Social Influences Actions

Social Influence
When a character interacts with someone to get them to act in a way that she desires, she uses social influence. Social influence represents anything a character may want to do to another (or multiple other) character such as persuading, intimidating, coercing, seducing, commanding, or any other action to get someone to do what you want without involving direct violence.
Every Exalt has aspects of her life which are the most important to her, and personality traits that define how she engages with the world. In Exalted, these are Virtues and Intimacies. Virtues define what drives an Exalt and how she acts, creating a worldview and defining how she engages with every other part of her life. Intimacies define what the Exalt cares most about in her life. All Intimacies are viewed through the lens of the character’s Virtue. For instance, if a character has a Justice Virtue, then her intimacies are often bound up in righting wrongs or seeking revenge and she perceives everyone in her life as someone to be protected from wrongdoing. Together Virtues and Intimacies define what a character values, and how she acts to uphold those things.
Social interactions are a give and take between character’s Virtues and Intimacies, and getting someone to act requires appealing to their fundamental desires.
Virtues
Every character has two Virtues, one Major and one Minor. Together, they define how she interprets the world around her. A Virtue isn’t just what drives an Exalt to act, it defines what kinds of actions she’ll take to accomplish a goal or deal with a situation. Her Virtues color everything she does and explain where her impulses come from and her base reactions to any situation. When choosing your character’s Virtues, consider why she has this outlook.
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Ambition: The Exalt desires greatness through action. She sets goals for herself regularly
and works towards overcoming them. When choosing this Virtue, decide on a large-scale goal
for the character, such as Purge corruption from the Realm or Drive the Guild from the Southern
threshold. This goal can be changed during the game when the character accomplishes a major Milestone. For example, Lydia the Dragon-Blooded’s Ambition is to become the leader of House Cynas to prove her brother wrong.
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Compassion: The character easily puts herself out for the sake of others. She is
empathetic to their needs and wants, and often sacrifices her own in order to help others. She cares for the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the meek and makes enemies of the wicked and tyrannical. For example, Rhaetmandius the Infernal’s Compassion is driven by his desire to relieve the common people of the burden of oppression.
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Courage: The Exalt thrives in adversity, viewing each new challenge as a chance to
prove herself. She values decisive actions, and scoffs at things like impossible odds or dangerous endeavors. She is not easily intimidated, and scorns those who are cowardly. For example, The Gate that Stems the Flow the Abyssal’s Courage comes from her deep desire to show everyone she is the best.
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Discipline: The character values personal restraint and dedication. She acts with
precision and methodical thought using caution to ensure victory. While cautious, she is not cowardly, that would go against her own views of dedication or devotion. She hates rash action
and impulsivity. For example, Violet Sky the Liminal’s Discipline drives her to resist the advances of wicked necromancers who would turn her from her work of laying the dead to rest.
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Justice: The Exalt values the laws and behaves righteously. She cares about doing the
right thing above all else and cannot abide wrongdoing of any kind. She feels it is her personal responsibility to punish wrongdoers, seek revenge for crimes, and protect the innocent. For example, Wandering Teeth the Solar’s Justice stems from his need to oppose rampant banditry and criminality in and around Nexus.
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Loyalty: The character dedicates herself wholly to someone or something that she
values. It may be an organization, a leader, a country, or an institution. She values loyalty in others and reacts in kind. She acts for the good of those she is loyal to and abhors betrayal of any kind. For example, Silver Star the Lunar’s Loyalty is to the Southern Tribal Confederation for saving her life. • Wonder: The Exalt views the world with a sense of wonder and curiosity. She always tries to discover new things and treats all experiences as valuable for learning. She values learning, discover, adventure, and exploration. She can’t stand to see the destruction of knowledge or the incurious. For example, Amber Rose the Sidereal’s Wonder comes from their desire to go new places and find new experiences.
Virtues are defining features that an Exalt isn’t going to leave behind or abandon on a whim. The only way to change a character’s Virtue is during game and through a story that changes the character’s fundamental nature and applies when she accomplishes a major Milestone. The story is likely to happen over time, and cause a gradual shift, and could happen between large time skips. For example, a Loyal character may experience so much betrayal that she becomes disillusioned and shifts her Virtue to Justice. Or an adventurous character with Wonder as a Virtue might encounter so many dangerous situations that she loses her sense of Wonder and shifts instead to Courage. Work with your Storyteller to help decide when these kinds of shifts make sense.
Changing Virtues While shifting a character’s Virtue in play requires a story and time, sometimes you may find that your chosen Virtue no longer represents your character’s outlook without even trying. Sometimes you pick a Virtue for your character, but through play realize they are focused on something else entirely. Players should feel free to change out one Virtue for another if it just isn’t working for the character without going through the process of shifting a Virtue with story.
Virtues in Play
Exalts are people who act in extremes. Without outside impetus, the character acts in line with her Virtues. Both trivial actions made without thought, and large decisions follow in line with them. She isn’t incapable of acting outside of her Virtues, and she might obfuscate her true intentions to manipulate her foes, but it takes outside input for her to even consider acting any other way. Use your character’s Virtues to help decide how to react to most situations. When hung up on an action, how to proceed during a story, or just what to say to a Dynast who is asking your group
for assistance, look to the character’s Virtues for guidance. You can also use the character’s Virtues to help describe Stunts or influence dramatic moments for your character.
Intimacies
A character’s Intimacies define what she cares most about in life. From her relationships with others to her beliefs and ambitions. Characters start the game with one Major and two Minor Intimacies.
While Virtues drive how a character acts and views the world, Intimacies are concrete people, goals, or ideals that the character values and will act to protect. Intimacies are broken down into two different overall categories based on if it is a person or a concept. These categories help narrow the scope of the Intimacy and give it definition, but do not alter its functionality or intensity.
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Ties represent how your character feels about another character. Intimacies define a
character, so this is more than just camaraderie for a fellow soldier. It is the love a mother has for her child, or the admiration from a student to a teacher, or the bloodlust one has for his enemy. Reciprocation is not a requirement for ties — a child may hate her mother, or a teacher may care little for his student.
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Principles represent your character’s goals, ambitions, and personal code. A character
might be a pacifist who tries not to hurt others, or a pragmatist who does whatever it takes to get things done. These are her principles. Intimacies are tied to a character’s Virtues, and when describing an Intimacy, the character must decide which Virtue it falls under. It helps describe how the character relates to the Intimacy and what she’ll do to defend it. For example: Amethyst loves her wife dearly and has “Loves Sonya” as a Justice Intimacy. Amethyst believes it is her duty to protect her wife from those who would treat her wrong or stop Sonya from breaking the law herself.
Gaining new Intimacies
As a character grows, she is bound to develop attachments to new people and ideals, and discard those she’s grown out of. While her Virtues rarely change without a life-changing event, Intimacies may come and go. You may gain new, change, or even remove Intimacies as it makes sense for your character and the story. Characters can change their intimacies in the following ways:
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A social influence action may strengthen or lessen the intensity of an Intimacy.
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A character may lose a Major Intimacy through dramatic roleplay, such as the loss of a
loved one, or a sudden discovery that shatters a strongly held belief. These losses should be directed through the Storyteller and should make sense. If the character is simply growing apart from the Intimacy, it is better to downgrade it slowly over time.
Love and Loss
Intimacies are not set in stone. People grow apart, find new interests, take up new causes, and fall in and out of love regularly. Players should feel free to upgrade or downgrade an Intimacy’s intensity as they see fit or change them out if they become inconsequential to the story or the character. We suggest letting characters downgrade or upgrade Intimacies each time they achieve a Minor Milestone if they wish, but if it just isn’t working, players should feel free to change them out as they wish. Sometimes characters develop intimacies to things due to someone else’s actions. This should only ever happen if the player is okay with it, and if the newly enforced Intimacy ever makes a player feel uncomfortable, they should drop it or change it immediately. See Resisting Influence p. XX for rules on what happens when a player doesn’t want to accept an influence action and apply those rules retroactively if necessary.
Intensities
Both Virtues and Intimacies have an intensity rating that determines how important that aspect is to a character. Having something listed as a Virtue or Intimacy means that it is important to the character, but when trying to decide how to act or between pursing one goal over the other, the intensity rating helps.
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Minor: These are notable beliefs, relationships, or personality quirks that have some
influence over the character, but don’t impact major decisions. Minor Virtues are ones that the character acts on without thinking, but when she must really consider her course, she can easily avoid acting on the Virtue. Minor Intimacies are ones that the character cares about but does not factor into every decision she makes.
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Major: These are important relationships, beliefs, and drives that influence the way the
character behaves and the choices she makes. Major Virtues are ones that color every decision a character makes, and she has a hard time acting without taking it into consideration. Major Intimacies are important enough to always be on the Exalt’s mind, as she considers them before making any major decision.
Characters can have varying intensity Intimacy with either of her Virtues, even if they don’t match intensity. Using the example from above, Amethyst’s Justice may be her Minor Virtue, but her Intimacy to Sonya is Major. She factors Sonya into every decision she makes, but she doesn’t always act for Justice.
Influence Actions
When one character tries to influence another, roll Attribute + Ability as an influence action. The most common Abilities for influence actions are Embassy, Performance, Presence, and War, though the Storyteller is the final arbiter of which Ability fits which situation. Characters have a Resolve against social influence set to two modified by the character’s Intimacy, Virtue, and

A character may lose a Major Intimacy through dramatic roleplay, such as the loss of a
loved one, or a sudden discovery that shatters a strongly held belief. These losses should be directed through the Storyteller and should make sense. If the character is simply growing apart from the Intimacy, it is better to downgrade it slowly over time.
Love and Loss
Intimacies are not set in stone. People grow apart, find new interests, take up new causes, and fall in and out of love regularly. Players should feel free to upgrade or downgrade an Intimacy’s intensity as they see fit or change them out if they become inconsequential to the story or the character. We suggest letting characters downgrade or upgrade Intimacies each time they achieve a Minor Milestone if they wish, but if it just isn’t working, players should feel free to change them out as they wish. Sometimes characters develop intimacies to things due to someone else’s actions. This should only ever happen if the player is okay with it, and if the newly enforced Intimacy ever makes a player feel uncomfortable, they should drop it or change it immediately. See Resisting Influence p. XX for rules on what happens when a player doesn’t want to accept an influence action and apply those rules retroactively if necessary.
Intensities
Both Virtues and Intimacies have an intensity rating that determines how important that aspect is to a character. Having something listed as a Virtue or Intimacy means that it is important to the character, but when trying to decide how to act or between pursing one goal over the other, the intensity rating helps.
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Minor: These are notable beliefs, relationships, or personality quirks that have some
influence over the character, but don’t impact major decisions. Minor Virtues are ones that the character acts on without thinking, but when she must really consider her course, she can easily avoid acting on the Virtue. Minor Intimacies are ones that the character cares about but does not factor into every decision she makes.
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Major: These are important relationships, beliefs, and drives that influence the way the
character behaves and the choices she makes. Major Virtues are ones that color every decision a character makes, and she has a hard time acting without taking it into consideration. Major Intimacies are important enough to always be on the Exalt’s mind, as she considers them before making any major decision.
Characters can have varying intensity Intimacy with either of her Virtues, even if they don’t match intensity. Using the example from above, Amethyst’s Justice may be her Minor Virtue, but her Intimacy to Sonya is Major. She factors Sonya into every decision she makes, but she doesn’t always act for Justice.
Influence Actions
When one character tries to influence another, roll Attribute + Ability as an influence action. The most common Abilities for influence actions are Embassy, Performance, Presence, and War, though the Storyteller is the final arbiter of which Ability fits which situation. Characters have a Resolve against social influence set to two modified by the character’s Intimacy, Virtue, and
Integrity. If the character has at least one dot in the Integrity Ability, her Resolve is set to three, and if the Integrity Ability is three or higher, her Resolve is four instead. For antagonists who do not have Integrity, set Resolve to three if it has an appropriate Secondary trait or four if it has an appropriate Primary trait.
A character’s Virtues and Intimacies may adjust her Resolve up or down if it is relevant to a social influence action targeting her. When targeted by a social influence action, determine if any of her Virtues and Intimacies are relevant to the nature of the influence. If more than one Virtue, or more than one Intimacy is relevant, choose the one from each category with the highest intensity.
This relevant Virtue or Intimacy modifies her Resolve and determines how hard it is to get her to act. If the influence would cause her to act out of alignment with her Virtue or Intimacy, it increases her Resolve against the action. If the influence would cause her to act in alignment with it, it lowers her Resolve against the action. Minor intensities add or remove two to the character’s Resolve. Major intensities change the bonus or penalty to her Resolve to three. The minimum Resolve a character has against an influence action is one.
For example, if an enemy warlord attempts to convince Amethyst to abandon her pursuit of him to protect her wife, the influence would be in accordance with her Major Intimacy to Sonya, but against her Minor Virtue of Justice. This would remove three from her Resolve for the Intimacy, but add two to her Resolve for the Virtue, creating a net total or removing one from her Resolve against that social influence. To use a social action, the character declares her intention, stating the general effect from the list of social actions detailed on p. XX. At this time, declare if the action is targeting a Virtue, Intimacy, both, or if she has appropriate leverage. The player forms a dice pool for the action using an appropriate Attribute + Ability and adding any modifiers. The target’s Resolve starts at two and gains any appropriate bonuses or penalties from Virtues, Intimacies, and Integrity. On success, the player achieves her stated action and can spend extra successes to purchase additional or greater effects. The target may always choose to resist the social influence.
Breaking it Down Characters may use social influence in action scenes and during combat, and Charms may modify their use. To know when a Charm could apply, we break the individual steps down into numbered components then tie the Charm’s activation time to this. What that means for the player is that you can only declare a single Charm at each step of the influence. The steps are as follows: • Step 1: The player declares her intention for the influence. • Step 2: Form the dice pool for the action using an appropriate Attribute + Ability and adding any modifiers. • Step 3: The target determines if any Virtues or Intimacies adjust his Resolve. • Step 4: On success, the player utilizes extra successes to determine the extent of her influence action on the target. The target may choose to resist the social influence.
When declaring the intentions for the influence action, the player must at that time declare what her intended outcome is. If the target’s Virtues and Intimacies come into play, then he modifies
his Resolve accordingly. Social actions do not need to target a character’s Virtue or Intimacy, though trying to get her to act in accordance with them is easier than not. She describes what kind of action she is taking, such as sweet-talking a judge or intimidating a legionnaire. She then rolls her Ability and if she overcomes his Resolve, her stated goal is successful. If she has additional successes after overcoming the Difficulty, she can use those extra success to create additional effects.
Where it would apply, increase the success of additional effects by the Virtue or Intimacy value. For example: Trying to persuade a character to act against her Major Virtue with additional successes increases its cost by two.
Influence Effects
The following are influence actions a character may take against her target. In parenthesis is the cost to buy the action with extra successes on another influence action.
Dissuade (2 successes): You convince your target to stop performing an action she wants to take. Dissuade covers anything from threats, convincing arguments, and acting in a calming manner.
On success, the target refrains from the described action for a single turn. You can spend extra successes to purchase this again to extend the amount of time the target will refrain from taking the action to a scene. Spending the extra successes a second time will prevent the target from acting for a story.
• Instill (1 success): You create a new feeling or belief for the character tied to a character’s Virtue. Instill covers actions to convince a character of a truth, inspire her to belief or great emotion, or create fear. Create a new minor Intimacy for the character based on what you’ve made her believe or feel. This could be anything from a new belief, a strong emotion, a fear of something (or someone), or even a new person she’s decided she cares about. The newly instilled Intimacy must be attached to one of the target’s Virtues. If you don’t know the character’s Virtues, then they decide which one the Intimacy is tied to. You may only instill a single Intimacy per social influence action. A character may Instill an Intimacy without attachment to a Virtue (such a temporary Tie of Fear). However, this requires magic such as a Charm otherwise the Intimacy persists only until the end of the session.
• Persuade (2 successes): You convince the target to take an action. This action generally targets a Virtue or Intimacy, but if the character has suitable leverage in the form of bargaining, coercion, or intimidation she doesn’t need to know her target’s Virtues or Intimacies. Persuade covers all types of actions, from threats, sweet talking, or inspiring one to act.
On success, the target acts to the best of her ability as long as it does not pose more than a minor inconvenience to herself. You may spend extra successes to purchase Persuade multiple times to increase the level of action a target takes on your behalf.
Extra successes spent on the same action persuades the target to take on a serious task that would pose inconvenience, and even danger to herself or others. She will not risk serious injury or her livelihood for the task.
Purchasing it a second time persuades the character to risk almost everything to perform the task. She is willing to put everything on the line, going so far as to allowing it to change her life. She won’t risk death, but short of that, she’s up for the challenge.
A note on surrender: Begging for your life in most cases is a basic Persuade — letting a defeated stranger live is little inconvenience. If the character deems your character a threat to her life or that of an Intimacy, you may need to spend extra successes to convince her to spare the character’s life.
• Read Intentions (variable successes): You read your target, learning something about her as you do. When taking this action, your character chooses which bit of information she wishes to learn: the target’s motives, Virtues, or Intimacies. On success, learn your stated goal. Spending extra successes gives you additional information. For one extra success learn a goal or intention the character has for the current scene. Spend two successes to learn one Minor Intimacy or Virtue. Spend three successes to learn one Major Intimacy or Virtue. The cost of Read Intentions is not modified by the target character’s Virtues or Intimacies.
• Set Up (2 successes): You create a situation in which the target is more likely to accept social influence from one of your allies. This can come in the form of intimidation through a show of force, playing up the other character’s abilities, or displaying lack of empathy for the target. Unlike other forms of social influence, Abilities such as Close Combat, Physique, Ranged Combat, and War work well for Set Up.
On success, remove one from the target’s Resolve on the next social influence used against him by a friend or ally. Extra successes can be used to remove another one from the target’s Resolve. A target’s Resolve can never go below one.
• Strengthen (2 successes): You strengthen an existing Intimacy, taking it from Minor to Major. This cannot be used to strengthen an Intimacy created in the same scene.
• Weaken (3 successes): You weaken an existing Intimacy, taking it from Major to Minor, or from Minor to removed completely. You may only weaken a given Intimacy once per scene. If a character fails on a social action, she can’t just retry immediately using the same tactics. The situation must change in some way to allow her to attempt again. She may need to come up with additional evidence to persuade someone or instill a belief, find additional money for a bribe, or increase the stakes. A character may take an entirely different approach, turning from bribes to threats on a failed action, but doing so increases the target’s Resolve by two. Otherwise, the acting character must wait until the end of the story to try again, or at least until the circumstances have changed greatly.
Example: Heather’s character, Mercurial Iris (a Nadir Infernal) is trying to help a Dynastic heir escape from her corrupt family’s holdings. While attempting to flee, she is confronted by the heir’s bodyguard, a towering Earth Aspect, who demands the Infernal reveal the hidden location of his charge. This social roll is made against a Difficulty of 6 determined by adding her three to her base Defense of three from her Major Virtue of Courage. He succeeds with 9 successes. He succeeds on the basic persuasion action, which has her reveal reveals that the heir is no longer in the family home. If he wants the full location of the heir’s whereabouts, he needs to spend two additional successes, as revealing that information is a serious risk for the Infernal. He spends those two successes to force her to talk. He then has one additional success which he spends to read the Infernal’s intentions, which tells him she intends to kill him.
Persuading a Willing Target
It should be easy to get a character to act in accordance with her Virtues or Intimacies, so much so that the players or Storyteller might not feel like it is worth rolling to get the character to act. A player may choose to have her character act on a persuasion influence action in accordance with a Virtue or Intimacy without a roll. Doing so grants the player Stunt dice for the action.
Resisting Influence
Social influence isn’t magical, nor is it mind control. Characters may be susceptible to influence, but there are limits to what you can get them to do. When an influence action succeeds, but the target is unwilling to go along with whatever they’ve been influenced to do, they have two choices: accept a hard bargain instead or ignore it entirely. A hard bargain is a narrative tool that allows a player to resist a social influence at a cost to the character. The Exalt might perform a different related action, suffer a setback, or weaken one of her Intimacies by doing so. A player can always choose to completely ignore an influence action if she feels it is too far out of her character’s nature. If she ignores it, the influencing character does not get any of his chosen influence effects and instead gains his extra successes as bonus dice to another roll in the same scene. These dice cannot be used to reattempt the same influence. The Red Rule and unacceptable influence still apply.
Example: Heather decides Mercurial Iris would never reveal information about the heir to this guard. The Storyteller offers Heather the choice to instead give up the location of the Circle, selling out her friends rather than the character she’s trying to rescue. She chooses not to accept the bargain, and the bodyguard gains three bonus dice, which the Storyteller chooses to apply to the first combat roll.
Unacceptable Influence
Certain types of influence never work on a character. No amount of oration or debate will make someone commit suicide or turn against their strongest ideals. If a request is so antithetical to the nature and personality of its target, it is unacceptable influence. A character targeted with unacceptable influence may reject it outright without granting bonus dice to the influencer, even before the roll. A player may still choose to have her character follow a course of action put forward by unacceptable influence, but only because she thinks it makes sense — the character cannot be coerced into doing it. Some Charms can force a character into certain kinds of unacceptable influence. The following are examples of unacceptable influence:
• Persuading a character to perform an action above the threshold of successes spent on Persuasion. For example, asking someone to take on a serious or dangerous task without spending extra successes.
• Any influence that would cause a character to kill himself or do something he knows would result in his certain death.
Asking a character to act in a way that would require her to abandon or ignore her Major
Virtue is unacceptable. The Red Rule
A player-controlled character can only be seduced or otherwise put in a sexual situation if the player is okay with it. Otherwise, such an attempt fails immediately. This is completely up to the player’s discretion. Only they can decide if they want their character to be seduced, and applies on an attempt-by-attempt basis — allowing it once doesn’t void your ability to deny an attempt in the same scene or even by the same character. If no one in your group chooses to invoke this rule, that’s fine too, but players don’t have to watch their character put into a sexual situation if they aren’t comfortable with it. Groups that feel comfortable doing so should allow player characters the full range of their seductive prowess when entangled with Storyteller-controlled characters. But remember, the Storyteller is also a player and actions should also respect her boundaries.
Multiple Targets
Most social influence actions only influence a single character at a time. Sometimes an Exalt may want to sway a crowd or convince a group of soldiers to take an action. When attempting to target multiple targets with an influence action, the Ability roll suffers a three dice penalty. Because everyone in the group is different with differing Virtues and Intimacies, their Resolve is applied individually. The influencing character rolls her Ability and counts her successes, and each defending character compares his Resolve to the result. If she spends extra successes, she spends the maximum amount of extra successes for the action that applies to the entire group. She spends extra successes based on the lowest Resolve of the group, but each individual removes successes from the action depending on their own Resolve.
Example: Danielle is playing Amethyst Blade (a Dawn Solar) who is trying to inspire a group of soldiers to attack. She rolls with a three-dice penalty and nets five successes. Any character with Defense 4 or lower is persuaded to act but will not put themselves in danger. The lowest Defense against the action is 2, and she spends two successes to Persuade the group to go all in and risk injury. The soldiers with Defense 2 act with the full effects of the influence. Anyone with a Defense of 3-4 will act under the base level of success. And anyone with Defense 5 or more will ignore the effects of the influence.
Social Actions in Combat A character may make an influence action during combat as her action. Doing so works the same as it written, though it must make sense. You can certainly shout out a fast set of commands, or even make a quick emotional plea, but a long-winded discussion or oratory takes too long for the fast action in combat. Influence actions count as combat actions and declaring t