There can be advantages to "being in the scene".
The stunt effectively puts your character in the scene with whoever's trying to circumvent your security precautions, to oppose them actively. While you don't get the advantage of actually using the Defend action, getting a boost if your roll succeeds with style, there are two minor advantages to this and one major one, which I'll headline because it's just that important.
Major: Multiple Oppositions
Passive opposition is in the GM's hands to set. It could be several things. In the case of someone trying to circumvent defenses you set, it could be your Burglary rating or your Crafts rating. If you were acting as part of an organization it could be some other number like your organization's size on the ladder or a custom organizational skill like a Security rating.
But when you take this stunt, the circumstances that would create that passive opposition don't actually change.
It's like, if you're trying to climb a difficult wall and somebody's trying to stop you, it's extremely rare for them to be so bad at trying to stop you that it actually makes it easier for you to climb the wall, right? But at the same time if they're really good at stopping you it can be harder to get away from them then to climb the wall in the first place.
Sometimes opposition isn't just active or just passive. Sometimes it's "best of both".
Now this is "sometimes" as in "sometimes food", okay? It shouldn't be your answer except in exceptional circumstances, where:
- there are multiple reasons something might be chancy
- they're fundamentally different reasons
- there's no doubt that they all apply
Suppose you're in a conflict where there's a sniper and you duck into the Crate-Filled Warehouse that represents one of the conflict zones. Is it difficult to land a shot on someone who's trying to dodge? Yes. Is it also difficult to land a shot when your line of sight is restricted by crates? Yes. Are these two different things? Yes. Is there any doubt that it's hard to line up a shot through a bunch of crates? No. (Unlike, say, having a brawl in a crate-filled warehouse, where either side could potentially turn a pile of crates to their advantage, so you have to put down a Fate Point to say that you do.)
So you get your Athletics roll as usual to defend, but because of the passive opposition from the crate-filled warehouse, it's effectively got a certain minimum result.
Now, the thing about stunts is they're about circumstances where you're exceptional. You can see where I'm going with this, I'm sure: the stunt isn't replacing the situational passive opposition, it's using it as a floor for your opposition roll.
Minor: The Signal
Like every stunt which doesn't follow a well-defined standard format:
- +2 to a skill in a narrow action circumstance
- +1 to a skill in a wider circumstance or two skills in a narrow circumstance
- use one skill for another in a narrow circumstance
- once per session, accomplish a story objective by fiat
- once per session, automatically succeed with style or with a single shift in a wide area
and other standard formats more particular to individual Fate worlds, this Burglary stunt is at least partially Extra and saying something about the campaign world in which it exists.
But really, there is no such thing as a generic Fate stunt, any more than there are generic Fate skills or a generic Fate setting. Even something that follows a standard template, like "+2 to Attack with Shoot when you use an automatic weapon to attack multiple targets in the same action", is reflecting several assumptions - that automatic weapons exist in the setting, that they're reasonable things for PCs to possess and use, and probably that they're worth distinguishing from guns with other firing modes and other vectors for using the Shoot skill, in terms of special tricks a character can learn with them.
The GM always defines the setting, sets limits on acceptable skills and uses, and determines what stunts they'll allow and why.
What this Burglary stunt says is "this campaign may potentially contain scenes where my opposition will attempt to breach defenses you have participated in setting up". And, similarly, someone who takes this stunt is saying "I expect to experience scenes where the GM attempts to breach defenses I have participated in setting up". Because nobody even gets a double digit number of stunts to start with, right? Every choice you make is something you expect to happen.
(But do always note this can be different from being excited for that thing to happen. Some people make choices defensively, because they don't want to be at a disadvantage in a scene the GM is going to force on them. The ideal is that your players pick stunts and aspects reflecting things they're excited to do and see in the game, because you want to run a game that gives your players exciting things to do and see, and their character sheets can be a way to prepare that without needing to sit down for a conversation with them. But that's an assumption, and you should always make time in your session aftercare to examine the actual play and correct your assumptions if they need it.)
Minor: Narrative Permission
If a PC or a named NPC can reasonably interfere with whatever the action is, then you should give them the opportunity to roll active opposition. This does not count as an action for the opposing character; it’s just a basic property of resolving actions. In other words, a player doesn’t have to do anything special to earn the right to actively oppose an action, as long as the character is present and can interfere.
-- "Opposition", Fate SRD, Actions and Outcomes
So, to flip that, when you can't provide active opposition, then you either aren't present or you can't interfere.
Tell me again why that means you should get to spend a Fate point on anything?
(After all, you're not the GM, who can declare any element of the scene to be its own character capable of spending Fate Points out of the scene pool, per what's often called the Bronze Rule.)
