Aspects & Fate Points

Aspects

An aspect is a word, phrase, or sentence that describes something centrally important — a trait, a relationship, a situation, an injury. A few flavors:

• Character aspects (your high concept, trouble, and the rest) — change rarely.
• Situation aspects — the scene's features (On Fire, Knocked to the Ground); they vanish when the situation ends or when an overcome action removes them.
• Consequences — injuries written as aspects (see Getting Hurt).
• Boosts — fleeting aspects from ties and good rolls; one free use, then gone.

Invoking aspects — 1 fate point

Describe how an aspect you know about helps you, then spend one fate point. Invoke after you roll. One aspect per roll — but you may invoke several different aspects on the same roll. Each invoke does one thing:

• +2 to your total
• Reroll the dice (best after a truly bad roll)
• Confront an opponent: +2 to their difficulty (e.g. invoke Buried in Debris when they try to draw their blaster)
• Help an ally: give them +2 on their roll

Free invocations: an aspect you create or discover with create an advantage can be invoked once free (twice on succeed with style); a consequence you inflict grants one free invocation; boosts are free once, then vanish.

Compelling aspects — earn fate points

When an aspect makes your life more complicated, anyone can compel it — including you (self-compel). Two kinds:

• Decision compels: the aspect tells you what you'd decide (a Defiant Streak a Mile Wide means mouthing off to the Dean of Discipline).
• Event compels: something happens to you (your Strange Luck turns the Potions Master's hair orange at the worst moment).

The person compelling offers you a fate point and describes the complication. Accept → take the point, live the complication. Refuse → pay a fate point of your own. No fate points, no refusal.

Compels are how the economy breathes: complication now becomes capability later.

Establishing facts — free

Aspects are true just by existing — no roll, no fate point. Sorcerer of the Mysterious Circle establishes that the Mysterious Circle exists, that magic exists, and that you do magic. Cooperate with the table when your aspects rewrite the setting.

Full rules: [Aspects, Invoking & Compelling](@Missing file). The economy around refresh: [Fate Points & Refresh](@Missing file).