble aspects, where they can be swapped out
freely. If you are in the process of changing from one goblinoid type to another, you use a minor milestone to
rename the aspect that specifies your goblinoid type to indicate the transition, for example, Hobgoblin Warrior
might change to Withering Hobgoblin Warrior to indicate you are shrinking down to goblin size over time. Once
this happens, you now qualify for both the hobgoblin and goblin stunts, and can start swapping out any hobgob-
lin-exclusive stunts for goblin-exclusive stunts as part of minor milestones. Once all your stunts are swapped out,
you can now rename your aspect again, for example, to Goblin Warrior, completing the transition.
When a goblinoid becomes a troll, first they must consume an entire living creature of roughly human size (or
several smaller ones of equivalent total mass) and use a minor milestone to rename their goblinoid type to reflect
that they are growing to troll size, to something like Hulking Blue Goblin or Bloated Locathah. Each subsequent
time they eat such a meal, they swap out another one of their aspects based on the meal they’ve eaten - if the
things they’re eating don’t match the personality traits indicated by those aspects, those personality traits are lost
and replaced with something fitting what they have consumed.
A goblinoid with all four of their aspects (including the Trouble) dedicated to becoming a troll can then rename
their High Concept as a minor milestone (even though this normally requires a major milestone) to something
like Troll Horror or Bestial Goblin Giant or Cunning Troll King, reflecting the aspects they’ve absorbed. Once the
goblinoid’s High Concept is renamed, they get the Trollish Regeneration stunt for free. If they already had that
stunt, they gain a free point of refresh, but they cannot spend that refresh on a stunt. While the goblinoid has
such a High Concept, they cannot rename or replace any of their other aspects.

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The High Concept remains until either all four of the goblinoid’s other aspects (which now all reflect their trollish
nature) are lost to Troll Regeneration, or else when the goblinoid reaches a major milestone. If the goblinoid loses
all four of their aspects to Troll Regeneration, they have been cut back down to an ordinary goblinoid. They get a
new Trouble immediately, and can start plugging in their three ordinary aspects with minor milestones.
At a major milestone, the fully formed troll can, but does not have to, collapse under its own weight and split
into multiple smaller goblinoids, one of which becomes the new character with a new High Concept and
whatever new aspects the player likes (any or none of the aspects from the troll may be inherited), while the other
spawned goblinoids become NPCs. Once this happens, the freshly spawned goblinoids lose the Trollish Regenera-
tion stunt or, if they bought the stunt with normal refresh, they lose the extra point of refresh they got from being
a troll.
The most common goblinoids are:
• Goblins, sometimes common goblins, forest goblins, or green goblins to distinguish them from other
goblinoids, are small, sneaky creatures who develop when in small spaces or getting too little food for proper
development. Despite the name “green goblin,” goblins develop a skin tone that matches their general envi-
ronment, which means goblins who develop in deserts have orange-ish or yellowish skin, those who develop
in tundras have shock white or pale blue skin, goblins living underground have jet black or purple skin, and so
on.
• Barghests are goblins found in cold conditions, growing shaggier fur and a less humanoid, more
canine appearance.
• Blue goblins are goblins with psionic powers who develop under similar conditions to regular goblins
when left in the Astral Sea or other areas with a powerful psionic background. They are short, blue (as the
name suggests), and have small antennae on their forehead.
• Bugbears are seven to eight foot tall, gangly goblinoids with sinewy musculature who grow from
goblins in tight or tall spaces who nevertheless have access to voluminous food supply.
• Hobgoblins are strong, tough goblins who develop when they have plenty of room to grow and food
to eat.
• Kol’ksu are small aquatic goblins created when goblinoids spend a lot of time swimming.
• Locathah are aquatic goblinoids of similar size to ordinary humans, created when a goblinoid spends a
lot of time in water but is nevertheless very well fed.
• Red goblins are goblins with psionic powers who develop under similar conditions to hobgoblins
when left in the Astral Sea or other areas with a powerful psionic background. They are four to six feet tall,
trending towards being slightly shorter than humans on average but with a lot of overlap, and lithe but not
gangly. Red goblins technically have antennae like blue goblins do, but these antennae are encased in keratin,
making them look like horns.
• Trolls have become such a conglomeration of different parts that each one is a bespoke horror with no
consistent physiology or psychology. They can have any of the stunts possessed by any other goblinoid.
Universal Stunts: Authority (blue goblins, red goblins), Celerity (hobgoblins, kol’ksu, locathah), Discernment
(blue goblins, goblins), Fortitude (barghests, hobgoblins), Magnetism (red goblins), Potence (barghests, bugbears,
hobgoblins, locathah), Veil (bugbears, goblins, kol’ksu).
Aquatic Warrior (kol’ksu, locathah): You have +2 to attack with Fight when underwater.

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Goblinoid Cunning (blue goblin, bugbear, goblin, kol’ksu): You have +2 on Burglary rolls made to Create
An Advantage when trying to find an escape route from prison or peril. You can also use Stealth to attack a target
who is unaware of your location. They defend with Notice.
Psionic Assault (red goblin): You can roll Will to Attack an enemy’s mental HP. The attack is defended with
Will (unless the enemy has a stunt or other effect saying otherwise). You can spend a Fate Point to fire a psionic
bolt at an enemy, which gets a +3 bonus and deals an additional shift of damage if it hits.
Psionic Visions (blue goblin): You can roll Will to Create An Advantage by creating psychic links with your
allies, or by scanning potential futures to see what the enemy is going to do next. You can pay a Fate Point to roll
Will with a TN based on the table below to see a vision of a distant event.
TN Target
1 Happening now on the other side of a wall or otherwise within your natural perceptions (if not
clearly, i.e. sound is muffled but you can hear the conversation with your regular ears)
2 Happening now to someone you know well
3 Happening now to someone you can identify by name and face, but are not well acquainted with
4 Happening now to someone you can identify by name or face, but not both
5 Happening now to someone you are familiar with only contextually, i.e. “whoever’s hair this is” or
“whoever that goblin meant by ‘the boss’”
+1 Happening more than a hundred miles away
+2 Happening on another plane of existence
+1 Happened in the past
+2 Will happen in the future (except to the extent that receiving the vision has altered the timeline)

Telekinesis (blue goblin, red goblin): You can roll Will instead of Athletics to move objects or push creatures.
Troll Regeneration (trolls only): You can sacrifice one of your troll aspects to heal a consequence of any level. If
possible, this results in some detached piece of your body developing into a new goblinoid.
Wolf Form (barghest): You get +2 when you roll Physique to Create An Advantage for yourself by turning into
a wolf. This roll is made against a default TN of 2. If you still have free invokes left on your Wolf Transformation
aspect, you can switch back and forth between the forms at-will. Once you have run out of free invokes on the as-
pect, you remain transformed until you choose to revert or are Taken Out, at which point you can only transform
back when Creating An Advantage again.

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Golems
Ancestral Aspect: Artificial Being. Being a golem means two things: First, that you were created from some
specific material, but more importantly, that you were created for some specific purpose. You might be an Iron
War Golem or a Clockwork Ballerina, but unlike almost any other ancestry, you definitely weren’t created without
a plan in mind for your function. Even a creator acting out of the pure joy of creation still would’ve made a
Replacement Child of Brass and Wheels, and honestly, the implications of that are probably worse for you than if
you were a Messenger Made of Swift Wood or something.
Being a construct, you are immune to poison and disease.
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Potence.
Overclock: You can roll Physique to Create An Advantage on yourself at TN 2 to apply the Overclocked (2)
situation aspect to yourself. This aspect gets free invokes based on your Create An Advantage roll like normal, and
they can be used like normal, but they can also be used to take an extra action immediately after you’ve acted.
You can only take one extra action from being Overclocked per turn.
At the start of each of your turns, this aspect gets one free invoke, the number in parentheses goes up by one,
and you must make a Physique roll against a TN equal to the number in parentheses (since the number starts at
2, this means your first roll against it will be TN 3). If you fail the Physique roll, you immediately lose the Over-
clocked aspect and instead take a mild consequence of Overheated. If you cannot take a mild consequence, you
must take a higher tier consequence instead, and if all your consequence slots are occupied, you are Taken Out.
You do not gain any extra HP from taking an Overheated consequence.
Purpose Built: Choose a skill to go with the purpose you
were built for, as indicated by your ancestral aspect. When
you spend a Fate Point on a check made with that
skill and relevant to your purpose, you get a +3 to
your roll, or you reroll at +1.
Reinforced Body: Some golems might be
mostly hollow, or made from a soft wood,
or full of delicate clockwork. Not you. Your
chassis is reinforced with heavy materials or
you’re made from clay all the way through
or something. You resist bludgeoning,
piercing, and slashing damage, giving you
+2 to all rolls made to Defend against
such damage.

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Greys
Ancestral Aspect: Natural Psion. While the majority of them are natural psions the way humans are natural
distance runners, i.e. theoretically built for it but without having put in the effort to actually run a marathon,
all greys are natural psions. This gives them psionic powers, but it also makes them more vulnerable to psionic
attacks, as the strength of the connection goes both ways..
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism, Veil.
Psionic Assault: You can roll Will to Attack an enemy’s mental HP. The attack is defended with Will (unless the
enemy has a stunt or other effect saying otherwise). You can spend a Fate Point to fire a psionic bolt at an enemy,
which gets a +3 bonus and deals an additional shift of damage if it hits.
Psionic Visions: You can roll Will to Create An Advantage by creating psychic links with your allies, or by scan-
ning potential futures to see what the enemy is going to do next. You can pay a Fate Point to roll Will with a TN
based on the table below to see a vision of a distant event.
TN Target
1 Happening now on the other side of a wall or otherwise within your natural perceptions (if not
clearly, i.e. sound is muffled but you can hear the conversation with your regular ears)
2 Happening now to someone you know well
3 Happening now to someone you can identify by name and face, but are not well acquainted with
4 Happening now to someone you can identify by name or face, but not both
5 Happening now to someone you are familiar with only contextually, i.e. “whoever’s hair this is” or
“whoever that goblin meant by ‘the boss’”
+1 Happening more than a hundred miles away
+2 Happening on another plane of existence
+1 Happened in the past
+2 Will happen in the future (except to the extent that receiving the vision has altered the timeline)

Telekinesis: You can roll Will instead of Athletics to move objects or push creatures.

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Jotun
Ancestral Aspect: Gigantic. The First Giant was a being of such creative potential that they could bring to life
their creations, and the first of those creations were the jotun. The jotun were small by comparison to the First
Giant, but still stand some fifteen feet tall on average. Some are made from stone, colloquially called “stone
giants” or “frost giants,” for the snow and rime that clings to them in the high mountain peaks where they dwell,
or “cloud giants” when they dwell in castles built atop clouds, the moving mountains of the sky (some people are
not aware that stone giants, frost giants, and cloud giants are the same creature, with the difference lying mainly
in altitude, but they are). Others are made from metal, and these are called “steel giants” or “fire giants,” for the
molten heat of the forges they work which clings to and radiates from their steel bodies in the great underground
kingdoms where they dwell, where their forges never cool.
The immense size of the jotun means that they not only can have the Fortitude, Potence, and Reinforced Body
stunts, but all of them do. It’s a prerequisite.
Universal Stunts: Fortitude, Potence.
Cold Resistant (frost giants only): Your body is made
from stone, and particularly good at weathering the cold.
You have +2 to all rolls made to Defend against cold
damage.
Heat Resistant (fire giants
only): Your body is made
from the thick steel of the
crucible, and particularly
good at weathering the heat.
You have +2 to all rolls made to De-
fend against fire damage.
Jotun Crafting: You are specialized
into either masonry or metalwork,
depending on whether you are a
frost giant or a fire giant (respec-
tively). You have a +2 to any Bur-
glary, Notice, Investigate, Lore, or
Resources check relating to your
chosen crafting specialty.
Reinforced Body: Your body is
made out of stone or steel and
is exactly as resilient as that
implies. You resist bludgeon-
ing, piercing, and slashing
damage, giving you +2 to all
rolls made to Defend against
such damage.

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Lycanthropes
Ancestral Aspect: Lycanthropy. If you are a lycanthrope, your ancestral aspect could just be Werewolf, although
it might instead be Werebear, Wereboar, or Weretiger. As with most ancestral aspects, it might double as a prerequi-
site for a class, like Werewolf Of The Jungle qualifying you for Hunter, or Werewolf With A Rune Blade qualifying
you for Rune Knight, both of which would make perfect sense as a High Concept.
Lycanthropy is in the blood and cannot be passed on by infection, but it doesn’t follow clear lines of descent.
Instead, it frequently skips generations or bounces around to niblings (i.e. nieces and nephews) instead of direct
children. Werewolves have a kinship with wolves of all sorts, including one another, and they have keen senses
and are physically stronger and faster even when not transformed, and you could invoke your aspect for any of
these.
Werewolves are also vulnerable to silver, and your aspect might be invoked against you to give silver weapons (im-
provised or purpose-made) to an enemy. Attacks made against you with silver weapons get +2, and if an enemy is
already established to have such weapons, you don’t even get the Fate Point for a compel in exchange.
If a werewolf goes too long without transforming and running around the woods, something referred to as
“feeding the wolf ” in lycanthrope cultures, they eventually grow more irritable, impulsive, and ultimately may
lose control and transform when under stress or under the light of the full moon. Werewolves do not have to be
under the light of the full moon to transform, but if they haven’t been feeding the wolf properly, they might be
unable to not transform under the light of the full moon. Similarly,
werewolves are usually perfectly in control of themselves
when transformed, but if the transformation was brought on
involuntarily, they may instead be frenzied and animalistic,
responding with growls or outright violence to shouting,
open flames, or seeing someone they particularly dislike.
A werewolf ’s Fate Point reserve can be used as a proxy
for feeding the wolf, with low refresh indicating they
frenzy easily while higher refresh indicates they’re
much more controlled, which may be because the
werewolf with lower refresh is worse at controlling
the transformation (they probably have low Will as
well) or it may be that they can’t transform and run
around easily (maybe they’re hiding from werewolf
hunters, or they live in a city so when they trans-
form all they can do is pace around a small
apartment rather than running through
the woods hunting deer). A werewolf
with three or more Fate Points is totally in
control of their transformation. At two Fate
Points, the transformation begins to show
through under pressure with changing eye color,
claws starting to grow from fingernails or canines
getting longer, or ears changing into wolf shape. The
werewolf can still suppress these partial transforma-
tions, but it takes effort and their humanoid form
will begin to slip if they’re distracted or stressed. At one
Fate Point, the werewolf has become irritable and restless due
to their need to transform, and the minor transformations flare up at
even small annoyances.

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Feeding the wolf doesn’t strictly require going into some kind of half-frenzied destructive rampage, but narrative
law and game mechanics being what they are, any attempt to feed the wolf mid-scenario must cause some signifi-
cant inconvenience to count and give you a Fate Point back.
Actually turning into a werewolf requires a stunt - it’s just too big a deal to come for free. Werewolves who don’t
have this stunt have lycanthropy lurking in their blood, but have not yet learned to control their transformation
even slightly. They may be young enough that they don’t transform at all yet (some werewolves do not begin to
transform until as late as age twenty-five), or they might be unable to control their transformation, transforming
only when frenzied. You’re probably not going to take the prerequisite aspect and then not take the werewolf
transformation stunt, but it’s possible.
Universal Stunts: Celerity, Discernment, Fortitude, Magnetism, Potence, Veil.
Lunar Regeneration: You can spend a Fate Point to decrease the severity of a consequence from severe to moder-
ate, moderate to mild, or healing a mild consequence completely.When under the light of the full moon, you can
spend a Fate Point to instantly recover from a consequence of any severity.
Wolf Form: You get +2 when you roll Physique to Create An Advantage for yourself by turning into a wolf or a
wolf/humanoid monster form. This roll is made against a default TN of 2. If you still have free invokes left on
your Wolf Transformation aspect, you can switch back and forth between the forms at-will. Once you have run out
of free invokes on the aspect, you remain transformed until you choose to revert or are Taken Out, at which point
you can only transform back when Creating An Advantage again.
Wolf Friend: Even as werewolves go, you’re good at making friends with wolves. You have +2 to any Empathy,
Provoke, or Rapport rolls made with wolves.

Merfolk
Ancestral Aspect: The Flesh Of The Drowned. Sometimes, a fish decides to try out being human. To accom-
plish this, a fish must feed on human flesh - traditionally, that of drowned sailors in a shipwreck. This only
transforms the fish partway, however, into a merfolk, human enough to make contact, to brush the edge of the
human world with their fingertips, but still as much fish as human. Merfolk don’t need to consume human flesh
for every meal to sustain the transformation, but they do need to eat part of a person periodically. Some merfolk
congregate around parts of the sea prone to causing shipwrecks to get more, and if there are too many merfolk,
they may fight each other over the wrecks. Others intentionally lure sailors to their demise, or climb aboard to
straight-up murder someone and take the body down to the depths. Some refuse to leave sailors to drown (let
alone drown them intentionally) to maintain their transformation. These latter, if they do not stumble across a
dead body by happenstance, eventually revert back to fish entirely, unable to speak, or write, or be part of the
human world even at its periphery.
Being of two worlds, all merfolk can swim adeptly, but are clumsy on land. Merfolk can speak to fish underwater
and humanoids in the air, and can breathe both water and air indefinitely.
Universal Stunts: Magnetism.
Aquatic Prowess: You have +2 to Athletics and Fight when underwater.
Fish Friend: Even as merfolk go, you’re good at making friends with fish. You have +2 to any Empathy, Provoke,
or Rapport rolls made with fish and other aquatic creatures (i.e. dolphins, whales, octopuses, etc.).

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Ophidians
Ancestral Aspect: Snake Eyes. Serpents record wisdom and knowledge upon their scales. When they run out
of room, they grow a new library of scales, shedding their old skin. The more a serpent learns, the larger they
become, until great sagacious naga are born, massive and with expertise that runs both deep and broad. When the
naga interbreed with humans (infamously capable at interbreeding with lots of things), they create the ophidian
purebloods, with the bottom half of a snake and the top half of a scaly humanoid. As the interbreeding continues,
the ophidians become halfbloods, fully humanoid but still covered in scales, and then ophidian thinbloods,
indistinguishable from humans at a glance, but possessed of some telltale sign of their serpentine heritage, like a
snake’s tail growing from their hips, a patch of scales at the back of their neck, or the stereotypical snake eyes.
Ophidians have an indefinite lifespan, but when thinbloods interbreed with humans, the result is mortal humans,
so naga seeking to expand their brood and take advantage of the loyalty built on family will try to find many
mates with which to create many different ophidian pureblood progenitors. Female naga are more likely to have
luck in this regard, since they can lay a whole clutch of purebloods from one human, rather than male nagas, who
must work under the constraints of human wombs.
Biologically speaking, ophidians pick up a degree of magical power from their progenitor, but the main thing
that shapes ophidian society is the cultural ramifications of being no more than three generations removed from
an immortal snake demi-god who decided to raise a family. Some naga raise ophidians for fulfillment, others for
the sake of having loyal minions (it’s perfectly typical for giant snakes to be pretty cold-blooded). Most nagas
don’t produce ophidian offspring at all - it’s not like being a very old, very learned snake necessarily means you
want to engage in interspecies copulation for any reason. If you are an ophidian, however, your clan matriarch or
patriarch is a naga who, for one reason or another, did decide to do that.
Universal Stunts: Authority (all), Celerity (half-bloods, purebloods), Discernment (half-bloods, purebloods),
Potence (purebloods)
Arcane Might (half-bloods, purebloods): When you pay a Fate Point to use magic, whether using an aspect (in-
cluding your ancestral aspect) for a bonus or when using a magical stunt or other effect that requires a Fate Point
to activate, your Fate Point is refunded if you succeed with style on the associated roll. If there is no associated
roll, roll 4df unmodified. Your Fate Point is refunded if you get +2 or higher on the dice.
Poisonous (all): Your poisonous nature makes you resistant to other poisons. You have a +2 to Defend against
any attack dealing poison damage. You have a poisonous bite attack that can be used to deal either piercing or
poison damage with Fight. If you strike an opponent with this poisonous bite, you can spend a Fate Point to have
the Attack also count as Creating An Advantage.

Slimes
Ancestral Aspect: Amorphous. Slimes are alchemically created creatures that normally have only the most prim-
itive of intelligence, because making them smarter is a lot of extra work for no clear benefit. When an alchemist
does bother to go to the trouble, though (maybe they’re into goo girls), the result is an intelligent, amorphous
creature that’s nearly impossible to kill, can sustain themselves by consuming any organic material, and which
splits into identical clones any time they grow large enough. Statistically speaking, most intelligent slimes aren’t
the one originally created by an alchemist, but a clone many times removed, having the memories of all the
predecessors up to the point of division but not afterwards.
Universal Stunts: Fortitude.
Elemental Body: Your body is charged with some kind of elemental power, usually acid, but maybe cold, fire,
or lightning instead. You cannot be damaged by that element at all, and you can make natural melee or ranged
attacks (in the latter case, by lobbing goo) dealing that damage type.
Amorphous Body: You can Defend against any physical attack with Physique. Any time you would take a
consequence from physical damage, you can choose to be Taken Out instead of taking damage (rather than after
taking damage), splattering your slime body across the floor only to reform in the next scene having suffered no
significant damage.

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Starspawn
Ancestral Aspect: Brain Eater. The starspawn are an ancient species of brain-eating aliens from the Astral Sea.
They devour brains for sustenance, absorbing the memories and knowledge of their victims. When the burden of
the many thoughts grows to be too much and the starspawn’s sense of identity begins to fray, they can pack what-
ever memories and skills they can’t handle into a larva, that is then extruded into a brain pool. Brains are dropped
inside to feed the larvae, until they grow into starspawn of their own.
Universal Stunts: Authority.
Brain Eater: You can gain a Fate Point by devouring the brain of a creature. When you do this, you absorb one
of the creature’s aspects. This aspect comes with a free invoke, which can be used for or against you. If you already
have five aspects (including your High Concept and Trouble), you can instead absorb the aspect into one of your
consequence slots. This doesn’t give you any extra HP, just the free invoke. Between scenarios, you can extrude a
larva, taking any number of aspects or brain-devouring consequences with it.
Psionic Assault: You can roll Will to Attack an enemy’s mental HP. The attack is defended with Will (unless the
enemy has a stunt or other effect saying otherwise). You can spend a Fate Point to fire a psionic bolt at an enemy,
which gets a +3 bonus and deals an additional shift of damage if it hits.
Psionic Power: When you pay a Fate Point to use your psionic powers, whether using an aspect (including your
ancestral aspect) for a bonus or when using a psionic stunt or other effect that requires a Fate Point to activate,
your Fate Point is refunded if you succeed with style on the associated roll. If there is no associated roll, roll 4df
unmodified. Your Fate Point is refunded if you get +2 or higher on the dice.
Psionic Visions: You can roll Will to Create An Advantage by creating psychic links with your allies, or by scan-
ning potential futures to see what the enemy is going to do next. You can pay a Fate Point to roll Will with a TN
based on the table below to see a vision of a distant event.
TN Target
1 Happening now on the other side of a wall or otherwise within your natural perceptions (if not
clearly, i.e. sound is muffled but you can hear the conversation with your regular ears)
2 Happening now to someone you know well
3 Happening now to someone you can identify by name and face, but are not well acquainted with
4 Happening now to someone you can identify by name or face, but not both
5 Happening now to someone you are familiar with only contextually, i.e. “whoever’s hair this is” or
“whoever that goblin meant by ‘the boss’”
+1 Happening more than a hundred miles away
+2 Happening on another plane of existence
+1 Happened in the past
+2 Will happen in the future (except to the extent that receiving the vision has altered the timeline)

Telekinesis: You can roll Will instead of Athletics to move objects or push creatures.

85
Watcher
Ancestral Aspect: As Old As The Stars. A watcher is a somewhat jellyfish-shaped creature, though they are
fleshy beings of eyes and mouths rather than jelly. Specifically, watchers have a single large eye and mouth in their
torso/head, and several more eyes dangling on tendrils below. The most common watcher is the watcher nonus,
with eight eye tendrils plus the ninth on the body. All watchers have, in addition to their eye tendrils, two larger
gripper tendrils they can use to pick up objects and turn door handles and so forth. Watchers use their telekinetic
power to float through the air.
Watchers are as old as anything else in the universe, and nobody’s making any more. Theirs was the first empire
in all of time, back when the watchers were the thirteen-eyed watchers ultima. Each time a watcher dies, they
reincarnate into a new form with fewer eyes: The watcher nonus, the watcher septima, and the watcher quintus.
After the great war that rent the old watcher empire, there are few watchers ultima remaining, and they are no
longer the pre-eminent imperial power of the Astral Sea. Some watchers, especially watchers nonus and what
few watchers ultima remain, still attempt to maintain dominion over some slice of the multiverse, but most have
gotten bored of power. They’re very old, they’ve been there and done that, and largely come to the conclusion that
it isn’t worth the stress. Their unaging bodies remain active and energetic, though, and so many of them embrace
eccentric hobbies and pastimes.
There’s a watcher who is obsessed with being a really good mayor (specifically a mayor of one city, no more and
no less), a watcher who’s obsessed with sword fighting and uses their gripper tendrils to fence opponents despite
the panoply of deadly eye rays at their disposal, a watcher who collects rare varieties of tea, a watcher who exca-
vates ruins of ancient civilizations which escaped their notice while they were busy leading a stressful life as some
mid-ranking officer in the old watcher empire, and so on.
Universal Stunts: Authority, Discernment, Magnetism.

Overpowered Watchers
While each unique ancestry stunt of the watcher is individually pretty normal and balanced, the ability to use
each eye separately on their turn, and thus potentially get up to thirteen actions in one turn if they are a watcher
ultima using every single ray, makes them hideously overpowered. Watchers are intended as NPCs, with even the
weakest of them able to keep up with an entire party. If you really want to play a watcher, the quick and easy
way to balance them is to remove the ability to fire multiple eye rays in one turn, although it should be noted
that the overlap between different eye rays gets pretty noticeable if you’re picking only one of them to use each
round.

Chronomancy Eye (requires Gaze, watchers septima, nonus, and ultima only): You have a chronomancy
eye with one of the following two effects. If you are a watcher ultima, you may take this stunt twice, getting the
second effect the second time it is taken.
• Haste: You can use your action to give another creature an action. If you spend a Fate Point, this
doesn’t take your action.
• Slow: You can roll Gaze to Create An Advantage by slowing down a creature in time. As long as the
aspect is still on the target creature (even if it has no free invokes left), they count as zero creatures for purposes
of holding the line in melee, as they’re so slow it becomes easy to go around them.
Destructive Eye (requires Gaze, watchers septima, nonus, and ultima only): You have a destructive eye with
one of the following two effects. If you are a watcher ultima, you may take this stunt twice, getting the second
effect the second time it is taken.
• Fireball: You can spend a Fate Point to attack all creatures in a zone with a Gaze attack. The attack
deals fire damage.
• Lightning Bolt: You can spend a Fate Point to make a Gaze attack that has +2 on the roll and deals
an extra four shifts of damage if it hits. The attack deals lightning damage.

86
Disintegration Eye (requires Gaze, watchers nonus and ultima only): Your eye can fire a beam that obliterates
all material it comes into contact with. Against unmoving targets, like walls or buildings, this allows you to bore
through at a rate of 25 cubic feet per second, so if you’re drilling a 5’x5’ corridor, the corridor gets 1 foot deeper
every second. Against moving targets, the Disintegration Eye is a gaze attack that, when it inflicts any conse-
quence, always inflicts a minimum of a serious consequence by vaporizing an entire body part like a hand or leg.
Gaze: You may learn a skill called Gaze which is used to power your eye powers and which fully replaces both
Notice and Investigate for purposes of noticing/finding things visually. If you have Discernment, you can use
Gaze instead of Notice for purposes of that stunt. If you have multiple eye rays using Gaze, you may use a num-
ber of them equal to your Gaze each turn (i.e. if you have Gaze +4, you can use 4 eye rays on your turn).
Laser Eye (requires Gaze): You can use Gaze to make a ranged attack dealing force damage.
Mental Eye (requires Gaze, watchers nonus and ultima only): You have a mental eye with one of the following
three effects. If you are a watcher ultima, you may take this stunt three times, getting a different effect each time
it is taken.
• Confusion: You can make Gaze attacks against mental HP. If you inflict a consequence, the con-
sequence is something like Confused By The Psychedelics or Hallucinating Vividly. When you inflict such a
consequence, you can put a Fate Point on it to give it a free invoke for future use (in addition to whatever free
invokes are brought on by the severity of the consequence). So long as there is at least one free invoke on the
consequence, the target must make a Will save at the start of each of their turns against the number of free
invokes on the consequence. If they fail, they act randomly by rolling 2df on the below table.
Roll Result
-2 The confused creature attacks a target of your choice (not theirs) in the same zone
-1 The confused creature wastes their turn grooving to the colors
0 The confused creature leaves the zone for a random destination
+1 The confused creature Creates An Advantage on a target of their choice (not yours) in the same
zone
+2 The confused creature acts normally in a brief moment of lucidity

• Domination: You can make Gaze attacks against mental HP. If you inflict a consequence, the conse-
quence is something like Dominated By The Watcher. You can invoke this consequence (using a free invoke or a
Fate Point) at the start of the creature’s turn to force them to act as you direct.
• Fear: You can make Gaze attacks against mental HP. If you inflict a consequence, the consequence is
something like Supernaturally Terrified. The consequence comes with one more free invoke than normal.
Paralysis Eye (requires Gaze): You can use Gaze to Create An Advantage by paralyzing someone. If you tie or
succeed, the target is Partially Paralyzed, but if you succeed with style, the target is Completely Paralyzed. Every
time their turn comes up, their turn is skipped and one of the free invokes is consumed. Once all free invokes are
used (either by skipping turns or for a bonus to a roll against them), the aspect turns to Partially Paralyzed and
works like a normal situation aspect from Creating An Advantage.
Telekinetic Eye (requires Gaze): You can roll Gaze instead of Athletics to move objects or push creatures, and to
fly with agility or at high speeds.

Other Eyes
All watchers, even watchers quintus, have a charm eye, which is where their Authority and Magnetism universal
stunts come from. Watchers use Discernment via their central eye. Like other eyes, watchers haven’t necessarily
learned how to use the magical powers of these eyes, but they do have the eyes.

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Profession
Class Skills And Aspects
All classes (except one) have a class skill, which is a special skill that is used for most of the class stunts, which is
good, because it is by itself usually a worse version of an existing skill. Because class skills are at least a little bit
crummy unto themselves, you usually only want to take one if you have at least one class stunt to go with it, and
if you do that, you probably want to make it two or three class stunts to get full use out of it.
All classes also require an aspect as a prerequisite. A default aspect name is given, but this can be embellished the
same way any aspect can to give it unique personality. An Assassin requires the Shadow Caster aspect, but that
might be combined with something else, like Dark Elf Shadow Caster or Vampire Shadow Caster, it might have
story implications attached, like Persecuted For Shadow Casting, and it doesn’t have to use the exact words “Shad-
ow Caster” either, if the group agrees that something like I Betrayed The Assassin’s Guild implies having once been
part of the Assassin’s Guild, and therefore a shadow caster. It can, but does not have to, take up a whole aspect
slot by itself.
It’s also worth noting that classes sometimes share stunts and swap out the class skill used to power them when
doing so. The Assassin is a readymade set of powers including shadow magic, poison lore, and general dirty fight-
ing, but an NPC poison master might have “Poisons” as a bespoke skill and a version of Poisonier that operates
off of that skill instead of Assassination.

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Class Stunts
Alchemist
Class Aspect: Alchemical Studies. An alchemist at some point learned alchemy, perhaps from a university or as
the personal apprentice of an old alchemist, or maybe from mad experimentation on their own initiative.
Class Skill: Alchemy. Alchemy is a more narrow version of Lore, used to identify and recall potions and poisons
and related concepts. Without stunts, it can’t be used to brew anything.
Biollurgy: You can concoct elixirs that drastically, though temporarily, alter a living creature’s physiology. You can
pay a Fate Point to create a mutagenic elixir. A creature who drinks the elixir gets one of the below aspects and
automatically receives two free invokes on that aspect. The aspect lasts until you refresh.
• Acidic Saliva
• Aquatic
• Bone Weaponry
• Elongated Limbs
• Extra Limbs
• Grasping Feet
• Omnimorphic
• Organometallic Skin
• Polymorphic
• Wings
Grenades: You can make an old-timey style sphere grenade with the fuse visibly sticking out, and fill it with ele-
mental powder. When you refresh, you can roll Alchemy and create grenades equal to the result, which can deal
any of acid, cold, fire, or lightning damage. When you attack with a grenade, you lob it into a neighboring zone
and attack every creature in that zone (including allies!) with Alchemy.
Healing Elixir: When you refresh, you can roll Alchemy and brew healing elixirs equal to the result. Healing
elixirs decrease the severity of a living creature’s consequence by one tier, from serious to moderate, moderate to
mild, or remove a mild consequence altogether. The consequence doesn’t have to be physical, as the elixir can also
soothe the mind.
Musketeer: You can use Alchemy instead of Shoot to make ranged attacks with firearms. You can load firearms
with elemental power, causing them to deal any of acid, cold, fire, or lightning damage. You can only load your
musket with one kind of powder when you refresh, but you can pick whichever powder you like each time you
refresh.
Ooze Concoction: You can brew oozes and keep them in little grenades. Whenever you refresh, you can roll Al-
chemy and brew oozes equal to the result. You can deploy an ooze at any time. The ooze cannot take consequenc-
es and its only skills are Fight +1, Athletics +1, and Physique +4, but it has the full 13 physical HP you would
expect from its Physique, which makes it very durable at holding the line. The ooze acts on its own turn and may
attack enemies of its own initiative, but it also might not. Its main purpose is to be a friendly unit on the front
line who is very hard to get rid of.

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Assassin
Class Aspect: Shadow Caster. You have perfect night vision (if you didn’t have that already from, for example,
being a vampire). You can gather shadows around yourself any time you want. This might be extremely conspic-
uous under certain circumstances, but especially if you’re quick, the nature of shadows means that people might
not notice one darting across the floor in their peripheral vision. You can also flatten yourself out to a shadow,
and while you’re still vulnerable to physical damage while doing so (be warned that people frequently step on
shadows in non-sexy ways), this can allow you to occupy very small spaces. You can shadow step from one shad-
ow and into another within the same zone, without passing through the intervening space. If you spend a Fate
Point, you can shadow step into any shadow you can see from the one you’re stepping into.
You can invoke Shadow Master when using any of these powers, but do not have to invoke Shadow Master to
use them at all (except to use a long range shadow step, as noted above). Shadow Masters are weakened by bright
light, and might have their aspect invoked against them by this, but the light has to be intense enough that no
shadows are left, so this doesn’t usually happen.
Class Skill: Assassination. Assassination is not as cool as it sounds. It doesn’t involve actually stabbing people,
that’s still Fight. It doesn’t include shooting them, either, that’s still Shoot. It doesn’t include familiarity with
breaking and entering, that’s still Burglary. What it does include is a familiarity with the assassin’s arts, including
poison and using the magic art of tenebrosity, control over shadows and darkness, to conceal your movements. So
it does serve as a wholesale replacement for Stealth.
Fade: You can fade into shadows right in front of someone (they still get to roll Notice against your Assassination
when you do so, but they can be looking right at you and you can still potentially hide from them), and have
+2 when using Assassination to hide in a crowd. You can use Assassination instead of Athletics to defend against
Shoot attacks.
Feint: You have +2 to using Deceive to Create An Advantage. When you succeed on Creating An Advantage with
Deceive, you can spend a Fate Point to allow any creature of your choice who is able to attack the deceived target
to do so immediately, without waiting for their next turn.
Poisonier: When you refresh, you can roll Assassination to concoct poisons, and get one dose of poison for each
point of the result. You can use one dose of poison to simultaneously Attack and Create An Advantage on the
target. The aspect created by the advantage can be generic poison nausea, or it can be something like blindness or
hallucinations.
If you spend a Fate Point while concocting poisons, one dose of the poison is the infamous Black Lotus Poison. If
it hits, Black Lotus Poison inflicts the Dying From Black Lotus Poison aspect on the victim. This counts as a serious
consequence except that it does not provide extra HP and the victim can have it inflicted even if they already
have a serious consequence. The victim loses 1 HP at the start of each of their turns as long as they’re Dying From
Black Lotus Poison. By default, healing someone who is Dying From Black Lotus Poison requires a TN 6 Lore roll,
although stunts which cure poisons automatically do work. Even when healed, however, the aspect is swapped out
for Recovering From Black Lotus Poison, which still counts as a serious consequence.
Sneak Attack: You can use Assassination to attack a target who is unaware of your location. They defend with
Notice.
Trap Master: You have +2 to Notice or Investigate to detect traps and to Athletics for avoiding damage from
them. You can use Assassination to lay a trap. When you do so, you specify a trigger for the trap, which can be
mundane (like a tripwire) or magical (like a glyph that only activates when constructs step on it). When the trap
is triggered, it makes an attack resisted with Athletics like normal. The TN for both spotting the trap and avoid-
ing damage from it is equal to your Assassination roll to set it up. Setting up a trap takes about a minute, but
once set up, they keep until they decay, which usually takes weeks if not months (broadly, don’t count on a trap
remaining after the end of a scenario, but within a scenario, they last until disarmed). Creatures can only trigger
one trap per turn, but you can fill a zone with any number of traps and try to keep enemies in that zone so they
stagger from one trap into another each turn they’re there.

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Chaos Knight
Class Aspect: Demon Armament. A Chaos Knight has bound a demon into a piece of armor or weaponry and
have an aspect that reflects this, ideally in a way that identifies a specific demon, like “I Forged Bas’varak the
Slaughterer Into Armor” or “Bearer of the Souldrinking Sword of Acheron” or something. This demon is aligned
with a specific chaos entity, and is going to have some thematic abilities in accordance with that entity. Most
things don’t like being paralyzed, and demons are no exception, but exactly how antagonistic the relationship
between demon armament and wielder is going to be depends on how much the wielder is willing to indulge the
monomaniacal focus the demon has inherited from its chaos entity progenitor.
Using one of my default nine entities as an examples, a sword made out of a Hunger demon might be good at
making things glow, might gild objects it’s in close proximity to, can cause metals to run with current, can unlock
locks (especially ones that might hide treasure), and can make you seem prettier and more fascinating. Because
the demon is bound into an object, it can’t get up and move around on its own to do anything, so all of its pow-
ers are passive effects on the wielder or immediate surroundings. The demon can focus its power if it gets roused
enough to go to the trouble, but not to the point of being an effective independent agent. The sword of the Hun-
ger, for example, might be able to give someone a static zap if it takes particular umbrage at a remark, but it can’t
fry them with electricity unless their wielder is directing their power to do so. The demon also usually has some
way of communicating with the wielder and others who are holding it or nearby it, often telepathy, allowing it to
make its wishes known, although the wielder is under no particular obligation to pay attention.
The aspect can be invoked by the wielder to add a bonus to anything that the demon armament’s powers or form
(i.e. that it is a sword/armor/whatever) might be relevant to, and it can be invoked against the wielder if the
demon is trying to resist a specific course of action or if it talks the wielder into doing something foolish in service
of the demon’s own monomaniacal agenda.
A Chaos Knight’s stunts only work if they are wearing or wielding their demonic armament.
A Chaos Knight’s stunts deal or resist elemental damage based on the alignment of the demon they wear or wield.
Here’s the elemental types for the standard nine entities I use.
Roll Result
-2 The confused creature attacks a target of your choice (not theirs) in the same zone
-1 The confused creature wastes their turn grooving to the colors
0 The confused creature leaves the zone for a random destination
+1 The confused creature Creates An Advantage on a target of their choice (not yours) in the same zone
+2 The confused creature acts normally in a brief moment of lucidity

Class Skill: Demon Lore. By itself, Demon Lore is exactly what it sounds like: A particularly narrow version of
the Lore skill, which can be used to recall facts specifically about demons and demon-adjacent subjects.
Demon Aegis: You can use your demonic armament to fend off attacks, whether by parrying with a weapon or
by absorbing them directly with armor. You can roll Demon Lore to defend against any physical attack, and you
have frontage equal to your Demon Lore score for purposes of holding the line. This means that, for example, if
you have +4 Demon Lore, you count as four combatants, which means you can attack the enemy backline with
impunity even if one or even two enemies are confronting you on the front line (although remember that attack-
ing a back line enemy draws them into the front line, and drawing enough of them into the front line will make
the front line too big for you to ignore - then again, if the goal is to stop enemies from making ranged attacks on
allies, they’ll have a harder time doing that from the front line).
Any time you take a consequence, the bonus HP you gain is multiplied by your Demon Lore bonus. Yes, this
does mean that taking a serious consequence will usually give you more HP than high-Physique characters get in
the first place, but you had to take a serious consequence to get there.
Demon Edge: Your demonic armament allows you to deal elemental damage matching your armament’s entity.
This might qualify you to do extra damage or get a free boost against creatures weak to that damage type, but
does not cause any additional damage by itself. You can also choose not to use your elemental damage type if that
helps you avoid a creature’s resistance.

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If you force an enemy to take a consequence while attacking with your demonic armament, you can spend a Fate
Point to force them to upgrade the consequence to the next level. The consequence is now something like Demon-
ic Wound or Fiendishly Festering Injury, indicating how the Demon Edge has rendered it particularly difficult to
heal. They still only get HP as though from the consequence they had tried to use, not the extra from the higher
tier you forced them into. If they were already trying to take a serious consequence, they have to take a second
consequence. If they can’t take a second consequence, they’re Taken Out automatically.
Elemental Resistance: You have a +2 to any Athletics, Will, or Physique check made to Defend against a specific
element, based on the patron of your demonic armament.
You can spend a Fate Point to totally ignore one attack dealing damage of the matching type, no matter how
much damage it would have dealt.
True Form: You can spend a Fate Point to temporarily unleash a shadow of your demon’s true form from the
metal prison you have encased it in. The demon has one skill of each level, with the highest level being equal to
your Demon Lore, so if you have +4 Demon Lore, the demon has one skill each at +4, +3, +2, and +1. The de-
mon’s second-highest skill is always Will. The demon takes fully separate actions from you, but is forced to obey
your commands as long as you still wear or wield the armament that holds the core of its essence. The demon has
no separate HP and consequences, but instead you take mental damage and consequences whenever the demon is
attacked. While your demon is still bound, you can recall it back into the armament you’ve forged it into at any
time, even if it’s not your turn, and the demon returns automatically at the end of the scene.
If you take a serious consequence from an attack on your demon, that consequence is Unbound Demon!, and you
will probably want to track down and rebind it as soon as possible, both to get your class features back and so it
doesn’t go around skinning cats. Even when “unbound,” as long as your demonic armament is intact, the core of
the demon’s essence is held there, and if you strike the demon with the weapon or grapple it while wearing the
armor, you can draw it back in by rolling your Demon Lore against the demon’s Will. Once you have the demon
rebound, the consequence changes to something like Spiteful Demon or Drained From The Demon Battle or simi-
lar, and it can now recover normally.
Unnatural Movement: You gain an unnatural movement type based on the entity of your demonic armament.
You have +2 to any Athletics checks that benefit from this movement type, and also certain things that would
ordinarily require an Athletics check might automatically succeed. For example, if you have an Abyss weapon, you
have +2 Athletics for chasing someone if you can swim after them, but if the Athletics check is to swim from one
place to another, you just succeed with no roll necessary. It’s as ordinary as walking.
Fly and teleport are generally more flexible than the others (the comparison between flying and climbing is partic-
ularly hard on the latter), but flight is granted specifically by the Hunger, which usually grants powers in a very
gaudy and attention-getting way, like growing a harness of golden wings that glow with resplendent light under
both the sun and moon, and teleportation has a range of about ten yards and can only be used infrequently (often
enough that it can provide a passive +2 bonus to relevant Athletics checks, but rarely enough that you cannot
chain teleport through the air to reach the top of a cliff without bothering to find handholds - teleporting up the
side of a cliff would actually be an extremely dangerous way to climb it, since you’re constantly taking all four
limbs off the cliff face and trusting you’ll be able to grab onto the next handhold when you teleport in rather than
slipping off and plummeting down).
Chaos entity Movement type
Abyss Swim
Devouring Climb
Empty Burrow
Eternal Climb
Hunger Fly
Labyrinth Teleport
Pestilence Burrow
Shapeless Climb, Swim
Slaughter Burrow

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Elementalist, Burning
Class Aspect: Planetouched. The Elementalist has some deep connection to the primordial elements. Fire springs
from your fingertips on command and sometimes without being commanded, and eventually the fire is joined
by acid, ice, lightning, and noise. Maybe you’re a succubus or an erinyes or a genasi, or maybe some primordial
fire just took a shine to you and started setting your enemies on fire. Invoking the Planetouched aspect would
certainly help any time you are setting things on fire, and could be invoked against you any time it compels you
to set things on fire that maybe you shouldn’t, or sets on fire something/someone who’s upsetting you without
running it by you at all.
Class Skill: Hellfire. Hellfire is a more-or-less adequate replacement for Shoot. Unlike Shoot, it can’t be used
with any ranged weapon you like, only the titular Hellfire, so if you don’t want to do fire damage, you’re out of
luck. Also unlike Shoot, it’s available to you all the time because you produce the fire from your hands, so at least
you can’t be disarmed.
Cacophony: Your Hellfire attacks can deal thunder damage.
When you roll to Create An Advantage, you can spend a Fate Point to fill an entire zone (not necessarily the
one you’re in) with noise that cause supernatural terror and rage. Every creature (including allies!) in the zone
rolls Will against your Hellfire, and anyone who fails gets an aspect like Frightened or Frenzied applied to them,
with free invokes just like they’d been individually targeted by Create An Advantage. The Cacophony does not
automatically Create any Advantages on people who enter it, but it remains a situation aspect on the zone until
the end of the scene.
Fireball: You can spend a Fate Point to make a Hellfire attack
targeting every creature in a zone (including allies!).
Frost: Your Hellfire attacks can deal cold damage.
You can spend a Fate Point to blast a cone of cold
from the backline or the front line. If you are on the
backline, you hit every other creature in the zone. If
you are on the front line, you hit one creature from the
enemy front line, two from their reach line, and three
from their back line. You roll Hellfire against all the
targeted creatures (even allies, if you blasted from the
back line), and any who take at least one shift of damage
are also frozen in place. Creatures frozen in place cannot
leave the zone and can no longer hold the line, although they
can still be on the front line. Frozen creatures remain so
until the end of the scene.
Lightning: Your Hellfire attacks can deal lightning dam-
age.
You can spend a Fate Point to fire a lightning bolt at a single
enemy. The attack gets a +4 bonus and deals an additional
two shifts of damage if it hits.
Vitriol: Your Hellfire attacks can deal acid damage.
You can spend a Fate Point to launch an acid missile at
a single enemy. This is both an Attack and Creating An
Advantage.

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Elementalist, Freezing
Class Aspect: Planetouched. The Freezing Elementalist has some deep connection to primordial ice. Rime
speads from your fingertips on command and sometimes without being commanded, and eventually the ice is
joined by obsidian stone and supernaturally terrifying fire. Maybe you’re a succubus or an erinyes or a genasi, or
maybe some bitter elemental cold just took a shine to you and started freezing your enemies over. Invoking the
Planetouched aspect would certainly help any time you are being metaphorically or literally cold, and could be
invoked against you any time showing just the slightest bit of warmth might be called for.
Class Skill: Rime. Rime can be used to Create An Advantage on someone by chilling them to the bone with your
touch. It is otherwise useless without stunts.
Banshee Shriek: You can spend a Fate Point to let out a shriek so loud it harms those too near it. When you do
so, you make an Attack using Rime opposed by Physique, targeting all creatures in the same zone as you (includ-
ing allies!).
Flames Of Panic: When you roll to Create An Advantage, you can spend a Fate Point to fill an entire zone (not
necessarily the one you’re in) with flames that cause supernatural terror. Every creature (including allies!) in the
zone rolls Will against your Rime, and anyone who fails gets an aspect like Frightened applied to them, with free
invokes just like they’d been individually targeted by Create An Advantage. The fire does not automatically Create
An Advantage on any creatures entering the zone after it is created, but it does remain as a situation aspect.
Flesh To Ice: When you Create An Advantage on someone using Rime and succeed (but not tie), they are Frozen
Solid. Every time they would take an action, their turn is skipped and you expend one of the free invokes. Once
the aspect runs out of free invokes, the aspect changes to something like Freezing Cold and works like a normal
situation aspect.
Stoneskin: You can roll Rime to cover someone’s skin in a rocky crop of stone, giving them extra physical HP
equal to the results of your Rime roll. This HP is tracked separately from their regular HP, and is depleted before
their regular HP. If you try to give stoneskin to someone who already has it, the new stoneskin HP replaces the
old, rather than adding to it. Any remaining stoneskin breaks off and falls away at the end of the scene.
Wall of Ice: You can spend a Fate Point and roll Rime to split a zone in half with a wall of ice. The back line and
reach line of the enemies are sent to one zone, while your own back line and mid line are in the other. You can
divide up creatures on the front line however you like. Any creature who doesn’t like which zone you put them in
can make an immediate Athletics roll against the Rime roll you made to create the wall, and if they succeed, they
get to be in the other zone instead. If they tie, they get to be in the other zone, but the next action against them
gets a boost as they recover their balance from diving over the nascent wall.
The wall prevents direct movement between the two zones it created, but it may still be possible to travel through
other zones to go around the wall. The wall of ice has HP equal to your Rime roll made to create it, and if
attacked, its Defend result is always equal to the Rime roll used to create it. Destroying the wall might not rejoin
the two zones immediately (particularly if a separate melee has broken out in both of them), but it usually will,
and even if it doesn’t, it will allow direct movement between them.

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Hunter
Class Aspect: Favored Terrain. You’re from the desert or the jungle or something and you have an aspect that
reflects this, which you can invoke any time you’re doing something relevant to that terrain. This definitely means
things that actually take place in that terrain, but might also include things like resisting cold because you’re from
the tundra or being good at climbing because you’re from the forest and trees are something you have to deal with
a lot.
Class Skill: Survival. Unlike most class skills, Survival even by itself is not a worse version of an existing skill.
You can use Survival to Overcome in order to find shelter or gather food in the wilderness, and you can use it to
Create An Advantage in the wilderness by using your familiarity with the environment to use the terrain against
an enemy, and these are things not covered by other skills. But they’re also things that generally come up in the
wilderness, which is neither the city nor the dungeon, which means there’s no guarantee they’ll come up very
often in a campaign.
Animal Companion: You have a shapeshifting fairy friend that usually takes the form of like a panther or a wolf
or something. This animal companion can help you using Teamwork (but not Create An Advantage), which
means they can give you a +1 to any skill they themselves have at least a +1 in. Animal Companions have four
skills, which are usually Athletics, Fight, Notice, and Provoke, but you can swap one or more of them out to
better suit your specific animal’s attributes if you want. Your animal companion doesn’t have a fully independent
HP track or consequences, but attacks targeting them hit your mental HP instead of physical (though it must
be noted here that consequences are shared between both types of damage!). If an attack targeting your animal
companion inflicts a serious consequence, that consequence is that your animal companion has been completely
incapacitated. Until this consequence is removed, they can no longer provide their +1 bonus, nor can you spend
Fate Points on any of the calls below.
You can spend a Fate Point to give out a wild call, allowing your animal companion to do something beyond
their usual +1 bonus.
• A Call of Resilience can be used to entirely negate one attack targeting your animal companion, no
matter how much damage it would have inflicted.
• A Call of Ferocity can be used to force a creature you’ve hit with an attack to take a consequence.
They do not get the HP boost from taking the consequence.
• A Call of Haste causes your animal companion to take a separate action in the same turn as they assist
you, which uses your Survival skill regardless of whether it is an Attack, Creating An Advantage, etc. Your Fate
Point is still spent if the animal companion’s roll fails, and your animal companion still can’t do anything their
physiology prohibits, like picking locks or performing surgery.
Sniper: You have +2 when attacking with Shoot from a zone outside the zone your target is in. You can roll Sur-
vival against the Athletics of the target to aim a shot at a creature in another zone to Create An Advantage, and if
you succeed, you can declare a trigger action for the target. If the target meets the conditions of the trigger, you
can immediately make an attack against them using the boost or free invoke from having created an advantage. If
this attack ties, you do not get a boost, but instead the target’s triggering action is interrupted and they lose their
turn. If this attack succeeds outright, you deal one less shift of damage and interrupt the triggering action in the
same way.
Track: You can roll Survival instead of Investigate to pick up the tracks of a creature, and have +2 when doing
so. You can track creatures by scent, so tracking over city cobblestones is no harder than tracking through the
wilderness..
Wild Empathy: You can talk to animals and plants. When attempting to persuade an animal or plant to do
something, you roll Survival rather than Rapport, Deceive, or Provoke.
Wildshape: You can turn into an animal. Turning into a small, mostly harmless animal like a rat, cat, or raven
requires no roll or cost. As an animal, you roll Survival for basically everything, but there’s things your small form
just can’t do. A rat gets to roll Survival instead of Athletics to chase someone down a city street, Survival instead of
Stealth to hide from them, and uses Survival to bite them in order to Create An Advantage, but they’re too small
to inflict any damage themselves, can’t persuade anyone to do anything, and can’t communicate anything they’ve
learned without either transforming back or laboriously writing it out with a paw.
You can spend a Fate Point to instead turn into something big and scary like a tiger or an owlbear. This allows you
to use Survival to make melee attacks, although these larger forms still have limitations on things like using tools,
opening doors, and speaking. Your transformation lasts until the end of the scene or until you are Taken Out.

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Necromancer
Class Aspect: Alumnus Necromantici. In order to be a necromancer, you must have studied necromancy. While a
certain amount of hands-on experience with post-mortem surgery and preservation is involved, most of what you
learn as a necromancer is found in books and/or lectures. Your specific aspect might be Bottom Of The Class At
Macabre Academy, or Gifted Apprentice Of Madame la Crane, or Memorized Every Page Of Granny Mort’s Book.
A certain connection with the forces of life and death also means that you know at a glance whether or not
someone is dead, and you know how to ritually desecrate any location that has never been touched by sunlight
as a tomb. This takes about an hour for every hundred square feet, but when you’re finished, you (and anyone
else with a relevant aspect) can sense any living, dead, or undead (but not constructs) within the tomb, as long as
you are also within the tomb. Tombs can be consecrated by your holy crusader types, which causes them to cease
functioning as tombs, and are automatically consecrated if in direct sunlight.
You can invoke this aspect not just for things directly related to necromancy, but also for the skills you would
have learned while gaining your education, like library research, or connections you made with other students.
Learning necromancy also means working with lots of dead bodies, which means you’re familiar with things
like where organs are, so you might invoke this aspect if doing mundane medical treatment. On the other hand,
those academic connections might not have been so positive, and the aspect might be invoked against you to
bring up old grudges and rivalries, and having experience with
slicing up dead bodies might work against you when working on
live patients if you get overconfident about how long you can
take before sewing things back up or what things can be
removed and stitched back in later.
Class Skill: Necromancy. Without any stunts to back
it up, Necromancy is mostly just a much more narrow
Lore skill, usable only for the undead and related topics,
however it does have one unique feature: It can be used to
contact the spirits of the dead for a chat. Spirits contacted
in this manner have ouija board style conversations and also
might throw things at you. You have no method of con-
trolling them, and their ability to interact with the physical
world is proportionate to how angry they are, so the more
capable they are, the more likely they are to be unreason-
able and attack you for no reason.
Awaken the Blood: You can use Necromancy to Create
an Advantage for a friendly living creature or vampire
by ritually awakening their blood to provide every last
ounce of its power to them.
You can also ritually awaken your own blood to share
your precious life essence with others. You use this
power to give your HP away to others. If you inflict
a consequence on yourself in order to heal others,
the HP you gain is multiplied by your Necromancy
bonus, but you must give all of the HP from the
consequence away. When you give away HP, it
can be physical or mental, and if you give HP
away from a consequence, you can divide it up
between physical and mental however you like.
If you spend a Fate Point while inflicting a
mild (but not moderate or serious) conse-
quence on yourself to heal others, you heal
the consequence immediately.

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Curse: You can roll Necromancy against a target’s Will to place a curse on them. This curse is an aspect, but it
does not give free invokes the way a standard Create An Advantage action does (for that, use a hex). Instead, the
curse can be either a curse of spite, a curse of failure, or a curse of misfortune. A curse of spite causes the target to take
shifts of mental damage equal to the number of shifts they get when they succeed on any check. A curse of failure
causes the target to take mental damage equal to the number of shifts they fail a check by. A curse of misfortune
inflicts a mental consequence on the target whenever they exactly tie a check. With the GM’s permission, you can
instead lay a curse that deals one shift of mental damage any time the target breaks a specific taboo, like attacking
a specific creature, attacking any creature, changing zones, telling a lie, or speaking a word with the letter “e” in
it. You can decide exactly what kind of mental consequences (fear, madness, despair, etc.) are inflicted by your
curses. The curse lasts until broken by some kind of divine magic, and the TN for doing so is equal to the Necro-
mancy roll you made to inflict it in the first place (write it down in the curse aspect).
Hex: You can roll Necromancy against a target’s Will to Create an Advantage by hexing an enemy. You can decide
exactly what to call the hex, and it doesn’t have to be the same hex each time. You can inflict a Blinding Hex, a
Frightful Hex, and a Nauseating Hex all on the same enemy, and while it would take you three actions (any one
of which might fail if the enemy makes their Will save), you could then use the free invoke on all three of them
at once. When you succeed with style while placing a necromantic hex, the aspect comes with three free invokes
instead of two.
Poltergeist: You can summon a poltergeist into a zone you’re in. It’s recommended you not remain, as the
poltergeist then makes an attack with Fight +4 at the start of each of your turns against every creature in the zone,
including your allies in general and you in particular. The poltergeist lasts until the end of the scene.
Reanimate: You can roll Necromancy to reanimate and/or sustain a number of skeletons or zombies equal to the
result of the Necromancy roll. If you already have undead minions when you make a roll to reanimate, the exist-
ing minions do count against how many you’re able to reanimate. For example, if you have 2 minions and roll a
3, you will reanimate 1 extra minion, for 3 total. If you roll to reanimate while you already have minions and the
result is less than your current number of minions, you lose control of the excess. Reanimated minions otherwise
remain under your control until destroyed.
Reanimated skeletons and zombies are friendly mooks with 1 HP, Fight +1, and no other skills, who will form a
crowd if possible.
You can spend a Fate Point to instead reanimate an intelligent minion, like a ghoul. The ghoul’s highest skill is
equal to your roll on the reanimate check or your Necromancy bonus, whichever is lower, and they have exactly
one skill at each level. For example, if you get a 3 on a reanimate roll to reanimate a ghoul, the ghoul would have
one skill at +3, one at +2, and one at +1. The ghoul is a supporting character. They have 3 HP plus additional
HP from Physique just like a player character, but they can take only one moderate consequence, not any mild or
serious consequences, and their HP track is unified, not split between physical and mental. Ghouls, like skeletons
and zombies, can be kept around indefinitely, however each ghoul (or other intelligent undead minion) you
sustain reduces your Refresh by 1 until they’re either destroyed or leave your necromantic control to wander off
on their own.

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Reaver
Class Aspect: Jack Of All Trades. Reavers have a wide variety of skills, usually picked up for purposes of some
combination of theft or violence. Your aspect might reflect how you picked up such varied skills, like Wandering
Barbarian, Traveling Bard, or No-Questions-Asked Problem Solver, or it might reflect a natural knack for learning
new things, like Fast Learner.
Class Skill: –. Unlike other classes, Reavers have no class skill. All of their stunts are based on ordinary skills.
Always A Way Out: You have +2 on Burglary rolls made to Create An Advantage when trying to find an escape
route from prison or peril.
Blade Finesse: Whenever you inflict a consequence with a hilted, one-handed weapon, like an arming sword or
an epee, the consequence is upgraded by one tier. The target still only gets HP as though from the consequence
they had tried to use, not the extra from the higher tier you forced them into. If they were already trying to take
a serious consequence, they have to take a second consequence. If they can’t take a second consequence, they’re
Taken Out automatically.
Cantrips: You can pay a Fate point to roll Lore in place of any other skill for one scene, for example, using divi-
nation spells in place of Investigation or magic missiles in place of Shoot.
Danger Sense: You have +2 Notice when rolling to detect traps or ambushes.
Dogged Pursuit: You have +2 Athletics or Ride when pursuing another creature.
Evasion: You have +2 Athletics when using the Defend action to avoid physical harm.
Feint: You have +2 to using Deceive to Create
An Advantage. When you succeed on Creat-
ing An Advantage with Deceive, you can
spend a Fate Point to allow any creature of
your choice who is able to attack the de-
ceived target to do so immedi-
ately, without waiting for
their next turn.

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Heavy Blow: Whenever you inflict damage with a heavy, two-handed weapon, like a great axe or a maul, you deal
an extra point of damage. Polearms are not generally heavy enough to qualify for this stunt.
Indomitable: You may spend a Fate Point to reduce a moderate consequence to mild, or eliminate a mild conse-
quence altogether. This doesn’t work on serious consequences.
Mettle: You have +2 Will to rolls made to Defend against fear or intimidation.
Money Talks: You can roll Resources instead of Rapport in situations where ostentatious displays of wealth
(including offering large gifts or bribes) would be persuasive.
Phalanx: So long as you’re wielding a shield, you count as a number of creatures equal to your Fight bonus for
purposes of holding the line. This means that, for example, if you have +4 Fight, you count as four combatants,
which means you can attack the enemy backline with impunity even if one or even two enemies are confronting
you on the front line
Polearm Sentinel: Whenever a creature within range of a polearm you are wielding tries to attack anyone but
you, you can make an attack against them as a reaction.
Riposte: When you succeed (not tie) on an Athletics roll to avoid a melee attack, you deal one shift of physical
damage in response. If you succeed with style, you deal two shifts in addition to getting the usual boost.
Sneak Attack: You can use Stealth to attack a target who is unaware of your location. They defend with Notice.
Sniper: You have +2 when attacking with Shoot from a zone outside the zone
your target is in. You can roll Shoot against the Athletics of the target to aim
a shot at a creature in another zone to Create An Advantage, and if you
succeed, you can declare a trigger action for the target. If the target meets
the conditions of the trigger, you can immediately make an attack against
them using the boost or free invoke from having created an advan-
tage. If this attack ties, you do not get a boost, but instead the
target’s triggering action is interrupted and they lose their turn.
If this attack succeeds outright, you deal one less shift of damage
and interrupt the triggering action in the same way.
Speed Freak: You love going fast and you’re good at eking out
just a bit more speed than seems possible when you need it.
Whenever you’re in a Ride contest where speed is the main
factor (like a chase or a race), your ties are considered successes.
Track: You have +2 when rolling Investigate to pick up the
tracks of a creature. You can track creatures by scent, so track-
ing over city cobblestones is no harder than tracking through
the wilderness..

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Rune Knight
Class Aspect: Fractured Visions of Fractal Reality. Reality is a fractal. As you zoom in on one part, you see
that what seemed to be a whole is actually made up of smaller parts, and those parts are made of smaller parts,
and those parts are made of smaller parts. People theorize that somewhere at the floor of reality is atomos, an
indivisible part, but no one’s ever found it or has any idea what it might be. There is a pattern that repeats itself
across every level of the fractal, though, and this pattern can be at least partly comprehended and represented in
the runes and the archetypes (the latter are traditionally inscribed upon cards). A Rune Knight uses the power of
the runes and the archetypes to see the pattern of reality, and invoke that power to stab people in the face.
Since it involves glimpsing the fundamental roots of reality, an aspect like this can be invoked for basically any-
thing. But since it involves tampering with the fundamental roots of reality, tampering whose side effects can lie
in wait for an indefinite amount of time, it can also be invoked against you for basically anything. A Rune Knight
might suffer general misfortune, but they might also be spontaneously set on fire, or cause someone nearby to
break out into boils inexplicably.
Class Skill: Runelore. Runelore can be used by itself to toss the runes or read the cards and perhaps glean some
cryptic information about the future. On the one hand, this represents a function no other skill covers. On the
other, it’s a function with vague and unreliable utility.
Rune Aura: By inscribing runes and archetypes onto a scroll, you can create an aura of power that radiates out
and alters reality nearby. The scroll has to be unfurled to work, so you can’t just toss it in a scroll case in your
backpack, but if you wear the scroll as a scarf or a loincloth
or something, that aura will follow you around. You
can spend a Fate Point to inscribe an invocation of
protection onto a scroll that you wear somewhere on
your body. While the invocation is active, you can
defend against any attacks, physical or mental, using
Runelore. You can expend the invocation to Create An
Advantage for as many creatures in the same zone
as you as you like, rolling Runelore against a TN
equal to the number of creatures you’re affecting.
The situation aspect you give them is Fated To
Win, and it can be invoked for basically any-
thing, but like all situation aspects it usually
stops applying after the current scene.

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Rune Scholar: By understanding the runes, you can understand everything. Unfortunately, understanding the
runes is very hard and even dedicated rune scholars tend to lose the forest for the trees far more often than not.
But with enough practice, you can sometimes produce surprising, intuitive insights into seemingly random situa-
tions because of your understanding of the runes. You can pay a Fate Point to roll Runelore for any skill check.
Rune Strikes: The building blocks of reality come in many forms. Some of them are fractal echoes of the pattern
at the bottom of reality: Constellations or animal organs. Others are human-made patterns which, through trial
and error, have been refined until they approximate that pattern in some arcane way, like cards and runes. The
neat thing about runes in particular is that you can carve them onto a sword. You can spend a Fate Point to carve
an invocation of destruction onto your sword with runes. While the invocation remains, you can roll Runelore
to Attack with the sword. If you hit an enemy, you can choose to detonate the invocation, instantly inflicting a
consequence of the highest remaining slot on the enemy, converting your damage to force damage, and doubling
the shifts of damage. Once detonated, the invocation is gone, the sword is no longer a rune blade, and you have
to use Fight when attacking with it. You can place multiple invocations on the same sword, as long as you can
afford the Fate Points for it.
Scrolls: The runes and archetypes of fractal reality can be used to accomplish anything - indeed, they have been
used to accomplish everything, just often many thousands or millions of times removed and iterated upon from
their original forms. Which means for anything that anyone can do, you can find a set of runes to write down
on a scroll that will do the same thing. You can pay a Fate Point to copy any stunt onto a scroll, and then later
consume that scroll to use the stunt. When you do so, any skill checks made to use the stunt are made using
Runelore. If the stunt has an option to pay a Fate Point for additional effect, that is in addition to the Fate Point
used to create the scroll, and if the stunt requires a Fate Point for use at all, that is also on top of the Fate Point
paid to create the scroll. Creating a scroll takes about an hour to sift out the appropriate runes from the infinite
complexity of reality, and your Refresh is decreased by one so long as you still have an unused scroll. You can
burn a scroll to get your Refresh back if you decide you don’t want to use it.
Scrying: Using a scroll with the fractal forms of reality wrapped around your eyes, you can scry on a specific
object, person, or location from any distance. While scrying on them, you have truesight, able to see through
invisibility and illusions automatically, and any objects or creatures with magical properties glow faintly, not
brightly enough to be seen through obscuring objects (i.e. you can’t see a magic item inside a desk, through a
wall, or under a rug) but brightly enough to be immediately identified as magic.
In order to scry on a person, you must either know their face and first name (“first” as in “original,” meaning
what they were named when they were born - scrying-conscious societies keep this a closely guarded secret be-
tween the parents, the child, and maybe a priest or midwife, and give the child a second name for public use) or
have a piece of their body. In order to scry on a location, you must know where it is in relation to where you are.
In order to scry on an object, you must have held it in your hands in the past.
If the target is a person and they don’t want you snooping, you must roll Runelore against their Will. If they
succeed, they’ll know someone tried to scry on them, but not necessarily who. Someone can also attempt to ward
a location or object against scrying, in which case they roll Lore to do so and the result of that check is the TN to
scry through it anyway.
Since you are usually in possession of parts of your body - indeed, you’ve usually got the vast majority of them -
you can always scry on yourself, which some rune knights take advantage of by never taking the scrying scroll off
and scrying on themselves to see where they’re going. This also gives them continuous truesight.

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Sorcerer
Class Aspect: Intuitive Magic. Sorcerers have an intuitive grasp of magic, which allows them to manipulate
magic on the fly. They can’t cast any spells of their own, but they can do all kinds of things to other people’s. This
is a property of the inherent nature of their magic. They might have draconic ancestry or a spark of magic may
have imbued itself in them in the womb, but however it happened, they can feel the flow of mana.
Class Skill: Metamagic. Metamagic can be used to Defend against any kind of magical effect. It can also be used
to detect an ongoing spell or other magical effect and determine what it does, but not to recognize what a spell is
when hearing it described. Metamagic is intuitive understanding of magic, not memorization of facts about it, so
you need the magic in front of you to identify it (with this skill, at least - you could also take Lore separately).
Confusion: Mana is attached at the hip to thought, and disrupting mana can make it hard for people to think
straight nearby. You can roll Metamagic against Will to Create An Advantage, and you can pay a Fate Point to do
so against every creature in a zone (including allies!).
Detonate Mana: You can attempt to blow up an ongoing enchantment on another creature. When you do so,
make an Attack using Metamagic. The target must have a situation aspect that is somehow magical in nature.
If you succeed (but not if you tie), you remove the aspect in addition to dealing damage. If the aspect had free
invokes left on it, you deal one extra shift of damage for each free invoke.
Mana Overload: When someone tries to do some kind of magic, you can pour a bunch of extra mana into it and
cause it to go off early, on top of the caster instead of their target. When someone is doing something magical
that targets another creature or a zone they’re not in, you can immediately roll Metamagic against their Will to
cause it to instead target themselves or their own zone. Magic which specifically cannot target the caster cannot
be affected by Mana Overload.
Mind Static: When someone tries to do some kind of magic, you can use the spell to infiltrate their mind and
cause a distracting burst of static, interrupting the action. When someone is doing something magical, you can
immediately roll Metamagic against their Will to interrupt the action. If you succeed, their action is wasted and
their turn is over.
Paranoid Energy: When someone uses magical healing, you can poison their mind with paranoia and con-
vert the healing energy into damage. Anytime someone tries to use magical healing, you can immediately roll
Metamagic against their will. If you succeed, they cause as much damage as they would ordinarily have healed.
If they were attempting to heal a consequence, they cause one instead, and if they were decreasing the tier of a
consequence, they increase it instead. If a consequence’s tier can’t be increased any further, either inflict a second
consequence or else the target is Taken Out.

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Trowe Heart
Class Aspect: Heart Of Shadow. At some point you were fully immersed in the magical shadow that spawns the
Trowe, and it permanently altered you. You’ve totally lost memory of who you were before, your personality is
radically altered, you’ve gotten very quiet and sneaky, and you have an inherent connection to the Trowe. You still
probably talk more than Trowe do, have a recognizably human shape, and are probably only partially made of
shadowstuff with lots of regular flesh left behind.
You have perfect night vision (if you didn’t have that already from, for example, being a vampire). You can gather
shadows around yourself any time you want. This might be extremely conspicuous under certain circumstances,
but especially if you’re quick, the nature of shadows means that people might not notice one darting across the
floor in their peripheral vision. You can also flatten yourself out to a shadow, and while you’re still vulnerable to
physical damage while doing so (be warned that people frequently step on shadows in non-sexy ways), this can
allow you to occupy very small spaces. You can shadow step from one shadow and into another within the same
zone, without passing through the intervening space. If you spend a Fate Point, you can shadow step into any
shadow you can see from the one you’re stepping into.
You have a connection with the Trowe and the ability to “summon” them. “Summon” goes in scare quotes
because, while they have a degree of independence from you, what you really have is an intuitive ability to
shape the shadows that cling to you into autonomous creatures piggybacking off of your own intelligence. Like
characters you write in fiction, they can sometimes surprise you with their obstinance or ideas, but you know
everything they know and ultimately you can force them to do anything because they are extensions of yourself,
not independent creatures. You share a certain kinship with independent Trowe, but you do not have this shared
knowledge or control over them.
You can invoke Heart of Shadow when using any of these powers, but do not have to invoke Heart of Shadow
to use them at all (except to use a long range shadow step, as noted above). Someone with a Heart of Shadow
is weakened by bright light, and might have their aspect invoked against them by this, but the light has to be
intense enough that no shadows are left, so this doesn’t usually happen.
Class Skill: Tenebrosity. You have a connection with darkness and shadow that makes it very easy for you to
sneak around. Tenebrosity can be used in place of Stealth in basically any situation, except maybe one where
every inch of every surface is bathed in light. Probably regular Stealth wouldn’t be super helpful in that situation,
though. You can also use Tenebrosity instead of Rapport when interacting with the Trowe in particular.
Fade: You can fade into shadows right in front of someone (they still get to roll Notice against your Tenebrosity
when you do so, but they can be looking right at you and you can still potentially hide from them), and have +2
when using Tenebrosity to hide in a crowd. You can use Tenebrosity instead of Athletics to defend against Shoot
attacks.
Shadow Self: You can summon a full-size humanoid Trowe. You can pay a Fate Point to summon a shadow self,
which doesn’t necessarily look like you in particular, and may have features you very much do not, like wings or
a tail or something. Your shadow self ’s highest skill is equal to your Tenebrosity bonus, and they have one other
skill at each rank below. For example, if your Tenebrosity is +4, your shadow self has one skill at +4, one at +3,
one at +2, and one at +1. Your shadow self acts fully independently from you, but any damage it takes is taken
out of your own mental HP and consequences (and note that consequences are shared between both types of
damage).
Summoning your shadow self banishes any other Trowe you have summoned, and your shadow self departs
automatically at the end of the scene.

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Sneak Attack: You can use Tenebrosity to attack a target who is unaware of your location. They defend with
Notice.
Trowe Familiar: You can summon a Trowe familiar of pure shadow, which usually looks like a dog or a raven or
some other kind of animal, but can be anything. The familiar can help you using Teamwork (but not Create An
Advantage), which means they can give you a +1 to any skill they themselves have at least a +1 in. Familiars have
four skills, which are usually Athletics, Lore, Notice, and Tenebrosity, but they can be anything, even if it’s not
at all clear how the familiar’s presence might assist you. Your familiar doesn’t have an independent HP track or
consequences, but attacks targeting them hit your mental HP instead of physical (though it must be noted here
that consequences are shared between both types of damage!).
Summoning a Trowe familiar banishes any other Trowe you have summoned.
Trowe Vanguard: You can summon a vanguard of Trowe out of pure
shadow. Trowe guards are still only about two or three feet tall, but
have a lanky build. Despite their slender forms, their shadow
bodies have lots of angular sharp angles, especially near the
shoulders and waist, making them look armored.
When you summon a Trowe Vanguard, you roll Tenebrosity, and
summon a number of guards equal to your result. If you
already have guards present, they count against the limit,
which means if you roll lower than the number of guards
you already had, some of your existing guards will vanish
into nothing. Trowe guards have Athletics +3, Fight +2,
and Provoke +1. Trowe guards do not act independently
of you, but all of them currently summoned can attack
separately when you use your action to direct them to at-
tack. When a Trowe guard is hit, you take the damage to
your mental HP instead of physical (though note that
consequences are shared between mental and physical
tracks!), but you can choose to reduce the damage to
one shift (not by one shift, to one shift) by sacrificing
the Trowe guard who was struck. The Trowe Vanguard
doesn’t generally do a whole lot of damage, but they’re
really good at bogging down a front line due to their
numbers and solid Athletics.
Summoning a Trowe Vanguard banishes any other Trowe
you have summoned (unless they’re a previous Trowe Van-
guard, in which case they count against the total you can
summon instead, as described above).

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Class Balance
Design Intentions, Class-by-Class
• Two of the Alchemist’s stunts only work on living creatures. They will be less powerful if classes
(especially tank classes) aren’t living (i.e. they’re constructs, undead, outsiders, etc.), and more powerful if they
are. It’s worth noting that the Alchemist’s healing elixir combos spectacularly well with Chaos Knight’s Demon
Aegis. These classes were adapted in a hurry from classes designed for a specific campaign (if you are reading
from the future, there was a legal kerfluffle in the tabletop RPG world that required me to very quickly change
tracks from one system to another), and in that specific campaign, everyone just agreed that if they played a
Chaos Knight, they would always pick a non-living ancestry to go with it, to avoid this problem. You may
wish to do the same if you have an Alchemist in the party.
• The Alchemist’s stunts almost all work by making rolls to make a thing which can then be used by
anybody. It’s easy to imagine an NPC Alchemist ally who does just that and then stays home, not joining
the party. That’s fine - they won’t be taking the spotlight from the player characters if they don’t come on the
adventure - but they should still count as a party member for the adventure for purposes of how many Fate
Points the GM gets per scene.
• The Chaos Knight’s Demon Aegis makes them insanely tanky on the front line, but has no special
ability to prevent ranged attackers from engaging the back line and very numerous enemies can still run
around them. It is intentionally true that the Chaos Knight is borderline invincible, so the counter to them
is either sufficient numbers to overwhelm the frontline even though they counts as 3-4 combatants or else a
handful of front liners to stop them from overwhelming the front line backed up by a bunch of back line at-
tackers. Either way, the plan is to ignore the Chaos Knight to attack other party members instead. Unless this
is an “if we lose today, there is no tomorrow” kind of scenario, the party can be forced to retreat even though
the Chaos Knight is unscathed because other party members are at risk of taking consequences that will put
them out of action for several weeks.

Also, for reference, the Chaos Knight should probably not be a living creature, to prevent a potentially over-
powered interaction with an Alchemist stunt that only works on living creatures.
• There’s a lot of support classes in general, but the Necromancer’s Awaken the Blood is the only dedi-
cated physical healing stunt in the game. They have a lot of debuff and crowd control powers to go with it, but
Awaken the Blood is their headline power - they’re much more of a support class than they seem at first glance.
• Reaver is easy to multiclass into because it doesn’t have a prerequisite skill, only a prerequisite aspect,
and a pretty flexible one at that. With four aspects (not counting the Trouble) to go around, most characters
can afford to give themselves something that qualifies them for Reaver, so the Reaver stunts are more like
feats. You could still have a dedicated Reaver character, because those stunts are still good by themselves and
assembling a character out of them would work, although beware that it’s much easier to make a bad Reaver,
both because of how many stunts they have to pick from (other classes have a small pool of stunts designed to
complement each other and drive them towards a specific strategy) and because you need to make sure your
skills are all high enough to make full use of all your stunts (other classes all have a single class skill and as long
as that’s high, all their class stunts will work).
• The Sorcerer is heavily dependent on enemy magic users being common enough that stunts specifical-
ly targeting them will be useful. Their Paranoid Energy stunt in particular relies on enemy magic healers being
a thing that comes up often enough to bother dedicating a stunt to countering them. If the GM doesn’t plan
on healers coming up ever, don’t take that stunt, and if the GM doesn’t plan on casters of any kind coming up
ever, don’t take that class.
• The Trowe Heart’s Trowe Vanguard stunt makes them a tank at least on par with the Rune Knight’s
Rune Aura or the Necromancer’s Reanimate (though no one competes with the Chaos Knight’s Demon Aegis
in pure tanking power), but that tankiness is derived purely from mental HP, not physical, so you doesn’t need
Physique and you do need Will.
• The two Warlock classes have nearly identical aspect prerequisites, but it’s easy to design an aspect to
cover multiple classes. Their separate class skills still make them as hard to multiclass as any other.

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Additional Content
Sample Characters
Here are a few NPC faces you can toss into a campaign, to serve as an example of what a completed NPC looks
like if nothing else.

Arkie the Arkansaurus

Good (+3): Athletics, Rapport
High Concept: Infamous Dinosaur With A Sword
Fair (+2): Shoot, Stealth, Physique
Trouble: Utahraptors Are Cooler And Everyone
Knows It Average (+1): Burglary, Empathy, Notice, Will
Ideal: I Fight For Truth And Beauty! Evasion: You have +2 Athletics when using the
Defend action to avoid physical harm.
Bond: I Once Sailed The Seas With Captain Lack-
beard The Terrible Mettle: You have +2 Will to rolls made to Defend
against fear or intimidation.
Trait: A Smile That Can Seduce Any Species
Riposte: When you succeed (not tie) on an Athletics
HP: 6/6 (1 from armor) roll to avoid a melee attack, you deal one shift of
MP: 4/4 physical damage in response. If you succeed with
style, you deal two shifts in addition to getting the
Fate Points: 3/3 usual boost.
Great (+4): Fight

Bloodmane Leo Blacksmith: You are a master blacksmith. You have

High Concept: Cleric of the Forge
Trouble: Lonely In The Crowd
Ideal: I Create A Better World
Bond: Last of the Order
Trait: Mighty Thews And Iron Sinews
HP: 13 (6 from armor)
MP: 6/6
Fate Points: 3/3
Great (+4): Physique
Good (+3): Athletics, Fight
Fair (+2): Lore, Notice, Will
Average (+1): Burglary, Provoke, Resources, Siege-
craft
a +2 to any Burglary, Notice, Investigate, Lore, or
Resources check relating to metalworking.
Divine Healing: You can heal a creature using your
divine power. Spend a Fate Point to heal all HP of
both types and a single consequence of the lowest
severity on a living creature other than yourself (for
example, if a creature has only a severe consequence,
you can heal that consequence, but if a creature has
a mild and a severe consequence, you would have to
heal the mild consequence instead).
Potence: You can climb directly up walls with no
need to make an Athletics check to do so. If you hit
an enemy with a melee attack, you deal one extra
shift of damage.
You can spend a Fate Point to deal an additional
three shifts of damage to a target, for four total, or to
instantly demolish a physical barrier or obstacle up
to and including stone walls about three feet thick.

106
Lady Florence Torrent
High Concept: Fractured Visions of Fractal Reality
Trouble: Can’t See The Present For The Future
Ideal: I Fight For Justice!
Bond: My Owl Companion Ella Follows Me Everywhere
Trait: Strong Female Character
Superb (+5): Runelore
Great (+4): Athletics, Physique
Good (+3): Notice, Shoot, Will
Fair (+2): Empathy, Investigate, Rapport, Resources
Average (+1): Contacts, Lore, Provoke, Ride, Stealth
Florentine Rune Aura: By inscribing runes and archetypes onto a scroll, you can create an aura of power that ra-
diates out and alters reality nearby. The scroll has to be unfurled to work, so you can’t just toss it in a scroll case in
your backpack, but if you wear the scroll as a scarf or a loincloth or something, that aura will follow you around.
You can spend a Fate Point to inscribe an invocation of protection onto a scroll that you wear somewhere on your
body. While the invocation is active, you can defend against any attacks, physical or mental, using Runelore. You
can expend the invocation to Create An Advantage for as many creatures in the same zone as you as you like, roll-
ing Runelore against a TN equal to the number of creatures you’re affecting. The situation aspect you give them is
Fated To Win, and it can be invoked for basically anything, but like all situation aspects it usually stops applying
after the current scene.
Rune Scholar: By understanding the runes, you can
understand everything. Unfortunately, understanding
the runes is very hard and even dedicated rune schol-
ars tend to lose the forest for the trees far more of-
ten than not. But with enough practice, you can
sometimes produce surprising, intuitive insights
into seemingly random situations because of
your understanding of the runes. You can
pay a Fate Point to roll Runelore for any
skill check.

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Rune Strikes: The building blocks of reality come in many forms. Some of them are fractal echoes of the pattern
at the bottom of reality: Constellations or animal organs. Others are human-made patterns which, through trial
and error, have been refined until they approximate that pattern in some arcane way, like cards and runes. The
neat thing about runes in particular is that you can carve them onto a sword. You can spend a Fate Point to carve
an invocation of destruction onto your sword with runes. While the invocation remains, you can roll Runelore
to Attack with the sword. If you hit an enemy, you can choose to detonate the invocation, instantly inflicting a
consequence of the highest remaining slot on the enemy, converting your damage to force damage, and doubling
the shifts of damage. Once detonated, the invocation is gone, the sword is no longer a rune blade, and you have
to use Fight when attacking with it. You can place multiple invocations on the same sword, as long as you can
afford the Fate Points for it.
Scrolls: The runes and archetypes of fractal reality can be used to accomplish anything - indeed, they have been
used to accomplish everything, just often many thousands or millions of times removed and iterated upon from
their original forms. Which means for anything that anyone can do, you can find a set of runes to write down
on a scroll that will do the same thing. You can pay a Fate Point to copy any stunt onto a scroll, and then later
consume that scroll to use the stunt. When you do so, any skill checks made to use the stunt are made using
Runelore. If the stunt has an option to pay a Fate Point for additional effect, that is in addition to the Fate Point
used to create the scroll, and if the stunt requires a Fate Point for use at all, that is also on top of the Fate Point
paid to create the scroll. Creating a scroll takes about an hour to sift out the appropriate runes from the infinite
complexity of reality, and your Refresh is decreased by one so long as you still have an unused scroll. You can
burn a scroll to get your Refresh back if you decide you don’t want to use it.
Eyes of Ella: Using a scroll with the fractal forms of reality wrapped around your eyes, you can scry on a specific
object, person, or location from any distance. While scrying on them, you have truesight, able to see through
invisibility and illusions automatically, and any objects or creatures with magical properties glow faintly, not
brightly enough to be seen through obscuring objects (i.e. you can’t see a magic item inside a desk, through a
wall, or under a rug) but brightly enough to be immediately identified as magic.
In order to scry on a person, you must either know their face and first name (“first” as in “original,” meaning
what they were named when they were born - scrying-conscious societies keep this a closely guarded secret be-
tween the parents, the child, and maybe a priest or midwife, and give the child a second name for public use) or
have a piece of their body. In order to scry on a location, you must know where it is in relation to where you are.
In order to scry on an object, you must have held it in your hands in the past.
If the target is a person and they don’t want you snooping, you must roll Runelore against their Will. If they
succeed, they’ll know someone tried to scry on them, but not necessarily who. Someone can also attempt to ward
a location or object against scrying, in which case they roll Lore to do so and the result of that check is the TN to
scry through it anyway.
Since you are usually in possession of parts of your body - indeed, you’ve usually got the vast majority of them -
you can always scry on yourself, which some rune knights take advantage of by never taking the scrying scroll off
and scrying on themselves to see where they’re going. This also gives them continuous truesight.

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The Ratwerks
High Concept: Rats Running A Workshop
Trouble: Literal Vermin
Ideal: We Make Wonders
Bond: For The Swarm!
Trait: Three Hundred Rats In A Trenchcoat
HP: 4/4
MP: 3/3
Fate Points: 2/2
Great (+4): Alchemy
Good (+3): Burglary, Siegecraft
Fair (+2): Investigate, Resources, Stealth
Average (+1): Athletics, Fight, Physique, Provoke
Grenades: You can make an old-timey style sphere grenade with the fuse visibly sticking out, and fill it with ele-
mental powder. When you refresh, you can roll Alchemy and create grenades equal to the result, which can deal
any of acid, cold, fire, or lightning damage. When you attack with a grenade, you lob it into a neighboring zone
and attack every creature in that zone (including allies!) with Alchemy.
Healing Elixir: When you refresh, you can roll Alchemy and brew healing elixirs equal to the result. Healing
elixirs decrease the severity of a living creature’s consequence by one tier, from serious to moderate, moderate to
mild, or remove a mild consequence altogether. The consequence doesn’t have to be physical, as the elixir can also
soothe the mind.
Ooze Concoction: You can brew oozes and keep them in little grenades. Whenever you refresh, you can roll Al-
chemy and brew oozes equal to the result. You can deploy an ooze at any time. The ooze cannot take consequenc-
es and its only skills are Fight +1, Athletics +1, and Physique +4, but it has the full 13 physical HP you would
expect from its Physique, which makes it very durable at holding the line. The ooze acts on its own turn and may
attack enemies of its own initiative, but it also might not. Its main purpose is to be a friendly unit on the front
line who is very hard to get rid of.
Veil: You have +2 to any Stealth roll to hide in shadows. This requires that shadows be present, and while there’s
almost shadows somewhere nearby, a patch of well-lit space between where you are and where you’re trying to be
might rob you of your bonus. This also requires the creatures trying to see you be affected by shadows in the way
that vampires, for example, are not.
You can also spend a Fate Point to become completely invisible. While invisible, people can’t detect you, period,
unless they take an action to roll Notice against your Stealth actively. You remain invisible until the end of the
scene.

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Additional Stunts
Jhu’lii Detonation: You can roll Lore to Attack by causing foodstuff to explode.
The King Has Spoken: When you Create An Advantage by issuing a royal command, you can pay a Fate Point.
Any time the aspect you created with the decree is invoked (whether with Fate Points or free invokes), it adds +3
to the roll instead of +2.
Whisper’s Illusions: You can roll Lore to Create An Advantage by weaving illusions. You can weave illusions
over an entire zone to Create An Advantage as a situation aspect on that zone, which can be invoked against any
creature in that zone (including allies, although if you create an illusion sufficiently weighted towards your team,
enemies might have trouble finding ways to use it against you).

110
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Andrew Beasley Jade Davies
Andrew Goodman Jay Thomas Jurcenko
Andrew Gould Jean-Michel Vilomet
Andrew Judd Jeremy Pinske
André Albrecht Joe
Anthony W Joe Crow
Ark the Legend John H. Bookwalter Jr.
Behrking John ~Q~ McHugh
Brian T Burrell Jon Terry
CA Moody Jonathan “Buddha” Davis
Carey Williams Jordan Theyel
Chiron Anderson Jose F Leon Espada
Christopher Pearce Joseph Evenson
Craig Hackl Joseph Roberti
Cybergarf Joshua Mattern
D_fish897 Julie Mundt
Dave Luxton Kale “TruAnnoyinGnome” Schneider
David Stephenson Karl Schmidt
Deazael Kary Realm Master K Williams
Don Da DM Kevin P.
Dragongunblade55 Kevin Pagliarini
ELF Vesala Kingyak
El Ben Konstantin Kitmanov
Eli Nyght Kora Bray
Elvenstreak Lady Kirana Storm
Eric Elmore Lenurd the Joke Gnome

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Loxie Anne Sean Holland
Lukas Kreienkamp Sir Salem Storm
M.A.McElaney Steve Locke
Marco Generoso Steven Burke
Mark Leymaster of Grammarye Steven D Warble
Matalino Lorenzo Stormy Danger ... (for my daughter)
Matthew T. Newman Stuart Butterworth
Mehrkat Surfal of KoSH
Michael Barrett Tanderossa Bob, Ruler of Riches
Michael Gordon Temaperacl
Michael Howard The Weule Bros.
Minandreas Thomas Faßnacht
Morgan Weeks Thomas P. Kurilla
Nathan Jones Thomas R.
Nero Tim Chanting
Nessalantha Trip Space-Parasite
Nicholas G Unklash Nethar
Nicholas Kenney William J. Scott III
Olaf Mora Windthin & Kassiana
Owen Gannon WyrmKissed
Panu ”Possessed” Laukkanen Z. Charles Dziura
Paul B. Zsolt, Timi & John Lockard
Paul Ryan krinsky
Pedantic polinchka
Phillip Tola …and 1 who preferred to remain anonymous
R.J. Spirko
Rafael Oliveira Bezerra
Raphael Bressel
Richard StClair
Robert “Jefepato” Dall
Robert Kim
Roderick Ball
RuinRuler
Russell Ventimeglia
Scott Creation Rites McManus
Scott J. Dahlgren

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 Class. See also Profession
Index Balance 105
Compels 6–8, 11, 47, 82
A Refusing 7
Actions 4–5 Concubus 57
Attack 4–5 Conflicts 12
Create An Advantage 4–5 Conceding 12, 14–15
Defend 4–5 Consequence 14, 16
Advancement 9, 11, 41, 44. See also Milestones Contests 12
World 44 Crowds 17

Alchemist 11, 89, 105

Ancestry 44–87
D
Archons 49, 50, 52 Damage 3, 12, 14, 34

Arkie the Arkansaurus 106 Caps 19

Armor 14, 16, 91 Types 18

Artillery 23. See also Sieges Deep Ones 70

Aspects 5–12, 16, 25, 28, 41, 44–45, 47, 49, 51, Demon 91–92, 105
54–55, 58, 60, 62–69, 72–76, 78–79, Devas 48–49
82–91, 93–98, 100, 102–103, 105, 107, 110
Devil 58
High Concept 11
Dice 3
Invoking 6
Dragon 16, 25, 71–72, 74
Trouble 11
Driders 73
Assassin 19, 88, 90 Dwarf 42, 46

B E
Barghests 77 Elementalist 93–94
Beastfolk 26, 30, 31, 35–36, 39–40, 68 Burning 93
Bestiary 26
Freezing 94
Bloodletter 57
Elves 22, 26, 30–31, 34–36, 39–40, 46, 73, 88
Bloodmane Leo 106
Bugbears 77 F
Fate Points 5–8, 10, 12, 14, 26, 28, 41, 47, 49, 51,
C 54–55, 60, 63–66, 69, 82, 95, 101, 105,
Celestials 48–52 108, 110

Changelings 53 Acquiring Through Refresh 6

Chaos Knight 91–92, 105 Acquiring Through Trouble 6

Character Creation 9–11 As a Player 6

Chases 21–22 Fey 53–56

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Fiends 57–59 L
Lady Florence Torrent 107–108
G
Lantern Archons 50
Game Creation 8
Lycanthropes 82–83
Genasi 74, 93–94
Genies 74–75 M
Ghosts 60
Marilith 59
Ghouls 60–62, 97
Melee 20, 24, 31
Giant 81
Merfolk 26, 30, 40, 83
Goblin 3, 25–26, 28, 31, 39, 70, 76–78, 80, 85
Milestones 41. See also Advancement
Blue 77
Monsters - Other 68–87
Kol’ksu 77
Mooks 25
Red 77
Mummies 63
Goblinoid 76–78. See also Goblin
Golems 79 N
Greys 80 Necromancer 10–11, 19, 96, 105
NPCs 25–27
H Bestiary 26
Hags 54 Major 25–26
Halflings 47
Mooks 25
Harm. See Damage Supporting 25
Healing 3, 12, 14, 16–17, 34, 52, 89, 106, 109
Nymphs 55
Hell 58–60
Hobgoblins 77 O
Horned Devil 58
Ophanim 50–51
Hound Archons 49
Ophidians 84
Humans 47
orc 25–26, 30, 32, 35–36, 40, 47
Hunter 19, 45, 82, 95, 111
Orcs 47
Outcomes 4–5
I
Failure 4–5
Imp 59
Success 4–5
Success With Style 4–5
J
Tie 4–5
Jotun 81
Overcomes

K 4–5

Kol’ksu 77

114
P Rapport 36–37
Resources 37
Physique 16
Pixies 55 Ride 38

Planetouched 93–94 Shoot 39

Positioning 12–14 Siegecraft 39

Grid-Based 14 Stealth 40

Profession 88–104 Steps / Ranks 26

Will 40
R Slimes 84

Race. See Ancestry Snake. See Ophidians

Range 20–22 Sorcerer 102, 105
Ratwerks 109 Starspawn 85
Reaver 19, 98–99, 105 Stress 15
Refresh 6–7 Stunts 3, 7, 9–16, 19–21, 26, 33, 36, 40–41, 43–47,
49–50, 52, 54–56, 58, 60, 63–65, 68–74,
Rune Knight 82, 100–101, 105
76, 78, 80, 83–88, 89–105, 108, 110
Additional 110
S
Class 89–104
Satyrs 56
Universal 44–45
Scale 23
Sword Archons 52
Scenarios 42–43
Scene 42–43
T
Seraphim 51–52
Treants 56
Sessions 42
Trolls 76–77
Sieges 22–24. See also Artillery
Trowe Heart 103–104, 105
Skeletons 64
Skills 26–40 U
Athletics 27
Undead 60–67
Burglary 28
Contacts 28–29 V
Deceive 30 Vampires 65–67
Empathy 30
Fight 31 W
Investigate 32 Watcher 42, 86–87
Lore 33 Weapons 18–20
Notice 34 List 20
Physique 34 Werewolf 82–83
Provoke 35 Will 16

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