Stunts

This section contains new Stunts unique to Iskios. It also provides a reference for those Stunts from the SotC SRD which Player Characters possess.

Alertness

Vigilance

Danger Sense

The character maintains a quick and easy awareness of ambushes and other nasty surprises – perhaps preternaturally, perhaps simply due to finely tuned mundane senses. Whenever ambushed (see page XX), the character is able to take a full defensive action, gaining a +2 on his defense roll, regardless of whether or not he’s surprised (if he is surprised, dropping his base defense to Mediocre, this stunt takes his base defense up to Fair).

Arcana

A Foot In Each World

Traveler

A character possessing this Stunt can ignore any modifiers increasing the difficulty of locating a Door and is able to sense them up to a hundred meters away. Further, a Traveler is able to open Doors which are closed and close those which are open.

Opening a closed Door takes an action and a successful Arcana roll against a target of Mediocre. If the opening just barely succeeds, the “full” default time of opening is one minute. Any shifts gained decrease the time taken by one step on the time table: One minute -> Half a minute -> A few moments -> Instantaneous.

Closing a Door, (having stepped through into the Otherworld?) takes a similar time and effort.

A Traveler can attempt to extinguish a Door, effectively locking it forever, taking an action and making a successful Arcana roll against a difficulty determined by the GM. Some Doors are more persistent than others.

If a Traveler on the other side is attempting to prevent the Door from being closed or extinguished, some sort of arcane contest will occur.

Phasing
Requires: Traveler

A character with this Stunt does not need a Door to be able to travel between worlds, but can enter it instantaneously. For a few moments, they can still be seen in the world they have left, appearing as a sort of ghost, but they are insubstantial and can neither effect nor be effected by those in that world. Then they disappear altogether.

A character cannot safely phase in every location; what is empty in one world may be on the inside a tree or cliff on the other. Someone with this Stunt can “peek” on the other side and decide whether they want to fully phase into the other world. Having started to phase and decided they cannot or will not cross over, they stay in the current world and take one box of physical Stress (lowest available box).

Traveling between worlds in this manner is exhausting. If a character phases between the Natural World and the Otherworld, they take a mild physical Consequence of “Exhausted”.

Spellcraft

The Sight

Whether it is due to specialized training, or being Night blooded, there is sorcerous potential within you. You are strongly attuned to the arcane spark that is within the living souls of all who remain following the Blood Plague.

This is the prerequisite Stunt to be able to cast Arcane spells.

Normally, a character may be called upon by the GM to roll Arcana as a kind of paranormal Alertness skill, to pick up on the surface strangeness in a place. With this stunt, you may deliberately use your Arcana skill to gain some mystic or terrible insight into the occult "climate" of an area, as if it were Investigation – using a similar time-frame and gaining a similar level of (paranormal) detail.

This also means that you may use Arcana instead of Alertness when surprised, if the origin of the surprise is in some way supernatural, and can even use Arcana as your initiative skill when locked in a conflict with otherworldly forces.

Used with this stunt, Arcana can give you access to information that would normally be impossible to get – though the GM is under no obligation to give you that information in any clear fashion. Muddled riddles and vague intimations are the mode of the day.

Finally, a character with this stunt receives a +1 to any Arcana roll when researching Arcane Lore topics.

(Type) Sorcery - Fire/Water/Earth/Air/Soul
Requires: The Sight

This Stunt allows the character to cast spells within the theme of their type of magic, Elementalism, or Soul Magic. There are three Static functions provided by this Stunt, and one Dynamic.

1) Characters may Attack with their Arcana Skill at a range of 2, similar to the use of the Archery Skill. This is defined as fire bolts, ice shards, or what have you as appropriate. As with Archery, defense is limited to Athletics, Weapons, or Fists. Also as with Archery, Arcana can not be used as defense. (Static)

2) Characters may Maneuver with their Arcana Skill at a range of 2 without respect to environmental or scene Aspects. As with any Maneuver, this is an opposed roll against a target to place a Fragile Aspect on it. For Fire or Water Sorcery, the opposing Skill is Endurance. For Earth or Air Sorcery, the opposing Skill is Might. For Soul Sorcery, the opposing Skill is Resolve. If successful, the Aspect will be type-appropriate. Examples: Seared, Suffocating, Held, Checked, Terrified, etc. As with any other Aspect, it may be tagged by others to enhance their own attack or defense against the affected target. This attack might be defined as a wave of flame, vines or earthen hands holding the opposition from below, etc. (Static) 8

3) Characters may set a Block with their Arcana Skill at a range of 2 without respect to environmental or scene Aspects. Typically, a Block can only be set by a character in their zone. This Block could be to prevent a character from leaving a zone, to defend a friend, or to prevent some other action. The Skill used as defense is the same as for Maneuvers. See the SotC SRD for details. As with any other Block, it needs to be renewed each exchange if the character wishes to maintain the Block, and the GM sets any penalties. (Static)

4) Characters may define and cast other spells they feel are possible given the situation and their kind of sorcery. They describe the desired effect and the GM sets a difficulty for them to roll against if they wish to continue. If they generate one shift they are successful and must pay one Fate Point. If they fail, they take one Health Stress (of the lowest box available) representing fatigue. Of course, with an Aspect matching their mode of Sorcery (e.g. "Heart of Flame"), they will be able to pay a Fate Point to make it less likely that they fail. (Dynamic)

Note that if the spell is significantly small in scope and the GM determines the difficulty would be less than Mediocre, they should not require the cost of a Fate Point for the spell. Examples: Using a breeze to lift a skirt, lighting a torch, evaporating someone's goblet of wine, and so on. 9

Sorcerous Area Attack (Fireball/Ice Storm/Cyclone/Hands of Earth)
Requires: (Type) Sorcery

The character may make an Arcana attack against every opponent (and any friends!) in a zone at a range of 2. The Attack is made at a -2 to the roll. Defined stacks of minions do not gain their group bonus for defense. Damage to minions is applied to each minion sequentially, rather than taking out one minion before proceeding to the next.

Example: Talan makes a Fantastic sword attack against a group of 5 Fair Vahgar. Gaining their +2 group bonus, they roll and achieve a Great defense. He achieves 2 Shifts and kills one of them outright.

[ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][ ] [x][x]

Example: Caedes makes a Fantastic Fireball attack against two groups of 5 Fair Vahgar and a Swamp Hag. He applies his -2 the roll and ends at a Great Result. Neither group gains their +2 group bonus and achieve Fair defenses. (2 Shifts against each group). The Swamp Hag gets a Good defense. Each group looks like this:

[ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][x] [ ][x]

[ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][ ] [ ][x] [ ][x]

And the Swamp Hag (having no particular vulnerability to Fire) takes 1 Stress as well.

Wind Leaper
Requires: Air Sorcery

A master of the skies, your character uses the winds to assist them in great leaps and is able to glide across great distances as well, gliding from sky barge to sky barge to deliver news or perhaps death.

Gliding on the winds, the character can move at the speed of a jog for up to ten miles in a roughly horizontal plane. They must start their glide from a high place such as a cliff or sky barge.

Excluding unusual circumstances, (e.g. being tied to a bolder and dropped off a barge), the character will never be hurt from a fall.

With the expenditure of a Fate Point, the character can ignore any height related borders, leaping across small chasms, from building to building, or around the battlefield for the duration of a scene. For the purposes of movement only, their Athletics is considered to be at Fantastic for the scene. They are in the air while in motion and touch down at a distance up to the shifts generated versus a target of Mediocre. 10

Contacting

Connections

I Know a Guy Who Knows a Guy

Sometimes it’s not who you know, but who the people you know, know. Many of your contacts are, themselves, very well connected. The breadth of your contacts make all Contacting rolls take one unit less of time, and you gain a +2 on any “second roll” efforts made to corroborate information you’ve gotten from another of your contacts. Consequently, this bonus is useful on a follow-up, but not on the initial roll.

Endurance

Persistence

Feel The Burn

The character can push through incredible pain in order to reach his goal. The character can take one extra moderate, physical consequence (see page XX) before moving on to a severe physical consequence, allowing him to take a total of four consequences in a physical conflict.

Tireless

Normally, someone who has not gotten a regular night’s sleep takes a consequence indicating his lack of rest, which cannot be removed save with the requisite amount of sleep. Not so for the character with this stunt.

Whenever this character would need to sleep, he may roll Endurance (see below for the difficulties) and spend shifts to reduce the amount of time he needs for a regular night’s rest. Each shift spent reduces the time increment (to get a full night’s rest) by one. One shift gets from 6-8 hours down to 3-4; two gets it down to an hour; three gets it to half an hour; four gets it to a few minutes.

The character may continue sleeping past that point, but if awoken suddenly, he does not face any issues due to insufficient sleep – he is refreshed and alert. Normally the difficulty for the Endurance roll is simply Mediocre, but if the character chooses to skip a night of sleep, the difficulty of the roll is increased by one step each night. Once he fails the roll, he must get a full, normal (6-8 hours) night of sleep to “reset” the clock; if he succeeds on subsequent nights, and chooses to sleep, he can still sleep for the truncated amount of time.

Fists

Kheth Fu

Martial Arts

Your training in the martial practices of the Far East have honed your abilities with your Fists into a finely disciplined form that is part combat skill, part art form. This gives you an acute insight into the means and methods of barehanded warfare.

You may use your Fists skill to study an opponent by engaging him and testing his defenses with your own martial techniques. You must do this as a full action during an exchange. Your target must defend against this action, which is essentially a maneuver, with his Fists skill.

If you succeed, you have gained insight to your target’s fighting techniques, and may place an aspect on the target, as with a successful maneuver. Whenever you tag this aspect, you gain an additional +1 to your roll, for a total of +3 instead of the normal tagging bonus of +2.

Lethal Weapon
Requires: Martial Arts.

Your martial skill is dedicated to dishing out punishment, and your hands are practically illegal in most civilized countries. Any time your opponent opts to take a mild or moderate consequence from a blow you have dealt, you may spend a fate point to increase the severity of that consequence by one step, increasing mild to moderate and moderate to severe. The opponent may then reconsider whether to take the consequence, or instead offer a concession. You may not do this to an opponent who is already taking a severe consequence.

Leadership

Command

Tactician

The character has a natural ability to view the battlefield and know how to approach a combat situation, setting themselves and their allies up for victory.

When rolling Leadership to remove Stress, the roll is made at +2. A character with this Stunt may have a military title or simply have studied the art of war in some capacity.

Field Command
Requires: Tactician

The character is especially adept in military command, removing the Stress that represents momentary tactical disadvantage.

Normally, someone using Leadership to remove Stress can remove a checkmark for every two shifts gained on the roll. With this stunt, every shift past the first improves the level of Stress that can be removed.

If the character rolls well enough to remove a stress mark that is higher than the subject’s physical stress capacity, their highest stress mark is removed and they get a +1 (Spin) to their next action if it is Athletics, Archery, Fists, or Weapons. 11

Lore

Scholarship

Scholar

Your character is a respected authority in a specific academic field. Possibilities include history, English, archeology, mathematics and so on. In the elite circles of that particular field, you are recognized for your expertise. Even if your skill level is low, it merely means you are towards the bottom of that particular group of the elite.

When you make an Lore roll pertaining to your general area of expertise, you automatically receive a +1 bonus. Beyond this, you should pick a specific specialization within that area (like ancient Sumerian history, or cryptography). When an Lore roll involves that specialization, you gain an additional +1 bonus (for a total +2 to the value of the research effort).

Any research efforts involving the specialization take one unit less time; this may be combined with Walking Library, in the Memory group of stunts, for lightning-fast research. When taking part in an academic conference or otherwise interacting with others in the field, you may use Academics to complement your social skills (Rapport, Empathy, Deceit, etc). Your skill is considered elevated by these bonuses, so someone with Good Academics, acting in his area of specialization, would complement skills as if his Academics were Superb (Good+2).

This stunt may be taken more than once, each time for an additional field. The bonuses may not overlap, however.

It's Academic
Requires: Scholar.

Your specialized knowledge gives you flashes of insight into all manner of things.

Once per session, you can use this ability when you are about to perform an action which your academic field touches upon. The connection can be tenuous, provided you can explain to the GM how it might apply.

Make a declaration attempt as described under “Declaring Minor Details” (see page XX). If you get at least one shift, you successfully declare one aspect; for every two shifts you gain beyond the first, you may declare one additional aspect about the subject in question (so two aspects total at 3 shifts, three aspects total at 5 shifts, etc). If you opt to declare only one aspect in total, you may instead convert these additional shifts into non-aspect facts.

Rapport

Allure

Unearthly Beauty

This Stunt gives the character a supernatural kind of beauty that only a few possess, whether they be mortals or those with a touch of the Other. Humanoids of the opposite gender feel compelled to watch the character and are much more open to grant them whatever they desire. This effect is also in place for those of the same gender who might find the character sexually attractive. Unless the character is dealing with someone who despises the beautiful for some reason, they receive a +1 to any Rapport effort.

"Eyes Up Here!"
Requires: Unearthly Beauty

The character’s beauty is so compelling they can distract even opponents engaged in mortal combat. Once per target, per scene, the character can attempt to place an Aspect of “Distracted” (or some more amusingly named Aspect) upon an opposite gender foe via a successful Maneuver of Rapport against Resolve.

This Aspect is fragile and disappears if the opponent is attacked. If the character achieves Spin when placing the Aspect, the Aspect is “sticky” and cannot be removed by any natural means for the entirety of the scene as long as the character is still in view.

Any character can tag the Aspect to receive a +3 (or reroll) instead of the standard +2 (first time for
free, as with any other Aspect). This can be tagged for combat purposes or when employing any other Skill where it would be useful to distract someone (helping a friend with a Stealth roll, pocketing a small item via Deceit, etc).

Dance Of The White Serpent
Requires: “Eyes Up Here!”

The character’s seductive dance can keep even the most determined in thrall. Once per scene, the character can perform a Block action or a series of Block actions against a single opposite gender target using their Rapport Skill.

Unlike a standard Block action, this Block is universal; until the enraptured target is either attacked or can break the Block using Resolve, they may take no actions, neither attacking, moving, nor even defending themselves more than half-heartedly. Any defense or passive Skill (i.e. Alertness) roll the target makes while enraptured by the dance is at -2.

While performing the dance, the character may make no supplementary actions save moving one zone per exchange (which will decrease the strength of their Block by 1). Outside of a combat situation, with a receptive audience expecting a performance, this dance can affect not just a single target, but an entire room of people of either gender.

Stealth

Hide

In Plain Sight

Your character suffers no environment-based difficulty increases when using Stealth. This means that even when he’s out in the open and wouldn’t normally be able to justify using Stealth, he may. This also means that, once hidden, even people actively searching for him (page XX) do not get a +2 to their Alertness or Investigation rolls.

This ability only functions so long as your character does not move, and does not do anything other than hide. The moment he does something else, he breaks cover and is immediately visible.

Master of Shadows
Requires: In Plain Sight.

Your character is one with the shadows, and lives in every darkened corner, unheard and unseen. You gain the full benefit of In Plain Sight, but may also move one zone per exchange without automatically breaking stealth, allowing you to remain hidden while moving, even when you shouldn’t be able to hide in the first place.

If your character is in an environment that could give a bonus to stealth (like one with a Dark or Smokey aspect) or even one that would normally justify the use of Stealth to hide, you may pay a fate point to make a full sprint action without automatically breaking stealth.

The upshot of this stunt is as follows: Whenever the character moves while hidden, discovery penalties (see page XX) may still apply, but are cut in half. Outside of conflict, this leaves observers at +1 for a cautious creep, +2 for walking pace, +3 for a jog (short sprint) and +4 for an out-andout run (long sprint); inside conflict, observers only get a +1 to detect the character for every zone moved in an exchange. If used in combination with Like the Wind (see page XX), these discovery bonuses are eliminated entirely.

Weapons

Draw

Quick Draw

This allows a character to bring his weapon or weapons to his hand so fast it’s as if by magic. The character takes no penalty for drawing a weapon as a supplemental action; if someone is actively blocking such an action (see page XX), you may treat that block as if it had a value two steps lower.

Thrown

Good Arm

The character has an amazing throwing arm, and can throw weapons with great force, allowing them still to be effective at a much longer range than usual. The character may make an attack using a thrown weapon up to two zones away instead of the usual one; if he does so, the attack is made at a -1.

Weaponry

Weapon of Destiny

You may only take this stunt if you have an aspect that refers to the weapon by name.

You have a signature weapon, which has a name that is well-known among certain circles, and a long and storied history surrounding its past owners. The weapon has a tendency to be always near at hand, even when circumstances have conspired against it. If you’d normally have to spend a fate point to have this weapon nearby, you can have it nearby without having to spend a fate point. If you wouldn’t normally be able to get it near to you for a fate point, then this stunt lets you spend a fate point even in the face of that impossibility. Once the fate point is spent, the GM is not required to furnish your weapon immediately, but must work to bend circumstances to make it available in reasonably short order. Thus, you cannot be deprived of the weapon for long unless you voluntarily give it up or pass it on to another.

Beyond the above capabilities, this weapon is an artifact (see page XX) that includes the craftsmanship improvement, giving you a +1 whenever you are using it. In addition, you may select one other improvement, including those only available to artifacts, such as Blessed, Arcane, Conscious, and others.

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