Fate
Some characters are touched by Fate — a thread of luck or destiny they can call on at a crucial moment. Fate is not something a character does; it is a resource they hold and spend, and it works on a test that has already been rolled.
Spending a Fate Point raises that test’s success level, turning a Marginal Failure into a Marginal Success, or a Marginal Success into a Critical Success. Fate never re-rolls the dice — the same roll is simply re-graded at a higher level.
Fate is not a single pool of luck. A character holds Fate Points through the Mysteries they possess — a Fate Mystery grants one or more points, tracked as its charges. A Fate Point may be:
- General — usable on any skill or attribute test, or
- Specific — tied to one particular skill.
Some Fate Mysteries grant a limited number of points, each use spending a charge; others grant an unlimited wellspring that is never used up. A test can call on Fate only when the character holds an available point that applies to it — a specific point for that very skill, or any general point.
Whether Fate is available in a campaign at all is a game option: the GM may enable it for everyone, for player characters only, or turn it off.
What Fate cannot touch
Even with a point in hand, some tests are beyond Fate’s reach. Fate is withheld entirely when:
The character has no Aura. Fate is drawn through the Aura attribute, so a character without a usable one cannot call on it at all.
The test is governed by Aura. An Aura-governed test cannot be fated — neither the Aura attribute’s own test, nor a test of any skill whose Skill Base is computed from Aura. Fate answers through Aura, and it will not be turned back on the thing that summons it.
The test is a Mystical Ability. No Mystical Ability test can be fated, ever. Mystical power is its own bargain, struck on its own terms; luck does not get a say in whether it answers.
The test is itself a Fate Test. A Fate Test can never be fated in turn — there is no spending a second point to rescue the first.
Spending Fate
When a test has been rolled and its result shown, an eligible character may spend Fate on it. Doing so rolls a Fate Test — its own d100 success test against the character’s Fate Mastery Level — and the outcome of that test decides what happens:
| Fate Test result | Fate Point | Success levels gained |
|---|---|---|
| Critical Failure | lost | none |
| Marginal Failure | kept | none |
| Marginal Success | spent | +1 |
| Critical Success | your choice — spend for +2, or keep for +1 | +2 or +1 |
A Critical Failure is the risk of tempting fate: the point is gone and nothing is gained. A Marginal Failure costs nothing and changes nothing. A Marginal Success spends the point to nudge the original test up one level. A Critical Success is a windfall — the character chooses whether to spend the point for a full two-level improvement, or hold onto it and still take a one-level gain for free.
The improvement is applied to the original test’s success level. Because only the success level changes — not the roll — every derived description and consequence of the original test simply re-resolves at the new, better level.
The gain is not capped at a Critical Success. Success levels continue past it into the extended levels, so a Marginal Success carried up two rungs by a critical Fate Test becomes a CS+1, not merely a Critical Success. Fate can push a good result past the top of the ordinary scale — that is precisely what makes spending a point on an already-successful test worth considering.
Once a result has been fated it cannot be fated again.
Choosing which point to spend
A character may hold several Fate Points that apply to the same test — a general point and a point specific to the skill being rolled, say. When more than one is eligible, the choice is the player’s, never automatic.
The most restricted eligible point is the one to consider first: a skill-specific point before a general one. Spending the narrow point preserves the flexible one for a test that may have no other option. The player is free to spend whichever point they prefer.
Fate Mastery Level
A character’s Fate Mastery Level is the target the Fate Test rolls against. It starts at 50 and is raised by half the character’s Aura (Aura EML ÷ 2, rounded down) — so the more numinous the character, the more reliably Fate answers when called.
See also
- Success Tests — the success levels Fate shifts, including the extended levels above a Critical Success
- Skill Base — which decides whether a skill is Aura-governed and therefore beyond Fate’s reach
- Mysteries — where a character’s Fate Points come from