The basic idea is that you take away boss stress tracks and replace them with immunity to stress except under certain conditions.
Like, a vampire is immune to physical stress unless he's taken by surprise with a wooden stake attack while someone is reciting an exorcism rite.
Cost: the vampire permanently loses all physical stress boxes. Benefit: Because of my unholy toughness and reflexes, I am immune to all physical stress unless I am surprised by an attack with a wooden stake while an exorcism rite is being recited.
And since the characters are piling everything up, and everything lies on the one attack, that might add up to having to take a Severe consequence just to stay in there.
Conditions can range from "A sword blessed by an 80-year-old virgin" to "Each of the standing stones is smeared with the blood of a new-slaughtered goat" to "Insulted your mother."
The conversation it sprung from was trying to create a WoW-ish feel to fights in his system, where there's lots of things to do and everyone has to contribute, but without the orchestrated ballet feel or the emphasis on DPS as the primary contribution.
At first I was describing it very abstractly without mechanics, and then I realised Fate already kinda supports the idea.
Then we talked a bit about class specialisation in this kind of environment.
It would have stunts like "Because I'm a shadow priest, I get +2 to Intimidate rolls to create aspects related to death and despair," or "Because I'm a survival hunter, I get +2 to Craft checks to create aspects which impede the target's movement."
But yeah.
I like this; it feels like a solid way to model enemies that are nearly impossible to put down put which have specific vulnerabilities which put them down immediately.
And even for more mundane NPCs that aren't vampires and werewolves and Cthulhu, you can mess with it.
"Captain Hook is immune to physical stress unless at least one of these are true: he can hear the Crocodile ticking; he is worried about showing Bad Form; he is distracted by a crew member."
I'm ok with esoteric. I had some trouble with my GF, intimidated by the vast possibilities of FAE, I thought giving her examples of chargen or actual games might help her.
(@JonathanHobbs Ooooh--use this system to limit certain outcomes of defeat, like you can't actually KILL a vampire without the above circumstances, but you can defeat him and force him to retreat as a cloud of vapour or a bat without any special prep.)
