Mystic Spellcraft - New Mysteries Stunts
These stunts provide a new “tree” of stunts for your Spirit of the Century games to allow for ritual and conflict-ready spellcasting with a minimum of fuss.
Mystic Rites: Requires Secrets of the Arcane. The character’s understanding of arcane secrets extends even into the casting of true magic rites. By spending a fate point, the character speaks a few arcane words or inscribes strange sigils, and may use Mysteries instead of any other skill on a single roll. This may be done even if the usual tools and equipment for the skill being “replaced” are not available—thus, Mysteries might be used instead of Guns to “blast” a foe with arcane power when the character lacks a gun, instead of Burglary in order to literally charm a lock to open, or instead of Investigation to discover something about a crime scene mystically without any obvious evidence present. The character may choose not to spend a fate point, instead taking two timesteps longer than the task normally would—effects that would normally be instant take around half a minute, while normally multi-minute efforts take upwards of half an hour. In any such case, this effort manifests as a time-consuming ritual incantation, obvious to any observer. The fact that this is done with mysticism, however, may alter some of the other difficulty factors and possible countermeasures for the character’s effort; for example, someone might reasonably be able to use Mysteries instead of Athletics in order to evade (or block!) a blast of eldritch power used in lieu of a Guns skill.
Rite of [X]: Requires Mystic Rites. The character has practiced a particular ritual to the point where it is rote. No fate point needs to be spent in order to use this rite, and no additional time increments are necessary, in order to perform this rite, unlike the usual case for Mystic Rites. The nature of the ritual, the skill being replaced by it, and the manner in which the skill must be used must be defined at the time this stunt is taken. For one example, see the Rite of Protection, below.
Rite of Protection: Requires Mystic Rites. The character may use Mysteries instead of Athletics in order to set up a defensive block that protects one individual for an exchange. Aside from the casting of this rite, the effect of this is subtle (attacks simply fail to find their target) -- occasionally the target experiences a little improbable luck that puts them out of the way of harm, just at the right moment.
Rite of the Ethereal: Requires Mystic Rites. For a fate point, or after taking about five minutes of ritual casting, the character may roll Mysteries instead of either Burglary or Stealth to become hazily indistinct for a few moments and, while in this form, sneak or otherwise infiltrate his way into (or out) of a given location.
Glyph of [X]: Requires Mystic Rites. The character may inscribe an arcane glyph onto an item—it must be large enough to be reasonably visible and legible!—and imbue it with the power of a rite, allowing it to operate even in the character’s absence. Fate points or extra time must be spent as usual for Mystic Rites, and the glyph is only effective for a single significant roll of the dice. At the GM’s option, the Glyph might continue to operate if its first roll is a failure; but on a success, it is always used up and must be reset. Additional capabilities—such as communicating a small piece of information across a distance—are entirely in keeping with Glyph of [X]. As with Rite of [X], the nature of the ritual, the skill being replaced, and the manner in which the skill must be used must be defined at the time this stunt is taken. For one example, see the Glyph of Warning, below.
Glyph of Warning: Requires Mystic Rites. The character inscribes an arcane symbol on a piece of paper, or into the wood frame of a doorway. The first time someone attempts to sneak past this glyph, or otherwise set up some sort of ambush, the Glyph of Warning may roll at the character’s Mysteries (as if it were Alertness) to detect the attempt. If this effort is successful, one of two effects occurs, depending on how the character set up the Glyph: 1) either a loud, piercing noise is made and heard by all present, or 2) the Glyph communicates a short, quick, vague image of warning to the character, no matter where he is! Setting up a Glyph of Warning either costs a fate point and a few brief moments of inscription, or costs no fate point but takes several minutes of ritual casting.
Big Family - New Empathy Stunts
Lead With The Heart: The character’s knack for leadership comes from her strong sense of family and understanding of those she respects and loves. With those she defines as “her family,”, she may use Empathy instead of Leadership skill on any roll that would normally call for Leadership.
A Mother Knows: The character has an almost preternatural sense of when someone in her family is in trouble, and has little difficulty in finding them. She may use her Empathy like Mysteries to “get a bad feeling” about something involving her family, and may also use Empathy to track any member of her family, ignoring all environmental factors and increased difficulties due to lack of evidence.
My Wonderful Boys: Requires A Mother Knows. This is identical to the “Minions” stunt (Spirit of the Century, page 168), but includes the benefit that the minions remain useful out of combat. This provides an advantage of numbers (as documented in Spirit) in a broader set of circumstances than minions normally might. Minions created in this fashion are a part of the character’s family. This stunt may be taken multiple times.
Companions Reloaded
For a number of players out there, the companion rules in Spirit of the Century are a bit broken. To that we can only say, mea culpa! The companion stuff was added to SOTC very early on and some of the elements of the design drifted away from them after it was all said and done, and we just never tripped over the disconnect in playtesting. With that in mind, here’s an alternate set of backwards-compatible companion rules that may just work in a way that fits better with the rest of the game.
Advances: Companions have the same number of advances as indicated in the Spirit of the Century text. An advance may be spent on one of: Quality, Communication, Independent, Keeping Up, Skilled, or Stunt.
Attachment: Only one companion may “attach” to a character at a time, the same as a minion might, taking hits to its stress track in substitute for the character’s own. An attached companion can’t take actions of his or her own, though the companion’s skills are available to the character while attached.
Quality: Companions start with a base quality of Average, and its quality may be increased by one step for each advance spent on Quality. The quality of a companion reflects how skilled he, she, or it is, and how resilient the companion is. Companions have a base of one stress plus one box per point of quality. The companion gets a single skill column (instead of a pyramid) with an apex equal to its quality and counting down from there. Therefore:Scope: Companions may no longer have the Scope advance. Instead, this is replaced by Stunt (below).
- An Average quality companion has 1 Average skill and 2 stress.
- A Fair quality companion has 1 Fair and 1 Average skill and 3 stress.
- A Good quality companion has 1 Good, 1 Fair, and 1 Average skill and 4 stress.
- A Great quality companion has 1 Great, 1 Good, 1 Fair, and 1 Average skill, and 5 stress.
Communication: One advance may be spent on Communication, as in Spirit of the Century on page 78. Attempts to disrupt the method of communication between companion and character face a difficulty equal to the companion’s quality rating, or the character’s skill that yielded the companion, whichever is higher. Additional advances spent on Communication increase this difficulty by 2.
Independent: All companions are now considered independent— able to act on their own—without needing to spend an advance on it; however, in order to send a companion off on an independent mission, the character must spend a fate point in order to do so. Only one fate point needs to be spent per significant mission (there’s no need to spend fate points when the companion is getting sent off to do something trivial). That said, the Independent advance may still be purchased for a companion, removing this fate point cost.
Keeping Up: One advance may be spent on Keeping Up (SOTC p.78). No modifications have been made to this advance.
Skilled: Each time this advance is taken, an additional “column” of skills is added to the companion’s sheet. But this is at diminishing returns; each column after the first starts one rank lower than the previous. So a Good quality companion with the Skilled advance taken twice would have 2 Good, 3 Fair, and 3 Average skills in total. A third advance would only add 1 Average skill, and a fourth advance would be wasted. A Great quality companion who takes the Skilled advance 4 times would end up with a “blunted” skill pyramid that’s 1 Superb shy of being equal to a PC!
Stunt: This advance may be taken a maximum of two times. Each time it is taken, the companion gains the use of a single stunt. The stunt may not confer companions of its own (though minions are possible). If using the “classic” companion rules instead, this advance should be replaced by Scope or Skilled instead.
