Stuntman
+250 Chips, -2 hand size
What Stuntman trades
Stuntman gives a flat +250 Chips every scored hand in exchange for -2 hand size. A massive chip floor for a permanent hand-size cost.
+250 chips per hand sounds modest until you remember that chips multiply with mult. If your build hits ×30 mult on a Flush, Stuntman alone adds 7,500 score per hand. That floor matters most against scaling blind requirements.
The hand-size cost is brutal for most builds
A standard 8-card hand becomes 6. That breaks several archetypes:
- Flush builds: harder to assemble 5 cards of one suit from 6 instead of 8.
- Five of a Kind / Flush Five: realistically impossible without significant deck shaping.
- DNA: needs 1-card hands, much harder when you start with 6 cards.
- Baron: fewer cards held = fewer Kings retained.
- Card-counting builds (Stuntman + Sock and Buskin chains): less flexibility.
Stuntman fundamentally restructures your hand to favor low-card-count hand types: High Card, Pair, Two Pair, Three of a Kind.
When Stuntman becomes broken
Two builds make Stuntman a top-tier pick:
Big chip + small hand: Pair / Two Pair builds that don't need 5 cards anyway. Stuntman's chip floor stacks on top of every Pair-leveled hand from Burnt Joker.
Plasma Deck: Plasma balances chip and mult into a single total. Stuntman's chip floor combines with high mult into massive Plasma scores. This is one of the canonical Plasma + Stuntman synergies.
Hand-size compensators: Painted Deck (+2 hand size base), Magic Tag (+1 hand), and the Antimatter Voucher (+1 hand) all walk back Stuntman's downside.
Stuntman + scaling mult
The +250 chips floor amplifies any mult source you have. Examples:
- Stuntman + ×30 mult build = +7,500 score per hand from Stuntman alone.
- Stuntman + Burnt-leveled Pair (level 10: 25 chips × 11 mult base): becomes 275 chips × 11 mult per pair. Stuntman adds another 250 chips → 525 × 11 = 5,775 base before any joker scaling.
The chip side of the score equation is what Stuntman fixes.
When to take, when to skip
Take Stuntman:
- Plasma Deck always considers Stuntman a priority pick.
- Low-card-count hand-type builds (Pair, Two Pair, Three of a Kind).
- You already have +hand-size insurance (Magic Tag, Painted Deck, Antimatter Voucher).
Skip Stuntman:
- Flush / Straight / Five of a Kind builds that need full hand size.
- DNA build — incompatible.
- Hand-size-already-low decks (Plasma at the start of run before compensation).
Related Jokers
Same rarity or category as Stuntman.
Stuntman FAQ
How do you get Legendary Jokers in Balatro?
Legendary Jokers come from The Soul Spectral card. The Soul can appear in Spectral or Arcana packs, then creates one of Canio, Triboulet, Yorick, Chicot or Perkeo. Use the seed analyzer to check whether a seed contains a Soul result.
How do you unlock all Jokers in Balatro?
Most Jokers are discovered through normal play, while some require collection progress or specific achievements before they appear. Keep playing fresh runs, opening packs and checking undiscovered collection entries; then use this database to study each Joker once it is available.
Is Stuntman a good Balatro Joker?
Stuntman is a Rare Balatro Joker. Read its effect, scoring category and pick-or-skip notes on this page, then test it in the Balatro calculator if you need exact chips and Mult for your current build.
Test Stuntman in the Score Calculator
Drop Stuntman into a slot, pick a hand and see chips × mult update in real time.