[X] My Assistant

[CanRay]

I'd have to say I'd deal with this on a Case-by-Case Basis. Especially if the character is superior in their skills than the player when it comes to the social stuff.

Although, I have seen someone that was 5'4" be able to loom over a 6'4" tall person a few times, but he was one of those people that was intimidating and scary when in a good mood. Which he was far, far, FAR away from at the time.

[baronspam]

I think this is the sort of thing that needs to be talked about at the start of the campaign so everyone is on the same page. I personally strongly prefer to play in games where the group works together toward a common goal and can trust one another. If you have people pulling out intimidate to try to get their way with other pcs then you are on the road to failure as runners. Sooner or later, there will be a betrayal, active or passive. They may not shoot you in the back or put a landmine under your matress, but they certianly can fail to bail you out when you need it, withhold important information, or take off in the escape vehicle rather than waiting for everyone to clear the hotzone. With so many other people out to get you, I think inter-party conflict would be the death of a shadowrun team very quickly.

[mister__joshua]

It was always my understanding that resisting something worked differently to normally testing. When resisting intimidation, you get to add bonus dice for having intimitate cos you know how it works, the techniques etc but I'd certainly allow an uncouth character to resist rolling just their stat. Do you give non-awakened characters a -1 penalty to resist spell effects for defaulting on counterspelling?

Conversley, if players are taking the uncouth flaw then they probably should be intimidated easily. The 3 related qualities are Uncouth, Infirm and Uneducated, all 20BPs. I had a player take Infirm cos he wanted to play an old man and then he realised he couldn't even attempt perception tests! Just literally didn't notice anything. That's way worse than being intimidated, for the same points. Consider an uncouth character that was the biggest baddest hunter in his massai tribe, but gets intimidated by the little girl cos she's white, or wearing bright colours, or for any other reason he isn't used to seeing. Uncouth characters are described as being sociopaths. They're more than a little messed up. This should be someone who has no place in society. Some people, no matter how tough looking, are just really intimidated by all social situations.

[Glyph]

That's why Uncouth is such a terrible negative quality - it was obviously intended to emulate people who are either borderline sociopaths at the fringes of society (such as the bounty hunter and enforcer archetypes), or Aspergerin' nerds (such as the hacker archetype). Literally uncouth. But the way the flaw works out mechanically is "This brutal bounty hunter will back down when his would-be prey threatens him with a sawed-off Remington Roomsweeper. This paranoid hacker will believe anything you tell him." But it's part of the wider system flaw of social skills being resisted solely by social skills, with no way to really emulate someone who is antisocial, but also stubborn when other people try to influence him (high Willpower alone does not do this).

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah, high willpower isn't sufficient to successfully resist social skills.

[mister__joshua]

Yeah, high willpower isn't sufficient to successfully resist social skills.

Surely high Willpower is sufficient to successfully resist social skills if your opponent is, as given in the example, an untrained schoolgirl. It isn't sufficient to resist someone who is good at social skills, but then neither should it be. There's also the Guts quality which gives +2 dice. Willpower of 5 would give 7 dice. +/- street cred and notoriety. No-one is gonna be throwing that many dice without any skill training.

[nezumi]

Yeah, high willpower isn't sufficient to successfully resist social skills.

You're probably referring to SR4 here, but in SR2/3, it sometimes is. Willpower alone is sufficient to resist intimidation and interrogation (and the intimidator receives penalties and bonuses based on how big she is, how awesome her gun is and so on), and intelligence alone is sufficient to resist negotiations, fast talk and iirc, etiquette. Funny enough, in SR3, charisma was still a dump stat even for faces because the only social thing it was relevant for was defaulting and reduced costs for purchasing linked skills.