So, CanRay's magican thread got me thinking about magicians with a secondary focus on social skills. I am trying to come up with a list of ways to enchance social dice pools for magicians. For the time being, lets rule out adept powers, so no mysitc adept builds. I am wanting to maintain as high a magic score for spellcasting as possible. In no particular order, there are some things that might be useful. Note that all of these probably would not fit on the same character.
Obviously, take a charisma tradition and a high charisma score.
Increase charism spell, but with a high charisma score this requires a high force spell. A sustaining focus would be best here, but again the high force might be problematic. I suppose a five charisma, a restricted gear quality, and a r5 health restraining focus could work, but you could also just be an elf.
Edit: I am getting a migrane. Do sustaining foci go up to r5? Or do they max at 4?
Which brings up obvious point #2, be an elf.
Control Emotion might be used to bonus certain social roles, at the GMs descretion. Fear would bonus an Intimidation check, love or friendship might bonus a Con check, etc.
Some mentor spirits bonus particular social skills.
You could loose a point of magic to some bioware, get tailored pheromones, a voice mod, etc. I don't mind doing this on adepts but I am generaly loathe to give up magic on a mage. It depends on how much you want those social dice I guess.
First Impression Quality and Chatty quality work for anyone.
I have the feeling that this probably works better as an adept or mystical adept, but what I really want are options for someone who is a spellcaster first and a face with the resouces left over from that.
I am sure there are things I am not thinking of (have a headache coming on, not thinking clearly right now). What else can you do to a straight magician to make him a face?
