Advancement

Level Up!

People change. Your approaches change to adapt to your current situation. Your life experiences accumulate and shape your personality. In Trilogy that happens through character advancement. Advancement allows you to change your aspects, add or change stunts, and raise your approach bonuses. You do this when your character reaches a milestone.

Milestones

Stories in TV shows, comic books, movies, and even video games usually continue from episode to episode, season to season. In Trilogy you can tell those kinds of stories. Play many game sessions in a row using the same characters—this is often called a campaign—and the story builds on itself. But within these long stories, there are shorter story arcs, like single episodes of a TV show or single issues of a comic, where shorter stories are told and wrapped up. The Fate Accelerated system can do that too, even within a longer campaign.

We call those wrap-ups milestones—whether they’re small ones for short stories, or really big ones at the end of many sessions of play. There are three levels of milestones and each allows you to change your character in specific ways.

Minor Milestones

A minor milestone usually occurs at the end of a session of play, or when one piece of a story has been resolved. Rather than making your character more powerful, this kind of milestone is more about changing your character, about adjusting in response to whatever’s going on in the story if you need to. Sometimes it won’t really make sense to take advantage of a minor milestone, but you always have the opportunity in case you need to.

After a minor milestone, you can choose to do one of the following:

Switch the ratings of any two approaches.
Rename one aspect that isn’t your high concept.
Exchange one stunt for a different stunt.

Note: This does not apply to Powers.

Choose a new stunt (and adjust your refresh, if you already have six stunts).

Also, if you have a moderate consequence, check to see if it’s been around for two sessions. If so, you can clear it.

Significant Milestones

A significant milestone usually occurs at the end of a scenario or the conclusion of a big plot event (or, when in doubt, at the end of every two or three sessions). Unlike minor milestones, which are primarily about change, significant milestones are about learning new things—dealing with problems and challenges has made your character generally more capable at what they do.

In addition to the benefit of a minor milestone, you also gain both of the following:

If you have a severe consequence that’s been around for at least two sessions, you can clear it.
Raise the bonus of one approach by one.

Major Milestones

Major milestones should only occur when something happens in the campaign that shakes it up a lot—the end of a big story arc, the final defeat of a main NPC villain, or any other large-scale change that reverberates around your game world.

These milestones are about gaining more power. The challenges of yesterday simply aren’t sufficient to threaten these characters anymore, and the threats of tomorrow will need to be more adept, organized, and determined to stand against them.

Achieving a major milestone confers the benefits of a significant milestone and a minor milestone. In addition, you may do all of the following:

Take an additional point of refresh, which you may immediately use to purchase a stunt if you wish.
Rename your character’s high concept (optional).

RAISING APPROACH BONUSES

When you raise the bonus of an approach, there’s only one rule you need to remember: you can’t raise an approach bonus above Superb (+5).

Scale

Power level over 9000!

In Trilogy, characters may continue to grow beyond the maximum. One method for dealing with increasingly powerful player characters is to rescale the world. Rather than taking that route, instead we introduce scale—or tiers, if you prefer.

This will allow both for threats that are truly overwhelming and for increasingly godlike player characters. It won't make sense to use this system for every story, of course. If you are going gritty and low tech, everyone will be at the lowest tier, Mundane, and pretty well stay there. In that case it may be necessary to "scale the world" as characters max out their approaches, which will be covered in Narrator's Content.

When a character who has maxed out their Approaches (+5 to each one) reaches a major milestone, above, they may choose to forego gaining an additional point of refresh and instead reset their approaches to the default level (+3, +2, +2, +1, +1, +0) and increase their scale by one. They do, however, gain the additional point to an approach of their choice granted by the significant milestone which will kickstart their journey into the higher tier. The character gains all other bonuses normally granted by achieving a major milestone.

System

When any two characters of different scale enter an exchange, the character with the higher rating will receive a bonus determined by the difference in scale. For instance if a Mundane (scale 1) character clashes with a Legendary (scale 4) character, the difference is 3 (4 - 1 = 3) so in the bonuses defined below X would be equal to 3.

Scale Ratings

Mundane - A Human or other baseline Species
Supernatural - A Super or gifted Species
Paragon - An elite Super or unique entity of incredible power
Legendary - A being so powerful that mortals barely register
Godlike - The most powerful beings in the universe

Scale Bonus

During each exchange the advantaged character may choose one of the following options:

+X to roll before the dice are rolled.
+2X to the roll total after rolling, but only if the roll succeeds.
+X additional free invokes from the create advantage action.