Heroic Traits: An "Aspect-like" Mechanic for D&D
Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 2:40PM This is something I've been rattling around in my head for a while now.
I'd been wanting a way to add something like FATE's Aspects to D&D, but FATE's Refresh mechanic doesn't really work well when your game sessions could swing wildly between no combat to entire game sessions devoted to a single combat encounter.
However, a week or so ago I stumbled upon a potential solution. And surprisingly, the solution came by ditching Fate Points.
The end result is a mechanic that promotes some measure of narrative control in D&D, but doesn't go as far with it as FATE. It's still D&D. And as such, I changed around some of the FATE-centric terminology so as not to confuse folks who play both.
And to be clear, you don't have to know anything about FATE to use these rules in your D&D game.
You can download the current draft here.
Note that while this was written for D&D4e, it is easily usable in Gamma World, 3.X/Pathfinder, Star Wars, or even older versions of D&D.
Potential Issues:
Humans are the "base-line" race. That being the case, their Racial Heroic Trait is rather lackluster. Should humans get something special to make up for this? If so, what?
What do you think? Comments welcome!
Reader Comments (4)
Great work! I was kicking around my own version of this but yours totally hits the mark. What benefit do Humans get I didn't see it?
Unfortunately I working in Dragon Age so I won't get a chance to try this out for a while.
Thanks for the great work.
Humans get a Racial Trait just like other races. Granted it's not going to be as useful or interested as the Racial Trait some other races have, but it can come up.
I suspect a LOT of non-humans don't care for humans, so it could be a common issue during social interactions.
No. In my opinion humans always have the benefit of being a majority (in most settings) and they are balanced out with more points. Having to spend points to be an Elf or Cat-Man or whatever helps balance out the humans who then get to get a few extra '+1 modifiers' on a few key Advantages. That should soothe any furrowed brows over the little things humans might have to give up like pointy ears or aspects dealing with grace or dexterity or whatever. Aspects which differenciate them such as culture or proficiency should be covered by normal character and specialty aspects. This is kind of set by tradition all the way back to D&D or Star Wars.
If someone wanted to make a 'human' aspect, perhaps a generalized theme aspect that is mentioned somewhere else in the book would work. I cant recall the right page. Under theme aspect you said that certain aspects can be set up which underly the campaign as a whole and thus add to the general flavor. To give two speciific situations I could see thier use is in a 'Legend of the Five Rings' or the Federation of Star Trek.
In each giving a thematic aspect (specific only for humans) such as a social bonus for wealth and beauracracy in L5R and perhaps 'resourceful with technology' for Trekers. Both would give the appropriate aspect theme for the world and be specific to humans. Whats improtant about this is that it is free. Being a baseline should have some advantage in this kind of a socially dominant situation and having over half of your characters spending points to aquire whatever advantage they can muster to make themselves compeditive with elves or kllingons is a bit silly. By just setting up one theme aspect specificily to adress this, you cut down on a lot of unnecessary point rituals.
As a counter example of this, the universe of Star Wars seems to a setting where humans are important players but definitelly not a majority filling out most of the enviroment. So I would think humans wouldnt get such a bonus in this kind of situation, relying instead just on thier few extra points for thier edge. This, I think, would address the demands of a human aspect and tend to identify where such an aspect would be useful and thematicly proper.
Hope this is helpful to someone.
A solution to the "human" problem would be to give humans no racial trait but give them an extra A,B,C or D trait. This dovetails pretty well with the D&D4E human racial design elements of having no racial powers, but gaining a bonus feat and at-will power.