Create Stunts (Action)

Main article: Action

The most important Create stunt is Tinkering, a whole complex of rules covering almost any build or repair situation, but there are other stunts you can do using Create. These stunts assume you have (or improvise) the relevant tools for the job.

Break Object

Basic Action

Make a Create roll against the Toughness of an object to break it. To do this, the object must be stationary relative to you; you may have to use other skills (like Maneuver) to get into position.

Breaking & Entering

Basic Action

You can try and disarm security measures of all types: locks, alarms and traps. You can use your Create skill to bypass or disable them. It is generally fairly easy to bypass security devices once they have been spotted. You need the proper tools for the job; a security kit can be stowed in a utility belt or small bag.

Safe	Difficulty
Simple security, typical interior door or cabinet	6
Basic security, typical home or small business	9
Good security	12
High-grade security, typical bank office	15
Basic store safe, security locker	18
Bank safe	21
Bank vault	24
Infamous bank vault	27
Legendary bank vault	30

A failed roll means you need some new method, gear or information to bypass a lock. On an alarm or trap, it means that the situation escalated; you can try again, but a second failure indicates the device triggers.

Demolish

Limit Break

Make a Create roll against the Toughness of an object to destroy it utterly. Even on a failed result, the Toughness of the object is reduced by one.

If the object is stationary relative to you, double the result of your Create roll. You may have to use other skills like Maneuver to get into such a position.

Tinkering

In Action adventures, gadgets are built with frenzied effort and leaps of genius in very short time. These rules give a framework for tinkering; how to repair and redesign crafted items by creative genius. The following table gives benchmarks for calculating the difficulty of tinkering tasks. There are many schticks and powers that use or modify the tinkering rules.

Decide what you want to do. Sum the difficulty modifiers from each column to get the final difficulty. You can choose to keep one of the factors open and dependent upon your outcome. So, for example, you can decide upon what you want to do, and then see how long it takes (keeping Time open) or you can decide how long you want to spend and make it as well-designed as you can (keeping Construction open).

Tinkering Table

The difficulty of tinkering tasks is 5 + the modifiers from this table

Difficulty Modifier	Time	Size	Construction	Complexity	Power	Resources	Difficulty Modifier
+0	Week	Personal	Haphazard	Established	None	Factory	+0
+1	Day	Car	Functional	Cutting Edge	One	Lab	+1
+2	Hour (Limit Break)	Truck	Artwork	New Design	Two	Field kit	+2
+3	Minute	Building	Benchmark	Conceivable	Three	Basic tools	+3
+4	Basic Action	Town	Miniaturized	Inconceivable	Four	Scrounge	+4

Time: This is how long you spend on the project. Tinkering is possible in action rounds; the inspiration of stress allows you to treat a Limit Break as a full hour of normal work.

Size: Larger installations take longer to build. This is the size of a normal, functional item of its kind, not including miniaturization. Want to make it smaller? See Construction, below.

Construction: How well-made and well-designed the item to be.

Haphazard: The device is frail, with exposed wiring and mechanics. It cannot stand normal wear and tear, and looks very odd. It will break down on any snakeyes roll. Most gadgets that techies make during scenarios will be of this category, if nothing else so as to avoid the hassle of the item hanging around and costing xp in the future.
Functional: The gizmo looks like what it is, revealing its function in its design. It is not pretty, but neither is it frail. In some cases, functionality can have its own aesthetics, tough it usually takes a while for this to become generally acknowledged.
Artwork: Going beyond the basic design, the item now attracts positive attention and can be considered a fashion accessory. It can look harmless and conceals its main function if you like, or it is merely cool enough to pass as an art object rather than what it is.
Benchmark: At this level, the item becomes normative, it shapes what people perceive as normal. It is suitable for mass production, the basic principles can be imitated and nudges the technological envelope. The GM is the final arbiter on when this is possible and what effect it has on the setting.
Miniaturized: The item is made smaller than such an item could normally be, which will mislead even those who know what they are looking for. It is simply not conceivable that an item this size could do what this one does, which makes it almost impossible to recognize for what it is.

Complexity: A measure of how much the device twists technological sensibilities. GMs should veto anything beyond cutting edge if it disrupts their campaign world.

Established: Run-of-the-mill technology of the day. Why don’t you simply go to the store and bye one?
Cutting Edge: This is everyday technology that is fine-tuned and adapted with great skill and care, pushing the envelope slightly. An expensive racing car.
New Design: A brand new item, possible under the tech level but not yet invented. Artificial intelligence.
Conceivable: This is something that people of the day can conceive how it would work, but which has never been done and is not normally possible under the local tech level. It may push the technology level by one step, or it might be something people in the past believed to be right around the corner, but we today know that it was not. Allowing this into a campaign gives it a distinct pulp feeling. Clockwork automatons.
Inconceivable: This is something that would cause the everyday observer to be flabbergasted, and which pushes the local technological level more than one step. The GM should only allow this in weird science campaigns. Aircraft in blacksmith technology.

Power: This is the number of experience points the item would have cost if paid for as a power, and thus a measure of its utility. If you have actually paid the xp, ignore this category. It is mainly applicable to jury-rigged, one-time desperation efforts.

Resources: This is what you have to work with. It is harder to improvise something out of rubber bands in the field than it is to order your ten thousand mooks to build it using state-of-the-art tools.

Factory: A full set of equipment, plentiful supplies, and a willing and able workforce.
Lab: Plentiful equipment and more supplies than you can carry. A truck full of gear or access to a large trash heap.
Field kit A man-portable tinkering kit, plus suitable pieces to work with.
Basic tools: A small toolkit and some junk. A Swiss army knife and what you can loot from a wreck.
Scrounge: Something to work with, but none of it suitable.

Repairs & Tuning

Tuning or rebuilding an item takes less time, because you don’t have to work from the ground up. The difficulty is the same as for building it, only you get to ignore the Construction column. Tuning up an existing invention of your own allows you to ignore the Complexity column; to you it is now established tech.

Power Gadgets

Tinkering generally applies to technology, but in a supernatural world, a creator can also tinker with magic items. In order to produce an item that uses a power, you generally need to know the form of the power involved. This is an open field in the rules, you have to work with your GM to determine what works for a particular campaign.

Permanent Gadgets

The results of tinkering are always temporary, lasting at most until the end of the story. If you want a permanent item, you have to purchase it using character points. But tinkering gives you an excellent means of procuring all kinds of odd and wonderful devices your GM might otherwise feel are too odd for his world as well as providing an easy way to change exactly what gadgets and power items you have.