Creating Characters

PDQ Qualities and FATE Skills and Aspects merge into just Qualities.

Characters begin with 7 ranks to spend on their character's Qualities (Strengths) in addition to a free Quality ranked Poor (a Weakness). The character must have enough Good and Poor Qualities to total one more than their number of Expert and Master Qualities. So for a character to have a Master Quality and an Expert Quality, he or she must also have two Good Qualities in addition to their Weakness. This means a beginning character can only have one Quality at Master and not more than two Qualities at Expert. Average-ranked magical Qualities-with-an-asterisk count as Good Qualities for the purposes of this calculation.

Characters still have Weaknesses, but all Qualities can be tagged or compelled to temporarily become a Weakness - for example, 'Lies like a rug: Expert' might add +4 to fool a naive customer, but could be rated Poor at -2 to convince someone who knows you well of your sincerity. Conversely, the character's Weakness can sometimes serve as a Strength ranked at Good if it makes sense.

Really, all a Weakness does is colour the Quality toward a negative direction (e.g. 'Lost an arm in battle':Poor rather than the less intuitive 'Lost an arm in battle: Expert) - fortune points are still gained when a Weakness is compelled or tagged by an opponent, and Weaknesses can be invoked for an Upshift (i.e. treated as a Good-ranked Strength) if the circumstances make sense.

Qualities should have a zing to them, to help generate story hooks and interesting compels. For example, the Quality 'Soldier' is bland and doesn't give much of a sense of the character. Contrast that with Qualities like 'Decorated veteran of Pellam's Rift', 'Novice draftee' or 'Officer in the Queen's Own Cavalry' - all of these give a sense of what kind of soldier the character is and make it easier to come up with interesting compels and story hooks.

Characters have a store of fortune points, which work very closely to how fate points work in FATE, and a refresh rate equal to their total number of Qualities (i.e. between 5 and 8). If you have no Master ranked Qualities, add 1 to refresh rate; if you also have no Expert ranked Qualities, instead add 2 to refresh rate, giving a possible refresh rate of between 5 and 10 fortune points.

Every Character starts with one Special Move! linked to a Quality. Special Moves add an Upshift when appropriate, but do not cost any fortune points to invoke, nor generate any through compels or tags.

Doing Stuff

To perform an action, the player picks a single appropriate Quality to use. For each additional Quality he or she wants to add, they must invoke the Quality and pay 1 fortune point. In some cases the GM might allow more than one Quality to be used without requiring the fortune point cost, but these situations should be reserved for when both Qualities seem equally relevant to the task - otherwise, the invoke is required to bring in additional Qualities.

Characters may also increase their chances of success by paying 1 fortune point to tag an opponent’s Quality that seems like it would be a disadvantage to them. For example, an opponent’s ‘Expert Armour’ in a footrace. Tagging an opponent’s Quality gives the tagger an Upshift of +2 no matter the usual value of the Quality and the fortune point paid goes to the tagged character.

A character can also pay 1 fortune point to tag a Quality of the scene, like ‘On Fire’, giving the tagger an Upshift of +2.

As in FATE, characters can perform an assessment, declaration or manoeuvre to create place Qualities on scenes or other characters, which they can then tag once for free. These Qualities do not normally persist for long.

Complications and Hazards

Qualities can also be compelled to entice a character to behave in a disadvantageous way appropriate to one of their Qualities. This compel should provide a meaningful complication to the character’s life. The GM compels the Quality for between 1 and 3 fortune points, dependent on the strength of the compel. If the character accepts the compel he or she receives the fortune points, if he or she refuses the compel they must pay the amount of fortune points.

Similarly, the GM or player may decide a Quality should act as a hinderance in a static task, such as climbing a rockface. In this case the GM tags the Quality and the character receives 1 fortune point and takes a Downshift for the disadvantageous Quality, as if it were Poor in value.

The difference between compels and these kind of tags is that compels can be refused and represent a choice of action and tags cannot be refused and represent a hinderance that other Qualities may help overcome.

Damage works exactly as it does in PDQ, reducing Qualities.

Some Qualities may be used to ‘soak’ failure or damage, such as the Armour Quality in a swordfight. The character pays 1 fortune point, reduces the soaking Quality by one rank, and disregards all other penalties inflicted that round. Qualities must be currently above Average in order to do this.

Fortune

Fortune points refresh between sessions. A character’s refresh rate is roughly equal to the number of Qualities he or she has, which will vary between characters. This is to balance a character who has a few Qualities at high rank with another character who has many Qualities at low ranks – while the character with a few, high rank Qualities gets more of a bonus for additional Qualities invoked, the character with many, low rank Qualities gets more fortune points to spend on invokes and tags.

Gaining Fortune Points

Fortune	Circumstance
1	if a Quality is tagged as a Weakness
1-3	if a Quality compel is accepted
1	performing a heroic action
1	for good roleplaying, especially encouraging a fairy-tale feel

Spending Fortune Points

Fortune	Circumstance
1	to invoke a Quality for an Upshift or for effect
1	to use an appropriate Quality (Iron Will, Armour, etc.) to 'soak' Failure or Damage ranks
1	to tag an opponent's Quality or scene Quality
1	to 'clear the fog' and regain 1d6 Failure ranks (takes an action/reaction)
2	for a 'second wind' and regain 1d6 Damage ranks (takes a turn)
1 or 2	to dictate a useful coincidence, plausible or implausible
1-3	if a Quality compel is resisted

Also, a character can 'dig deep' and trade Learning points for Fortune points on a one-for-one basis.

Overall, there are more new ways to spend fortune points and only a few to gain more fortune points. However, the refresh of fortune points is an additional supply which should balance things.