Suggest

Will/Hard

Defaults: None. Prerequisite: Persuade at 12+.

Bards in fantasy can often influence others through storytelling. The GM may choose to represent this ability using the four Enthrallment skills Captivate, Persuade, Suggest, and Sway Emotions. Depending on the setting, these skills might be magical, psionic, or a cinematic form of hypnotism. Each has a time requirement, FP cost, and duration, and requires two skill rolls to use.

At the outset of the tale, roll vs. Public Speaking skill; if you can’t grab your audience’s attention early on, you won’t have much of a chance of controlling them by the end. On a success, proceed to the Enthrallment skill roll; critical success gives +1 on that roll. On a failure, you may still attempt the Enthrallment roll, but at a penalty equal to your margin of failure. Critical failure means your Enthrallment attempt fails automatically.

After the time required to enthrall has passed, roll a Quick Contest of your Enthrallment skill vs. the Will of each audience member. If you win, you affect your audience – see the individual skill description for effects. If you lose or tie, there is no effect. However, if you critically fail, your audience instantly turns hostile!

You may never learn these skills at a skill level higher than your Public Speaking skill.

Audience Size: An “audience” can be one listener or a hundred – as many as can hear the tale. However, the number of audience members that you can enthrall at one sitting is limited to your Charisma level squared, to a maximum of 25 people at Charisma 5.

This ability lets you give your audience a single, simple suggestion. A suggestion should have no complex grammatical clauses – just a subject, verb, object, and at most two modifiers. “Kill the king!” is acceptable; “Kill the king if he doesn’t accede to our demands!” is not. A given subject gets +5 to resist if your suggestion goes against his personal safety, and +3 if it goes against his beliefs, convictions, or knowledge.

If you win the Quick Contest, the audience members try to act on the suggestion to the best of their abilities – each assuming that the idea was his own.

Time: 20 minutes of uninterrupted storytelling.

Fatigue Cost: 6 FP, whether successful or not.

Duration: 10 minutes – or longer, if you continue to talk to the audience and can make a successful Suggest roll every 10 minutes! Once the suggestion lapses, audience members only wonder why they acted the way they did if the suggestion was something they would never have done normally.

Modifiers: All four Enthrallment skills are at -3 for Low Empathy (p. 142). If the player actually tells a good tale, the GM should reward him with +1 to +3 to the Public Speaking and Enthrallment rolls!