If you attempt to defend against an attack and fail, the GM can offer a dangerous version of success at a cost. If you take the option, then you don’t take any stress from the attack. The attack still happens, but someone or something else takes the harm instead, and that must significantly impact the character. … This form of success at a cost can only be offered by the GM, rather than volunteers by players. This rule only works for PC-vs-GM conflicts, and only for PCs as the dramatic tension isn’t as strong with NPCs making such choices. The most important part of making this rule work: the players have to know the sort of price that can be paid, not know the specifics, and not be given the option to revoke the decision. If that uncertainty means that a player never takes up defending at a cost, that’s great! They’re making the firm choice to always take the harm themselves and to go out as a hero. … ClarificationSome people seem to be confused as to how this isn’t just the consequence system as written in Fate Core. It’s very much not, as consequences are direct markers that tie to individual agency. Here’s what I wrote to that effect: Here’s the great divide: consequences persist with the person that took them. If you have a Broken Arm, then you have that even if you’re naked and transported to the other side of the planet. The idea of a broader sense of consequences that creates some that don’t persist and travel with the person breaks the very way that consequences work as a currency. That’s what this “defend at a cost” is about. You don’t have to spend delicate, persistent narrative currency, but there’s a bit immediate cost that is still paid. All of my examples in that post are things that don’t travel with a person regardless of situation: something you need is destroyed, someone you care about is killed, etc. Maybe that also inflicts something on you, but that’s tangential to the immediate…well, I would say “consequence” but that’s a game term that continues to lead to confusion. (If I were rebuilding Core today, I would ax “consequences” as a confusing term, just as we did “maneuver” and “tag.”) This, by the way, has made for some interesting thinking in the Eclipse Phase build.
Here’s the great divide: consequences persist with the person that took them. If you have a Broken Arm, then you have that even if you’re naked and transported to the other side of the planet. The idea of a broader sense of consequences that creates some that don’t persist and travel with the person breaks the very way that consequences work as a currency. That’s what this “defend at a cost” is about. You don’t have to spend delicate, persistent narrative currency, but there’s a bit immediate cost that is still paid. All of my examples in that post are things that don’t travel with a person regardless of situation: something you need is destroyed, someone you care about is killed, etc. Maybe that also inflicts something on you, but that’s tangential to the immediate…well, I would say “consequence” but that’s a game term that continues to lead to confusion. (If I were rebuilding Core today, I would ax “consequences” as a confusing term, just as we did “maneuver” and “tag.”) This, by the way, has made for some interesting thinking in the Eclipse Phase build.