What Not to Add

Short chapter. These are the four changes that look like improvements and are not, listed with what actually goes wrong.

Do not add a skill list

Five Approaches is not a simplification that needs fixing. The moment you add a sixth axis — or a list of specialisations under Force — you have created something a player must read before playing and something you must balance forever. The Approaches are broad on purpose: a character good at Force is good at every problem force solves, permanently, without a list adjudicating which ones.

Do not add a power catalogue

You will be tempted. A list of forty powers with fixed Ratings and effects feels like generosity, and it is the single fastest way to kill this system.

The moment powers are selected instead of described, three things happen. Players stop writing Aspects and start comparing options. The GM's one-question adjudication becomes a rules lookup. And you inherit a balance problem you can never finish, because every new power must now be checked against forty others.

Ship examples. Eight good ones, written well enough to imitate, is the correct number. The power type exists so a table can add the ninth at the table, in play, when someone describes it.

Do not soften the Scale gap

"Gap of 2 means roll at −4 dice instead of no roll" is the most common house rule anyone will propose to you, and it destroys the thing that makes this engine work.

The no-roll rule is what guarantees the dice only engage near-peers, which is what keeps a 7-dice pool tense at Scale 5, which is what lets you run one ruleset from a rooftop to orbit. Soften it and you immediately need difficulty numbers scaled per tier — and then you have a different, larger, worse game.

If a player is frustrated by a gap of 2, the answer is a Lever, not a penalty die.

Do not make Scale purchasable

Putting Scale on the XP table is the last one, and it is the worst, because it seems so reasonable.

Scale comes only from Ascension: Break, survive the Backlash, three times. That is not a pacing gate — it is the emotional content of the genre rendered as a mechanic. The character gets stronger by being pushed past their limit on-screen, at cost, in front of everyone. Sell it for 15 XP and you have replaced the best scene in the campaign with a purchase.

The test

Before any change to this engine, ask one question: does this add something a player has to read before they can play?

If it does, it needs to be worth it. Almost nothing is.