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-====== Stunts ======
-//See Also: [[Stunts (list)]]//
-Taking a new stunt reduces your character's refresh rate by one.
-A stunt is a special trait your character has that changes the way a skill works for you. Stunts indicate some special, privileged way a character uses a skill that is unique to whoever has that stunt, which is a pretty common trope in a lot of settings - special or elite training, exceptional talents, the mark of destiny, genetic alteration, innate coolness, and a myriad of other reasons all explain why some people get more out of their skills than others do.
-Unlike skills, which are about the sort of things anyone can do in Miranda, stunts are about individual characters. For that reason, there is a section below about how to make your own stunts.
-Having stunts in your game allows you to differentiate characters that have the same skills one another. This allows a [[character]] to specialize in various aspects of a skill so that two characters each having a Good(+3) Crafts skill can differ.
-===== Building Stunts =====
-The stunts provided on the [[Stunts (list)|master list]] are not meant to the the only stunts you are allowed to take. Instead, they are simply meant to be a jumping off point for the development of stunts that fit your character.
-==== Adding a New Action ====
-The most basic option for a stunt is to allow a [[skills|skill]] to do something that it normally can't do. It adds a new action onto the base skill in certain situations, for those with this stunt. This new action can be one that's available to another skill (allowing one skill to swap for another under certain circumstances), or one that’s not available to any skill.
-Here are some new action stunts:
-=== Backstab ===
-You can use [[Stealth]] to make physical attacks, provided your target isn't already aware of your presence.
-=== The Fight in the Dog ===
-You can use [[Intimidation]] to enter the kinds of contests that you’d normally need Physique for, whenever your ability to psych your opponent out with the force of your presence alone would be a factor.
-=== You're Never Safe ===
-You can use [[Burglary]] to make mental attacks and create advantages against a target, by staging a heist in such a way as to shatter their confidence in their security.
-==== Adding a Bonus to an Action ====
-Another use for a stunt is to give a skill to get an automatic bonus under a particular, very narrow circumstance, effectively letting a character specialize in something. The circumstance should be narrower than what the normal action allows, and only apply to one particular action or pair or actions.
-The usual bonus is +2 to the skill total. However, if you want, you can also express the bonus gives as two shifts of additional effect after the roll succeeds, if that makes more sense. Remember, higher shifts on a roll allows your action to be more effective in certain ways.
-You can also use this to establish any effect worth two shifts as an additional benefit of succeeding at the skill roll. This might be Fair (+2) passive opposition, the equivalent of a 2-point hit, a mild consequence, or an advantage that takes Fair (+2) opposition to remove.
-Here ar some examples of adding a bonus to an action:
-=== Demonologist ===
-Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using [[Lore]], whenever the situation has specifically to do with demons or devils.
-=== Warmaster ===
-When using this weapon or style you get a +2 damage bonus.
-=== Child of the Court ===
-Gain a +2 bonus to any attempt to overcome obstacles or defend social attacks with [[Rapport]], when you're at an aristocratic function, such as a royal ball.
-=== Creating a Rules Exception ===
-Finally, a stunt can allow a skill to make a single exception, in a narrow circumstance, for any other game rule that doesn’t precisely fit into the category of an action. [[Conflicts]] are full of different little rules about the circumstances under which a skill can be used and what happens when you use them. Stunts can break those, allowing your character to stretch the boundaries of the possible.
-The only limit to this is that a stunt can’t change any of the basic rules for aspects in terms of invoking, compelling, and the fate point econmy. Those always remain the same.
-Here are some stunts that create rules exceptions:
-=== Ritualist ===
-Use [[Lore]] in place of another skill during a challenge, allowing you to use Lore twice in the same challenge.
-=== Hogtie ===
-When you use [[Crafts]] to create a Hogtied (or similar) advantage on someone, you can always actively oppose any overcome rolls to escape the hogtie, even if you're not there. That’s how good your hogties are.
-=== Riposte ===
-If you succeed with style on a [[Fighting]] defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a [[aspects#boost]].
-===== Balancing Stunt Utility =====
-If you look at most of the example stunts, you'll notice that the circumstances under which you can use the stunt are pretty narrow compared to the base skills they modify. That’s the sweet spot you want to shoot for with your own stunts—you want them to be limited enough in scope that it feels special when you use them, but not so narrow that you never see them come up after you take them.
-If the stunt effectively takes over one of the skill’s base actions, it's not limited enough. You don’t want a stunt replacing the skill it modifies. The two main ways to limit a stunt are by keeping its effects to a specific action or pair of actions (only creating an advantage or only attacks and defend rolls), or by limiting the situations in which you can use it (only when you’re among nobles, only when it deals with the supernatural, and so on).
-For the best results, use both—have the stunt restricted to a specific action, which can only be used in a very specific in-game situation. If you're worried about the situation being too narrow, back up and think of the ways the skill might be used in play. If you can see it being relevant to one of those things, you're probably on the right track. If you can't, you may need to adjust the stunt a little to make sure it'll come up. You can also restrict a stunt by only allowing it to be used once in a certain period of game time, such as once per conflict, once per scene, or once per session.
-===== Stunt Families =====
-If you want to get detailed about a particular kind of training or talent, you can create a stunt family for it. This is a group of stunts that are related to and chain off of each other somehow.
-This allows you to create things like fighting styles or elite schools in your setting and represents the benefits of belonging to them. It also helps you get specific about what types of specialized competence are available, if you want to give your game a sense of having distinct "archtypes" - so there might be an "Ace Pilot" or a "Cat Burglar" family of stunts.
-Creating a stunt family is easy. You make one stunt that serves as a prerequisite for all the others in the family, qualifying you to take further stunts up the chain. Then, you need to create a handful of stunts that are all related somehow to the prerequisite, either stacking its effects or branching out into another set of effects.
-==== Stacking Effects ====
-Perhaps the simplest way of handling a related stunt is just making the original stunt more effective in the same situation:
-  * If the stunt added an action, narrow it further and give the new action a bonus. Follow the same rules for adding a bonus—the circumstances in which it applies should be narrower than that of the base action.
-  * If the stunt gave a bonus to an action, give an additional +2 bonus to the same action or add an additional two-shift effect to that action.
-  * If the stunt made a rules exception, make it even more of an exception. (This might be difficult depending on what the original exception is. Don’t worry, you have other options.)
-Keep in mind that the upgraded stunt effectively replaces the original. You can look at it as a single super-stunt that costs two slots (and two refresh) for the price of being more powerful than other stunts.
-Here are some stunts that stack:
-=== Advanced Warmaster ===
-//Requires Warmaster.//  When you're fighting anyone who is armed with a sword, you get a further +2 bonus to creating an advantage using Warmaster.
-=== Scion of the Court ===
-//Requires Child of the Court.//  When you overcome an obstacle with Child of the Court, you may additionally create an advantage that describes how the general attitude turns in your favor, which you can use for the rest of the scene. If anyone wants to try and get rid of this aspect, they must overcome Fair (+2) opposition.
-=== Advanced Ritualist ===
-//Requires Ritualist.//  You gain a +2 bonus when you use Lore in place of another skill during a challenge. This allows you to use Lore twice in the same challenge.
-==== Branching Effects ====
-When you branch, you create a new stunt that relates to the original in terms of theme or subject matter, but provides a wholly new effect. If you look at stacking effects as expanding a stunt or skill vertically, you can look at branching effects as expanding them laterally.
-If your original stunt added an action to a skill, a branching stunt might add a different action to that skill, or it might provide a bonus to a different action the skill already has, or create a rules exception, etc. The mechanical effect isn’t connected to the prerequisite stunt at all, but provides a complementary bit of awesome.
-This allows you to provide a few different paths to being awesome that follow from a single stunt. You can use this to highlight different elements of a certain skill and help characters who are both highly ranked in the same skill to differentiate from each other by following different stunt families. As an example of how this works, let’s take a look at the Deceit skill. If you look at the skill description, there are several avenues that we might enhance with stunts: lying, sleight of hand and misdirection, disguise, creating cover stories, or social conflict.
-So let’s make our first stunt something like this:
-=== Fast Talk ===
-You get a +2 to overcome obstacles with [[Deceit]], provided you don’t have to talk to the person you’re trying to deceive for more than a few sentences before blowing past them.
-Here are some potential options for branching off of that stunt:
-=== Quick Disguise ===
-//Requires Fast Talk.//  You’re able to put together a convincing disguise in a heartbeat, using items from your surroundings. You can roll Deceit to create a disguise without any time to prepare, in nearly any situation.
-=== Instant Cover ===
-//Requires Fast Talk.//  You can whip up a cover story like no one’s business, even if you haven’t made an effort to establish it beforehand. Any time you overcome an obstacle in public using Deceit, automatically add a scene aspect representing your cover story, which you can use to your advantage the rest of the sceneand stick a free invocation on it.
-=== Hey, What’s That? ===
-//Requires Fast Talk.//  Gain a +2 bonus whenever you’re using Deceit to momentarily distract someone, as long as part of the distraction involves saying something.
-Every one of those stunts thematically relates to very quick, spontaneous uses of Deceit, but they each have a different flavor of awesome.
-{{tag>fate rules stunts}}