Varying Consequences By Weapon

By: Dave Hallett

If you want to differentiate between weapon types in SotC/FATE, Consequences are the logical place to do it. So here's a variant based on that notion.

Stress and consequences work as for the 2/4/6 modification in Faster Conflicts, where taking a Mild Consequence reduces the Stress taken by 2, a Moderate consequence by 4, etc, but the actual values used vary by weapon type. Here's a possible set:

Unarmed (and any weapon that's no better than a fist or kick) 3/5/7
Ordinary weapons (knifes, machetes, most handguns, long/medium range shotgun, clubs) 2/4/6
Lethal weapons (rifles, SMGs, big axes, machine pistols, close range shotgun) 1/3/5
Devastating weapons (elephant guns, machine guns, various military gear with the word "heavy" in it) 0/2/4 (no Mild consequences possible)

Example:
Gorilla Khan deals a crushing blow with his simian fist! 5 stress to Captain Jack. Jack could do one of three things:

  1. take the hit
  2. take a Mild consequence and the remaining 2 stress
  3. take a Moderate consequence and that's it.

For an even grittier feel (Lenny's suggestion), you could use 2/4/6 as the unarmed default, and then go to 1/3/5, 0/2/4 and 0/1/3, respectively. Or you could fine tune the numbers for each weapon individually, if you like that level of detail.

It would also be possible to use this approach for stunts that increase weapon effectiveness (use the next category up, e.g. treat Fists as Ordinary weapons) or to model the effect of armour (reduce the effective weapon category).

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.