How do you feel about the Dresden Files Accelerated completely discarding any attempt at character balance?

How do you feel about the Dresden Files Accelerated completely discarding any attempt at character balance?
The original Dresden Files RPG tried to balance different types of characters by having some character types "cost more" than others. This was imperfect, because pure mortals were still weak despite the attempts at giving them extra points and spellcasting was far too strong for its price, but the attempt at character balance was still there.

The Dresden Files Accelerated though...
>The first is abandonment of any intent to achieve balance between mantles. Recall that a mantle expresses the truth of existence of a distinctive type of entity in the universe and their influence on the world. Expression of that concept requires however many stunts and conditions needed for accuracy. However, GMs should beware of creating a mantle whose nature denies other players the meaningful participation by extreme, even overwhelming, strengths.

Are you a pure mortal? Good. You get some neat abilities, nothing major.
Are you the erlking's huntmaster, a knight of a faerie court, Kringle's seneschal, or a true fae? Congratulations! You also get some neat abilities, roughly the same amount as what a pure mortal receives. You also have some weaknesses, but nothing devastating. In exchange, you get to operate on the Otherworldly scale for nearly all actions!

There are five scales: Mundane, Supernatural, Otherworldly, Legendary, Godlike.
>When applying scale to two opposing forces or individuals, compare each side’s level and then apply one of the following benefits to whichever is scaled higher:
>+1 per scale level to their action before the roll
>+2 per scale level to the result after the roll, if the roll succeeds
>1 free invocation per scale level on a successful advantage after the roll
The character types are supposed to be imbalanced. While the strongest of the character types are obvious, everything in between is harder to judge the rough power and competence of.

Bad game for a bad series.

They work together to highlight the worst parts of the Fate System (too narrativist, no sense of balance, easily abused, and players need to often act against their characters) and the Dresden Series (a derivative world created as a backdrop for a juvenile wish-fulfilment egotist to run amuck alongside a cast of hollow plot points pretending to be characters), and it culminates in an experience that people would pay money to end.

Alright, better question - is it possible to tell high-powered Urban Fantasy that doesn't devolve into Juvenile Wish Fulfillment Egotism? Or do you consider all high-powered urban fantasy (or possibly all high-powered fantasy_ to just be JWFE?
Serious question, not me trolling; I keep working on an urban fantasy story, but I notice that all such stories are all-or-nothing; either it's over-the-top stories about blowing up cities to stop the king of the elves from taking over the world, or it's like one housewife who can maybe talk to birds and this really should have just called itself magical realism. I'd like to successfully hit somewhere in the middle, for once.

If it's narrativist, why not make characters equal?

Character equality is a gamist trope i.e. they need to be playing pieces of equal "board presence". Narrativism doesn't try to balance characters, but accepts that Gandalf and Bilbo have different roles to play.

Other versions of Fate try to balance characters.

That doesn't even represent the actual series though.

It's kinda a major factor of the series that people seriously underestimate mortals and Karen could cap the ass of Harry (The Winter Knight and a Wizard) if she played to her strengths.

The funniest part here is that there is only one "true fae" character type, and true fae "usually operate on an Otherworldly scale," implying that playing even a lowly pixie places you two scales above puny pure mortals.

The book says:

>Frequent and rigid application of scale rules may put mortal characters at a distinct disadvantage. Compensate by generously affording those players opportunities to subvert scale disadvantage in clever ways. Viable options include researching a target for weaknesses, changing the venue to one where scale doesn’t apply, or altering goals so that their opponent cannot leverage their scale advantage.

>Wizard Dresden is an expert at finding the Achilles’ heel of superior foes.
>Like using the sprinkler system against an army of hobs.

>ASPECTS AND SCALE
>Active situation aspects sometimes represent a supernatural effect, such as A Powerful Ward or The Telier Family Curse. In these cases, the GM may determine that invoking the aspect grants the additional benefit of its scale.

However, this is of little help against the various character types that give a global benefit of:
>The Huntmaster operates at Otherworldly scale (page 182).
>The Knights operate at Otherworldly scale (page 182).
>The Seneschal operates at Otherworldly scale (page 182).

Sure, you could probably force some kind of compel against them to lower their scale, but that grants them fate points, and might cost you fate points.

You could invoke an aspect in such a way that your scale increases, but if you think about it, what is stopping the Erlking's huntmaster, a knight of a faerie court, or Kringle's seneschal from doing the same with their own appropriate aspect, bumping themselves up to Legendary?

Never mind how ridiculous it is that being the Erlking's huntmaster, a knight of a faerie court, or Kringle's seneschal automatically places you at an übermensch level of competence for every single action, even mental and social actions.

But that's a gamist concession. Not like GNS theory has any real value in modern design, but it's something that was put in specifically because it's a game.

Debateable. Even Kincaid (a superhumanly good assassin) couldn't kill Harry with a mortal weapon. Maybe if he hadn't fallen into the water he would have died, but maybe not. And the Eebs might have done him in with repeated jabs that were mostly mortal weaponry, but he was distracted and going working to stop them. The Winter Mantle is a hell of a thing, as is the stupid level of wizard power Dresden has gotten to in recent books. He's survived car bombs before; I really doubt that a mortal could kill him unless they got incredibly lucky and got him from surprise the first time with something absolutely overwhelming.

Knight mantles don't turn mental/social actions god tier.

>Even Kincaid (a superhumanly good assassin) couldn't kill Harry with a mortal weapon. Maybe if he hadn't fallen into the water he would have died, but maybe not.

The only reason he lived was that Mab herself intervened. The series makes it pretty clear that she's meddling a lot in order to make sure Harry stays as her knight. If she'd not saved him, he'd be dead.

He also nearly got killed in the most recent book by virtue of 'An LMG'. Even with his winter mantle and his shielding bracelet he nearly got mowwed the fuck down and needed medical treatment to avoid bleeding out.

The same people that nearly killed him also got removed from the equation by a single mortal woman with a flash bang. A mortal woman who was recruited for a heist because she's a better safecracker than actual supernatural people. But since she's mortal and a Denarian of his class is Legendary, he'd have been better off just doing it himself rather than getting her involved.

>But since she's mortal and a Denarian of his class is Legendary, he'd have been better off just doing it himself rather than getting her involved.
But that's true.

>But since she's mortal and a Denarian of his class is Legendary, he'd have been better off just doing it himself rather than getting her involved.
If a character doesn't know how to do something they don't know how to do something. Being supernaturally Fuck-Huge won't suddenly have him know how to be a catburglar, because scale doesn't apply to literally everything, because that doesn't make sense.

>The mantles represented herein (page 119) are designed to give advantage to the appropriate party in the appropriate context.

For some characters, scale is context-dependent:
>Fae stunts [for a changeling] operate at Supernatural scale (page 182).
>The Knight usually operates at Otherworldly scale (page 182) when battling evil.

For other characters, scale is still context-dependent, but that context is "everything," short of compels (which grant fate points):
>The Huntmaster operates at Otherworldly scale (page 182).
>The Knights operate at Otherworldly scale (page 182).
>The Seneschal operates at Otherworldly scale (page 182).

>When applying scale to two opposing forces or individuals, compare each side’s level and then apply one of the following benefits to whichever is scaled higher:
>+1 per scale level to their action before the roll
>+2 per scale level to the result after the roll, if the roll succeeds
>1 free invocation per scale level on a successful advantage after the roll

True fae have a worse deal:
>True Fae USUALLY operate at an Otherworldly scale (page 182).
Emphasis mine. Still, never before have pixies been so strong.

>If a character doesn't know how to do something they don't know how to do something. Being supernaturally Fuck-Huge won't suddenly have him know how to be a catburglar, because scale doesn't apply to literally everything, because that doesn't make sense.

His coin is literally that of the spymaster of the Denarians and he's shown no shortage of talents in such areas.

Dresden is shit, and anything it touches turns to shit. Fate Accelerated is not a bad system, but playing any of the Dresden Files RPGs is like pulling teeth.

The Dresden Files Accelerated manages to preserve the absolute worst part of Fate Accelerated: the rules heavily encourage you to shoehorn all of your actions into a single approach.

Usually, that approach is Clever (called "Intellect" in this new game), because it covers "Quick thinking, the solving of complex problems, or accounting for numerous variables at once," which is more generous than any other approach's definition.

The Dresden Files Accelerated is particularly cancerous about this because certain (common) character concepts actually call for hard-locked Intellect rolls for mandatory powers. Any magical practitioner's Sight and Soulgaze are Intellect-based, and any fae glamours are also Intellect-based.

I like how there is a Sneaky/Guile approach, and yet glamours use Clever/Intellect instead.

You're misinterpreting the writing here. It's not saying "usually" as in "scale applies only to some situations", it means usually as in "sometimes a True Fae isn't at Otherworldly scale".
Scale is always context dependent, just like everything else in Fate.

>Still, never before have pixies been so strong.
I recall hearing they were easy as hell to break in 4e D&D, as a PC race.

>the rules heavily encourage you to shoehorn all of your actions into a single approach.
That's like saying Mutants & Masterminds encourages you to have game breaking powers.
Some players there for figurative masturbation might be encouraged to do that, but the game's also pretty clear about it not being the point and explicitly discourages it.

"Usually it's when you're using supernatural abilities" lines up with the way most mantles work. Changelings, werewolves, white court virgins, and the like only gain scale when using their powers. The book explicitly states this.

The huntmaster, the knights, the seneschal, and others lack that "when using X" provision. They instead have a flat "operates at Otherworldly scale." If this is not how it is supposed to work, then the wording should change to match up with the wording of changelings, werewolves, white court virgins, etc.

I would send feedback to Evil Hat, but I acquired my early peek PDF illegally.

Fate Core is much better about this, because shoehorning in all of your actions into a single skill is much harder than doing the same with a single approach.

Core's skills are simply more robust than Accelerated's poorly-defined approaches.

>Fate Core is much better about this, because shoehorning in all of your actions into a single skill is much harder than doing the same with a single approach.

Yeah, I did sorta prefer the pyramid approach. Where characters needed to be kinda well-rounded.

Fate has literally never cared about balance, why are you whining now?