Confused about Alertness vs. Lore

[exploding_brain]

General: What skill does one roll to sense that the supernatural is present in a scene?  The Lore skill says "In certain
circumstances, you can substitute Lore for Alertness to pick up on supernatural details about a scene."  What if your Alertness skill is better than your Lore skill in the first place?  Further complicating things, Temple Dogs have the stunt "Unity of Senses (Alertness): Use Alertness instead of Lore to pick up on the presence of the supernatural."  This implies that you normally cannot use Alertness to pick up on the presence of the Supernatural.

The specific: I have a player who's character is lightly touched by the supernatural, but will start the game as a pure mortal, or very nearly a pure mortal.  She's got Good alertness and Average Lore.  She wants to be able to get a vague feeling when dealing with the supernatural, but the character wouldn't be well trained in interpreting these sorts of mystical impressions.  Eventually she may start seeing auras around supernatural creatures that indicate their natures, but for now it will probably be more vague than that.  What stunts or powers would she need to take?

[GoldenH]

My advice is to just use Lore - you're not going to be finding anything out with the sense. You might eventually get The Sight, which is the desdenverse's version of seeing auras. (True Sight also suggests using Lore instead of Investigation for magical stuff). Your GM might allow something similar with the Supernatural Sense on p. 165, too. If you want to be better at it, get a stunt.

[exploding_brain]

Actually, I'm the GM, trying to help my player chose her stunts and powers.  I don't want to make her pay refresh that she shouldn't have to, but I don't want to be giving stuff away for free either.

I think she's basically conceiving of a character who has something similar to a Temple Dog's Unity of Senses stunt.  I'm not sure if that stunt is enough to pick up supernatural stuff without also having the Supernatural Senses power.

[Saedar]

Why not use the Finely Tuned Third Eye stunt on YS154?

[Mal_Luck]

The way I understand it, for pure mortals Lore can be used as alertness for supernatural things. But it's generalized, either you sense something odd or you don't. Finely Turned Third Eye just makes you better at determining if there is something supernatural going on.

But people with the The Sight/Arcane Senses(which I think almost needs to be it's own power, but I haven't read Supernatural Sense), your able to tell the difference between the supernatural vibes. Faeries smell like sugar, evil tastes like chalk, etc. You can differentiate between vibes like recognizing a smell or a taste. And Arcane Senses also allows you to use Lore to Investigate with your Arcane Senses, which without it you cannot do.

[exploding_brain]

Finely Tuned Third Eye isn't quite right, but it's existence definitely clarifies the issue.  Even without any supernatural powers, a normal mortal can be aware of the supernatural.

Unity of Senses on OW80 will provide the effect we want, and later powers will probably give it more specificity.

We're thinking of a second stunt, Aura Reading, that allows Alertness instead of Empathy or Lore for the purposes of assessing aspects related to another character's supernatural nature, following the normal time constraints of Empathy.

[Mal_Luck]

Aura Reading sounds too much like Power rather than a Stunt (like a specific use of The Sight or a visual type of Supernatural Sense). If your wanting a Stunt that allows using Alertness for Empathy checks, I'd call it Noticing the Little Things. Alertness is passive, where making an Empathy check for someone's aspects I'm fairly certain is active. So the checks would be made by you or you tell them to make it.

Investigation might be more appropriate substitute for Empathy Reading because, as I said before, Empathy Reading is more of an active use of a skill where Alertness for perception is passive. I'd call it The Devil is in the Details or something similar.

Personally I'm just more comfortable using Lore to see if I have supernatural knowledge of the person/creature I'm attempting to read or just use Empathy outright.

And reading Unity of the Senses, it is just substituting Alertness instead of Lore for the passive presence or absence of the Supernatural, which a normal person can do with Lore anyway.

((Slightly off topic but seeing that the Temple Dog's Alertness is less than Harry's Lore + Arcane Senses Harry should have sensed the One Ear before puppy Mouse in Blood Rites, unless Mouse's Alertness is higher than the average Temple Dog ))

[exploding_brain]

Right, but the point is that the character has good alertness and only average lore, so we want one or two stunts that expand the trappings of alertness, like Unity of Senses does.

More supernatural stuff is probably a point or two of refresh down the road.

Thanks for the help everyone. 

[Rel Fexive]

Seems to me there's two easy ways to do this.

1) Use Finely Tuned Third Eye - she's more sensitive than usual and the bonus increases her relatively weak Lore to the same level as her Alertness, giving her that extra sensitivity without the knowledge (a higher Lore) to back it up.  And call it something else if you prefer - make it a name more in tune with the effect you're trying to achieve. Unusually Sensitive perhaps.

2) Come up with a new mortal stunt that flips the association of passive supernatural detection back to Alertness.  Call it, uh, Supernatural Radar or some such.  Or use Unusually Sensitive s above.

The moment you get to Aura Reading, giving an ability equivalent to The Sight, you're into Supernatural Power territory.  I'd say -1 Refresh, with the ability to assess for one Aspect, one time only, balanced by not having the risk of being driven bonkers by what you'd be seeing if you'd used your Third Eye.