Rapport Stunts

Charisma

✪ Best Foot Forward [Rapport]

You’re adept at making first impressions – sometimes you might not improve the preconceived attitude someone holds towards you, but you can at least assure you don’t get off on the wrong foot when you meet for the first time.
Whenever rolling to make a first impression with an NPC, no matter how severe the failure, you cannot cause them to have a lower or more negative opinion of you than they already had, unless you’re making an active effort in that direction.
In rules terms, this means that if your target ever gains spin on an impression “defense” (see page XX), it does not cause his attitude to degrade by one step.

✪ Five Minute Friends [Rapport]

For a fate point, you can make a steadfast friend in a place you’ve never been, given a chance for five minutes of conversation. This stunt makes nearly impossible opportunities to make friends merely improbable, improbable opportunities probable, and probable opportunities outright certain.

✪ International [Rapport]

The character’s mastery of etiquette leaves him comfortable, and even glib, in any situation. The character never suffers any penalties or increased difficulty from unfamiliarity with his setting, making it easy to maneuver through local customs he hasn’t encountered before, and to cover up any gaffes with a laugh and a sparkle in his eye.

✪ Ladies’ Man/Popular Gal [Rapport]

You’re adept at catching the eye of the opposite sex, and keeping it once you’ve got it. Any seduction attempts you make with Rapport receive a +2 technique bonus provided the target is someone who could be receptive to it (this is not always a simple case of gender and preference).

Wordplay

✪ Blather [Rapport]

It’s not that you’re a good liar – possibly far from it. It’s more that you have a skill at talking so fast, and not letting the other guy get a word in edgewise, that he doesn’t ever get the chance to figure out if you’re lying or not.
With this stunt, so long as you can keep talking, you can cover up increasingly ludicrous lies. Start your fast-talk conversation with your target as a contest between your Rapport and their Resolve or Rapport. If you win, the conversation continues, and you repeat the roll on the next exchange. If you fail, no matter how poorly, you can spend a fate point to continue the conversation as if you had won.
So long as you can keep talking uninterrupted and continue to spend fate points to defer any failures, your endless blathering will prevent your target from realizing quite what you’re doing. For the duration of the conversation, the difficulty of any perception (usually Alertness) checks by the target are based off your base Rapport skill, or your last successful roll, whichever value is higher.
The target of this effort is by no means helpless – if they are attacked or otherwise disturbed they may respond normally, and they will respond to obvious stimuli (friends being attacked in their line of sight, fire alarms going off and such). However, the target is definitely distracted. When using this ability on multiple opponents at once, they each get to defend, and you take a -1 penalty for each opponent past the first.
Of course, once you stop talking, it may be time for a quick exit.

✪ Heart on My Sleeve [Rapport]

You’re a regular stand up guy with no secrets, at least so far as anyone can tell. But even so, you’re in control of which part of your best face you’re putting forward.
Whenever using the Opening Up tactic (see page XX) to “defend” against an Empathy read, you gain a +1 on your Rapport roll. If you gain spin on your defense, you may substitute one alternate true, non-trivial fact about yourself instead of revealing an aspect.
The reader must still get an insight into you if you’re providing a fact; it’s just not necessarily one that has the weight of an aspect.

✪ The Right Questions [Rapport]

Smaller parts of a larger truth can contain a blueprint of the whole – and as a skilled conversationalist, you are adept at pulling the larger truth out of a single individual. Provided the person you’re talking to is at least neutral towards you, you may use your Rapport skill instead of Contacting for any effort to gather information (see page XX). The results are limited and colored by the knowledge available to your chat partner, but it’s always possible he doesn’t know that he knows certain things, and as such, your acquaintance effectively acts as a small “cluster” of contacts.

✪ Smooth Over [Rapport]

You’re adept at stepping into a bad situation and dialing it down to something more reasonable. So long as you are not the direct reason someone is upset, your attempts to calm them down using your Rapport receive a +2 bonus.

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