Social Skills

=SOCIAL SKILLS=

Animal Ken
Anticipating and understanding human emotions is one thing, but being able to interpret and recognize the behavior of animals is something else entirely. Your character intuitively grasps or has been trained to read animals to know how they react to situations. The Skill also involves innately understanding how the animal mind operates, and what may appease or enrage beasts. The knack often coincides with a respect for animals, but it could derive from the analytic observation of a lab scientist or from years of abuse inflicted by a callous animal handler.

Animal Ken could be applied to grasp the thoughts or intentions of supernatural animals, if the Storyteller allows. Sometimes these beings have human or greater intelligence and cannot be read by this Skill alone.

Specialty(ies)

 * Behavior
 * Care & Maintenance
 * Specific Types Of Animals
 * Training

Empathy
This Skill represents your character's intuition for reading people's emotions. For some, it's a matter of observing body language and non-verbal cues. Others employ an extraordinary sense that helps them divine a person's true mood. As the name implies, Empathy also involves the capacity to understand other people's views and perspectives, whether your character agrees with those positions or not. This is useful in everything from negotiations and crisis counseling to reading faces in a crowd and looking for potential trouble. If a subject actively conceals his emotions or motives, make a contested roll versus the person's Wits + Subterfuge + equipment.

Specialty(ies)

 * Body Language
 * Deception
 * Emotions
 * Motivation
 * Verbal Language

Expression
Expression reflects your character's training or experience in the art of communication, both to entertain and inform. This Skill covers both the written and spoken word and other forms of entertainment, from journalism to poetry, creative writing to acting, music to dance. Characters can use it to compose written works or to put the right words together at the spur of the moment to deliver a rousing speech or a memorable toast. Used well, Expression can sway others' opinions or even hold an audience captive.

When composing a poem or writing a novel, roll Wits or Intelligence (depending on whether the work is poetic or factual) + Expression. When reciting to an audience, roll Presence + Expression. Playing an instrument involves Intelligence + Expression for a known piece, and Wits + Expression for an improvised one. Dance calls for Dexterity + Expression.

Specialty(ies)

 * Literary Forms (Various forms such as poetry or books.)
 * Physical Forms (Various forms such as sculpture.)
 * Verbal Forms (Various forms such as speech or singing.)
 * Visual Forms (Various forms such as drawing or painting.)

Intimidation
Intimidation is the art and technique of persuading others through the use of fear. Your character can intimidate someone with a show of brute force (Strength + Intimidation), through more subtle means such as verbal threats (Manipulation + Intimidation), or simply through menacing body language (Presence + Intimidation). It can be used to get other people to cooperate (even against their better judgment), back down from a confrontation, or reveal information that they'd rather not share.

Specialty(ies)

 * Body Language
 * Interrogation
 * Verbal Language, Overt
 * Verbal Language, Subtle

Persuasion
Persuasion is the art of inspiring or changing minds through logic, charm or sheer, glib fast-talking. Though it can be taught to varying degrees of success, most characters with the Skill possess a natural talent and have honed it over years through trial and error, practicing their delivery until it rolls effortlessly off the tongue. Persuasion is the Skill of convincing others by force of personality alone, making one's point through carefully chosen words, body language and emotion.

Specialty(ies)

 * Body Language
 * Inspirational
 * Seduction
 * Verbal Language, Overt
 * Verbal Language, Subtle

Socialize
Socialize reflects your character's ability to interact with others in a variety of situations, from talking people up at bars to comporting himself with dignity at state dinners. This Skill represents equal parts gregariousness, sensitivity, etiquette and custom. Knowing how to make friends is no less important than understanding how to treat guests in formal situations. Characters with low dots might be naturally entertaining or approachable, but unschooled in the finer arts of social interaction. Or they could be punctilious with their manners but difficult to approach. Conversely, characters with high dots could have the social graces of a practiced diplomat or raconteur, knowing just what to say and when to say it in any given situation.

Specialty(ies)

 * Club Scene
 * Informal Gatherings
 * Formal Gatherings
 * Specific Cultural/Social Group
 * Specific Commercial Group
 * Specific Economic Group
 * Specific Political Group

Streetwise
Characters possessing this Skill know how life on the streets works and are adept at surviving by its harsh rules.

Streetwise characters can gather information, make contacts, buy and sell on the black market, and otherwise make use of the street's unique resources. The Skill is also important for navigating urban dangers, avoiding the law, and staying on the right side of the wrong people.

Specialty(ies)

 * Covert Operations
 * Illegal Operations
 * Specific Cultural/Social Group
 * Specific Commercial Group
 * Specific Economic Group
 * Specific Political Group

Subtefuge
Subterfuge is the art of deception. Characters possessing this Skill know how to lie convincingly, and they recognize when they're being lied to. Subterfuge is used when telling a convincing falsehood, hiding one's emotions or reactions, or trying to pick up on the same in others. The Skill is most often used to trick other people, but characters also learn it to avoid being tricked themselves.

Specialty(ies)

 * Deception
 * Detecting Deception

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