Some cherries for more socially inclined people
Cherries are an interesting facet of certain obsession skills – combat and magick. As the two most rules heavy skills, it makes some sense that the benefit of matched successes was also more clearly ruled.
However I find myself with a tendancy to see socially obsessed characters (be it Lie, Seduce, Interrogate or Look like a normal innocent 12 year old), so I devised a few cherries for characters obsessed with something other than magick or hurting people.
These cherries could work on almost any social skill, theres hopefully enough variety in effects so that the player should be able to pick one that suits the current situation.
SOCIAL CHERRIES
Intuition – The character learns one of the targets passions or obsession (the GM decides based on what’s most appropriate).
Insight – The character gains a clue as to the targets plans for the future.
Influence – The character receives a +10% shift to his next roll against this target.
Information – The target inadvertently reveals a secret to the PC (if this was the intent of the roll, then he reveals an additional secret).
Inspiration – The character receives a hunch.
Inarticulate – Target gets a -10% shift to its next social roll (lie, charm, etc).
Incredulous – The next person to make a lie (or other similar social skill) roll against the target gets a -10% shift.
Innocence – The next person to make a lie (or other social skill) roll against the target gets a +10% shift.
Injure – Target must make a rank 2 check on an appropriate madness gauge (often isolation, helplessness or self, though graphic descriptions could provoke violence or unnatural).
Instruction -The target gains a permanent +1% to the skill you are using on him (or gets it at 5% if he doesn’t have it), unless he already has that skill at a higher rating than yours.
I’ve seen players of masochistic obsessed seducers constantly choosing Injure (Self), and demented Torturers always picking Instruction because they remember how it was done to them, but mostly this system seems to flow very naturally into the game. The innocence and incredulous cherries seemed to get a high amount of use, as deceivers and reprogrammers either needed to weaken someones resistance or bolster it when their work was done.
These cherries might even work for the Authority skill, with target being whomever your currently waving the badge at/etc.
Suggestions? Additions? Scathing Criticisms?
n.b. theres no real reason for the in- thing. I noticed a pattern after the first few and just ran with it.
Great Idea! I love it. I’ve been meaning to do something similar for awhile but I’ve never bothered writing it up. Very cool.
This is rad!
I suppose, theoretically, there should be similar ones for technical skills, avatar skills, athletic/driving skills and scholarly skills. But that sounds like a lot of work.