Social Skills
From Vampire V5
<yambe:breadcrumb>Main_Page|Main Page</yambe:breadcrumb>
Social Skills
Social Skills operate in the space between people or between Kindred. Although they depend on your ability and your personality, the other party’s response contributes something to the effort. Without skill on your part, that response tends to be negative.
Animal Ken
Animal Ken allows you to cow, pacify, and even befriend animals. This Skill allows you to predict how an animal might react in a given situation, train a domesticated creature, or even try to calm or enrage animals. Without this Skill, most creatures pointedly avoid or grow aggressive around vampires.
• Animals shy away from you but will not bolt or snap.
•• Animals are docile around you, acting as if you aren’t there, unless you build a rapport with them.
••• Animals treat you as if you were a warm, friendly owner, unless provoked to do otherwise.
•••• You draw animals into your orbit. Few attacking creatures maintain their aggression.
••••• You can sense an animal’s feelings and thoughts, and they can feel and act on yours.
Specialties: Attack Training, Cats, Dogs, Falconry, Horses, Pacification, Rats, Snakes, Stunt Training, Wolves
Etiquette
Etiquette is the ability to identify and respond to the social conventions in the current scene, set new protocols, and please everyone around with your good graces. Use this Skill in both Kindred and mortal high society.
• You know how to address your local ruler without causing a faux pas.
•• You know the rules of etiquette in each of the domain’s popular nightspots.
••• You impress others with your command of politeness, deference, and grace.
•••• Your behavior sets trends, especially if you do something to buck the norm of etiquette.
••••• The Keeper of Elysium and the Harpies look to you to establish domain protocol.
Specialties: Anarch, Camarilla, Celebrities, Corporate, Elysium, Feudal, One-Percenter, Secret Society
Insight
Insight grants you the ability to interpret body language, note subtle cues in expression and tone, and determine truth from lies. It also allows you to perceive and understand the motives behind another’s actions.
• You can see straight through hollow boasts.
•• You pick up on the hidden emotion between humans and even sometimes between Kindred.
••• You can provide psychotherapy even more effectively than someone who doesn’t want to eat their patient.
•••• You are an undead lie detector. Only the best con artists can slip one by you.
••••• People may be books of blood, but they are printed in very large type – easy to read.
Specialties: Ambitions, Desires, Detect Lies, Emotions, Empathy, Interrogation, Motives, Phobias, Vices
Intimidation
Anyone (except perhaps 500-year old vampires) can learn to drive a car. The Drive Skill connotes ability to drive fast and safely under adverse conditions or in stressful situations: to drive off-road, speed away from ambushes, win street races, and get out of chases with the Second Inquisition.
• You are a cautious driver, unlikely to make any mistakes.
•• You can put your foot down without much fear of an accident, providing visibility is good.
••• You have won car chases, earning a cool reputation among the Anarchs.
•••• You could be a stunt driver or the personal chauffeur of a Prince or Baron.
••••• You know cars inside and out. Few can match your skill and knowledge.
Specialties: All-Terrain Vehicles, Evasion, Motorcycles, Street Racing, Stunts, Tailing, Trucks, Vintage Models
Leadership
Leaving a victim with holes in their throat: full-on Second Inquisition investigation. Leaving a victim with holes in their head: just another Saturday night in Baltimore. Cainites use Firearms not only for the human reasons (efficiency and thrill) but to preserve the Masquerade. This Skill comprises familiarity with small arms from holdout pistols to assault rifles. It also includes other trigger-operated weapons, such as crossbows and shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades. Finally, it includes cleaning, unjamming, and rapidly reloading such weapons.
• You’ve fired a gun a few times, at the range or in less-formal circumstances.
•• You know (and know how) to keep your weapon clean, take it apart, and reassemble it.
••• You’ve been in the shit (“seen the elephant†if you’re older than a century) and come out the other side.
•••• You can handle trick shots, called shots, running shots – really anything ending in a gunshot.
••••• You’ve been practising since the debut of the Winchester.
Specialties: Crossbows, Gun Dealing, Gunsmithing, Handloading Ammunition, Quick-Draw, Sniper, Trick Shooting
Storytellers should discourage obvious crocks such as suggested specialties in “Combat Shooting,†“Pistols,†or even “Glock 17s.†A specialty in Your Personal Signature Weapon You’ve Carried For Decades might be allowable, because if you take your personally engraved Colt balanced to your personal grip to every gunfight, you’re much more likely to drop it, have it stolen, or have its ballistic fingerprint connect you to a series of murders.
Performance
This Skill entails familiarity with the tools and techniques for picking locks, planting bugs, deactivating standard burglar and car alarms, manual forgery, hot-wiring automobiles, or even safe-cracking, as well as countless forms of breaking and entering. Characters also use it for setting up “unbeatable†security systems or deducing how and where systems failed in a break-in. Ventrue probably call the skill “Security.â€
These days, most high-end security systems feature computer controls, video surveillance, or electronic alarms, so they might also involve the Technology Skill to defeat.
• You can pick a simple lock or a careless pocket.
•• You can hotwire a car or shoplift with ease.
••• You can identify the locations of security cameras and alarms so to best bypass them.
•••• You can defeat a keypad, re-tool an ID card, or crack a safe.
••••• You can get into – or out of – the vault of a multinational bank.
Specialties: Alarms, Forgery, Grand Theft Auto, Housebreaking, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Safecracking, Security Analysis
Persuasion
Use Melee to wield handheld weapons such as knives, chains, and baseball bats with prowess. A stake is a melee weapon, often found in the hands of would-be hunters.
• You can swing a bat or blade and mostly hit the people you intend to.
•• Your clear competence with a weapon in hand should give attackers pause.
••• Your skill with a melee weapon is known throughout the domain.
•••• The fools brought a gun to your knife fight.
••••• You are the domain’s weapon master, sought out by Kindred far and wide for your skill.
Specialties: Axes, Chains, Clubs, Fencing, Disarming Blows, Garrotes, Improvised Weapons, Knives, Stakes, Swords
Streetwise
Stealth allows a character to shadow a target, making vampires with this ability superlative hunters. They benefit from the ability to spy, sneak, and blend in with crowds when needed.
• Spotting you under the cover of darkness or in camouflage proves difficult.
•• You can sneak by casual observers and stalk unknowing victims without raising any hackles.
••• You evade patrolling guards, moving softly and hiding easily.
•••• Your subtle, silent passage could make you a worthy ninja – or a worthy foe for ninja.
••••• The Children of Haqim come to you for advice on stalking and hiding, if they can find you.
Specialties: Ambushes, Crowds, Disguise, Hiding, Shadowing, Silent Movement, Urban, Wilderness
Subterfuge
Survival conveys the ability to exist in the wild and other adverse conditions, and to return to civilization again: navigate by the stars, establish a makeshift haven, and notice werewolf signs before it’s too late. Some of its related functions apply in parks, brownfields, and other wastelands of the urban jungle.
• You know the trails and wilderness around your domain.
•• You spend more time outdoors than inside, and you can track anyone who doesn’t possess woodcraft.
••• You can subsist outside the city, setting traps for mortals and a shelter for yourself.
•••• You can thrive outside the city like the true predator you are.
••••• Gangrel run in packs with you – if they can keep up.
Specialties: Desert, Hunting, Jungle, Tracking, Traps, Shelters, Urban Exploration, Woodlands
| Attributes | |
|---|---|
| Attributes: | Physical Attributes ♦ Social Attributes ♦ Mental Attributes |
| Skills: | Physical Skills ♦ Social Skills ♦ Mental Skills |