Squad-based Combat

FATE SYSTEM TOOLKIT

Squad-Based Action

What if you want to play a squad of characters who are conscripted to storm the beaches at Normandy on D-Day? Can you use Fate to play a squad of space marines?

Yes, sir. Yes, you can.

These rules, like everything in Fate, are flexible enough to work with a variety of skins, accommodating modern military units, World War II squads, high fantasy armies, and futuristic bug-hunting mechs.

Creating Squads

First, create characters normally (see Fate Core, page 30). While you’re writing up your characters, name your squad and describe the role it plays in the greater force. Is it a ragtag bunch of ex-felon soldiers? Or a highly trained force of well-equipped professionals?

Whatever you decide, turn the description into two aspects, a squad concept for your squad, and a squad trouble that always seems to plague your unit. Any player in the unit can invoke these aspects and be compelled by them.

Lara, Antonio, and Michelle decide that their squad is a bootstrapped group of survivors who are fighting back after alien forces nearly destroyed New Orleans. After creating individual characters, they name their squad the Ninth Ward Defenders, giving it the squad concept Dogs of War to represent their scrappy resilience and the squad trouble In Over Our Head to show that the aliens are dominant.

Squad Skills

Unlike individual skills, squad skills can be used to reshape the whole battlefield. For example, your soldier might lead a charge against the enemy’s line or call in reinforcements to soften hardened defenses.

After creating the unit aspects, give your unit:

One Fair (+2) squad skill

Two Average (+1) squad skills

One Squad Stunt

If you want to emphasize the squad over the individual characters, reduce your characters’ starting stunts and refreshes from three to two, and cap your skills at Good (+3) instead of Great (+4).

Operations

The Operations skill measures your unit’s ability to work together on the battlefield, eliminating enemy units and securing key strategic positions.

O Overcome: Operations allows you to overcome obstacles as a unit, such as when you lay down cover fire to reach a wounded soldier safely or work together to climb over a wall.

C Create an Advantage: When you create an advantage with Operations, your unit is setting traps (Ambush!) or charging directly at the barricades (Panicked Grunts).

A Attack: Operations allows your squad to launch coordinated attacks against targets and should be rolled instead of an individual character’s Fight or Shoot whenever the squad acts as a unit.

D Defend: Operations is rolled for defense when your unit attempts to retreat from the larger combat zone or otherwise avoid an enemy attack as a group.

Operations Sample Stunts

Hard to Pin Down: Take a +2 on any Overcome roll made to retreat from a combat zone.

Blitzkrieg: Your squad is fast, light, and deadly. Take +2 on all Operation rolls in which your attack focuses on catching the enemy off-guard.

Equipment

The Equipment skill represents the resources your squad has available to pursue its objectives.

O Overcome: Like the Resources skill, Equipment can be used to get the squad through a situation that requires some additional gear. The squad might call in some trucks to carry them over rough terrain or even call in a bombing run.

C Create an Advantage: Your squad might use Equipment to get some high-powered weaponry for a particular mission (Flamethrowers!) or to procure resources that are crucial for navigation (Topographical Maps).

A D Attack / Defend: Equipment isn’t used to attack or defend.

Equipment Sample Stunts

Hi-Tech Gear: You can use Equipment instead of Operations in any situation where raw technological superiority would win the day.

Well-Stocked: You gain a +2 on all Equipment rolls made to create an advantage when you are accessing your preexisting supplies.

Recon

O Overcome: Recon isn’t used often to overcome obstacles, but it can be used, like Notice, to give the squad a chance to head off ambushes or traps.

C Create Advantage: Your squad can use Recon during a battle to pierce the fog of war, gathering information beyond your immediate location.

A D Attack / Defend: Recon isn’t used to attack or defend.

Recon Sample Stunts

Codebreakers: On a successful Recon roll to create an advantage while monitoring enemy communications, you can discover or create one additional aspect (though this doesn’t give you an extra free invocation).

Counterprogramming: You can use Recon instead of Operations to set a trap when you use the enemy’s communications system against them.

Rolling Squad Skills

In order to make a squad skill roll or use a squad stunt, one player must decide to give up his personal action to rally the group. The nature of rallying will depend on the situation—military units typically follow orders—but generally the player will need the support of most of the other player characters.

If he’s successful in directing the squad, the difficulty of the task drops by 1 for each additional squadmate who sacrifices their next action to the new goal, as the group turns all its attention to accomplishing the goal. In addition to reducing the difficulty, the success or failure of the roll is carried across the whole unit, as the squad’s skills have the potential to reshape the battlefield and win the day—or cause the squad to suffer together. As such, stress inflicted on the squad as a whole is inflicted on each squadmate equally.

Rather than make a roll to try to breach an alien barrier by herself, Lara decides to rally the Ninth Ward Defenders to knock it down together. The difficulty of accomplishing the task falls from Fantastic (+6) to Great (+4). If she succeeds, the whole unit will get the benefit of breaching the enemy barrier without having to roll a second time. If she fails, the whole unit will suffer stress from the alien counterattack.

Squad-Based Combat

To run a great squad combat, use Operations rolls to move directly to the heart of the action. Rather than start at the beginning of the fight—when the conflicts are boring—get the squad to develop a plan of attack and roll Operations as an Overcome with a difficulty appropriate to the target to see how things turn out.

If they are successful, the players should narrate one good outcome for every shift above the target. If they fail, the GM will narrate one negative outcome for every shift below the target. Either way, jump straight to the exciting action. Repeat when things start to drag in the middle of the fight.

After breaching the alien barrier, Lara is pretty sure that her PC can get close enough to the alien queen to kill her before the rest of the aliens regroup. She rallies the Ninth Ward Defenders to charge the enemy line, rolling their Fair (+2) Operations against a difficulty of Great (+4) set by her GM. She gets a +2 on her roll, but invokes the Dogs of War to get another +2 for a total of Fantastic (+6). For her first shift, she narrates that they charge the line successfully, and for her second, she states that her character gets close enough to kill the queen.

Crew

Crew Actions

The ship’s crew includes general hands as well as officers who fill any roles the PCs haven’t. The crew can perform any ship duty on their own, including navigating and plotting courses, operating the sails and guns, repairing damage, keeping lookout, operating signal lanterns, transferring cargo, and so forth. When the crew performs a task on their own, they roll actions using their own skill rank .

If a PC takes direct command of the crew to perform a specific task, roll using the PC’s skill rank. In these cases, the PC must be actively involved in the task alongside the crew. The crew can perform any reasonable number of tasks at the same time, with or without PC leadership, but any one PC may only take command of one task at a time.

Bailey orders the ship’s guns to fire. He decides to lead the gun crew, so he uses his own Shoot rank instead of the crew’s Shoot rank. Shortly after, the ship is damaged by return fire, and Bailey wants to lead the repair effort. To do this, he gives up command of the gun crew. When the guns are fired again, the crew operates the guns, using their own Shoot rank.

You may wish to invent names and backgrounds for some NPC crew members, but you don’t need to choose skills for these characters—they have the skills and skill ranks as the rest of the crew.

Crew Combat

When running battles with large portions of the crew, such as ship-to-ship boarding actions, use the mass combat rules from the Fate System Toolkit (page 163) with the modifications in this section.

At the start of the battle, divide friendly and enemy forces into units of equal size, such as five or ten combatants per unit. Create enough units so that each player can command at least one unit, but without creating too many units to track easily. If the units have fewer than five combatants each, run the battle as a normal conflict, not a mass combat, and group nameless NPCs together using the mob rules from Fate Core (page 216).

Next, determine the statistics for each unit. Units composed of ship’s crew will have the skills and the crew aspect associated with their ship. For non-crew units, just assign skills as appropriate using the templates for nameless NPC’s. Units have no stress boxes and 1 mild consequence. If you’re using maps or other props, use a two-sided counter to represent each unit. When a unit takes a mild consequence, flip the counter over. When it is taken out, remove the counter from the battlefield.

During the battle, you can combine units into groups. A group of units acts as a single unit, combining their skills using the teamwork rules from Fate Core (page 174). The entire group can benefit from having a leader as if it were a single unit. However, if you roll Will to remove a consequence from your troops, remove a consequence from one unit in your group, not from all the units in your group.

Multiple characters can attach themselves to a unit group, but only one attached character can serve as the group’s leader. Attached characters who are not leaders can invoke their aspects on behalf of their unit, and can engage enemy leaders in single combat, but they cannot perform any of the other functions of a leader.

Units use Fight to attack enemies in the same zone, and use Shoot to attack enemies in distant zones. Attacked units defend against Fight with Fight or Athletics, and defend against Shoot with Athletics. When a group takes shifts from a successful attack, the player controlling the group chooses how to assign those shifts among the comprising units and attached characters.

A unit cannot prevent another unit from entering its zone. However, a unit entering a zone with an enemy unit cannot leave that zone until the next exchange. Also, whenever a zone contains opposing units, any of those units can overcome using Fight to move an enemy unit into an adjacent zone. The target can oppose this action with Fight or Athletics.

At the end of the combat, take note of which units are uninjured, injured, and taken out. After combat, injured units immediately recover and become available for duty. If any crew members are taken out, each character with the Doctor stunt can roll Alchemy once against a Mediocre (+0) difficulty to attempt to prevent the crew members from dying. Characters with Alchemy at Average (+1) or higher can provide teamwork bonuses to these rolls, even without the Doctor stunt. Each shift preserves the life of ten crew members. Any crew members who were taken out and not healed with Alchemy will perish.