I'll expand on what Bluedevil said and try to dig into maneuvers at the same time, because maneuvers are really tactically the best way to go in this game usually. They're designed to lead to a more narrative feel, you set up the shot and take it for big effect - something you see in the books time and time again.
Invoking Aspects
First, what you can do with aspects. Using an aspect is called invoking that aspect. You can see YS98 for all the details, but here are the basics:
- Think of how an aspect applies to the situation or can be used
- Invoke that aspect to gain some advantage or give some penalty
Aspects
You have aspects. The scene has aspects. The campaign has aspects. The NPCs have aspects. Everything has aspects. The trick is learning those aspects so that you can use them. Here are a few aspects relevant to the situation right now. Normally you'd perform an Assessment action to learn them, but I'll spell a few out for learning purposes:
- Scene Aspect: Twilight Going on Night
- Ghoul Aspect: Anger Issues
- Campaign Aspect: Trouble Around The Corner
You can use any of these aspects, not just your own. Assessing the situation to learn aspects is a great way of getting bonuses through tagging (below), but often not practical in a fight due to taking actions to do so (depending on the skill).
Alternately you can guess at an aspect. You could probably guess that there's some kind of sunset aspect on the current scene for example. I don't make you know the exact name. If you said you wanted to tag the Sunset Aspect, I'd allow it. Now, if you make an assumption that is wrong, however, you lose the FATE point you're spending (since you can't tag it without knowing it exists). So that's a gamble. If you gambled because I wasn't clear in my description of something, however, you won't lose the FATE point.
Invoking
Invoking an aspect costs a FATE point normally, but if you just discovered an aspect in a scene (say through an assessment) or the aspect was just created (say a consequence), you can invoke it without spending a FATE point. That's a tag.
The most common two ways to invoke an aspect are to gain +2 to a die roll or to reroll a die roll. Those are pretty straight forward. Remember, you have to find an aspect that fits the situation, and you always decide whether or not to invoke an aspect
after the dice have been rolled. It's retroactive to the roll. No need to spend when you don't need to and no need to decide how you'll use the invoke until you see the dice results.
The next way is to invoke for effect. Invoking for effect is more complex.
This is where making a declaration and using a FATE point comes in. We had a long discussion about that, so I think everyone gets it, but just to recap: declarations are taking something previously unknown in the game world and then defined by the player during play.
The second way to invoke for effect is to invoke a
compel on the enemy. This next part is important:
If you spend a FATE point to invoke to compel, the target of the compel gets the FATE point! Tagging bypasses this. You didn't spend a FATE point, they don't get a FATE point. If they buy off the compel, as some NPCs do have FATE points to spend, you do not get the FATE point back. It just goes away.
Maneuvers
This post is getting way too long! Okay, I'll try to keep this brief. We'll see.
A maneuver is something you do in the combat. Dirty tricks, tactical movement, changes to the area around you, "Your shoelaces are untied", whatever. Think cinematically. Maneuvers create aspects. You can create an aspect on yourself (called a naval gazing maneuver) or create them on someone else. Things like On His Back, Blown Off Balance, In My Sights, Steady Hand, Flanked, Rattled, Fallen Tree, Broken Glass, Sudden Darkness, Dust Cloud, Smoke Screen, Flat Tire, Focused on the Road, Flour on the Floor, etc. can all be aspects created through maneuvers.
To perform a maneuver you take an action to make a skill roll. If successful, the aspect is applied. Sometimes the skill roll is opposed, as the case of Stealth vs. Alertness. Other times it is made against a base difficulty, especially in the case of naval gazing maneuvers.
You can tag maneuvers in the scene in which they were created. That means you can layer aspects. And you can tag an aspect someone else created with a maneuver. That means if all four PCs perform a maneuver against one guy in an exchange, one person can tag it next exchange for +8 to the roll. That is huge. That bypasses stress tracks and goes right into creating consequences, which can further be tagged to do it all over again. Groups that work together to create aspects will do really well, and spending some FATE points to invoke the same aspect again can be truly devistating. It's
much better than repeatedly attacking. One big hit is worth more than multiple small hits in DFRPG due to the way stress tracks and consequences work together and how Taken Out works.
This is one reason that FATE points are so powerful and that taking compels is so good.
