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Suppose we're playing the Dresden Files RPG, and one of the characters decides to go for broke. He wants to use fate points on 4 seperate aspects that are relevant, for a whopping +8 to the result. Is this allowed? Is there a limit to how many fate points you can spend in a round, and if so, what is it?

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That's the point of the system right there - a player makes a decision to spend a limited resource to power his ability to accomplish something that obviously aligns really well with his character - or it wouldn't hit 4 separate Aspects! Spending those Fate points is an explicit act of player agency. And it's going to leave the player short on Fate for a while, too. Why would you want to stop him? – gomad Nov 2 '11 at 22:17
Mostly we saw it in combat; i.e., "I attack the Ghoul, and spend fate points on his aspects of 'dazed', 'tripped', 'disoriented', and 'concussed' for +8 to the roll". I just wanted to be sure that this was an expected combat tactic (i.e., the party stacks aspects via maneuvers and one player goes for mass roll) and not some sort of accidental unbalancing exploit in the system. – GWLlosa Nov 3 '11 at 14:59
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Yup! That is EXACTLY how it goes - this allows players who might not have the combat chops to hurt a bad guy to still take meaningful part in the combat - it also makes the combat more exciting narratively, while allowing and encouraging more creative play. This answer of mine may be of help, too. – gomad Nov 3 '11 at 19:50

1 Answer

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Dresden Files does not limit the fate points you can spend in a single roll. As long as you have justifiable aspects and enough fate points, you can go for it.

That being said, Diaspora, another good FATE implementation, does limit you to using one aspect from each scope, the scope being the source of the aspect, like your character, opponent, scene, system, environment etc. You may want to use that if you want a limit.

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