Stunts That Cost More Than One Refresh

[Sanctaphrax]

Title says it all, really.

For background:

Recently, we've been discussing the possibility of purchasing minions and allies with stunts. It's been agreed that really strong allies and large mobs of minions should require multiple stunts.

This can be done by piling 1-Refresh stunts on top of each other, but not elegantly.

So I thought, why not make some multi-Refresh Stunts?

Which brought to mind an old thread about letting people take packages of related stunts at a small discount.

So, the idea is to make it possible for stunts to cost more than one Refresh. Such stunts would be good for four things:

1. Providing new abilities that are just too good for one Refresh, but that should be available to mortals.
2. Giving people a discount for buying a bunch of stunts that are thematically appropriate but mechanically foolish to take together. Often, this will mean that a single multi-Refresh stunt applies to multiple skills.
3. Letting people basically take a stunt repeatedly, with the limited stacking you'd expect from that.
4. Compressing a stunt tree into one stunt.

Such stunts would not scale exponentially the way that Powers do. A -3 Stunt is not better than 3 normal stunts.

Examples:

[-2] Extremely Capable Researcher (Scholarship): If there was an Olympic researching event, you'd be a strong contender for the gold. All of your Scholarship research is three time increments faster.
[-3] Hammer Blows (Might): Your mighty muscles make you much more dangerous in a fight. All of your muscle-powered attacks inflict 2 additional stress.
[-3] Supreme Workspace (Resources): You have the best facilities. THE BEST. Your workspace can be used for any workspace function and has a quality equal to your Resources plus one.
[-4] Pet Wolf (Survival): You have a pet wolf. It's pretty badass. You are accompanied by a companion character with the High Concept (Character)'s Pet Wolf. It has Echoes Of The Beast, Claws, Inhuman Strength, and Inhuman Speed. It has a skill pyramid that caps out 1 below your Survival skill.

What do y'all think?

[Tedronai]

I think that all of those are too expensive except the Scholarship stunt, and that that one could use a +1 bonus to something relatively narrow. (perhaps a +1 bonus to the effort of a narrow band of research)

You say that a goal of this is that they not scale exponentially the way powers do, but these don't even scale linearly (with the exception of the pet wolf which is just really hard to judge).  They don't even come anywhere close.

[Sanctaphrax]

Yeah, they scale logarithmically. (Is that the right term?)

Which is how stunts are supposed to work, as I understand it.

Probably should have made that more clear.

That being said, Hammer Blows is a lot cheaper than it would be to build the same effect out of 1-point stunts.

[Tedronai]

Most characters aren't going to be regularly engaging in Fists attacks, melee Weapons attacks, thrown Weapons attacks, AND bow-based Guns attacks.
The vast majority of the benefit will be wasted on the vast majority of characters who would otherwise benefit from Hammer Blows.
For instance, a Fists-specialist could gain the benefit from a whopping 2 refresh (1 for Lethal Weapon, and 1 for a custom stunt mirroring Lethal Weapon instead against armored opponents justified by finding relatively weak points in their armour that happen to coincide with weak points of human physiology).

Unless you intended this to also affect grapple damage, in which case it needs to be reworded, as that's not an attack in the conventional sense (though that benefit would just add more waste for most characters who would otherwise use this stunt).

[Sanctaphrax]

That's the point, really. Taking all those stunts together is a dumbass move. So people who buy them all should not pay the 5ish Refresh that it'd cost to assemble Hammer Blows from normal stunts.

Perhaps I costed Hammer Blows too highly, but your posts seem generally in favour of the idea here. Is that correct?

[Tedronai]

Actually, I'm somewhat conflicted on the subject.
If a character would gain sufficient benefit to make the entire scope of these stunts useful, then they become far, FAR less costly than I think they should be.  But, if a character benefits from only a small subset of the potential benefits, then they're substantially more expensive than I think they should be.

I'm just not sure how to make them a worthwhile proposition without obsoleting smaller stunts for anyone with enough refresh to afford them.

[Radecliffe]

This just seems to be doing an end run around powers to me.  I'm not sure that is such a good idea. 

[Richard_Chilton]

I'd rather see SotC style stunt trees than stunts that cost multiple refresh.  The cost might work out to the same, but "stunts cost one" "powers can cost more than one" seems to be one of the basics of the DFRPG.

For example, here's a SotC stunt tree where each stunt need the one before it:
On Top Of It - spend a FATE chip to go first in a round
Ready for Anything - when looking at initiative, the character's Alertness is +1 and wins all ties.
Run Interference - basically allows you to hold an action to block someone else later in the round, but the person can change the action based on your block and do something else as a supplemental action (at -1).

I'd rather see these three stunts on a character's sheet than one three point stunt that duplicates the three of them.  Or it be a supernatural power - say one that's worth about 2 points.

Richard

[Becq]

I don't have any problem with the basic concept of multi-refresh stunts, assuming that the guidelines for stunts are maintained (ie, stunts are strictly mundane abilities, and marginally less effective point-for-point than "equivalent" powers).

I do agree, however, that building them as trees of one-refresh stunts that build on each other has advantages.

For example, take Hammer Blows.  Instead of having the single stunt for three refresh, why not do something like this:

Hammer Blows I (Weapons) - Choose a type of muscle-powered weaponry (swords or thrown daggers, etc) and gain +2 stress when attacking with that weapon.
Hammer Blows II (Weapons) - Choose a class of muscle-powered weaponry (melee or ranged) and gain +2 stress when attacking with that class of weapon.  Must be purchased as an upgrade replacing Hammer Blows I and for the class that includes the type chosen for that stunt.
Hammer Blows III (Weapons) - Gain +2 stress when attacking with any muscle-powered weaponry.  Must be purchased as an upgrade replacing Hammer Blows II.

Note that I'm not commenting above on your pricing, just splitting the stunt into components building up to the same pricing you used.  By doing it this way, you let people decide the level of commitment they want, and allow them to smoothly upgrade as desired.  It also has the side benefit of making it a bit easier to see how the costs are laid out.

[Sanctaphrax]

@Tedronai: Okay.

@Radecliff: Could you please explain what you mean a bit more?

@Richard, Becq: Stunt trees are often a good idea, but sometimes they just aren't elegant or effective.

Hammer Blows is a good example. It's a tremendously simple effect. By splitting it into three pieces you add meaningless complexity to the character sheet of anyone who has it.

(It's also worth noting that the existence of Hammer Blows as a -3 stunt does nothing to prevent Hammer Blows 1 from existing.)

By contrast, the tree Richard posted would make a terrible -3 stunt. It's three different effects, and trying to cram them all into one stunt is pretty pointless.

PS: Becq, you made a small mistake when adapting Hammer Blows. It's supposed to work with unarmed attacks.
PPS: Why does Ready For Anything have a pre-req? It's strictly worse than On My Toes, which doesn't have one. Eh, maybe it's just a difference between games.

[Richard_Chilton]

PPS: Why does Ready For Anything have a pre-req? It's strictly worse than On My Toes, which doesn't have one. Eh, maybe it's just a difference between games.

I'm not sure - I copied and pasted that tree from SotC, and it has a pre-req there.  Maybe it's because On My Toes costs a FATE chip to use and Ready For Anything is always on, granting you a plus 1.5 for your initiative.

Richard

[Radecliffe]

It just seems to me that this is looking for a way to have "powers" while at the same time keeping your +2 bonus refresh for being a pure mortal.  For example, Hammer Blows gives a character the combat abilities of Inhuman Strength.  Granted that said character would not get the lifting and breaking bonuses but in a fistfight they would be evenly matched.  Add in the Lethal Weapon stunt and you have a guy that at the same effective refresh (-3 hammer blows -1 lethal weapon + 2 pure mortal vs. -2 for inhuman strength) that will beat the tar out of the guy with the super strength.  Even if you add in Inhuman toughness that just brings thing more or less even but also putting the guy with super powers in a -2 refresh hole. 

Pure mortals are the jack-of-all-trades of the Dresdenverse.  They use stunts to round out their skills and they get more fate points to pull off some really funky stuff when the fecal matter strikes the rotating blades.  But if you create super stunts then that changes the dynamic and it's just ripe for abuse. 

[Silverblaze]

I'm in agreement with Radcliffe.  While they sound good on paper, (the multi refresh stunts) I have reservations.

They are likely close to powers and therefore get around the "no powers" clause of Pure Mortals.

I'd prefer stunt trees to build up and accomplish the same thing.  I know they aren''t always the best answer, but I think trees suffice to handle needs regarding more powerful stunts.

I guess I am against multi refresh stunts.

[Mr. Death]

I concur with those against multi-refresh stunts. They seem to be an attempt to get around the powers, keep the +2 refresh, and try and make Mortals on even keel with supernatural creatures which...they're not supposed to be.

Say what you will about balance, but this isn't a setting where a Mortal's "normal" stats and abilities are supposed to be on par with things with supernatural powers.

[Haru]

I think Becq's assessment is pretty good. The Supernatural Senses power is layered pretty much like this, and I don't think it is too powerful to do it like that. I would maybe phrase it more broadly, so you can use it for every stunt out there. Every stunt has a condition under which it applies, so we can use SS logic and broaden it:

improved stunt:
Chose a stunt. You may instead define a small set of up to three thematically related conditions under which the stunt applies.

stunt expert:
Chose an improved stunt. You have a wide array of conditions where your stunt applies, easily up to a dozen (or one very broad).

Wording and numbers might be up for changes, but I think that would be an easy way to handle something like this.