Specialty Aspects behave just like Character Aspects, only with a much more narrow focus. These are skills you are particularly good or bad at, or relationships that are important to you. We get to choose 5.
As with Character Aspects, we can turn to the “Aspect Alphabet” for guidance. Again, this isn’t required but since this is our first character we decide to see where it takes us.
The Aspect Alphabet for Specialty Aspects picks up where it left off with Character Aspects, so we’ll start with “E”.
Exceptional Skill– What is your area of expertise?
Parker’s Defining Character Aspect is as a psychic soldier. We decide his Specialty Aspects should also reflect that. Knowing what someone will do before they do makes him a good shot with a gun and that’s almost always based on Agility. So we start with Crack Shot (Agility).
Foes–Who are your enemies?
The government did this to him. They stole his life, his childhood, and even those few he ever called friends. That’s something he’ll never forget. And now they’re after him. Foes are always a Persuasion Aspect since had you somehow been more persuasive, you might not have ended up with enemies.
That leads us to The Government (Persuasion).
Gear ‐ Do you have any special pieces of equipment, vehicles, or facilities? Parker piloted the HK‐50 assault craft that he and his friends used to escape. Since then he has managed to make a few modifications to it and it serves as both his private craft and transport for the team.
We can work out the necessary details for the craft using the guidelines in Chapter 9 but for now we’ll just take it as a Specialty Aspect. Aspects for gear are always tied to Resources so we end up with “This old HK‐50 saved our lives!” (Resources).
Help ‐ Do you have a friend, some family, or a group you can call on in times of need?
During his time in captivity, Parker made a few other friends. Among them was one of the security guards assigned to watch him. Since his escape, Rachel has been promoted. And while she’s still an employee of the government, sometimes Parker can call on her for information.
Like a foe, someone who can offer help is always a Specialty Aspect linked to Persuasion. And since Rachel’s insider information can really help us out, we take Sgt. Rachel Wilkins (Persuasion) as one of our Specialty Aspects.
Inferior Skill–What is your handicap?
Life as a slave, soldier, and mercenary brings with it a lot of challenges when you are set free. The challenge Parker seems to have the most trouble with is respecting any sort of authority. He seems naturally and on occasion violently averse to being told what to do by any sort of government representative or law enforcement. We’re going to attribute this Specialty Aspect to Willpower since any kind of dealings with those kinds of authorities really challenges Parker’s ability to keep himself in check. But it could just as easily apply to Persuasion or even Deception rolls. So we end up with “You don’t control me anymore!” (Willpower).
6. Purchase Advantages
Advantages are the special things that set us apart from the nameless masses. In the campaign our GM has planned they could include cybernetics or psionic powers. We get 12 Advantage Points to spend. Lets start with Powers. Parker is a Precognitive. Looking through the list we see Enhanced Reflexes. It allows us to use Agility to defend against ranged attacks as well as helping with attack and defense rolls in physical combat. Sounds like something someone who can see glimpses of the future would have. Powers need a “Power Aspect”, so we decide on Precognitive Reflexes for our Enhanced Reflexes. This costs us 3 AP.
A little further down the list we find Precognition. Well, I guess we need that one.
Precognition also requires a Power Source and an Affinity Ability. A Power Source tells us were our powers come from. In Parker’s case they are psionic, so we write Power Source: Psionics on our character sheet.
Affinity Abilities represent our capacity to control our Power Source and it’s what we roll when we need to use our Powers. We need to buy up our brand new Affinity Ability but we’ve already bought our Abilities and we’re out of ranks to distribute. What do we do? Well first, let’s finish buying Precognition.
We’ll keep it simple and choose Psychic Precognition as our Power Aspect. We also note that Precognition gives us the Character Aspect Precognitive which behaves just like all of our other Character Aspects.
So now that we’ve finished with Precognition, we need to fix our Affinity Ability problem. After talking our character over with our GM, he allows us to buy the Experienced Advantage. This gives us 20 Experience Points to spend later for 2 Ability Ranks.
Having spent the last few months on the run we decide to give Parker the Advantage Constant Vigilance. This gives us a bonus to initiative and the ability to spend Fate Points to defend normally if surprised. Sounds good for someone living on the run. This is a Heroic Advantage and costs us 2 AP.
With our last AP we pick Fly Boy. Parker is a trained pilot and flew the HK‐50 that the group used to make their escape in. So he now gains a +2 bonus on rolls to pilot any aircraft. It is an Expert Advantage and costs us 1AP for a grand total of 10 Advantage Points spent.
Now we need to go back and take care of the Experience Points we gained with Experienced. Spending XP to increase an Ability costs us 10XP per rank. So we spend our 20 XP and raise our Affinity from 0 to 2. Now Parker has everything he needs to use his powers.