Daredevil (sage study)
.jpg)
Daredevil is a sage study in the field of Circus, allowing the performance of dangerous stunts and tricks to elicit a moment of terror from an audience, followed by relief and stunned respect for the magnificence of the performer's bravery and skill. Examples include walking tightropes between buildings, leaping over spikes or pits, scaling towers without equipment, engaging with bulls or baiting wild animals, dancing on stilts — overall, challenging the thresholds of human ability within natural conditions — gravity, balance, tension, height, flame — and using those to elicit awe.
Contents
The study is legitimately dangerous — characters performing stunts outside their normal routine will have to make dexterity checks to stave off possible injury and death. However, within the framework of a prepared performance, where practice has occurred and the character is familiar with the details involved, the danger is only apparent. Nonetheless, the skills that make such performances possible may also allow the character to act in the real world with an unnatural level of skill when carrying out unlikely feats.
The daredevil lives as though fate were a dance partner, not a master. There is in them a defiant grace, an ease with danger that borders on seduction — they refuse to yield to fear, forged through countless moments at the edge where calculation, instinct and motion become one. They carry themselves with a kind of light-hearted bravado, from a joy in testing the limits of flesh and will. They may laugh in the face of danger, but it's a trust they have in their ability to make the impossible seem like a day at the beach.
Sage Abilities
The sage abilities below are those acquired by a character through the study, according to status.
Amateur Status
- Animal-baiting: allows the character to draw the attention and aggression of natural large mammals, causing them to see the character as the immediate threat. So long as the character has room to move about, and doesn't make an attempt to hit, attacks by the animal will miss unless a natural 20 is rolled; critical hits, however, still count as "critical," so that if one is achieved it's assumed the daredevil did something very wrong.
- Climb Walls: allows characters to climb a vertical surface, with or without equipment, provided that surface retains cracks or mortared separations at least ⅓ of an inch deep.
