GURPS Social Engineering and "super negotiator" character

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by lordabdul

Hey all,

One of my players wants to make a character that's basically a "super negotiator". Apart from the obvious advantage of having a PC with a lot of Reaction Roll bonuses, the goal is to give him a chance to "defuse" any potential combat situation by first trying to communicate with the NPCs (and if it fails, proceed to shoot them in due form).

Of course I immediately ran back to my PDF collection, screaming "Finally! I can use GURPS Social Engineering!". In there I found a couple pages pertaining to this particular type of situation. However, I'll often need to come up with appropriate penalties for each particular group of NPCs.

The one I'm first interested in are "evil cultists". We're playing Call of Cthulhu adventures using GURPS, so these are the type of NPCs most often chasing you... what kind of penalties should I apply to Reaction Rolls? I get the impression I would treat them as a "mob" (p70) with at least "intolerance" towards the PCs and "indoctrination", for a total of -6, plus some additional -1 to -4 if they are under more or less direct orders to kill or kidnap the players?

Second is how Public Speaking factors into this situation? It's referenced throughout the book for other situations, but not so much about calming down a mob? I imagine I would use it as a "complimentary skill" to give +1/+3 to the Reaction Roll?

Last is how to handle the situation when there's only a handful of enemies. Maybe you just have a couple of hired killers after you... when you confront them, how hard is it to distract them, turn them, offer them more money to let you go, etc? The same applies if, say, an FBI negotiator wants to prevent someone from killing a hostage. I didn't see anything about this situation but I may have missed something?

Thanks!

How many points are you giving this PC? Are they limited to normal traits, or can they actually be "super"? What about Cinematic traits?