Fate Core Tri-Core Skill Hack

Here’s a hack for the skill system that I’ve been working on that’s similar in approach to Atomic Robo’s Skill Modes.

I noticed Fate Core has 18 default skills, and they seem to fit fairly well into 3 groups of six.

First, there are the social skills, which I call the Dramatic group:
Provoke, Rapport, Empathy, Deceive, Contacts, and Will.

The physical skills are also easily grouped into the Action group:
Athletics, Physique, Fight, Shoot, Drive, and Notice.

This leaves six skills that are more knowledge and technical in nature, named the Intrigue group:
Stealth, Investigate, Burglary, Resources, Lore, and Crafts.

Now a regular starting character in Fate Core has a skill pyramid of one +4, two +3, three +2, and four +1 skills.  That’s 20 points worth of skills.

However, what if assigned skills using those three groups instead? Divided into three different skill columns of: six skills at +2, six skills at +1, and six skills at 0. Note that the point difference between this and a traditional skill pyramid is only two points.

This would be great for NPCs because you could just note if a character is going to be known for their physical, social, or technical area of expertise and be done with it.

However, one big problem is that using the traditional skill pyramids has characters with an apex skill of +4, whereas this approach tops out at +2.  This is where you could bring in that 2 point difference by letting a character have specialized skills. Simply add those 2 extra points anywhere you want to individualize someone.

Or another approach that’s interesting is to allow refocusing skills.  Refocusing is when a character takes a -1 Weakness in one skill to get a bonus +1 in another. This could be maxed out at +2 to a single skill, but the negative 2 points can be spread between two different skills.  What makes this approach interesting is that you can use these mechanical choices to create a narrative in the fiction.  In fact, I personally would only allow a refocus with a permission aspect.

For example, suppose you have a 2 characters that have +2 Action, and +1 Intrigue.

The first refocuses a -1 resources into a +1 shooting.  This could represent someone that spends all their income on buying the best equipment.

This would be noted as:
+2 Action (+1 Shoot)
+1 Intrigue (-1 Resources)
Permission Aspect: Lemme show ya the new scope I got

The second refocuses a -1 notice into a +1 shooting. This could represent someone that concentrates on reacting without hesitation.
This would be noted as:
+2 Action (+1 Shoot, -1 Notice)
+1 Intrigue
Permission Aspect: Shoot first, ask questions later

Another benefit to this skill hack is that by using this format you still have a balanced skill pyramid, and every choice could help you define your character.  It also helps characters make more sense because it’s difficult in this system to have a high rating without having a similar rating in related skills.  In other words, there won’t be a swordsman with a “fight +4” and “physique 0” and “Athletics 0”.