Weem’s Fate Point Cards

I have received a few PM’s recently over at EN World regarding the location of my Fate Point Cards. As it turns out, they were never moved over here and so they were very difficult to find. Recently, a forum thread was even created to try and hunt them down. I figured I should resolve the issue, so here they are! The write-up that follows is something I wrote at EN World over a year ago…

I have been asked by a few people for more information about the Fate Point Cards we use in my campaign, so I thought I would drop them in here with some information.

First of all, the idea to use Fate Points in a 4e (or any D&D edition) game was not my idea. In fact, I was not aware of Fate’s Aspect system until I read the idea of bringing it over to D&D a while back (was mid 2009 I think).

Anyway, the idea of the rules as we use them were developed by other people (I think most of it we were discussing was on RPGnet) and went as follows (I am going to make the assumption that everyone is somewhat familiar with Aspects from SoTC – if not, just ask)…

Characters in the Heroic Tier choose 3 Aspects. You get another in Paragon, and one more in Epic for a total of 5 at that point.

You gain Fate Points (1 at a time) from the DM based on roleplaying your character well based on his/her Aspects. A Fate Point can be used a number of different ways. Here is a screenshot of one to give you the idea…

So, the first few are pretty straight forward – you get bonuses to hit. The cool thing about these is that FP’s can be used as a Free Action so you can use it after a roll – and in fact, I allow the PC to ask (after missing) “would a +2 from my FP hit?” and I will answer them yes/no so they can decide whether or not to use it.

Recharge an Encounter or a Daily Power (though Daily requires 2 fate points).

Recharge a Healing surge, pretty straight forward.

Make a declaration is a fun one and basically covers any other thing you may want to try and use a FP for. I gave en example in another post of a game where I was playing a goblin rogue (with a DM who also uses this same system). We broke out of the basement of an Inn and needed to flee/hide somewhere – so I pulled up the FP card and said, “I want to take the group to my hideout” at which point he said, “ok, you head there” and took the card. I didn’t have a hideout, we had never talked about it etc but it allows you to add something the game/setting as a player in much the same way a DM could.

Finally you have Resist an aspect compulsion. So you have an Aspect called “Greedy”… and enter a room with gold on the table… the DM could hold a Fate Point in front of you and say, “that’s a lot of gold, and no one is looking… you really want to take it”… the player knows he can either take the gold (and the Fate Point) or instead say, “no, I don’t want to risk it right now” at which point he hands the DM one of his own Fate Points, thus resisting the aspect compulsion.

Anyway, that’s the quick rundown of it for those interested.

Download the sheet of 9 Fate Point Cards here [PDF]

And here they are in black and white [PDF]

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