...
Adversaries Cheat Sheet

Excerpted and edited from the Fate Adversary Toolkit published by Evil Hat Productions.

Enemies

Something with Skills, Aspects, possibly Stunts, can take Stress and possibly Consequences, and can take actions in the scene as part of the initiative order.

Threats

Exist to soak up hits. Large Stress tracks, at least a Mild Consequence. Skills tend to be defensive, and Stunts “...let them grab the PCs’ attention and hold it.”

  • Aspects: HC and Trouble at least.
  • Skills: An apex skill one or two steps above the PCs’ peak skill. Two more skills rated one step below the apex skill.
  • Stunts: At least one they can use to make the PCs want to deal with them. A really tough threat has a stunt that makes them tougher, like extra stress boxes or an Armor rating.
  • Stress & Consequences: Stress boxes to match the largest of the PCs’. A Mild Consequence and maybe a Moderate Consequence.

An easy fight has one threat, a standard has two or three, a climactic encounter probably has four or five. Any conflict with a boss should have at least two threats, and any fight with a hitter should have at least one threat to distract the PCs.

Hitters

Deal damage, can’t take much punishment. Peak skill is Fight, Shoot, or equivalent. Stress tracks are small, usually no Consequences. Stunts focus on hurting the PCs.

  • Aspects: HC and Trouble at least.
  • Skills: An apex skill one or two steps above the PCs’ peak skill. Two more skills rated one step below the apex skill. Prioritize skills that deal stress to the PCs.
  • Stunts: Always have the equivalent of Weapon: 2 on their primary attack. Another that makes them harder to spot makes them more dangerous. A way to hit really hard with a non-standard skill under the right circumstances.
  • Stress & Consequences: Bare minimum stress track. Only a Mild Consequence for extra tough hitters.

Hitters should not be obvious at the outset, PCs might not even clearly see there is a hitter in the scene. Maneuver them into position and then strike without remorse. Spend Fate Points or two to make the hitter’s attack count. Don’t spend resources trying to protect them after they get their attack off. Don’t use in every Conflict. Put in other enemies to distract from the hitter, or a distraction or a block for camoflage.

Bosses

Lynchpins of an organization. One or two in a Conflict, often powerful. Multiple high skills, at least a Mild Consequence, always have Stunts, which depend on purpose in fight. Some might be built to deal damage, others to avoid attention, for example.

  • Aspects: Full spread of five Aspects. Trouble should be a closely guarded secret that the PCs can exploit if they find out about it.
  • Skills: An apex skill two steps above the PCs’ peak skill, or 2 skills one step above the PCs’ peak skill. Two more skills rated one step below the apex skill. Fill out the pyramid with 1 more skill than the rank above it down to Fair(+2). All other skills are Average(+1). Skills should support their personality.
  • Stunts: A boss always has at least one stunt, and as many as three. Create stunts that make the boss memorable, stunts that bring in more bad guys to fight, stunts that make the boss hard to deal with, and stunts that represent her social status or allies.
  • Stress & Consequences: Stress boxes to match the average of the PCs’. Mild and Moderate Consequences and maybe a Severe Consequence.

You can let the PCs fight a boss frequently, but be careful with your bosses—don’t be afraid to concede. They’re not as disposable as other kinds of enemies are, so it’s a viable tactic to concede, so the boss can threaten the PCs later. But don’t rob the PCs of their victory, either. When the PCs do defeat a boss, make it a big deal, and reward them accordingly.

In an encounter, use your boss’s personality to inform how they behave. An aggressive, combative boss will get right up in the PCs’ faces, while a cautious, politically oriented boss will hide behind minions.

Fillers

Everyone else. Fragile minions who let the PCs look cool. Never have Consequences and rarely have Stress tracks with more than 2 boxes. They don’t have stunts and typically are good at only one thing. Can act and be taken down as groups.

  • Aspects: A single Aspect that encapsulates its function in the scene.
  • Skills: Depending on the filler’s quality. Average: a single Average(+1) skill, Fair: a single Fair (+2) skill, or Good: a Good(+3) skill and an Average(+1) skill.
  • Stunts: None.
  • Stress & Consequences: one 1-stress box per quality step. Average: [1], Fair: [1][1], or Good: [1][1][1] Mark off more than 1 per attack if needed. No Consequences.

Don’t be afraid to drop a bunch of fillers into a fight, grouping them up to keep things simple and make them a little more threatening. Fillers are easy come, easy go, so don’t go out of your way to protect them. You can also put fillers in a support role, creating advantages that they pass to more powerful enemies. A group of goons laying down distracting covering fire can make the hitter sneaking up behind the PCs that much more dangerous by passing him a free invoke or two.

Filler groups

A filler group has all the skills that its fillers have; fillers of different types can be grouped together, see crazed velociraptor / mob enforcer example in FAT, p17. For every filler with the same skill in the group add a +1 bonus to that skill. A filler group’s skills can never be rated higher than Great(+4), however.

Group the stress tracks of the members of the group, weakest to strongest. A group of two mob enforcers and a velociraptor would have a stress track that looks like this: [1][1] | [1][1] | [1][1][1]. Mark the stress boxes out left-to-right, and reduce the skill rankings appropriately as members are taken out.

Obstacles

Something that must be avoided, circumvented, or simply dealt with, and can’t be attacked directly. They always have Skills and Aspects, and never have Stunts, Stress, or Consequences.

Hazards

Hurt players or threaten to do so - fire jets, spinning fan blades, or mines. They have a name that defines their purpose a skill rating, and a Weapon rating (1 to 4.)

The name is both an Aspect and a Skill. The skill rating should at least as high as the PCs’ highest skill rating, if not a little bit higher. They act in the initiative just like the PCs do. Hazards can attack or create advantages. They can’t be attacke and they don’t overcome obstacles.

Because hazards can’t be attacked or taken out, they should be situational, so they can be avoided, or there should be a way they can be overcome, or (under appropriate circumstances) they can be transformed from a hazard into a threat that can be attacked. (See examples in FAT, p20.)

Blocks

Get in the PCs’ way. They mostly deny access. They have a name and a skill rating, which shouldn’t be more than 1 or 2 step above the PCs’ highest. It might have a Weapon rating as high as 4. Blocks don’t take actions or have a turn in the initiative order,) but they provide passive opposition in certain circumstances, and can threaten or cause harm if not heeded.

Whenever a block would interfere with someone’s action, they have to roll against the block’s skill rating as passive opposition. If the block can’t cause harm, it simply prevents the PC from taking the action they wanted to. If the PC fails to overcome the block and it can cause harm they take a hit as if the block attacked them.

Characters can try to force someone into a block as an Attack. They roll their attack as normal,with a Weapon rating equal to half the block’s Weapon rating (rounded down, minimum 1).

Some blocks can be used as cover or as armor. A particular block could just negates the attack, or it could add an Armor rating equal to half the block’s skill rating (rounded down, minimum 1).

You can give the PCs the option to disable the block somehow. They must take a risk, putting themself in danger, and make an Overcome roll against passive opposition two steps higher than the block’s rating.

(Examples, FAT p23.)

Distractions

Exist to give the PCs a difficult choice in the scene. They might have an Aspect and might have a rating for passive opposition to rolls. They are more about narrative challenge than mechanical challenge.

  • Name: A brief, punchy representation of what the distraction is. It can be an Aspect if needed.
  • Choice: A simple question that codifies the decision it gives to the PCs.
  • Repercussion: What happens to the PCs if they don’t deal with the distraction. There might be multiple repercussions.
  • Opposition: Passive opposition rating against PCs rolling to deal with it.

(Examples, FAT p23.)

Constraints

Modifiers of enemies and obstacles. Adding a constraint to an enemy or an obstacle makes them harder to deal with. Use constraints to add texture to an encounter or nuance to a villain. Constraints do not stand alone, they are additions to an enemy or an obstacle.

Countdowns

Create urgency to an enemy or obstacle: deal with it now or things will get worse. Countdowns have three components: a countdown track, one or more triggers, and an outcome.

  • Countdown track: Everytime you check off a box, the countdown gets closer to being over.
  • Trigger: An event that marks a box on the countdown track. There could be a different trigger for each each box on the countdown track.
  • Outcome: When the last box is marked, the countdown ends and the outcome happens.

Countdowns don’t have to be confined to a single scene. A countdown can represent the big bad’s evil plan, and each box is triggered by the successful completion of each step of the plan.

(Examples of countdowns applied to enemies and obstacles, FAT p26-27.)

Limitations

Prevent the PCs from taking particular actions by adding narrative consequences for the PC for taking those actions. Limitations have a fact or possibly an Aspect, and might have a Weapon rating.

Limitations don’t outright forbid actions; they simply discourage them. Adding a limitation to an enemy makes them more important to the story. Limitations work best when they are revealed unexpectedly; they work well as surprise twists. Try not to use more than one or two limitations in an adventure.

Resistances

Make other adversaries hard to handle in a particular way. The dragon’s scales are impervious to mortal weaponry. The mob boss is protected by dirty cops. Resistances force the PCs to vary their tactics, to come up with a Plan B: because the dragon’s scales are immune to mortal weaponry, we must go on a quest to find the one sword that will hurt it. Where limitations encourage the PCs to deal with an adversary in a new way, resistances force such an approach. There is always a chink in the armor, embodied in two parts: the resistance’s lock and key.

  • Lock: An Aspect that states exactly what the adversary is immune to.
  • Key: The one thing that can bypass the lock. This can be an Aspect, an Extra, a character, another adversary, or just a narrative element.

Never have more than one resistance in play at a time. The PCs will need to go on an adventure, or at least a series of scenes, to get the key to the adversary’s lock.

(Examples, FAT p29.)