EMPATHY
Description: Empathy provides you with insight into how the people around you feel. This helps you to understand them better and perhaps allows you to calm, rouse, or otherwise adjust their emotional state. A higher rating allows you to understand where others are coming from even better than they might be aware of themselves, to more convincingly sympathize with or feign sympathy for certain individuals, or play on their emotions as you see fit. You are adept at discerning motive, and might be able to detect when someone’s lying to you. Take heed: Empathy is usually restricted to intimate, one-on-one interactions, such as a therapy session, interrogation cell or a hot date. Connecting with bigger groups tends to rely more on Leadership and Expression.
Allowed Specialties: Carousing, Interrogation, Persuasion, Sense Deception
Rules: Empathy is usually roleplayed, with the Storyteller often simply giving characters with high Empathy a benefit of the doubt in describing situations and reactions. In especially tense situations, a Storyteller can ask a player to roll Manipulation + Empathy vs a set difficulty to gain some insight into an NPC’s motives or current emotional state.
Story Example: Human expressions can be so hard for a lupus to recognize. What exactly does that face mean? Roll Perception + Empathy (difficulty 6) to figure it out.
- The Carousing specialty allows you to roll Charisma + Empathy to influence those around you to relax and have fun. This might include showing a potential ally (or vessel) a good time, loosening an informant’s tongue, or making instant drinking buddies who come to your aid when a brawl starts. The difficulty is typically 6 (most people can be persuaded to loosen up), though it might be higher when dealing with particularly large or surly groups.
- The Interrogation specialty allows you to peacefully interrogate someone, typically by feigning friendliness (the ‘Good Cop’ routine), or asking strategic questions designed to make the subject reveal more than they realize. Some interrogation method, such as the ‘Scharff Technique’ utilize both approaches. Roll Manipulation + Empathy vs difficulty 6, which is contested by the subject’s Willpower. For every success over the subject’s own roll, they divulge one extra bit of additional information over the course of a session. If your extra successes exceed the subject’s permanent Willpower, they will fold completely on that particular line of questioning. This method is much slower than violently beating the truth out of someone, though is likely to result in convincing the subject that you have their best interests at heart. Over a long enough period, this could even flip a former enemy into a long-term asset.
- The Persuasion specialty allows you to read and take advantage of another’s emotional state, to better convince them to act how you would prefer. A therapist, life coach or mentor might try to engender positive change, whereas a pick-up artist, salesman or borderline sociopath usually has more selfish motives. Roll Manipulation + Empathy vs a difficulty determined by an opposing character’s Appearance + Empathy or Subterfuge (use whichever is higher). These success can either apply as bonus dice to a subsequent mundane roll (such as deceiving or seducing someone), or be used as shorthand to gauge how sincerely an NPC might respond, or how many excuses can be brushed aside.
- The Sense Deception specialty allows a character to actively listen or watch for evidence of being mislead, not unlike a human lie detector, albeit just as fallible. Most lies require the same passive Credibility check as usual (the deceiver rolls their Manipulation + Subterfuge vs a difficulty determined by the sum of your Intelligence or Perception + Subterfuge ratings).
- However, when trying to deceive a character who has actively declared Sense Deception, you may roll Wits + Empathy vs a difficulty determined by the sum of the supposed deceiver’s Manipulation and Subterfuge ratings, and subtract any successes from their deception attempt.