YS125: Attack is undermining your faith (God, magic, friends)

[Arcteryx]

I was reading over this and wondered... if that was a PC making the attack, what skill/trapping would he be using?

If it was in an aggressive, overbearing manner - Intimidation?
And if it was a reasoned attack - as in to make someone see the sense in a situation - Empathy?

[EdgeOfDreams]

Empathy is almost never an attacking skill, at least by my reading of it.  However, an Empathy roll could allow the character to learn aspects they can tag on later attacks.  Rapport is generally the skill for making a persuasive argument.  Intimidate can be demoralizing or arguing from a position of power/authority.  Deceit could be used as well, but it'd be harder to justify.

[UmbraLux]

I was reading over this and wondered... if that was a PC making the attack, what skill/trapping would he be using?

I'm guessing you're talking about the section under Acts of Faith.

If it was in an aggressive, overbearing manner - Intimidation?
And if it was a reasoned attack - as in to make someone see the sense in a situation - Empathy?

Intimidation works, I'd probably use Rapport, Deceit, or Scholarship (depending on situation) for an attack based on logic though.  Empathy seems more about feelings.  Any of the social skills are possible give the right situation and trappings. 

[Richard_Chilton]

Recently (well, a few weeks ago) I watched a British TV show called Shadow Line and it had some very good examples of people making social attacks.

Someone was missing and might be calling either his girlfriend or his mother.  Three different factions (four if you count the police) were trying to get the two women to agree that (if he contacted either of them) that she would get the missing man to call him first.

There was the business man who happened to be in an illegal business - he was using Presence and Empathy.

There was someone with the reputation of being a psycho - he was pure intimidation.

Then there was a mystery man who was using Rapport and Deceit equally in his attempts - who later proved to be a master at intimidation ("If I wanted to kill her then she would already be dead.  I don't want to kill her, but if I have to I will and now you know that I can do it.") and it was interesting to watch the interplay of those skills.

The main story of the series is... well, it's very iffy and there are some plot holes, but the social conflict scenes make it worth watching....

Which is a very long way of saying different skills work best on different people.  In the example above the psycho told the pregnant girlfriend that if her boyfriend called anyone before calling him then he (the psycho) would terminate her pregnancy with a beating - and no other message sank in as deeply as that one. 

The third force had a nice sit down with the missing man's mother and built up a rapport with her - then convinced her that if her son didn't call him first then her son would "commit suicide" while in police custody.  In that situation rapport and deceit (that he would help her son) were what worked.

As for the person using presence (and empathy to see what the targets wanted), he discovered that there were times where leadership just didn't work - that when someone was scared enough they would ignore his offers of protection and do whatever they thought they had to do.

Again, the series had plot holes, but seeing those scenes... It was almost as if one player said "Well presence my highest social skill so I'll go with that" and another invoked his "Everyone knows he's crazy" aspect when intimidating.

Richard

[Arcteryx]

Nice one Richard...! And thanks to everyone for the replies; it is odd that I still get into mental entanglements from social conflicts, always great to be able to come on here and get a few of these things sorted out. One of the things I like about this system is the flexibility in how you deal with things - case in point the question I asked. Context and specific circumstance are all-important.