Social Specializations

It would be neat if a character's backstory and social abilities tied more directly into the class.

Say you could select a specialization for your social aspect which would translate the time spent garnering special knowledge of organizational layouts, inventing new means of magical storage, doing parkour stunts for local businesses, or rubbing shoulders with the local nobility into usable class features in the form of special abilities.

Generically I'd organize these by "street rat," "merchant," or "noble."

Break favored class skills into vigilante and social aspects, possibly with some overlap between the two and give a minor benefit for each. Street rats for example might be a bit hardier than others, merchants might start with a side effect from interacting with the rare and mysterious, and nobles might have a little extra wealth and prestige.

I mentioned this a while back... a WHILE back.

Basically, the original Social Persona was an Expert; alternatively an Aristocrat.

What I suggested was using the NPC classes as archetypes for creating Social-Persona specializations:

Aristocrat (Bruce Wayne, Don Diego de la Vega) - a high-society socialite; gets boosts to hob-nob and mix in with high society.

Expert (Matt Murdoch, Barry Allen) - Someone who is an accomplished member of their field, who has connections in law enforcement, the clergy, academia, the Underworld, etc.

Commoner (Virgil Hawkins, Peter Parker) - an average-joe who can easily Hide in Plain Sight in large crowds, and can get into, out of, and work around the ground-level social environments.

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Then again, there's already a LOT of realty on this class as-is, and I think making the class little more than 2 Bloodlines smashed and held together by duct-tape is not the way to design it.

I'd start with the Reputation/Fame mechanics from the leadership feat and the Ultimate Campaign book. A couple options of how to go from there:
New traits and feat trees to let players choose to focus on social progression
Secondary progression option (like Mythic power progression)
Fame/PP style point/reward system for social progression (some existing PP/fame awards would fit into this idea already)

If you're up for trying to develop this idea, let me know. I'd be up for helping/brainstorming if needed.

I was actually trying to move the class away from renown, which I see as an integral byproduct of doing anything in the game. Not a fan of the mechanical implementation either; Muffinman's social identity as a muffin vendor wants nothing to do with Muffinman - at most he shakes his fist in the air angrily and curses the hoodlum for repeatedly stealing all his muffins -- hardly a reputation which will help strike fear in the hearts of Muffinman's enemies.

Ideally the intimidate bonus, which is more a Masked Aspect thing should be tied into the Masked Specializations. But to be honest most intimidate DCs are either: ridiculously low, or immune so while the bonus is nice (especially at low levels) it's not terribly important.

Irrespective of that, the Social Aspect should grant bonuses based on your social proclivities. Social proclivities are considerably larger in scope than gossiping about the masked guy who runs around the streets at night.

The Social Persona could use the Social Talent system to do things like store items in odd places on their body (smuggling/merchant background), run quickly/hide in crowds (peasant background), Climb and Swim well (rural background), or be Socially Suave and affect people's perceptions (Noble). In addition to detailing Class Skills, and mundane bonuses this might be accompanied by some SLAs; things like Alter Self (Peasant), Detect Secret Doors (Merchant/Smuggler), Camouflage (rural), or Charm/Dominate Person (Noble).

At the least this needs be a place to give the class re-roll, alternate movement, and utility/flavor options.