Alertness Stunts

Reflexes

✪ On Top Of It [Alertness]

You may spend a fate point to go first in an exchange, regardless of your initiative. If multiple people with this stunt exercise this ability, they go in turn of their normal initiative, before those who don’t have the stunt get a chance to act. If the exchange has already started, and you have not yet acted, you may instead spend a fate point to act next, out of the usual turn order.
This may only be done between character’s actions, and cannot be done as an interruption of any kind (so if you spend the fate point to do this while someone else is acting, you must wait until they’re done). Your character must not have acted yet in the exchange in order to use the ability in this way. If your character’s turn has passed, and you elected to hold your action, then there’s no need to activate this stunt; use the held action rules normally.

✪ Ready for Anything [Alertness]

Requires I’m On Top Of It

The character’s senses are so keyed into minute changes that he is able to respond more quickly to new details. The character’s Alertness skill is considered to be one higher for purposes of determining initiative (allowing someone with Superb Alertness to have Fantastic initiative). This stunt breaks ties whenever facing opponents with the same initiative. This stunt may be taken multiple times, each time increasing the character’s initiative one step.

✪ Cut Off [Alertness]

Requires On Top Of It

The character’s always watching for his opponents to try to get something past him, and can cut that option off, even when he fails in his primary effort against them. Whenever your character attacks an opponent (or performing an attack-like maneuver), then no matter how well the opponent rolls on his defense, the opponent does not generate spin, and thus can’t provide a +1 in his side’s favor.

✪ Run Interference [Alertness]

Requires Ready for Anything

Normally, a character who has held his action cannot interrupt another’s action at all; he must allow the action to finish before acting. If your character has this stunt, you may bend that rule.
Whenever you choose to hold your action, you may spend a fate point before someone acts to have that person truthfully declare what he is about to do. You may then use your held action to block the action your target has declared, using whatever skill is appropriate to create the block. If you are not opting to block the effort, you may not use your held action before your target, and your target may proceed. If you commit to performing a block action regardless of what your target declares, before he declares it, you do not need to spend the fate point. Be clear about this when you make your demand!
Regardless, if you do act and your most recent target then changes his mind based on that block, he must do so as a supplemental action, putting him at a -1. If he continues his declared course of action despite what you did, he must overcome the block.

Vigilance

✪ Danger Sense [Alertness]

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, 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).

✪ Saw It Coming [Alertness]

Requires Danger Sense

The character is never surprised; he may always take a full defensive action when ambushed, and his base defense is never reduced to Mediocre by surprise.

✪ Constant Vigilance [Alertness]

Requires Saw It Coming

Not only is the character never surprised, he is never forced onto a defensive footing by an ambush. The ambush rules simply do not apply to him; in the first exchange, where others may normally only defend (if that), he may act freely, in normal initiative order.

✪ Take It All In [Alertness]

Requires two other Alertness stunts

The character has tuned his Alertness to the point where, if he takes a normal Investigation length of time to open his senses to a location, he can gather an Investigation level of detail about it, without really going through the motions of a methodical search. When acting in this fashion, he may use Alertness instead of Investigation (which, really, is nearly all of the cases where he might use Investigation).
The trick with the results, here, is that they may come to the character with a different set of details than a methodical approach would yield. Conclusions may precede supporting details; the GM might choose to describe the middle part of a piece of information before the beginning or the end. Such are the hazards of Alertness.

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