SOCIAL ADEPTS

A NPC in 'Blood in the Boardroom' (don't get fooled by Fasa's publicity, this is more a background book with run ideas than a Run book with background stuff) was said to maybe be a "social adept", a kind of physical adept that specializes in social things. The problem is, Fasa didn't include any rules, or even pointer as to how this could be handled. This article is to fill this gap. Remember that all of this might, or might not, be changed with the release of the system for this possible new type of magically active character. These rules haven't been tested, so may be totally out of touch with any kind of play balance, although I doubt so.

CHARACTER CREATION

A social adpet is created in the same way as a physical adept. It follows the same rules as for the physad, except that it uses this list of power (and any you, me or anybody else come up with in the future). They start with as many points to spend as their rating in magic is and can only raise this number through initiation (therefore the raising of the magic rating). All in all, they're physical adepts with an alternate set of powers. If a player wants to make a character with both physical and social adepts powers, he must choose the 'A' priority for magic, or spend 20 points if the point system is used.

POWERS

Empathy

Cost: .25/level

This power enables the character to 'sense' the emotions of those near him. He can know if the person he's talking with fears something, is mad, in love, etc. The power can be used too to sense if somebody is deliberatly lying to the character. To learn these information, the player rolls his level in the power against the willpower of the subject in an opposed roll If he wins, he learns an information about the feeling of the subject for each success over his opponent's. If he fails, nothing is learned.

Emotional Masking

Cost: .25/level

With this power, the adept can mask his own emotions, thoughts, etc. against other adepts or other "normal" people. Each level in this power means the adept get one more dice to resist any power or investigation of any kind in a social fashion. This power doesn't help in case of torture and such.

Improved Pherormones

Cost: .75/level

This power works the same way as the 'Tailored Pherormones' bioware in every aspect, except that the level of the power is only limited by the magic rating of the adept. These bonuses DO help the other social adepts powers when they require charisma or social-skills rolls.

Fast-Talking

Cost: .75/level

With this power, the adept knows what to say to somebody to convince them, at least for a short period of time. With this power, he can convince people to let him come in a movie theater without a ticket, to get a table in a restuarant without reservation, or even trivial things like getting the password to enter that secret research facility or get the guard to 'ignore' the fact that you have a gun. The subject of the power will not do anything that could harm him (as long as he knows it could harm him) and will be hard to get to do things he doesn't want to. Getting the guard to think you're "other guards in disguise to fool runners" is easier to do than to ask to just "let us pass". The player makes an opposed test of his power against the willpower of the subject to get this ppower to work. The difficulty can be modified depending on the circumstances and what you're asking. If the adept has more successes, the subject does what was asked, with more or less happyness depending on how many successes the adept got. If the subject got more successes, he doesn't do anything and adds the number of successes over the adept's he got to the difficulty of any other Fast-Talking attemps he suffers from that adept. On a tie, the subject is unbalanced and doesn't do anything for this round. After that, it gets back normally.

Awesome

Cost: .5

That powers grants a -2 target modifier on all Social and Etiquette roll tests made against members of the opposite sex and -1 when dealing with members of the same sex. Members of the opposite sex greet the character the adept with a Friendly attitude (if anybody still uses the Social Skill Table on p.182 of the main rule book...). These bonuses apply only on the first meeting of the adept and the target. The runner cannot take the edge and the flaw on page 22 of the Shadowrun Comapnion (under 'Designing edges and flaws)