Stunts

Stunts

You can use stunts to add a science-fictional gloss to otherwise normal skills.

Athletics

Athletics stunts can reflect the physiological advantages accrued from alien, mutant, cyborg, and similar anatomical variations. Power armor, performance-enhancing drugs, and prosthetic limbs and organs may also justify Athletics stunts.

• Glandular Implant: Because you have been implanted with an artificial adrenaline gland, once per session when you are using Athletics to overcome or defend, you may spend a fate point to treat your dice roll as ++++ before or after rolling them.
• Tentacles: Because you have powerful manipulator tentacles, you gain +2 to Athletics when creating advantages related to grabbing, grasping, or holding on to something.

Burglary

Burglary stunts can represent high-tech lockpicks and safecracking gear. If your setting includes regions of different technological sophistication, you can use Burglary stunts to reflect the advantages of greater technical knowledge and preparation.

• Ninja Skills: Because you have received special training, you gain +2 to Burglary when overcoming low-tech security equipment and procedures, such as unaugmented guards, mechanical locks, and pressure plates.

Contacts

Contacts stunts can reflect a reputation among particular groups or a wide array of acquaintances on certain planets. They also could reflect being wired into information technology and communications networks.

• Traveller: Because you have traveled extensively throughout the galaxy, whenever you return to a planet that you’ve ever visited, you gain +2 to Contacts to overcome difficulties in finding someone you need to find or want to meet. Additionally, you may spend a fate point when you first arrive on a new world to declare that you have been to this place before.

Crafts

See Fate Core, page 102.

Deceive

Deceive stunts can reflect the advantages possessed by particularly inscrutable or hard-to-read alien species. Also, sophisticated disguise kits and similar technologies justify a Deceive stunt.

• Mask-Like Countenance: Because your facial expressions are particularly neutral or otherwise hard to read, you gain +2 to defend with Deceive versus efforts to discern your true motivations, intentions, or nature using Empathy or Investigate.
• Personality Graft: Because you can imprint personality patterns upon your brain, you may spend a fate point to imprint the patterns of an individual that you’ve observed, gaining +2 to create advantages and overcome obstacles with Deceive when you are imitating or impersonating that individual.

Drive

See Fate Core, page 106.

Empathy

Empathy stunts can reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg abilities, as well as advanced neuroscientific equipment.

• Projective Telempath: Because you have psionic powers, you may attack with Empathy versus Will, sending out waves of emotion after emotion that produce mind-shattering catharsis in the target.
• Telempathic Healing: Because you have psionic powers, once per session you may reduce the severity of someone’s else’s consequence by one step by succeeding with Empathy against Mediocre (+0) difficulty for a mild consequence, Fair (+2) for moderate, and Great (+4) for severe. If you succeed, you then take a mild consequence. If you fail, you may succeed at a cost by taking a consequence of the severity you healed.
• Vee-Kay Analyzer: Because you have access to special equipment, you gain +2 to Empathy when trying to figure out someone’s psychological stressors or breaking points during an interview.

Fight

Fight stunts can reflect training with particular weapons, especially stylishly futuristic ones. They may also refer to fighting styles or schools, or to maneuvers and strikes with futuristic weapons.

• Energy-Staff Feint: Because of your peregrinato-warrior training, you gain +2 to create advantages with Fight when using your energy staff to blind, disorient, or otherwise discomfit your opponent.
• Zero-Gee Brawling: Because you have trained as a space marine, you gain +2 to attack with Fight when you are in hand-to-hand combat in microgravity conditions.

Investigate

Investigate stunts may reflect sophisticated cognitive capabilities as well as high-tech data-analysis tools.

• Encyclopedia Pangalactica: Because you have access to the Encyclopedia Pangalactica, you gain +2 to creating advantages with Investigate if the object of your investigation is important enough to have an encyclopedia entry.
• Full-Spectrum Signal Analyzer: Because you have access to special equipment, you gain +2 to Investigate when overcoming difficulties associated with deciphering or interpreting possible communication signals.

Lore

See Fate Core, page 114.

Notice

Notice stunts represent alien abilities and mutations as well as advanced communications gear and sensors.

• Handheld Scanner: Because you have access to special equipment, you gain +2 when creating advantages with Notice during an initial inspection of some area or scene.
• Radio Sense: Because of a mutation that allows you to sense radio waves, you gain +2 to create advantages with Notice related to the electromagnetic radiation being given off by a point source.

Physique

Physique stunts can reflect the physiological advantages accrued from alien, mutant, cyborg, and similar anatomical variations, as well as from survival equipment of different sorts.

• Heavyworlder: Because you are native to a high-gee planet, you gain +2 to Physique to overcome or defend against the effects of high gravity, acceleration, and other g-forces that you may experience.
• Rapid Regeneration: Because of your unique physiology, once per scene you may spend a fate point to immediately clear a mild consequence or reduce the severity of a moderate or severe consequence by one step. You may rename the consequence if appropriate.

Provoke

Provoke stunts can reflect alien abilities and setting-defining social circumstances.

• Bug-Eyed Monster: Because you are a freakish alien, you gain +2 to Provoke when creating advantages related to frightening or repulsing normal human beings and others with similar sensibilities.
• Psychic Blast: Because of your psychic powers, you may use Provoke to attack any intelligent target, even if you are unable to communicate or otherwise interact with them. The target defends with Will.
• The Death Sentence in Twelve Systems: Because of your notoriety in the demimonde, you gain +2 to Provoke when creating advantages among criminals, outlaws, and other denizens of the underworld.

Rapport

As with Provoke, Rapport stunts can be used to reflect alien abilities and setting-defining social circumstances.

• Imperial Facilitator: Because of the special trust the Imperator of the Galaxy has for you, you gain +2 to Rapport when overcoming an Imperial citizen’s reluctance to assist you in your duties.
• Pheromonal Mimic: Because you can produce tailored pheromonal mixes, you may spend a fate point to gain +2 to Rapport against one target who shares your life-support environment. This bonus lasts until the end of the session. You may spend another fate point to change your target, but changing your target ends the bonus for your previous target.

Resources

Resources stunts reflect unusual sources of wealth or economic influence as well as the effects of wealth accumulation.

• Galactic Line of Credit: Whenever you are compelled because of your financial needs or economic circumstances, you gain an extra fate point.
• Cash Reserves: Once per session, when you are compelled because of your financial needs or economic circumstances, you may reject the compel without paying a fate point.
• Trader to the Stars: After you use Resources to create advantages that represent the acquisition of trade goods or valuable commodities, you may trade any unused free invocations on those advantages for fate points, one to one, but you must do so at a market for those goods. However, at the end of a session, you lose any fate points you have above your refresh. Note that others do not lose any excess accrued fate points, reflecting the volatility of the market.
• All the Way to the Bank: At the end of a session, if you have three or more fate points in excess of your refresh, you may spend three fate points to increase your refresh by one. (GMs, as written this is a pretty powerful effect, so you may wish to slow advancement by setting the threshold for advancing to four, five, six, or even more excess fate points, depending on the circumstances of the campaign.)
• Market Savvy: Because you are a master of buying low and selling high, whenever you use Resources to create an advantage that represents the acquisition of trade goods or valuable commodities, a success counts as a success with style.

Shoot

Shoot stunts may reflect special training or experience as well as devices such as scopes, sights, and special ammunition. Firearms may be represented by special rules, such as the Weapon ratings described in Fate Core (page 277) and the alternatives described in the Fate System Toolkit (pages 70-72).

• L-5 Colony Windage: Because you are experienced in correcting for the effects of being inside rotating cylindrical habitats and similar places, you can attack with Shoot with no increase in difficulty due to Coriolis force, as described in “Microgravity”.

Stealth

Stealth stunts may reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg capabilities as well as technological devices such as cloaking devices and stealth sheathing.

• Camouflage Circuit: Because you have a suit with a light-bending fiber-optic lattice, you may spend a fate point to remove yourself from the scene. You may later reintroduce yourself to the scene in any place that you could have reached while you were out of sight, even interrupting another’s action to do so. If you didn’t act during the exchange in which you vanished, you may act immediately. Otherwise, you simply reappear and will act during the next exchange.
• Prana Bindu Training: Because you have been trained in a graceful and subtle martial art, you may defend with Stealth against Fight attacks as long as you have suffered no stress or consequences in the current conflict.

Will

Will stunts may reflect alien, mutant, or cyborg capabilities as well as technological devices such as cybernetic memory or psionics.

• Alien Mindset: Because your alien physiology makes you quite emotionally stable, you gain +2 to defend with Will against efforts to move or persuade you with emotional appeals, particularly those that try to “get your goat” or “get under your skin.”
• Psychic Blast: Because of your psychic powers, you may attack with Will. The target must be able to perceive your gaze.
• Total Recall: Because you have a library of data implanted in your skull, you gain +2 to Will when overcoming obstacles involving memory (Fate Core, page 127).