Shounen FAE: Special Attacks as Stunts

When I started my shounen FAE campaign I had an unexpected task in front of me: I needed some mechanical way to make special attacks work inside FATE without making the stats useless. The answer seemed to be around stunts, but there was a real danger in designing them too powerful and therefore breaking the original design of the "Forceful" stat. To solve that problem had to divide it in some sub-questions that are intrisic to the shounen genre. 

Special, but not expensive

I really didn't wanted to put a Fate point price on the use of the special attack stunt. Not only it seemed lazy, but also it was incoherent with the whole thing about shounen battles. The special attacks are part of the character abilities and often put them in an advantage position. Spending fate points seemed to do the oposite in long term.

Super, but not too avaliable

That was a challenge cause shounen manga fights are 80% normal fights with 20% really epic stuff. The special power stunt shouldn't be avaliable all the time or it would require the players to choose to make a "forceful" stat test. That simply wouldn't work cause the normal attack would often sound as a disadvantage action to any player. 

Different levels of power

As if we didn't have problems enough, I wished to make the special attacks somehow open to evolve. Also, they needed to have different levels afterall there was difference between Goku and Picollo. All without making it too complicated and without changing the essence of FATE. 

The Solution: Shounen Special Attack Stunt

Conditions

You can have two types of condition that can (but not necesserally must) be combined.

1. Only when in battle can use stunt x; or
2. Only after reaching the stress level of y you can use stunt x.

This second condition can add some interesting moments to your shounen characters. Like an ability that is only unlocked when they are really hurt.

Charging slot

This one is where the shounen texture appears. It's like a thematic modifier for the conditions. This was necessary because of the 80/20 equation I mentioned earlier. It basically works like that:

1. The fighting characters have a special attack slot that respawn every x actions.
2. When used the slot can't be used again until it respawn. 
3. The stronger the fighter, less is the respawn value of x. In other words, quickier it becomes to use the special attack again.
4. The characters can learn any number of special attacks, but they must have only one slot. 
5. As an exception, really strong (and rare) oponents might have a second slot. Mostly bosses.

The idea is that the charging slot create a time between one special attack and another. And that's it. It worked really well in my game and definetely gave me the shounen feeling for the fights.