Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Skills (section)

==Empathy==

Empathy involves being able to spot changes in a person’s mood or bearing. It’s basically the emotional and social Notice skill.

'''Potential Uses:''' Watching how a person reacts in a certain situation, getting a feeling for what someone thinks is important, checking out the social dynamics of a group, talking a friend through an emotional trauma, detecting lies

===Actions===
* '''Overcome:'''You don’t really use Empathy to overcome obstacles directly—normally, you find out some information with it, and then use another skill to act. In some cases, though, you might use Empathy like you would Notice, to see if you catch a change in someone’s attitude or intent. Empathy is the main skill you use to help others recover from consequences that are mental in nature, as well.
* '''Advantage:'''You can use Empathy to read a person’s emotional state and get a general sense of who they are, presuming you have some kind of interpersonal contact with them. Most often, you’ll use this to assess the aspects on another character’s sheet, but sometimes you’ll also be able to create new aspects, especially on NPCs. If the target has some reason to be aware that you’re trying to read them, they can oppose with Deceive or Rapport.
* '''Discover:'''When it comes to sussing out a person, Empathy is your main skill. Like Notice, this is an observational skill. It’s passive and you won’t use it to directly do something to another. However, you can use it to reveal clues and create advantages that will help Rapport, Provoke and Deceive rolls.
* '''Sample Questions:'''
** How does this person feel about this event/situation/other person?
** Who seems to be in charge of this group of people?
** Who seems not to fit in?

===Example stunts===

'''Lie Whisperer.''' +2 to all Empathy rolls made to discern or discover lies, whether they’re directed at you or someone else.

'''First Impressions.''' When you meet a person for the first time, you can ask the gamemaster one question about that person, no discover action needed.

'''Psychologist.''' Once per session you can reduce someone else’s consequence of an emotional nature by one level of severity (severe to moderate, moderate to mild, mild to nothing at all) by succeeding on an Empathy roll with a difficulty of Fair (+2) for a mild consequence, Good (+3) for moderate, or Great (+4) for severe. You need to talk with the person you’re treating for at least half an hour in order for them to receive the benefits of this stunt, and you can’t use it on yourself. (Normally, this roll would only start the recovery process, instead of changing the consequence level.)