An Idea for a Competency-Based Dilettante Bold Attack, or, When Politics Attack!

In which Dyo talks about two favorite topics: politics and tressyms, and considers how Politics as a competency could expand its reach through formal mechanics.

Everything is political. RISE is no different, except that the politics here are designed to be entertaining and to enhance the game. Politics, generally, refers not to a larger organized landscape or worldview, a party, if you will, but an understanding of the workings and key personnel within the local and possibly semi-local authorities in a given area. Politics as a Competency is figured as the intersection of Integrate and Stealth, because to survive in the political arena, you must be able to fit in with a given crowd without standing out at the wrong time, and there seems often to be an underlying secrecy of what is revealed to whom. In short, Politics offers a valuable playground for those interested in gaining and trading knowledge. The acumen Diplomacy and Intimidate I see as natural companionate allies, which maybe says something about my own view of civil debate and the two main tacts of advancing a specific agenda. As a player-character, I have found equal enjoyment in graciously bringing people around to my opinion and in seizing minds by force. It is true that whenever politics are on the table, a battle may not be far from beginning. But what about Politics in battle, or on the threshold of battle? 

Richard III of England and the Lady Anne (1890) by Edwin Austin Abbey

Currently, in RISE, each competency has one or two accompanying Utility Powers. Utility powers don’t attack anyone; in the event that a utility power has a target creature, it is usually yourself or an ally, someone who is unlikely to resist your power. In other words, Utility Powers are helpful boons, not banes, to your target. 

Intriguingly, the existing Adept Politics Heroic Utility Power is a double-edged sword, reflecting the difficulty of keeping on top of power in the political arena. The power, fittingly called War and Peace, grants a +1 bonus to you and to your allies to attack rolls, Hit damage, Damage Reduction: All, Brutal, and all defenses until the end of the encounter or until a chosen enemy is defeated. However, the power actually targets an enemy who then receives all of the wrath of the enhanced party’s attacks (the bane) but also the potential to regain one Heroic power at the beginning of each of that target’s turns (the boon). Many powers do not have the potential to grant boons to your enemies in the process of granting boons to yourself or your allies: for many powers, the downside to your character is in the cost or difficulty of enacting a given power. With War and Peace, you could feasibly unleash havoc on a target, only to endow it with the means to lay waste to your entire party, depending on the nature of the renewing Heroic power and how often luck favors the renewing process.

So there’s an example of a strong Utility Power for Politics. There could theoretically be Move Powers for Politics, perhaps one that allows you to shift so many squares to directly confront the strongest enemy or to teleport a number of squares to more easily broker an in-battle cease-fire with an enemy. But my primary interest is in Politics as an Attack. 

Attack Powers, as you can guess, always choose a specific target or a range in which all beings are targeted, with the goal of doing harm. Let’s say that you want to create a small cache of competency-centric powers for your character, who holds Dilettante status in Politics and is currently involved in an increasingly hostile debate about how much money the current provisional government of Artenesia is willing to offer a band of hired archer mercenaries to protect it from a coming horde of vicious tressyms. Someone, probably the childish boy-king who is overly enamored with his bestiary of exotic animals, offers up the idea of acquiring a fleet of ravenous griffons instead, with hopes that in the inevitable clash, the griffons would eat the tressyms and then could be domesticated and made into a revenue-generating tourist attraction. This is utter nonsense and you know it. You try Diplomacy to tell him he’s a fool. You try Intimidate to tell him he’s a fool. What next? 

Lo! I give you the attack power Chamber of Echoes.

Here, friends, is an answer! Save the tressyms from undignified destruction and the griffons from this madman’s hands by casting into the boy-king’s head the noise of perhaps twenty or thirty iterations of your preferred solution, so that his own opinion is drowned out.

Tressyms, Art by Valerie Valusek (1992)

Since Overwhelmed as a condition demands that the target enact all of his plans for that “round” or his “turn” within five seconds, this will thus force him to make a decisive choice, and with any good luck, the repetition and fervor of your voice will convince him to announce your plan as his own. I should also say that, as it is an Attack Power, your ploy may be the opening salvo to an encounter, and the petulant boy-king may unleash his cockatrices or other animal lackeys upon you, but the condition of Charmed makes it likely that the king will see you as his ally and be more receptive to your opinion. For the “bane” part of the equation, you will have just shouted your own opinion out in a number of voices (please picture a medieval-attired political rabble-rouser played by the late great Robin Williams), which will leave whoever else is in earshot most likely not Charmed by your efforts, potentially creating more political problems in the long run. But hey— desperate times call for desperate measures sometimes (yes, you are a medieval or time-indeterminate version of Nikita Kruschev banging his shoe on the podium in the middle of a UN meeting. But hey, it gets attention!). 

Think you can do better than that? Maybe. Probably. Submit your ideas for a better Dilettante Politics Bold Attack here: https://www.rpgrise.com/rules-submission, and you might just see your brainchild become the favorite of characters wishing to use Politics as an attack in their quest to RISE!