Shields Conquered!
After much debating, thinking, and bouncing ideas back and forth, I have come to a decision. Shields are going to be another stress track. Unlike my previous idea on shields, it’s going to be binary, no light/medium/heavy choices.
Shield Basics
Shields are going to be a 4-box track. Unlike the normal physical stress track, shields are a HP-type track. Meaning that if you take 2 stress, you mark off 2 boxes. Two hits of 2-stress each will overwhelm the shields.
Recharging Shields
In Halo, when you’re able to take a quick breath, your shields recharge. Normally, I would make some complicated rules to emulate how that works†. In FATE, anytime you have to catch your breath, your stress tracks clear up.
However, “between scenes” isn’t the best way to show regenerating shields. So to make things a bit closer to source, I’m going to give shields a minor consequence. The player can take the consequence overloaded shields to remove all 4 stress from their shields. This way, you have the option to, once per conflict, regen your shields.
Note that you can always do a manoeuvre that has to do with your shields and tag for a +2 when needed.
Why Not an Aspect?
I’ll be honest, I originally was just going to have your shields be an aspect that can be tagged once/twice/thrice free per conflict (for light, medium, and heavy shields). It would be easy, and interact well with EMP effects.
However, firearms do less damage to shields, and plasma weapons deal more damage to them. If shields were just an aspect, how would we emulate that? In the end, I had to decide what was more important, and what brought about more of that “Halo” feel. In my opinion, having shields as another stress track was more in keeping with the games.
†See my previous post dealing with shields.
