Compulsion (minor): "You can be more"

[classicdrogn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaLHu8UIwGE

I'm not sure about the effect really, but the music is too good to have none. It's not that strong as mental influence powers go, using it during active combat might get you some hesitation at best and seriously provoke the target if their "moment of weakness" is taken advantage of... but if you use it on the right person, at the right time, and in combination with actually following through on the promise it offers, you might just turn an enemy into an ally. Notably, it's effective even on targets that Doug could not normally communicate with as long as they're within his range and capable of understanding the concept of a friend/ally/partner/packmate/etc..

Diplomancing? Doug? Clearly the universe has not yet revealed the true depths of its perversity

[Bob Schroeck]

Diplomancing?

"Diplomancy" sounds like a very specialized field of magic...

Seriously, though. I've liked a lot of Machinae Supremacy's stuff, starting with "Action Girl"; I'll have to give this one a bit of thought through some replays.

[Norgarth]

'Diplomancer' is an RPing phrase generally referring to a character specced out for talking out problems/negotiating/social interaction rather than cracking heads.

[hazard]

And due to the way talking generally works in RPGs, mechanically speaking anyway, calling it magic is pretty accurate.

It's basically magic when you can convince an tough elven guardsman they're a soft and simpering human peasant girl way out her depth in a single sentence as long as you roll well enough.

[robkelk]

So, it's another name for "The Face"?

[classicdrogn]

As opposed to the "dipsomancer," which is the polite name for a wizard who likes his booze just a little too much. Drunken magic may be the best magic... but only as a spectator from a safe location, preferably separated by numerous dimensional walls and scrying it in the past after ensuring that no memetic hazard outbreaks were started at that place and time.

[classicdrogn]

Also, for an example of a "you can be more" diplomancing, I turn once more to Dragonflight's Mekton game that I played in for a while, where, with a page or so length speech that made all the other members go "wow" and a roll of about 45 on 1d10 where 10s add and roll again, my character talked a Mass Effect Reaper that crashed on a D&D world out of doing that whole mind control/genocide shtick when it could turn its vast abilities to guiding the society forming around it in a benevolent fashion. Daisuke was a Kamen Rider/Super Sentai hybrid MAGIC SPAAAACE PALADIN! who pulled some damn crazy stunts basically from the first day he joined the team*, but that is surely going to be the highlight of my gaming stories for a good long time.


* His first trick was actually fairly mundane but still notable, the party were sneaking (actually sneaking, with no explosions or spontaneous mecha battles or buster-class magic doombeams blasting out to the horizon! I swear, the literal pose-and-declaim, over the top melodramatic toku hero was the sneaky one in the group...) inside an enemy geofront and his super-armor was still in pieces from a rough insertion to the story, but he "transformed" by flipping the flashy geometric-patterned cloak around to the urban camo grey lining and hopped up onto a roof, then folded it around himself to look like an HVAC unit to fool some patrolling guards rather than duck into a doorway, alley, or (I think?) behind a dumpster like the others. Another time, he used illusion magic to make the enemy super-mecha appear to have exploded instead of being captured, then went straight to performing a pioneering de-cyborging surgery and regeneration of the integrated slave-pilot to allow him to return to a relatively normal life as a humanoid instead of a giant tunnel borer/snake-thing, while extracting the booby-trapped portal drive gizmo to get coordinates for the boss's asteroid base. No, that Persuade check was still the biggest crazy thing he pulled off, in a metaphorical ocean where there was always a bigger crazy thing.