Attributes, Abilities & Specialties

SUBTERFUGE

Description: Subterfuge involves hiding your motives and projecting something else on top of that. If you can figure out what someone else wants, you can twist that to your best advantage. A trade secret for sneaks, gossips, grifters, and frauds, this Talent helps you get around social barriers, figure out what people want, and then appeal to their desires. It doesn’t have to involve outright lying – the best con artist often accomplishes more by carefully shading the truth. Characters with high Subterfuge are masters of knowing precisely what to say to further their own goals.

Allowed Specialties: Credibility, Disguise, Fast-Talk, Masquerade, Mimicry,

Rules: There are numerous narrative encounters where a Subterfuge roll might be called for – including any time you might wish to play your cards close to the vest or sell a fabricated story.

Story Example: After being questioned for hours, roll Stamina + Subterfuge (difficulty 8) to keep to the story you made up. With five successes, you just might convince them that you are telling the truth.

• Credibility: “You’ve gotta believe me!” When such words fall from the lips of your character (whether or not he’s actually telling the truth when confronted with a suspicious audience or an inconvenient piece of evidence), you might roll Manipulation + Subterfuge to see how credible he really comes across.
  • Generally, the difficulty of that roll is based on the target’s Intelligence or Perception (whichever is higher) + Subterfuge. Circumstances may raise or lower that difficulty. A high-Honor Garou or otherwise trustworthy Troll would have a lower difficulty, while a Ragabash or a Tremere would face a higher one. If your character really is telling the truth, the Storyteller should lower the difficulty in all but the face of the most hostile accuser.
    
    
• Fast-Talking: When you want to baffle ‘em with bullshit, this is the system to use. Normally, a player who wants to set his target off-balance with a verbal overload rolls Manipulation + Subterfuge, although Charisma or Appearance might work as well or better, depending on convincing the roleplaying is. Either way, the roll’s difficulty equals the target’s Wits + Streetwise. A successful roll confuses the hell out of said target, who then does — within reason — whatever the trickster wants her to do for the next few turns, until she gets her wits together again. This is more suitable for getting a security guard to search in the wrong direction, not shoot himself in the head. Extraordinary results require extraordinary roleplaying as well.
  • In order to resist the trickster’s tactics, the target might spend a Willpower point and nullify that successful roll entirely if they have the slightest reason to be genuinely suspicious. A failed roll lets the target get a word in edgewise, which may throw the fast-talker off his game. A botched roll pisses the target off — from that point on, our trickster’s not getting away with shit.
  • A specialty of Ragabash Garou and other mischievous types, fast-talk can be hilarious, scary, or just plain weird. If the trickster’s trying to keep his target confused for a while, the Storyteller might require several rolls, yet watch out if you fail: People don’t like being tricked, and a character who suddenly sees through a fast-talk attempt will not take things well.
    
    
• The Disguise specialty involves This might involve impersonating an existing person, concealing your own identity, or creating a whole new persona independent of yourself. Even without Life or Mind magick, your expertise can fool casual observers… and, at the higher levels, fool almost anyone. Add a Discipline like Vicissitude or Obfuscate, or a Magickal effect such as Life and /or Mind to this Skill, and your disguise can become damn near perfect.
  • With or without make-up and such, the art of disguise depends upon an ineffable quality that allows a person to slip into another personality. A truly magnificent disguise-artist can change personas with a few shifts of physicality, though most folks need make-up and clothes to complete the illusion. Disguise means “remove appearances,” and so the core of this Skill involves changing the way you come across – not simply gluing on a moustache, but appearing to become an entirely different person.
    

• The Masquerade specialty reflects a vampire character who is particularly skilled at appearing to be mortal: feigning respiration, creating a heartbeat, producing pink skin (by bringing blood to the surface), sneezing, masking vampiric tendencies, et al. Subterfuge may be paired with a Social Attribute to determine whether the character successfully passes as a mortal among mortals.
  

• A character with the Mimicry specialty is a skilled imitator. You can mimic voices or sounds; the higher your rating, the greater your ability. The human larynx is quite flexible, capable of a wide vocal range. (A touch of Life magick or a Discipline such as Vicissitude can make that range even wider if you augment your natural abilities.) At the lower levels, you can imitate accents or the voices of specific people, while higher levels help you fake an impressive range of sonic phenomena