3: Skills

Change That List!

The skills in Fate Core are designed to offer a wide range of actions, broadly applicable to a number of different settings. That said, the skill list is the thing we expect you to change first. Your skill list should be rooted in your setting and should reinforce it; if the default skill list works for this, you’re in luck! In some cases it might mostly work for you, but you might have to add a skill or two, take one out, or rename a few. If you’re looking to make more extensive modifications to the skill list—or even the system itself—then this chapter is for you.

Using Skills as Written

The easiest thing to do in most cases is to simply tweak the skill list to reflect the needs of your specific game, and there are a few ways to approach that.

Adding or Removing Skills

Is making stuff not an important part of your game? Get rid of Craft. Do you want people to be able to maneuver in zero-G? Add a skill to do that. This is one of the easiest ways to hack the skill list because all you’re doing is going skill by skill and deciding what isn’t necessary and what needs to be added.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, if you subtract too many skills then the players might have access to too much of the skill list. If there’s too much overlap between PCs, you can wind up with PCs getting too little spotlight time. Conversely, if you add too many skills you might wind up with PCs who don’t have access to enough of the skill list, meaning they’re often missing a critical skill in a given situation. An easy fix is appropriately increasing or decreasing the number of skills each PC gets during character creation.

Consider that Fate Core has 18 skills. As a rule of thumb, the pyramid allows a character to really stand out in 3 of them and have rankings in 7 more, leaving 8 unaccounted for. It’s not a precise ratio, but it’s worth keeping in mind when deciding if you need to change the pyramid. See for more details.

Finally, keep in mind that changes to skills have repercussions on stress tracks and turn order.

Reskinning and Making Alterations

If all of the default skills work for you from a mechanical perspective, but some of them don’t quite work with the themes of your game, change a few details. Lore might become Academia or Knowledge, Drive becomes Ride or Pilot, and so on. Doing this might also alter what a given skill can do. For example, if you reskin Lore to become Arcana and then determine that it’s the skill for spellcasting, suddenly it makes sense for you to be able to attack or defend with it.

Expansion and Compression

One handy trick for altering the skill list is to look at the skills in terms of their sphere of activity and how important they are to your game. If a particular sphere is less important, then you can compress the skills within that sphere into a single skill—in a non-violent game, you might compress Shoot and Fight into a single fight skill. On the other hand, if a particular sphere is very important, you might want to split that skill into finer gradients. If martial arts are important to your game, you might want to expand Fight into multiple skills, perhaps Armed, Hard Styles, and Soft Styles. The advantage of this approach is that the general guidelines for the skills are still in effect—you’re just adjusting the level of focus.

Other Solutions

Sometimes the skill list as presented just won’t work for you. Maybe you want another list entirely, or maybe you’re looking for a different approach. The good news is that even if you do something drastically different, the guidelines of the existing skills can still be helpful to you, because the underlying action can still work the same way as the original skill. Whether the skill is called Fight, Kung Fu, or Existential Badass, the basic mechanics of punching someone are going to remain more or less the same.

New Skill Lists

If you’re looking to make another skill list in the same style as the existing one—simply with new skills—then the guidelines are going to depend a lot on why you’re making the change, and no one’s going to know that better than you. The guidelines for adding and removing skills are your best reference for this.

Professions

While skills normally reflect what you do, professions reflect who the character is, and infer capabilities from that. If, for example, the professions are Fighter, Scholar, Woodsman, Thief, Craftsman and Diplomat, then you might roll Fighter in situations where you might roll Fight or Shoot, Thief where you might normally roll Stealth or Burglary, and so on. Profession lists tend to be shorter and more open ended than skill lists, which may mean a very reduced pyramid. It’s possible to use a fixed list of professions, or use them in in a freeform manner, which we’ll get into below.

Approaches

If the normal skill list is what you do and professions reflect who you are, approaches reflect how you do things. That is, instead of more typical skills, a character may have a rating in Forceful, Graceful, Clever, and Resolute, and which he rolls depends upon the situation. In a swordfight, are you hammering at your opponent’s guard (Forceful!), swinging down from a chandelier (Graceful!), feinting and maneuvering as you seek an opening (Clever!) or biding your time until your opponent makes a mistake (Resolute!)?

Fans of Fate Accelerated Edition will recognize this method as the one FAE uses, with the approaches Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky.

Freeform Skills

So, what if there were no skill list at all, and players were able to simply name their skills? It might seem a little bit chaotic at first, but most likely you’d see a lot of familiar patterns, with new and interesting names. Such an approach is absolutely playable, with only one real caveat—everyone needs to be on the same page regarding what skills mean. Otherwise it’s possible that one player may end up with a super-skill that’s useful in every situation, leaving the rest of the group out in the cold.

The easiest way to avoid this is make sure everyone understands the difference between a skill, a profession, and an approach. Most problems will emerge if you have one player choosing skills while another is choosing a profession or approach, because professions and approaches are much more broadly applicable than individual skills. Approaches and professions might be a little more interchangeable, but it is still something to tread carefully with.

In addition to opening up opportunities for player creativity, this approach allows for a particular trick—using aspects as skills.

Skills and Aspects

If you’re using freeform skills, one of your skills could share a name with one of your aspects. If you’re a Knight of the Chalice and also have Knight of the Chalice: Good (+3), there’s a certain sense of completeness to that. It’s far from mandatory, but sometimes it just feels like the right choice. It’s also possible to use aspects to forgo skills entirely, but that’s a bit more fiddly, and we’ll get to that further along.

Structural Changes

So far all of these systems still assume something that looks like the current skill list in most important ways—there’s a list arranged in a certain way,and a progressive set of bonuses. But those assumptions need not be universal—you can do some crazy stuff by stepping outside of the normal bounds.

Pyramid Alternatives

The most obvious hack is to replace the pyramid, with a column system—as is used in advancement—with a point-buy system, or even something like skill packages from specific backgrounds. This is really something you can change quite freely, but before you do, just be sure you understand why the pyramid is in place. It is fast, it demands characters be capable (the apex) but well-rounded (the foundation), and it makes sure that not every character can do everything (the skills you can’t buy). It’s not unreasonable to change these—a superspy game, for example, might have characters with very broad skill bases—but make sure you know what problem you’re solving when you make the change.

Larger Steps

Nothing says skills need to progress smoothly. Suppose that each “rank” of a skill was actually two steps on the ladder—you might now have a pyramid of 1 Superb (+5), 2 Good (+3) and 3 or 4 Average (+1), and if you’re feeling mean, move the default down to Poor (-1).

Why do this? Suppose you have a small skill list, as you might for professions or approaches. You get a heroically potent pyramid—more so than the default, even—for a smaller list. It also strongly separates the “tiers” of skill level, something that may be thematically appropriate in certain genres.

Aspects Only

If you want to take a very extreme step, you can forgo skills entirely, and use aspects for everything. This requires a single change to the way aspects work. Now, in addition to everything else, they provide a passive +1 bonus in situations where they apply. Thus, if my aspects are Acrobatic, Ladies’ Man, Strong, and Swordsman, I can count on a +2—effectively a Fair skill—in most sword-fighting situations involving strength, which bumps to a Good (+3) if I do something acrobatic.

If taking this tack, some extra thought will need to go into aspect selection so that everyone has a good understanding of when their aspects are and aren’t applicable. The first instinct of many players will be to gun for broad, simple aspects, like strong or smart, because they’re so easy to apply in most situations. However, the real advantage will go to players who take the time to put a bit more story into their aspects. Knight covers a lot of ground, but Knight of the Stars covers even more, and Renegade Knight of the Stars covers even more. As is so often the case, the most interesting characters will be the most mechanically potent.

Other Skill Functions

Skills already let you do a wide range of things, but they can be even more flexible than they initially appear. If you take a look at the skill list, you can see that every single skill has the overcome and create an advantage actions checked. This opens a lot of possibilities, even for skills that don’t seem to have a lot of interesting uses.

If a character has a high rank in a skill, Good (+3) or higher, this means that they are an expert in that particular area of endeavor. They possess deep knowledge within the narrow range covered by the skill. This knowledge covers the tools and trappings used by the skill and knowledge of other people who use the skill at the same high level.

The three attack skills—Fight, Shoot, and Provoke—are most often used in combat. That doesn’t mean combat is the only situation where these skills are useful. A character with the Shoot skill can identify ranged weapons, knows details about their care and maintenance, and knows where to obtain them. The same goes for Fight, regarding hand-to-hand weapons.

This opens up lots of possibilities for overcome or create an advantage actions. A Shoot expert could use their skill in an overcome action to find a gun seller in a new place, for example. Shoot could be used to create an advantage by identifying the type of gun by the sound of its shot and filling in details on the limitations of the model, or by noticing that an enemy’s weapon has not been properly cared for and could possibly malfunction.

Provoke might seem to be a harder skill to expand, but with Provoke, an expert could create an advantage to discover an opponent is bluffing, or to identify which person in a group of opponents is the biggest threat.

You can use other skills in a similar way. Burglary experts can find tools or other practitioners of the trade, or even identify the trademark techniques of other burglars they know by the traces they leave behind. Drive experts can identify vehicles and use create an advantage to talk about the subtle edges or disadvantages a particular make has when compared against another vehicle.

Skills that normally do not allow you to attack or defend—Burglary, Crafts, Investigate, Lore, and Resources—have lots of options for additional actions, and in the right circumstances might be used to attack or defend. In the right situation, Crafts could be used to create an attack through the construction of a dangerous trap, for instance. Burglary could be used for defense, if a character sets up countermeasures based on their detailed knowledge of security precautions. These should be very specific and very limited applications, but it can be quite rewarding to allow players to use these skills in a way that stretches their capabilities a bit.

Creativity is the order of the day. In almost any skill, a high level of ability opens up many possibilities. As a GM, it’s important to allow flexibility and logic to guide you, as your players are sure to surprise you. They should get the chance to feel exceptionally competent in their character’s area of expertise. When a player tries something new with a skill, consider the option carefully, and be open to a creative interpretation of the skill. As a player, let yourself try new things with your skills. If a situation arises where you think you would be able to use your skill in an unusual way, give it a shot! Fate is more interesting when the unexpected arises and players use an unexpected method to overcome the situation at hand.

Skill Modes

A skill mode is a bundle of several skills that represents a broad area of competence. Modes are great for speeding up character creation even more than Fate Core already does. Instead of picking and rating 10 individual skills, players pick and rate three modes, and the skills come along for the ride.

Take a look at your game’s skill list and think about archetypes you’d like to see in your setting. For each of these archetypes, choose five or six relevant skills. Each of these skill groups is a mode. It’s okay if some skills show up in more than one mode, but if any are so common that they’re in nearly every mode, be aware that it’s going to lead to a certain sameness between characters.

Ideally, you want between four and eight modes—enough for variety, but few enough that picking three is still fast.

Ben is planning a classic fantasy game of dungeon-delving, treasure-grabbing, and the occasional dragon-slaying. This game’s skills are Athletics, Burglary, Contacts, Deceit, Empathy, Intimidation, Melee, Missile, Physique, Rapport, Stealth, Survival, and Will. Based on that list, he comes up with four modes:

Battle: Athletics, Intimidation, Melee, Missile, Physique

Talk: Contacts, Deceit, Empathy, Rapport, Will

Thievery: Athletics, Burglary, Receit, Notice, Stealth

Woodcraft: Atketics, Lore, Notice, Stealth, Survival

Ben notices that Athletics shows up in three of the four, but it’s such a broadly applicable skill that he can’t imagine any of those modes doing without it, either. Besides, the tomb-robber PCs are going to need it.

Ratings

The usual Fate Core skill pyramid doesn’t apply to skills in modes. Instead, each player picks three modes and rates them—one at Good (+3), one at Fair (+2), and one at Average (+1)—and the mode’s rating becomes the default rating for all of its skills. Skills at this rating are trained. Skills one step above their mode’s level are focused, and skills two steps above are specialized.

One of Ben’s players, Will, wants to play a thief-type, so he picks Good (+3) Thievery. This means Athletics, Burglary, Deceit, Notice, and Stealth all start out trained, with a rating of Good (+3).

Reinforced Skills

If two or three of a character’s modes contain the same skill, it’s reinforced. When this happens, write it down under its highest-rated mode, but not under any other. No skill should appear more than once on a character sheet.

If a skill is reinforced once—meaning it’s shared by two modes—improve it from trained to focused. If it’s reinforced twice—shared by all three modes—improve it from trained to specialized.

In addition to his Good (+3) Thievery, Will’s also picked Fair (+2) Talk and Average (+1) Battle. Both Battle and Thievery have Athletics, so it goes from trained to focused—from Good (+3) to Great (+4) under Thievery. Likewise, Talk and Thievery share Deceit, so that skill’s also focused under Thievery. So far, Will’s modes look like this:

Improving Skills

After that, each player has 7 points to further improve skills.

[Table: Focus a trained skill = 1; Specialize a focused skill = 2; Specialize a trained skill = 3]

No skill can ever be improved beyond specialized.

Will wants to be especially sneaky, so he spends 3 points to specialize Stealth, from Good (+3) to Superb (+5). He’d also like to be capable in combat, so he spends another 3 to specialize Melee as well, from Average (+1) to Good (+3). With his last point, he focuses Contacts, from Fair (+2) to Good (+3), so he can be a little better connected.

Modes with Extras

Some modes offer access to extras—either because it contains a skill extra, or because it unlocks an aspect extra. For each such extra associated with a mode, the mode has one fewer skill than normal. For example, if standard modes in your game have five skills, a mode with a skill extra would have only four. Aspect extras are in addition to the usual number of aspects for your game.

Ben adds four modes to his list: Arcana and The Gods, for two different kinds of magic, and Dwarf and Elf, for…dwarves and elves. The first two have two extras each—a skill and an aspect, both related to magic—and the second two only have one—an aspect.

Arcana: Lore, Magic, Will, Skill Extra, Aspect Extra

The Gods: Favor, Lore, Will, Skill Extra, Aspect Extra

Dwarf: Intimidation, Lore, Melee, Physique, Aspect Extra

Elf: Athletics, Lore, Missile, Notice, Aspect Extra