[RPG] Does Fate have precedents for mechanical inabilities/weaknesses

fate-acceleratedfate-core

Core/FAE has Stunts that give a numerical bonus to actions or otherwise let a character do things beyond the normal rules. But reading through the rulebooks, I haven't found any guidance for the opposite effect: an "anti-stunt" that imposes a penalty on an action or prevents an action that's normally allowed. Is there any official text covering this topic? If their response is, "Don't do it this way; model disadvantages with another method," that's okay too.

Question inspired by the comments in this answer where SevenSidedDie gives an example of making an Aspect or "bad" Stunt so a zombie horde can't move zones as quickly as other characters. Of course I could make it an Aspect and let the PCs compel/invoke so the zombies get hung up on obstacles and have to stop moving or roll an overcome action. My question is about creating a persistent, clearly-defined mechanical effect, which to me sounds more like a Stunt.

The best resource I've found so far is FAE's section on Bad Guys, where you pick what they're skilled at (+2 to rolls) and bad at (-2 to rolls). You've got the mechanical modifier there, but the descriptions seem broader than Stunts. It also doesn't cover "the character just can't do this at all."

Best Answer

There's a really simple alternative to penalties (at least for passive opposition) that I haven't seen mentioned yet: just set the difficulty higher. This is the recommended approach in the rules, and it is clearly a deliberate design decision to prefer this over penalties. Under the section "Running The Game" > "What To Do During Play" > "Setting Difficulties" (http://fate-srd.com/fate-core/what-do-during-play) it states (emphasis mine):

When you’re setting passive opposition for an action, keep in mind the difficulty “break points” mentioned in Actions and Outcomes—anything that’s two or more steps above the PC’s skill is probably going to cost them fate points, and anything that’s two or more below the PC’s skill will be a breeze.

Rather than “modeling the world” or going for “realism,” try setting difficulties according to dramatic necessity—things should generally be more challenging when the stakes are high and less challenging when they aren’t.

(Functionally, this is the same as setting a consistent difficulty and assessing a circumstantial penalty to the roll to reflect rushing the task or some other unfavorable condition. But psychologically, the difference between a high difficulty and a lower difficulty with a penalty is vast and shouldn’t be underestimated. A player facing a higher difficulty will often feel like they’re being properly challenged, while that same player facing a large penalty, likely chosen at the GM’s discretion, will often feel discouraged by it.)

As further proof that the Fate rules deliberately eschew explicit penalties, we can check the System Toolkit, which discusses the topic of Supplemental Actions (http://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/supplemental-actions) -- "...in previous versions of Fate... performing an action that would distract from your primary action imposes a -1 penalty on your primary action", but this was removed in Fate Core. The reasoning:

Supplemental actions don’t appear anywhere in Fate Core, despite having appeared in previous versions of Fate. We did this for two reasons. First, we feel it’s better to use bonuses than penalties, and supplemental actions imposed a penalty. Second, supplemental actions are there to make things more “realistic,” but they don’t necessarily make things more fun or more like an exciting story. They make it harder to do cool things, not easier.

They then propose an alternative that's "a little more in keeping with the ethos of Fate Core", which is to place a boost on you -- something like Distracted -- which (as with any boost) can be used once by your opponents, and then goes away.

"the character just can't do this at all."

The existing answers already mention using aspects (which are always true) as permissions (or lack thereof). But, as I mentioned in a comment on harlandski's answer, the rules also allow for certain skills to be "unavailable" if you don't have them.

Mediocre (+0) is the default for any skill you do not take. Sometimes, a skill will state that it’s unavailable if a character didn’t take it; in those cases, it’s not even at Mediocre.

None of the default skills are like this, but you might make this the case for certain complex skills in your game: casting, piloting, hacking, and surgery come to mind as such skills. But these can also be modeled using aspects as permissions.

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