BLATANCY
Description: Almost anyone can learn to fool an audience. Blatancy is the ability to fool yourself. In other words, to make yourself believe something that you know is not really true. Self-deception has an ancient pedigree, and as any Stalinist functionary, George Orwell, Self-Help guru, pick-up artist or Pavlovian researcher can assure you, it can definitely be learned. It can be silly, (‘Think happy thoughts’), piteous (“Dad’ll be home one day…He just went out for a pack of cigarettes!”), cynical (‘Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia’) or clinical (‘Holding a pencil with your teeth forces your mouth into a smiling position which subconsciously improves your mood’).
Allowed Specialties: You can specialize in the effects of each Sphere (Correspondence, Entropy, Mind, Forces, etc).
Rules: Mechanically, it works like this:
- Scenario #1: If you want to pull off a magickal effect that you think is coincidental, and I think is legit, then this Ability isn’t needed.
- Scenario #2: If you want to pull off a magickal effect that you think either is or /could/ maybe be coincidental, and I think is kinda bullshit, then Blatancy comes into play.
- Scenario #3: If I think something is total bullshit, then Blatancy does not come into play. But if there is any kind of wriggle room or plausible flex, I will typically let you roll this.
If it’s Scenario #2, then you roll Blatancy vs a base difficulty of 5 + the highest Sphere Rank. Your successes on this roll will determine how many Arete successes of what would otherwise have been a vulgar effect, may be treated as coincidental instead.
As you can see, it’s not going to help much with throwing fireballs or turning people into newts. But it could still make a massive difference.
Note, if your Arete roll has more successes than your Blatancy roll, then it is still vulgar, unless you spend a Willpower point to concentrate and bring it back down to the number of successes you know you can get away with.
Special ST Note: This is not a House Rule. This is an optional Storyteller flavor addendum. If your character has a Merit like Concentration, Inner Strength, Time Sense, Lightning Calculator, Friendly Face or whatever – it must be a General Merit – that seems relevant to what you’re doing in some way, the ST may let you cap your Arete successes at your Blatancy successes without spending a Willpower.