Talky and scientific characters in SotC fights

These mailing list posts about Spirit are pretty inspiring for non-traditional fights. Every Skill Is Useful In Combat (Was: Re: manging significant ability discrepancies within the party). Fred Hicks writes:

Skills really break down into three types: talky, thinky, and fighty.

Fighty, you’re already set in a fight. So let’s move on to “talky”.

In my opinion, in SOTC, the most powerful skill is Rapport. It’s vastly flexible, and unless your character is gagged, you can always use it. Combine it with the Blather stunt and you can pretty much /paralyze/ opponents during a fight — or at least leave them too confused to decide to attack /you/ — by creatively running your mouth.

/Any of the social skills/ could potentially be used to deliver witty one-liners, ruses of misdirection, and other such gambits, meaning that even in a fistfight, your mouthy guys can perform /dialogue maneuvers/ that place temporary aspects on the opponents — tenderizing them for the physical combat specialists they’ve teamed up with, or giving themselves and their teammates a better edge on defending against their foe’s attacks.

So those are the talky applications. The thinky ones are even easier: /make shit up./ Thanks to the power of assessments and — more importantly — declarations, perception and knowledge skills can be used to /determine or invent the existence of temporary aspects/ that will place your opponents at a disadvantage. Much like a “dialogue maneuver”, assessments and declarations /are maneuvers/, at least in terms of how their effects manifest — as a temporary aspect which your side can use for an advantage.

So, ultimately, the “how does my not-fighty character get useful in a fight?” question has a single, but very potent, answer: use your other skills in their /usual idiom/ to get your fighty compatriots a leg up. /Everything that isn’t an attack, a block, or movement, is a _maneuver_, qs far as fighting goes/./ /So go nuts with that.

Spout off crazy assertions (“Using my understanding of physics, I roll Science to tell Jack when his opponent is most off-balance so he can land a knockdown blow!” or “I’m rolling Investigation to find the weak spot in the armor–if I succeed, we’ll know where best to shoot!”) or run your mouth (“I’m using Deceit to convince this guy that he’s been double-crossed by his allies!” or “I’m going to confuse this minion mob with my gift of gab–rolling Rapport!”) and put the GM on the spot to come up with a valid skill your foes must roll to defend against it (flexibility is the watchword; maybe Weapons defends against that Investigation for a weak spot — maybe Athletics can stop that Science assertion cold — maybe Empathy will see through those clever conversational gambits).

The temporary aspects will be /flying/ once you work this formula hard, and your fight-focused friends will find you an absolute /necessity/ in a fight–you’ll save them from having to do all those set-up maneuvers, and they can focus on what they do best–attacking!

Fred

Another good exchange followed up on this:
Q: What happens when the [declaration] roll misses?
A: Like any maneuver, they don’t always succeed, man.

Q: How do you manage meta gaming, when the smart character makes a declaration the other players know failed, even if their characters would normally swear by the smart character’s perception?

A: I don’t have this problem at my table, so I leave that open to the crowd.

(At my table, folks have enough of a sense of fun to see the comedy in believing something that’s wrong. We have a ball with it.)

Fred

And more: The example in the book is a great one, where one PC declares, “this tribe respects strength! Walk up and punch that guy out, and they’ll do what we want.”

If he succeeds with his declaration, it’s all good.

If he fails, and the other PC walks up and punches the tribesman,
things are probably going to get real interesting fast.

David