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Old 01-26-2015, 03:31 AM   #39
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: Social Skill Questions, Reparcelling and Rebalancing

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Savoir-Faire is most important when you need to have it to be acceptable company. You may get into the Duchess' ball, or the Officer's Mess without (High Society) or (Military), once. But without the skills, you become known as unacceptable, and can't go there again.
If you need to cover all bases and the campaign is cinematic or has high-TL brainwork (e.g. THS nanodrugs), you're better off buying Social Chameleon. And I suspect that spending more than one point on a Savoir-Faire is unusual even for single-skill, unless the character spends a really fraction of the time in a given subculture. E.g. Savoir-Faire (Goth-Punks) among Vampire Masqueraders. ^_^

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sindri View Post
The way I see it Fast-Talk is the primary deception skill and Acting is stuff like maintaining consistency (both in information and in not dropping the role) and impersonating people that some people who would have the deception skill don't have practice in doing.

I would say that Acting is normally worse though of course there are characters for whom it is better. It's also rare for it to be a good idea to have one and not the other.
Having one but not the other seems quite okay concept-wise to me. I don't get the wish to enforce having both by requiring Fast-Talk to start all lies.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sindri View Post
It's fairly common for Savoir-Fair to basically be High Society. Military and Police aren't terribly useful if you aren't in the military or police respectively. Dojo can be necessary sometimes but doesn't really do things so much as avoid problems. Servant is very dubious except in an unusual campaign. If organized crime is significant in the campaign Mafia can be useful. When you have it at a reliable level for a lot of campaigns it gives +1 from complimentary use a huge amount of the time to multiple choices of Influence skills. Plus it occasionally gets a direct roll. It's not the strongest, but it's not something you should quickly drop.
Come to think of it, any speciality depends heavily on campaign type. A military campaign will have little use for SF(HS), and cases where you can use it will also be covered by SF(M) 99% of the time. SF(D) is just as cool in a campaign set in a martial arts school.
But if the campaign is such that there's less than a 50% dominance of a single subculture, you're better off taking another Influence skill, one that is more generic. Again, that usually means Diplomacy and Fast-Talk first, depending on communication style.
Actually, I find it kinda asymmetric that Streetwise is not called SF (Street) and that there is no SF for Status 0, but there is a special skill (SF & Streetwise) for both negative and positive status.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sindri View Post
They are both solid but not awesome Techniques that are also low on flash with faintly ridiculous names. Of the two I think Irony is the stronger.
Irony is probably only ridiculous because you think of it as of the wrong meaning of the word. Agenda sounds kinda cool, but misleading.
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