FATE CHIPS

Here are the first set of rules for Fate Chips.   It seems to me that when I used them before (for Castles an Crusades many years ago) that these took the place of Experience Points for Monsters, in addition to being a story mechanism.   So the more skillful play, without spending chips, you showed, the more XP you got.   Since monster XP is really secondary to Treasure XP in old-timey D&D anyway, I'm inclined to keep it that way.  It's one less thing to keep track of during the game.  But, it's a big question, so let me know thoughts.

Getting Fate Chips: each Player begins the session with 3 Fate Chips.  He will gain more through the course of the game session.  Generally speaking, each significant combat or role-playing encounter that involves some risk, or advances the action, goal or mission will result in either 1 or 2 Fate Chips being awarded to each player who participated.  The GM can award more for significant actions to specific players.  At most 1 encounter per session can be designated a “key encounter” or “super dangerous monkey-slap encounter” and be worth 3 chips.

Spending Fate Chips: a player may spend Fate Chips during the game to help any character or henchman under his control.  Chips may be spent to do the following actions:

• Re-roll a die: 1 chip allows any result to be re-rolled, but only 1 chip per roll may be spent.  The re-roll can never be worse than the original roll.
• Heal: immediately heal 1d4 hit points of damage suffered
• Maximum Damage: score maximum damage on a single die rolled for damage (so you can max out a great axe shot d10, but not a 6d6 fireball).
• Put the Hoo-Doo: cause an enemy to suffer –4 on a saving throw.  This use may be vetoes by the GM at his whim.
• Death to Wound: it is assumed that whenever a character reaches –1 hit points, he is dead.  If you spend a chip, you can transfer that into a lethal wound, reset to -1 hit points, that bleeds 1 hit point per round until treated. Character dies if he reaches -10 hit points or spends a second chip to stabilize the wound (or heals it to 1 hp or better).
• Change the World: allows the player’s character to find a piece of needed mundane equipment, or to turn a non-hostile npc into an old friend met by chance, or similar minor effect.

 

Cashing In Fate Chips: when the session is over, each player must cash in his Fate Chips.  Each chip left over is worth 100 experience points (if characters are levels 1-3). 200 experience points (if characters are levels 4-6), or 300 experience points (if characters are levels 7-9) or 500xp (if the characters are levels 10+).  The main character under the player’s control gets the full value of the chips he holds at the end, but henchmen get ½ that value.