Empathy Ability

This Ability represents a person’s skill at gauging the mental and emotional state of others and picking up clues about their motives or intentions. Many people possess this Ability in differing degrees, from poker players to corporate negotiators to police interrogators. Regardless of the application, the technique is the same: Human beings give away clues about their mental state in the tone of their voice, their body language and myriad other tiny details often referred to as “tells”. By asking a few questions or observing a subject’s actions and reading these tells, characters with this Ability can learn a lot about what someone is thinking - or trying to hide.

Characters use this Ability to tell if they are being lied to, to aid in a negotiation with a hostile party or to convince someone to open up to them.

Trait Effects: A character wit Empathy 1 is fairly sensitive to other people’s emotional states and can gauge their motives some of the time. A character with Empathy 3 is keenly attuned to the emotions of those around her and can read most people like a book. A character with Empathy 5 is so perceptive that it’s almost as though she can read a person’s mind – a degree of insight that can make people profoundly uncomfortable.