Rolling Dice

You roll the dice when there’s some kind of interesting opposition keeping you from achieving your goals. If there’s no interesting opposition, you just accomplish whatever you say you’re trying to do.

As said previously, characters in a Fate game solve their problems proactively. Players, during the game you’re going to do a lot—you might break into the bad guy’s fortress, pilot a starship past a minefield, rally a group of people into a protest, or poll a network of informants to get the latest word on the street.

Whenever you take action, there’s a good chance that something or someone is going to be in your way. It wouldn’t be an interesting story if the bad guy just rolled over and handed you victory on a plate—clearly, he’s got some crazy security measures to keep you out of his place. Or the mines are unstable and already blowing up around you. Or the protesters are really scared of the cops. Or someone’s been bribing the informants to keep quiet.

That’s when it’s time to take out the dice.


 * Choose the character’s skill that is appropriate to the action.
 * Roll four Fate dice. (In Discord, this can be done by calling the Tataru bot--
 * Add together the symbols showing on the dice. A + is +1, a - is –1, and a 0 is 0.
 * Add your skill rating to the dice roll. The total is your result on the ladder.
 * If you invoke an aspect, add +2 to your result or reroll the dice.

Difficulty
All unopposed rolls (i.e. you're rolling against "chance" or the environment, and your effort is not contested by an NPC or another player) are rolled against static difficulty ratings:

Trivial: 0 successes needed to pass

Easy: 1 success needed

Moderate: 2 successes needed

Hard: 3 successes needed

Daunting: 4 successes needed

If your roll is contested (for example, rolling Attack against an opponent who is rolling to Defend), the character initiating the action rolls first, and the other participant uses that character's result as their difficulty.

Outcomes
When you roll the dice, either you’re going to fail, tie, succeed, or succeed with style.

Every roll you make in a Fate game results in one of four outcomes, generally speaking. The specifics may change a little depending on what kind of action you’re taking, but all the game actions fit this general pattern.

Fail
If you roll lower than your opposition, you fail.

This means one of several things: you don’t get what you want, you get what you want at a serious cost, or you suffer some negative mechanical consequence. Sometimes, it means more than one of those. It’s the GM ’s job to determine an appropriate cost.

Tie
If you roll the same as your opposition, you tie.

This means you get what you want, but at a minor cost, or you get a lesser version of what you wanted.

Succeed
If you roll higher than your opposition by 1 or 2 shifts, you succeed.

This means you get what you want at no cost.

Succeed with Style
If you roll higher than your opposition by 3 or more shifts, you succeed with style.

This means that you get what you want, but you also get an added benefit on top of that.