Now that people have been playing for a while, I'm curious how "Perform a Stunt" is working for you. Our table doesn't use it, but we've pretty much been playing straight up combats. And outside of combat we just use skill tests if even then. So how about you all? Does it get used at your table? What sort of things are you using it for?

seen a zealot shoulder charge past intervening cultists, through the amorphous form of a materialising daemon, to engage the cult leader summoning it. succeeded so well one of the cultists was knocked prone.

in the very next act, had a mercenary slide down a ladder from a rooftop, only to catch his foot in a rung get flipped upside down and end up face to upside-down face with a gor.

i've found the stunts to be some of the most fun aspects of the game. really your groups collective imagination is the only limitation. the creativity seems to feed off of itself. one player comes up with a gem of an idea and then another player responds.

as GM i have preferred to use the perform a stunt action over other mechanically superior action cards simply because the stunt was too good a narrative opportunity to pass up.

We use them to encourage creative forms of manouvers such as a kithband warrior leaping on a chandelier and swinging over a melee engagement to escape the room, I was amazed that my player even thought of doing that and the perfrom a stunt covered it perfectly. We don't use as much as I'd like to but in my last adventure I didn't present enough opportunities for awesomness such as above.

Last session it was used to

• punch a guard in the face and at the same time kicking another to the groin
• to tackle a guard into the sewer
• to hit a dagger stuck in the back of the guard deeper

I like it! It's much more fun to allow players to do stupid thing that end up biting them in the ass. And they just like it as they see there's even a chance of something happening that isn't strickly covered by rules.

As we play, the players come up with more and more uses for it. So we're actually starting to see it's use gain in frequency.

We try to limit the way it can be used to deal damage so the emphasis for "attack" type actions remains on those specific action cards. But very complex physical manoeuvers are ideal (e.g. the above example of jumping/swinging from a chandelier to escape a melee).

Another example might be to kick a chair into the path of an enemy while leaping onto a table (black die to enemy, white die for your next attack for height). If you try to combine all of that into an attack as well, it becomes tougher to arbitrate. Are the successes for the moves, or for the attack itself?

Since Perform a Stunt is an Action itself, I think it's hard to determine when it can be used to replace an already available action (like a straight up melee attack), My feeling is that the specific action cards should always have the best outcomes for success. Thus if you don't have the specific sword & board action card, you can do the same thing, but it's harder (requires 1 more success maybe) and you won't get as stellar results (you can't get the three success line, or comets are spent differently, etc.)

One final note: I almost always add fortune tokens to the group sheet for well thought (i.e. cool) stunts.

Sad to say, at 26+ sessions, no one has "performed a stunt" except a couple of times when wanting to do something and I as GM say "perform a stunt" for that.

Rob

I still firmly hold that the game can be stripped down and played with only the 8 basic actions and a really good team at the table. The Perform a Stunt action is my favorite action in any roleplaying game. The depth of what is possible with the use of this card is immense. The freedom that the system allows for is great, I allow my players to discribe their action and if none of the Action Cards fit we use Perform a Stunt. This has led to some great roleplaying and descriptive play.

I do allow my players to use it as a "modified" attack action, and usually have penalties such as Fatigue / Stress or or <P> dice effect that attempt. However most of the time my players just just their attack actions to solve combat related action and use the Perform a Stunt to do things like run off the wall, perform a cartwheel into combat. In my last session the Dwarf Pit Fighter tore the cloak from a pompous minor noble who was riding on the coach with them, he then lit it on fire with his torch and tossed it at Ungors that were charging the party. Its been an exercise in GMing to figure out an appropriate limit on what is possible with one use of Perform a Stunt.

I'm a firm believer in the utility of this card and its praise cannot be sung high enough. You all have great examples of how you've seen it used and I applaud that!

I run one group and play in another. The play group has used it a few times, but the one I GM hasn't (maybe once).

I think it all depends on the crowd. Some people look at their cards for what action to do, and others describe an action and then try to shoehorn it into the cards.