GAME MASTER

CHAPTER INFORMATION AND HINTS

Even if the heroes face a powerful foe, it is incredibly important for the battle to be transparent. It is your job as GM to communicate the following clearly:

• Crisis. Always make sure to tell the Players if an enemy is in Crisis, and give hints if this caused it to gain new abilities or change its damage Affinities.
• Damage Affinities. If a creature takes damage, tell the Players what the corresponding Affinity is — Vulnerable, Resistant, and so on. Inform the Players again if they use the same damage type and the creature's Affinity has changed.
• Changes in attacks and abilities. When a creature uses an ability, if its effects have changed during the scene, make sure the Players know.
• "Charged attacks". If an enemy is about to use a powerful attack — the kind that the Player Characters should Guard against! — you should describe them charging their energy at the start of the round, and only unleash the attack later so that the group can prepare for it.

Always allow the group to make informed tactical choices.

RANDOM TARGETING

This is the default method of choosing targets in Fabula Ultima, and it frees you from the responsibility of picking targets for enemy attacks. Simply assign a number to each member of the Player Character's side, and determine the targets of attacks, spells and Skills by rolling dice.

SWARMS

If the Player Characters find themselves battling a great number of identical creatures and you want them to feel powerful, treat all those creatures as a single swarm.

Examples of swarms may be a horde of drooling zombies, a cloud of deadly insects, or even an entire unit of trained magitech gunners.

If you want to turn a creature into a swarm, just do it — mechanically the creature will be the same, it is simply “described” as a multitude of smaller beings within the narrative of the scene.

Philip Forlenza (Order #)