Speech Point Buy

Speech Point Buy is part of the Proficiency System. Speech Point Buy is for diplomats, high-brow elites, smooth-talkers, and conniving schemers both for legal and illegal purposes. Speech Point Buy is strictly non-combat. If you invest any Proficiency Points into Charisma, it will detract from your Combat usefulness, the heavier you invest. Charisma Proficiency Points cannot be used in Combat Roleplay in any way, and do not contribute to your Attack Stat, or Defense Stat. However, it can grant out-of-combat functions that are completely inaccessible to conventional warrior-focused Characters. Each Point of investment in Charisma increases your Character’s Persuasion Stat. Persuasion Stat can be used to perform Persuasion Rolls, which can be particularly useful to convince a DM/Event NPC of something. For more details about Persuasion rolls, see the bottom of the Page.

Speech Point Buy Packs

Hosting Presence Pack

While skills in cooking and mixology are not bound by Proficiencies, knowing how to perfectly anticipate wishes, is. The Hosting Presence Pack allows your Character to anticipate the favorite flavors, colors, foods, drinks, and interests of DM/Event NPCs before they show up. If this would for example require you to change the colored interior of an Event, make a Ticket to Staff to ask. This does not grant additional information, it just makes sure you do not accidentally use tokenized flattery and can put NPCs in a good mood. This can also be used on Players, but only with their consent to provide the information they want to provide. The Pack functions like your Character using their contacts to learn about a person’s preferences and interests.

Sanctioned Presence Pack

This Pack does several things:

• Your Character has an Imperial Identification Seal that is not forgeable and cannot be copied. It allows your Character to indisputably establish their identity if they have been forcibly Transformed, copied, imitated, or otherwise visually obscured.
• Your Character can, because of this Imperial Seal, gain access to Palace Events even if they are a Commoner, and without a Noble or Knight entourage or acting as their +1. Keep in mind Palace decorum is still in effect, criminals/monsters will be ejected.
• When Knights or other forms of government law enforcement block off an area or make an area off-limits due to a barricade or blockade, the Imperial Seal allows your Character to remain there, or pass through any barricade set up for security or exclusion.

Stubborn Presence Pack

This Pack allows you to reduce incoming Persuasion Rolls, or Persuasion Rolls made by others in the same scene. When someone uses Persuasion Rolls on you, the final result has -1 removed. When someone uses Persuasion Rolls near you, you can choose to apply this to their Dice, to sabotage their attempts to persuade. A Character can only be affected by one Stubborn Presence Pack per Dice Roll, and each time this Pack is used, it counts as your Character saying something snarky or snobby to sabotage the Persuasion attempt. The person who is attempting to use Persuasion will know IC that you tried to sabotage them.

Saving Presence Pack

Either when you or your friend commits some grievous communication error with a DM NPC or some other Event Character controlled by a Staff Member, you can activate the Saving Presence Pack as a rewind to quickly save the situation from escalating, relax, or diffuse the person who the statement was made towards, and give the speaker the time to re-phrase their statement, opinion, or choose to remain quiet. This is particularly useful to save yourself or someone from committing a diplomatic faux-pas or saying something awkward that would result in loss of opportunities, however, this Pack has limited use. If you are using it for yourself, there is a 30-day cooldown per DM, even if that DM is playing different Characters in different plotlines, you cannot re-use this Pack on the same DM in that period. If you are using it to save a friend’s error, the cooldown applies both to you and your friend, regardless if they have the Pack or not.

Political Presence Pack

Through political connections and social dealings, the user, if they are a non-voting person (for example a Commoner) at Imperial Assemblies, is instead allowed to sit in the noble-voting section, and has 1 vote. If the user already has a vote (for example, they are Noble or a Priest), they gain +1 vote. This Pack is still predicated on the Character being presentable and legal to the Court, obvious criminals, traitors, and monsters will be deprived of a vote. If the Character already has a bonus +1 vote (from for example, Slizzar Mechanics), this Pack does nothing.

Hazard Presence Pack

This Pack allows the user to access physically or socially hazardous locations. This can include for example Guldar, where the air is toxic though some kind of special exception granted by the Maquixtl state. This can for example be the Allorn Empire, which has its borders closed to foreigners, and Regalians are banned from entry without this Pack. Because these places exist off the map, they cannot be visited in-game. This pack purely exists to allow a Character background interactions with these regions and to write lore stories and have stories to tell players in conversational roleplay. Finally, this Pack also grants your Character the means to (mundanely) avoid some of the hazardous risks of exploration around Regalia, for example, the Acid Flats (in Gloomrot) and Sulphur Caves (in the Badlands), where normal Characters would experience respiratory problems, your character happens to have safety breathers.

Undisclosed Presence Pack

This Pack has the user trained so well in mental fortitude and obfuscation, that they are immune even to Magical attempts to apply Mind Control, or scry their mind for information. Your Character becomes immune to being mind-controlled, Thralled, having their emotions read, or emotions influenced, and so forth. This does not protect against Illusions, or Memory Alterations, however. You can still submit your Character to these functions if you want to, however, it assumes that by default your Character deters any kind of Mind Control.

Fiscal Presence Pack

Your Character is living life on the edge of loans and grants, always shuffling money and debts around and ahead of themselves so that loan sharks somehow never come to collect. Your Character counts as being Aristocrat-like wealthy and can throw money around, even if they don’t own any money and all of it is in the form of loans constantly being shuffled around. Additionally, while supply is available and with manpower permitting among World Staff, you may request a small “Smuggler’s Cove” region in the far north of Regalia’s mountain ranges in a Ticket, where your Character can do IC smuggling. There will be no buildings in this area, just an empty beach with a traveling cart to the back of Crookback, but you can build things there.

Fame Presence Pack

Your Character can use their wide social connection to subtly inquire about opinions of themselves, or their allies or friends, from specific social groups. These social groups are always off-screen NPC groups, for example: The Imperial Family, The Aelrrigan Grandmaster, the Lothar Order Council, the Court of the Queendom of Lusits, the Jarl-Regents of Tryllelande, etc. They should be government institutions or specific organizational structures. The inquiry will result in a readout of how much this entity knows about your Character or your friend’s Character, how much they like or dislike yours or theirs, and sometimes why (but generally not). Always inquire in a Ticket.

Persuasion Stat and Rolls

Persuasion is an optional system to help Players add unpredictability to their own Roleplay or to help Players use persuasive dialogue towards DM/Event NPC’s or Characters. Note, Persuasion is not meant as a replacement for strong rhetoric. Persuasion is not meant to be used after your Character has gone on a monologue about why something is a good idea to believe, or do. Persuasion must be used before an attempt is made to Persuade someone, followed purely by the suggested opinion, course of action, or belief. There are some additional rules:

• You cannot use Persuasion without at least 1 Proficiency Point invested into Charisma Point Buy. Without any Charisma, you cannot use Persuasion Dice. Persuasion also cannot be used to cause Characters or NPCs to engage in self-harming activities. If a Persuasion Attempt is too outlandish, it will be rejected.
• Persuasion may convince NPCs/Characters to do something that is going to cause problems for them, but they will hold your OC accountable after if they can. If the suggestion or Persuasion attempt is too clownish or out of the bounds of what is reasonable, actionable, or otherwise functional, your Persuasion attempt may be denied. If you are unsure, ask in OOC before attempting, to prevent wasting time if it would never work.
• Players can only opt-in to Persuasion, but cannot revoke consent to Persuasion after it has been given, and /Dice is rolled. It must be used in good faith. Additionally, Persuasion should never be used post-statement. That is to say, after a Player has delivered dialogue or rhetoric, you should not ask for a Persuasion roll, this is considered poor etiquette. Handle the Roleplay dialogue as it is, and use Dice rolls where there is none.

Persuasion Stat

Persuasion Stat is a number that dictates whether you can do Persuasion Rolls at all, and at what number you perform these /Dice rolls. Up to 7 Proficiency Points can be invested into the Charisma Packs. Persuasion Stat and Dices works as follows.

• When rolling on an NPC, perform 2d10 (/dice 10 twice in-game). Add these, and then add the number of your Character’s Charisma Proficiency on top. Finally, add any Buffs or Debuffs from Mechanics. This is your final Persuasion Dice.
• An NPC will always have an internal Stat, between 11 and 19, and this Stat will always be the same. You cannot ask to be informed of the exact number. If you roll over the NPC’s Stat, you succeed in convincing them.
• Between Players, the persuader will roll first following the same rules. Then, the defender will roll following the same rules, with the highest number determining success or failure.
• If a Player Character who has 0 Charisma is being Persuasion rolled upon, they always just roll 2d10, but add no Charisma Proficiency on top. They still get Mechanic-based Buffs or Debuffs, however.
• To give you a general overview of what percentages this leads to, we provide an overview below of the probability between investments and subsequent bonuses.