5.Overturning an Aspect
5. Overturning an Aspect (new)
Fate has a formal move called Overcome. It replaces or clears an Aspect already in play. The earlier version of Create an Advantage in this supplement only covered making Aspects, not unmaking them. This section closes that gap.
5.1 The Move
A PC tries to replace or clear an existing Aspect. They take an action that makes sense in the story. Resolve it as a normal action roll. The GM sets the Difficulty from the story — how big a deal the Aspect is, plus any GM invoke against it per §1.4. Tell the player this clearly before they commit (see §7).
5.2 Resolving the Outcome
- Critical Success: The Aspect is cleared and can be replaced with a new one, of the player’s choosing, with 2 free invokes banked on the new Aspect — matching Create an Advantage’s crit result.
- Success with Hope: The Aspect is cleared or replaced, with 1 free invoke banked on the new one.
- Success with Fear: The Aspect is downgraded, not cleared — it softens into a weaker version of itself. The problem doesn’t go away, it just loosens. GM gains a Fear.
- Failure: The Aspect stays as-is, or gets worse, at the GM’s call. This fits Daggerheart’s four-outcome system better than Fate’s simple pass/fail Overcome. It gives a clean “better, but not gone” result on Success with Fear. Fate can’t express that as neatly.
Example: The scout still has “Overextended” from the shrine fight. A free invoke is still banked against him. He doesn’t want to just let it clear on its own. So he spends his turn actively fighting it off, so nobody can use it against him again. The GM sets Difficulty at 12 for “steadying his stance under pressure.” He rolls Success with Fear. The Aspect doesn’t go away. But it downgrades to “Slightly Off-Balance” — a weaker version, worth less on a future invoke. The GM banks a Fear from the cost.
6. Ask, Answer, and Declare (new — replaces Core Gameplay Loop Step 2)
6.1 Two Things, Not Three
Step 2 of the core rules (“Ask and Answer Questions”) already covers more than it looks like. A GM saying yes to a plausible detail doesn’t care whether it came as a question (“Is there a chandelier?”) or a flat statement (“There’s a chandelier, right?”). Small, non-advantageous color gets the same free yes either way — that’s just normal GMing. It doesn’t need its own rule here.
One move does need its own rule: Fate’s Declare a Story Detail. This is a real, separate, costed move. This supplement had wrongly folded it into the free category before. Fate’s original wording says: “To add something to the narrative based on one of your aspects, spend a fate point.”
Why does it cost something? It’s easy to guess the wrong reason, so let’s be clear. The cost isn’t for pointing at an Aspect. It’s for the player briefly taking on a power that’s normally the GM’s alone. They’re putting a brand-new fact into the shared world, instead of acting inside it or asking about it. Fate’s own words for its point resource say this plainly: it’s “a measure of how much influence you have to make the story go in your character’s favor.” Needing an Aspect to back up the declaration isn’t the reason for the cost. It’s the guardrail. It keeps this kind of power limited and believable, instead of “I declare whatever I want.”
- Ask (free): unchanged from the core rules. Includes simple, flat statements too — a plausible, non-advantageous detail gets the same free treatment as a question. No separate rule needed.
- Declare — Aspect-Justified (1 Hope): a player spends 1 Hope to add something advantageous to the story, backed by something that counts as an Aspect (§1.1) — an Experience, their identity, an active Aspect, or a Condition. The GM still gets the final say on whether it’s believable (§6.2). This never produces free invokes — see §2.1’s distinction from Create an Advantage.
Example — Ask (free): “Is there anywhere to hide the egg in this shrine?” The GM says yes. There’s a hollow behind the altar. Plain, non-advantageous color. No cost.
Example — Declare (1 Hope): The ranger wants more than that: “Given my Experience ‘Grew Up on These Cliffs,’ I know this shrine has a second exit the scouts won’t have found.” That’s advantageous — it changes the party’s odds of a clean escape — so it costs 1 Hope, backed by her Experience. The GM agrees it’s believable, and the exit becomes true.
6.2 Contested Declarations
Sometimes a declared detail — free or paid — gets in the way of something the GM already planned. Maybe it overwrites a fixed clue, or a planned reveal. Or it just doesn’t fit the story. When that happens, it’s contested. No new rule is needed for this. It reuses the existing GM Principle “Reframe Rather Than Reject” (“If a player’s contribution conflicts with the fiction, work with them to reshape it”): the GM offers something close but different, instead of a flat no.
6.3 Optional: Forcing a Contested Declaration
A player can push a contested detail through anyway, over the GM’s hesitation. This costs one more Hope, on top of the 1 Hope already spent on the Aspect-Justified Declare. This is the one spot where real stakes change hands twice on the same fact. It’s entirely optional. A table can skip this and let Reframe Rather Than Reject handle every contested case, with no extra cost.
6.4 Why Merge Rather Than Replace
Fully replacing Step 2 would cost us something good. It would lose the free, easy back-and-forth of clarifying questions. It would also lose the GM’s own half of that exchange — background and Connections questions that feed into scenes. Keeping Ask and background answers free protects that. Splitting out a properly-costed Aspect-Justified Declare brings back Fate’s paid tier. That’s better than losing it completely, or charging the same price for a small detail as for a real advantage.