Garden/StuntGuide

Garden’s Guide to Cunning Stunts

First off, stuff from the core rules:

What is a stunt? A stunt is a way of describing a character’s action that is evocative, exciting and that results in a cinematic feel. It’s a mechanical incentive for players to do crazy and exciting things to make their descriptions of the characters’ actions more lively than “I hit him with my mace.”

Guidelines for stunt bonus awards:

Bonus Guidelines

1. The player described the action in a cool or interesting fashion. “I swing my mace at his head in a whistling overhand blow.” Note that just repeating that again and again won’t receive stunt dice on the repetitions because it gets boring.
2. The player described the action in a cool fashion, and the character interacted with or took advantage of the environment. The stunt is integrated into the ongoing scene. The description should involve interaction with the scenery or otherwise make ongoing events in the scene part of the action. These sorts of stunts take the action away from something that could be happening in a bare room someplace and ground it firmly in the location and overall thrust of the scene.
3. The player comes up with something amazing. Everyone at the table goes “Damn, that’s cool.”There are no firm guidelines for a three-die stunt, other than “it makes you go wow.”

Notes from Garden:

1 die stunts: Anything that involves just the actions of your character will get one die, in order to get higher, you have to actually do stuff with the world around you.

2 die stunts: Don’t forget that scenery doesn’t just include a nearby tree or an overturned cart, enemy npcs, friendly npcs, random passer-by npcs, and even other players can be used as ‘scenery’, team stunting is particularly cool, so if you see an opportunity for it, take it. Also, don’t be afraid to create your own scenery, chances are I will only give a brief description of the scene that won’t include every single last detail of all the things that might be there. If you want a something, and that something seems appropriate for the scene (and yes this includes random people/creatures passing by) then include it, I can always overrule it if I think it’s inappropriate, just don’t be afraid to create things for yourself.

3 die stunts: We haven’t had many 3 die stunts so far. The one that immediately springs to mind though is when Fayz cut a painting out of its frame, then recreated the painting on the wall behind so that no one would know it has been stolen. Very cool. Very stylish. And importantly highlights another point, stunting on activities other than combat is not only possible, but also encouraged.

Mechanical Effects of Stunts: As well as granting a dice bonus to a stunt (if the stunt description takes place over several actions/turns/the whole scene the bonus dice apply to all related rolls over that period), if a stunt is successful it can also be used to regain motes of Essence or Willpower. On a successful stunt, the character can regain a number of motes equal to the number of stunt dice awarded, or on two and three die stunts may instead elect to regain a Willpower point instead.