How to Deal with Fate Points in impossible situation.

[Kaihlik 50]

Ok this almost came up during a game where one of my players who is a psyker attempted to use a touch of madness on a Guardsman character. Now the reasons for this were increadibly stupid and was mainly due to the fact that the psyker wanted to go to bed when he had been ordered to go somewhere. OOC the player thought the guardsman would punch him or something totally forgetting what he had just read in the Imperial Infantrymans Uplifting Primer just a few hours before about what to do with a psyker who acts odd, shoot him. So the guardman player passed the willpower check to resist and now aware of the activity promptly brought up his lasgun and put 3 holes in him and killing him instantly.

The player dicided to burn a fate point as the guardman then informed a senior Inquisitorial Agent who heard the shots and came to investige of the psykers attack. Of course the senior agent sided with the guardman who was well within his rights to execute the psyker. At that point we all realised that the psykers character was unplayable as the group would never accept him back so he rolled up a new character. I made the fate point stand so the character is still alive and I want to think up something interesting for him. The thing is what if the player hadn't agreed that this was an unplayable situation for the character and wanted to play on, im sure I could have come up with some way around it in this case but im sure there are cases where just spending a fate point wont be sufficent to allow the character to play on.

How would you deal with something like this, would you rewind time or perhaps just have the rest of the group act as though nothing was different or simply force the player to roll up a new character. I am curiuos to know in case this comes up again.

Kaihlik

[Luddite 38]

I think you're conflating two different issues here;

1. Burning a fate point to survive character death
2. Acceptability of a character into a PC group dynamic

The first point is relatively easy, as a GM there's pratically no situation you can't manipulate to justify a character surviving due to a fate point burn.

The second point is much more tricky.  Every group has a dynamic, and if the players are roleplaying their PCs to the point where another PC will simply not be accepted, unfortunately thats it for that PC. 

The solution you suggested is pretty much the best option (roll a new PC).  Personally i've 'retired' a fair few PCs because of party rifts like this.  As a GM, where such rifts occur (and they do from time to time), i tend to either take forward the majority, or the faction that is closest tot he narrative, or abandon the party completely and have everyone start anew, depending on the situation.

The only time this gets really tough is if the PC emnity spills over into player emnity.  Its difficult to advise on this as it depends on your group and friendship dynamics as to how you deal with it.

[Attila-IV 3]

 I am of the belief that when you burn fate points the survive death, the impossible may happen, and probably should.  Thrown out of an airlock?  A starship scoops you up just before your blood boils away.  A gun pressed to your forehead and the trigger is pulled?  The gun jams (this has happened twice, once between Acolytes).  Stepped on by a titan?  Turns your you were standing right between it's giant mechanical toes as the foot came down.  In the situation you described above, where the psyker failed to put the razzle-dazzle on the guardsman and got himself shot, I would simply have the psyker wake up in his quarters in a cold sweat, possibly screaming.  After a moment to calm down and possibly a Forbidden Lore Warp or Psykers roll, reveal that the character was never shot.  Rather, the Fate point caused him to retroactively fumble his Touch of Madness roll, overloading his brain and causing him to hallucinate his death at the hands of the guardsmen, when in reality he just had a seizure and was dragged away to his quarters to recover.

[aethel 1]

I couldn't agree with Luddite more that there is a difference. 

In my opinion, PC-to-PC or (by Inquisitor) death trumps Fate Points.

If your character is about to become unplayable for RP reasons, they are getting ready to become an NPC and lose their fate points.

In my game we had a Feudal character with a very non-Imperial morality.  It had already gotten her sanctioned once by the group's Inquisitor (and the rest of the group sternly warned to keep an eye on her), when she finally tried to defend a scared rogue psyker and attacked another party member.  Pretty much the whole group turned on her and killed her.

She still had plenty of fate points left at that time, but I ruled that she was dead and staying dead.  Having her survive made little sense since the other PC's would just try to kill her again, and even if she did live, she was never playing another mission.  No one (including the player of the dead character) objected at all.

I had no lack of viable ideas for her survival, I just didn't want the distraction. I could have had her survive via fate points and run a multi-game arc with the other PC's pursuing her, but I wasn't interested in doing so at that juncture of the campaign.

In my opinion Fate Points are made to preserve the character so they can continue being played.

[Luddite 38]

aethel said:

She still had plenty of fate points left at that time, but I ruled that she was dead and staying dead.  Having her survive made little sense since the other PC's would just try to kill her again, and even if she did live, she was never playing another mission.  No one (including the player of the dead character) objected at all.

I had no lack of viable ideas for her survival, I just didn't want the distraction. I could have had her survive via fate points and run a multi-game arc with the other PC's pursuing her, but I wasn't interested in doing so at that juncture of the campaign.

In my opinion Fate Points are made to preserve the character so they can continue being played.

 

Personally i'd have definately allowed that character to survive...as a lovely little nemesis NPC.  Have the fate point save her without the players knowledge and see her pop up as a 'bad guy' in a later plot...

[schoon 13]

First, as to the Fate Point - I tend to play them with some rather dire consequences. In other words, your Psyker might have miraculously survived the attack, but this might not be immediately apparent, so the Guardsman would have thought he'd succeeded.

Meanwhile, the psyker would have had a consequence (perhaps some augmetics to replace the bits that were just shot out) after the orderlies asked to remove the body found that he was actually still alive.

He might then rejoin the group as a later time - resanctified by the Scholastia Psykana after the treatment.

 

Now on the other hand, by having the Imperial Agent called by the Guardsman side with him against the Psyker, you definitely added some fuel to the fire, making it much harder for him to continue play. If the Agent had been neutral - knowing that Psykers are useful and rare - then the Guardsman and Psyker might have had a simmering rivalry, but not the current situation.

I'm not trying to say it was your fault by any means, but simply that there are other ways it could have been handled.

[Kaihlik 50]

I didn't have that many options and tbh I thought that was how the NPC would react. Just so you know it was actually Illumination from the book we were playing and the senior Agent was Aristarches. Everyone in the group was aware of the punishment a psyker would recieve if he was to act like that so to take a neutral view would have seemed a bit false. Also he had just read what a guardman should do if he feels that a psyker is not in control of his powers or is acting strangely, in the Imperial Infantrymans Uplifting Primer, I mean come on talk about how to be stupid.

Anyway I have the character alive and I just need to think of something fun to do with him. I havn't really got anything planned for after we have finished the scenario as is was a spur of the moment decision to play DH in the first place so this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I can use him soon or save him for much later when he has had time to build up a well of hate towards the PC's and gain some power. I think I may just go for the latter .

I was just curious to find out how other people would deal with the problem as this is my first time GM'ing a game and I have had little time to prepare (I had to railroad them once or twice because of my lack of time to read things over and work out alternatives but im hoping I will be ready in future).

Kaihlik

[aethel 1]

Luddite said:

aethel said:

Personally i'd have definately allowed that character to survive...as a lovely little nemesis NPC.  Have the fate point save her without the players knowledge and see her pop up as a 'bad guy' in a later plot...

As I said, I did consider it, but I didn't really want the disruption (this character had been pretty disruptive already, and only some of the time in a good way, so I didn't want to encourage the behavior by making them more important).  Also, the character's personality didn't lend herself to being a  villain without a lot of offscreen paradigm shifts. 

[graver2 4]

Attila-IV said:

 I am of the belief that when you burn fate points the survive death, the impossible may happen, and probably should.  Thrown out of an airlock?  A starship scoops you up just before your blood boils away.  A gun pressed to your forehead and the trigger is pulled?  The gun jams (this has happened twice, once between Acolytes).  Stepped on by a titan?  Turns your you were standing right between it's giant mechanical toes as the foot came down.  In the situation you described above, where the psyker failed to put the razzle-dazzle on the guardsman and got himself shot, I would simply have the psyker wake up in his quarters in a cold sweat, possibly screaming.  After a moment to calm down and possibly a Forbidden Lore Warp or Psykers roll, reveal that the character was never shot.  Rather, the Fate point caused him to retroactively fumble his Touch of Madness roll, overloading his brain and causing him to hallucinate his death at the hands of the guardsmen, when in reality he just had a seizure and was dragged away to his quarters to recover.

 

Brilliant! While your approach to Fate burning is very similar to mine, I would have gone about it slightly differently but this option is just pure gold.

 

Like Attila, I believe that there is no such thing as impossible when Fate points are burned. When ever they are burned in my game, I tend to chose effects and consequences that are a touch blatant and miraculous just to hammer home the fact that the character is indeed fated for greater things. I've had statues fall for reasons unknown just at the right time to intercept a lethal shot fired at a PC and, upon striking the ground, cracking and breaking in such a way as it's features resemble the man who hired the assassin in the first place. No one there could figure out how blood had also gotten on the statues hands.

I view Fate points as divine intervention allowing a character to survive a situation in a state that is still playable. Much like that famous scene in Pulp Fiction, the miraculous happens in such a way as the characters lives can be altered as minds turn to the higher powers of the God Emperor in such times. That being the case, I would have viewed the psyker burning a fate point not as "the psyker survives being shot" but instead as "the psyker survives the Guardsman wanting to kill him for acting strangely."

While Attila's option is a beautiful one, I would have went with a more "miraculous" approach. The Guardsman's Las Pistol shot would have, oddly enough, went wide as if the Las Pistol's focusing lens had been mounted crooked. It would have struck no less the three reflective suffices bouncing around the room before striking a shelf. The shelf would have shattered and burned dropping one of the many tomes dealing with the Imperial Creed. When it hit the ground, it would have fallen open to a page that was still burning from the Las Shot that never even hit it. Only certain parts of a passage within the book relating to a soothsayer who had saved a Saints life would have been burned in such a way as to highlight that psykers name which, by some odd coincidence, just happened to be the same name as the Psyker the Guardsman was trying to shoot. Not only that, but a fire still burning on the page alters the name of the man who was trying to kill the Saint in the text's to the name of one of the Bad Guys the players are investigating along with another hint or clue that the players might have been having difficulty with spelled out by the selective burning of letters on the following page. All of this would have happened with both the payker and Guardsman feeling an odd kind of weighty deja-vu and the feeling that what they were seeing was important beyond measure, that it had the weight and the eyes of the universe, nay, the God-Emperor were on them for that single split second that it took for the shot to ricochet around and the book to fall before the feeling dissipated and all returned to normal.

I never miss an opportunity to inject something that will move the plot along as well as the possibility of injecting more complex sub-plot elements and all of that, at least with my group, would have sufficiently distracted the players enough that the guardsman would have forgotten (for the time being) shooting the psyker in lieu of the far more strange (and miraculous) event that transpired (as well as what it all means).Granted, once the oddness wore off, there might be more spats between the two, but that would be something for another fate burn if either of them continued to pursue the other (especially in light of the odd kind of prophecy (that's vague enough to mean anything that might come up latter in the game really) that the miraculous las shot spelled out in the holy tome.

At least that's how I would have handled it. Fate point burning is a big thing in my game, a major earth (or Scintilla) stopping event. It is a Deus Ex Machina that the players can call upon at will and I treat it as such.

 

[aethel 1]

Graver said:

Fate point burning is a big thing in my game, a major earth (or Scintilla) stopping event. It is a Deus Ex Machina that the players can call upon at will and I treat it as such.

Hmmm.. this is an interesting take on the mechanic.  I shall have to consider it.

[bogi_khaosa 267]

No situation is impossible if you can make a last-minute Daemonic Pact.

[Kaihlik 50]

Emm no we like to keep that sort of thing until at least the 4th maybe 5th session . Anyway the guy making a Daemonic pact wouldnt have really helped when the guardsman was trying to kill him. Most it would do would allow the Psyker to go and kill the guardsman and alert Aristarches and then we are back to unplayable characters. Not really what I had in mind.

Kaihlik

[Mark It Zero 50]

No rpg situation should ever be impossible.  Even a dead end should have at least one way out. 

[gathrawny 0]

Though whether the out is something appealing or something more along the lines of "Take your cyanide pills now" is where the fun comes in.

[llsoth 2]

I always used the buring of a fate point to be a Dues Ex Machina.  It can save a character from a bad roll that kills them or a stupid mistake that makes the character unplayable.   In the exaple of the (not very bright) psyker using touch of madness on the guardsmen I would have done something similar to the whoops you bungled your touch of madness and it was all a dream.  Though exactly how the guardsmen knew what was going on (if he noticed anything at all) and that it was the psyker is a whole other question. 

As to demonic pacts..  well fate points (as per core book page 28) are supposed to represent that the acolyts are unique individuals destined to do the -->EMPERORS<-- work.  In other words the emperor likes them and has plans for them.  If they turn their back on the big E then they loose all fate points.  In my games, making a pact burns all fate points and makes it impossible to gain more.

 

[llsoth 2]

Bahh for the love of an edit function!!!  Are you listening FFG staff?  I would also say that the psyker gain a few insanity points for "living through" his own death.

[spaceratcatcher 10]

Don't you think that when the chaos powers corrupt such an important individual they would want to keep them alive for great things? Regardless, in DotDG there are official rules for NPCs with fate points, including heretics, and I believe such an idea was suggested in the core book too. It's your game, but I don't see any reason to take away a character's fate points for making a daemonic pact.

[Chance Silas 0]

llsoth said:

I always used the buring of a fate point to be a Dues Ex Machina.  It can save a character from a bad roll that kills them or a stupid mistake that makes the character unplayable.   In the exaple of the (not very bright) psyker using touch of madness on the guardsmen I would have done something similar to the whoops you bungled your touch of madness and it was all a dream.  Though exactly how the guardsmen knew what was going on (if he noticed anything at all) and that it was the psyker is a whole other question. 

I concur with the general consensus on fate ppoint usage in this particular situation if and only if there is some weird and obscure rule contermanding the "detecting psychic powers" section that makes psychic powers noticed by those not attuned to the warp.

if someone used a psychic power on you and it failed, and then you knew they did it. that completely changes the dynamic on why people are afraid of psykers. the fear is because you don't know, you don't know if your thoughts are your own, if that guy looking at you is just glancing in your direction or if he's probing his tendrils into your mind rewriting your memories to remember him as your childhood sweetheart. that's kinda the point. of psychic powers being unnoticeable.

of course the players having problems with each other always taint the character reactions and situations...

[Kaihlik 50]

The psyker passed the power but the Guardsman passed the willpower check to resist  so he felt the invasion of his mind yet fought it off. It would have been blatently obvious from the way the guy was acting that he was the one doing it. Yes this was an example of the player being an absolute tool.

I dont like using things like dreams and I dont think my players do either and in fact we are basically going to turn off fate points when a character fights another character in a way that will result in one becoming unplayable. It saves the situation of 2 characters who are intent on fighting to the death being unable to kill each other due to fate points. This is at my discretion so I can turn them back on if I wish. We will just play what feels natural and keeps the game going.

Kaihlik

[llsoth 2]

Still not convinced that the guardsmen would have noticed anything.  The core rules and the fluff are pretty consistent on this one.  In the core you need psyniscience to detect the use of psyker powers (without obvious visual clues.  In the fluff it mentions that Ciaphas Cain, Ragnar, etc, etc have had "training" in how to detect and counter psykers doing the whole these is not the droids..  or I mean servitors you are looking for routine.  Just because he passed a will power test does not mean he noticed anything or even consiously tried to resist it (this power in particular smacks of the subconsious mind).  After all you can use psyker powers on an sleeping person right?  This does leave out the cases where it appears the psyker was not trying to be stealthy, some interogations, on the battlefield, torture, etc.

Now if the psyker (judging by his actions it is hard to discount the posibilty) stood up, pointed at the guardsmen and called out "I call upon the power fo the warp to overthrow your mind!"  That is a different story.

Also another story is if the characters/players want to kill off the other character and this is just an excuse.

[Kaihlik 50]

Its not really important anyway, its done. The power doesn't really do anything to a sleeping person so its not an issue, I ruled on the day that it was a concious resistance or that he at least felt something strange and thats all there is to it. It doesnt really say one way or the other. He wouldn't have been able to tell that it was a psykic power or who did it just that he felt an intrusion but unfortunately for our Psyker friend he wasn't exactly hiding it. Its hard to describe over a forum just exactly how stupid he was being but just trust me that he deserved to be shot.

Kaihlik

[Aureus2 0]

A few things from what I've seen here on this matter:

1.  If you make the roll against the "touch of madness" it is perfectly reasonable to assume you felt something mess with you, the situation would tell you if it was obvious *who* messed with you.

2.  The uplifting primer is a good guide to show a guardsman's training, pre-I, but is not the guide for an inquisitorial agent.  So while his knee jerk reaction "shoot it!" is understandable (especially as he was a target), it's is not automatically sanctioned behavior for an acolyte.

3.  The seer's reaction would be somewhat odd, though if the psyker was obviously attacking another acolytes mind for no justifyable reason, then his having been shot to death is completely reasonable.

4.  Fate-points, IMHO, should function as "you're saved!" events regardless of the situation, but in a "path of least resistance" manner and at high cost to the character (explosion that kills them leaves them unconcious, horribly damaged, but not dying, and thrown far away from any further immediate threats.  So they can be picked up and treated once the current crisis is resolved.  Some scars that *could* be fixed by a master surgeon and a long time in traction remain.), but leaving them alive and playable (so no massive brain damage or loss of functionality that isn't short-term).  In this case, I call that the psyker was not actually killed, and their powers eventually allowed their body to restore itself to a measure of functionality before finding a medic to fix them.

5.  Playable as a character does not equal acceptable however.  If the party refuses to work with them, then they need to find a new group or master to serve.  In other words, if the player come up with a way to have their character convince the others he's still trustworthy, they are alive but need to roll up a new character regardless.  Fate points do not affect RP (well not 99.5% of the time anyway).

 

From the sound of it, the situation is not impossible, the psyker did something completely stupid and made themselves get kicked from the group.  Fate points can't fix that kind of problem, unless they are spent making a **** fine set of Fel-related skill checks to convince the other characters that there was a perfectly good reason for everything, and that the psyker did the right thing.