Overcoming Obstacles
The other side of the coin relates to getting rid of or overcoming
obstacles.
If you want to get rid of a situation aspect, you can do it in one of
two ways: roll an overcome action specifically for the purpose of
getting rid of the aspect, or roll some other kind of action that
would make the aspect make no sense if you succeed (FC 78).
Example:, if you’re Grappled, you could try a sprint action to move
away. If you succeed, it wouldn’t make sense for you to be Grappled
anymore, so you’d also get rid of that aspect.
If a character can interfere with your action, they get to roll active
opposition against you as per normal. Otherwise, GMs, it’s your job to
set passive opposition or just allow the player to get rid of the
aspect without a roll, if there’s nothing risky or interesting in the
way.
Finally, if at any point it simply makes no sense for a situation
aspect to be in play, get rid of it.
Example: If you’re Grappled but the opponent holding you describes
wandering off to do something else, it no longer makes sense for the
Grappled aspect to be in play and it is immediately discarded.
Regarding the level of difficulty to overcome an obstacle, Leonard
says:
“Setting the level of passive opposition for anything is the GM’s
province unless a player is making a hard statement by spending a fate
point. You can talk about it, like you can talk about anything, but
the GM retains the last word.”
This is an important change from Dresden Files, where the difficulty
to overcome a block was set by the shifts obtained on the block.
Changing the way this works has two major advantages:
You don’t have to remember the successes rolled when you later come to
work out the difficulty of overcoming an obstacle You can’t stack lots
of aspects when you create the obstacle to make it virtually
impossible to overcome. Instead you have to burn fate points or
invocations whenever the obstacle is challenged in order to maintain
it at a high level. This prevents the game from getting blocked or
bogged down for a sustained period by an obstacle. This means that a
character’s skill (+/- luck) no longer correlates directly to the
difficulty to overcome an obstacle. Instead GMs are encouraged to use
the usual rules for setting difficulty based on the needs of the story
or the realities of the situation.
Example: John Rambo is alone in the forest and he decides to set up
some pits and wooden traps to deter people from following him into the
wilderness. He describes what he’s setting up and the GM considers his
description, Rambo’s aspects, the materials available and the time
he’s taking and settles on passive opposition of Good to overcome the
traps. He also notes that most of the traps are deadly and that they
will inflict a Good attack with weapon 2 on anybody who fails to
overcome them…
When an obstacle is overcome, it’s overcome
As to what happens to an aspect/obstacle when it’s overcome, Lenny
clarifies:
“When an obstacle is overcome, it’s overcome – whatever considerations
need to go into effect to make that legitimate, make them. That may
mean the aspect goes away. That may mean you call ninja bullshit on
pulling the same trick over again. It’s the same kind of thing as,
‘talk about a concession until you find something that has real
teeth’.”
If the obstacle is not overcome, it’s not overcome. i.e. it stays in
effect until it’s overcome, subject to modification by context.
Lenny says:
“So, in the cover fire example that’s starting to make me feel like
hearing “Love Shack” at karaoke, failing [to overcome] means no
opportunity to fire, and maybe other costs atop that. Next turn,
whatever that person does, firing at the intended target is
off-limits. That can choose any other actions, though.”
Acho que isso cobre a questão mecânica com tantos detalhes quanto for útil.