Aberrant 2.0 Social Systems

Sway

Making a character do what you want is simple, in practice. Any logical combination of Attribute and Ability can be used to attempt to create Sway, which the subject may resist via straight Willpower and bonuses from Wits/Enhancements, or a related Attribute + Ability combination if so desired. Unsuccessful attempts to generate Sway create a cumulative +2 difficulty penalty for rolling the same attribute/ability combination during the scene, and a cumulative +1 difficulty penalty for any other attempts to create Sway. Botching extends the penalty duration for the rest of the story, or permanently if the character was attempting to create Intimate Sway.

By default, this roll is over the timeframe of one day, which covers several hours' worth of schmoozing someone. Reducing the time taken for this roll increases difficulty:

• 1 hour: +1 difficulty
• half-hour: +2 difficulty
• 10 minutes: +3 difficulty
• 5 minutes: +4 difficulty
• 1 minute: +5 difficulty

Each net success over the opponent's defense and the difficulty creates one point of Sway of the given type (Casual or Intimate) which can be used to make the target take a desired action. Each individual action costs 1 point of Sway, so if you wanted for someone to "stop chatting, tell your friend to go home, and go help me with this project", that would cost 3 points of Sway, one for getting your lab partner to stop chatting, another to make him ask his friend to leave, and a third to help you with your stuff. The opponent may resist Sway with Willpower, paying 1WP to cancel out 1 point of Sway. If canceled with WP, any attempt to demand a similar condition automatically fails for the rest of the scene.

Extending the influence of your actions for a scene costs 1 additional point, extending them for a session costs 2, and extending them for an entire story costs 5. Extending your influence longer, to years or even permanently, can easily cost far more successes than that and is the result of weeks or months of constant influence.

Casual

Casual sway has no significant emotional component and is generally short lived. It is most useful for forming the basis of a personal relationship, creating vague positive or negative feelings, or getting minor favors done which might cause some trouble for the other character, but is not capable of doing anything more than that. Getting your captor to hand you his gun is not something casual sway can do, but it might let you stall him for long enough to build a rapport. Casual Sway cannot be extended past a scene, and fades at 1 point/day.

It requires 2*willpower successes worth of Casual Sway to start creating Intimate Sway. For most normal people, that requires days of work, but a particularly capable Nova may be able to become your best friend in a handful of minutes.

Intimate

Intimate sway has an emotional component, and attempting to build it also renders you vulnerable to similar attempts, for it requires bonding and understanding the other party as a person (or pretending to be, you could be a sociopathic asshole after all). Intimate sway can allow you to make a target act against his morals or ideology, take actions which might cause them serious trouble, have them abandon long-held beliefs or change the target's opinion on an important issue, or even temporarily change the character's Demeanor. The few things it cannot do are change the character's Nature, make them take actions that directly lead to self-harm (such as jumping off a bridge or in front of a bus) unless they're already inclined towards that, or permanently change their personality.

Bonuses and Penalties

There are social "weapons" that can be used to give bonuses to Sway attempts, such as Influence, Backing, Fame, high appearance, having a loaded gun to the victim's head, threatening his children, so on and so forth. These bonuses tend to increase the dice of the person attempting to Sway others, or may alternatively increase the difficulty of resistance. On the flipside, social "armor" exists that protects against Sway. Having a ideological or ethical objection to the task requested (+1-5 diff), negotiating from a position of strength (+1-5 diff), being requested to perform an action which could be dangerous to life or social standing (+1-5 difficulty) are all examples of potential "social armor".

Similarly, if you're the one staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, difficulty penalties can often be insane. A Mega-Charismatic Nova with no non-social powers staring down the barrel of a shotgun (+3 difficulty to Sway) against fanatics who absolutely loathe the Nova and what he stands for (+5 difficulty to Sway) might still be able to talk his way out of the situation if he's good enough and has enough time... but if he's about to be executed in a minute (+5 difficulty) that's a total of +13 difficulty and the opposition can roll to resist beyond that and will almost certainly pay Willpower to resist your condition of "don't shoot me". For that there is another system.

Social Combat

"Sway" is generally used for neutral to friendly socialization (or at least, people you already have an advantage over) and for less-important NPCs. Its primary advantage is that one Sway roll can gain significant concessions from the other party, but the other party can easily immunize himself to any condition she doesn't like by spending 1 willpower. Social combat is used when this is an unacceptable outcome and you have one condition which you need the opponent to accept under any cost.

The social combat system is generally borrowed from The Danse Macabre for Vampire: The Requiem.

Goal

All social combat scenarios have one goal. In general, the aggressor states the goal, and the defender's goal is to not do what the aggressor wants. The goal of any social combat should be summarized in a single, clear sentence. "I want to keep him from killing me", for example.

Timeframe

Social combat takes place over a longer time than physical combat. Each turn in social combat can go from ten seconds to several minutes, and occasionally each turn of social combat may be an entire scene, with other actions happening in between each turn.

Multiple Actions

Multiple actions in social combat typically represent holding back a "trump card" or some other bit of juicy information, or weakening an argument so you can attack someone on multiple fronts, or so on. Note that Quickness, Temporal Manipulation, and so on do not give additional actions in social combat. Trying to argue at superhuman speed just makes your epic tirade sound like a chimpunk, and unless your goal is to make people laugh themselves to death sounding like a chipmunk is generally counterproductive. Multitasking does function as normal.

Basic Concepts

Dominance

A character's Dominance is their social health, how well they can hold up against cutting insults or logical arguments. Dominance is a combination of the character's self-confidence, their social standing, and their "edge" in a conversation. Dominance is calculated via (Charisma + Willpower/2), plus 1 "Defeated" Dominance level. Round Dominance up. Each point of Mega-Charisma adds 2 to Dominance. Low Dominance, like low health, reduces a character's effectiveness. If a character has half or less of his or her Dominance pool, she has a -1 penalty on all social rolls, while if a character has a quarter or less of his Dominance pool, she suffers a -3 penalty on all social rolls. Round all thresholds up to the nearest whole number.

• Example: An average person has Charisma 2, Willpower 3, giving them a Dominance of 2 + 3/2 = 3.5, which rounds up to 4. Their Dominance track is therefore -0/-0/-1/-3/Defeated.

Dominance heals at the rate of 1 point per day, assuming the character has time to be well-rested.

Soak

Social soak is a character's ability to ignore jibes, counter arguments, and otherwise deflect attacks without effort. A character's social soak is (Manipulation). Each point of Mega-Manipulation adds 1 to social soak.

Initiative

Initiative for Social Combat is 1d10 + Appearance + Wits. High Wits means an excellent ability to preempt and deflect arguments, while high Appearance makes a character more noticeable and more interesting-seeming, often allowing them the first word. Like normal initiative, Mega-Appearance and Mega-Wits contribute normally to this score.

Unlike in normal combat, characters declare action and resolve in initiative order. The highest initiative character declares first, then the second highest, then so on, until the lowest acts, and then the dice are rolled in the same order.

Attacking and Defending

A social attack should be described in a way which makes it relatively clear what attribute + ability combination is used because there are far more ways to gain a social advantage compared to the (relatively) limited ways to break things and maim people. In general, this should be a combination of a social attribute and a social ability (although in rare circumstances other attributes and abilities may be substituted in). A snide insinuation buried in "friendly conversation" might be Manipulation + Subterfuge, while an overt threat based on your own reputation might be Charisma + Intimidation. Similarly, defensive rolls are not limited to dodges or parries. In general, any method of attacking is a valid comeback, and therefore a valid defense depending on the description. Most common social attacks are (Charisma + Etiquette) or (Manipulation + Subterfuge); social defenses are often one of the two abilities in question or (Wits + Rapport), which although technically not a social attribute + ability combination, is used to discover an opponent's ulterior motive (and then expose or reject that).

Unlike physical combat, social combat is a game of tit-for-tat, not two combatants circling the drain slowly as fatigue and injury weaken them. A successful attack drains some of the enemy's Dominance, but gives that Dominance to you (as long as your Dominance pool is below maximum). Successful attacks deal dice of Dominance "damage" equal to (1 + Relevant Ability + Net Successes), which is soaked by Manipulation. Even if this is insufficient to penetrate social "soak", one die of Dominance damage is dealt as "ping".

Maneuvers

• Ambush: Social surprise is generally managed by letting slip something surprising to the target, like a dangerous secret, a hint of a potent tidbit of knowledge, knowledge of one of the target's shameful desires, or so on. The target may not defend against such an attack and may only attempt to soak.

• Prepare: Like an Aim action, preparing an argument is 1 action and adds +1 to next attack roll made, up to (Intelligence) bonus dice. Thinking before speaking has its advantages. If a character has pertinent information, such as a dossier on the character's personality and beliefs, it acts much as a telescopic sight does in physical combat, doubling the bonus to +2 per turn.

• Burn Bridges: Blackmail. Threats against family members. Revealing dark secrets. An insult that cuts right to the bone. A particularly scathing and inflammatory attack can be extremely potent, but will destroy any remaining relationship you have with the character. Any further attempts to engage the character socially suffers a +4 difficulty modifier. The relationship is ruined, the person in question wants nothing to do with you, so on. On the other hand, doing so adds +5 to any social attack attempt, and a successful attack instantly wins the fight, reducing the target's Dominance to 0, ignoring soak or any other factors. Obviously, this may not always be applicable, although it is a seduction of a sort to threaten someone's family if he or she refuses to sleep with you. This is a drastic action which costs 1 Willpower and 1 Dominance. Against particularly close associates, the Willpower cost is in permanent Willpower. Burning bridges with close friends can shatter a person.

• Reject: Rather than attempting to counterargue, the character simply shoots down every attempt to start an argument, or deflects every one of them, throwing up walls against any attempt to convince him or her. This is the social equivalent of a full defense, with the same altered multiple action rules used by a standard full defense. A character Rejecting any attack may use Willpower instead of (social Attribute + Ability) for their defense roll as well.

Weapons and Armor

Unlike weapons, which are always applicable in physical combat, or armor, social combat equipment is often only functional in a narrow range of social scenarios. On the other hand, they often function as both. Social equipment modifiers can be to Attack, Damage, or Soak. Note that these only work as weapons or armor if you explicitly call attention to them, whether with statements or wordlessly.

• Clothing: Proper clothing fitting the tone can give a character an edge. An impeccably tailored suit helps convince someone of your wealth, seductive ensembles are a must for a succubus or incubus, a police uniform gives an air of legal power and authority. Even something as utilitarian as tactical gear or sports wear can be a social weapon in the right situation.

Accuracy +1, Damage +0, Soak +0

• Props: The badge of a cop, the medals of a decorated veteran, a technical certification, a loaded gun, a diploma. All of these can be powerful weapons or defenses in their own right. Although generally very specific, these are fairly powerful "social weapons". The statline below is for a general version of a prop. Some props may have higher values than this, like the Congressional Medal of Honor or a letter of recommendation from one of the finest experts in a field.

Accuracy +2, Damage +1, Soak +0

• Influence: Influence is a powerful method of both retaining dominance and contesting it. Being in an actual position of power is an incredibly dangerous tool to wield in an argument, and is often broadly applicable. The stat line given below is when the influence is fully applicable-in general, and oftentimes the advantage given is significantly less due to influence being only partially applicable.

Accuracy: (+Background), Damage +2, Soak (+Background)

Victory and Defeat

If a character loses all his Dominance, he has lost. The loss of Dominance is a crushing blow to his attempts at social interaction, inflicting a -5 dice penalty on all uses of social abilities, and causing the loss of 1 temporary willpower point. If the defeat was particularly crushing and the result of insults or some other method which might cause the character to lose even more confidence, half this penalty (-2) may apply to the use of physical or mental abilities as well. More importantly, the winner achieves her desired win condition.

The winner comes out of it having accomplished his desired goal, which was the entire point of this interlude.