A Face is a person that specializes in social skills. Their role is to talk for a team of Shadowrunners. They will usually negotiate pay from a Mr. Johnson, act as a distraction, talk their way past security, and offer tactical advice for a team in combat situations. The line between Face and Fixer can sometimes be thin, especially if the team of runners is assembled ad-hoc for each run rather than a group that consistently works together.
A person can qualify as a Face either based on their magical talent, emergent abilities or augmentations each specialized in social skills:
- Commonly physical adepts make good faces. Since a number of adept powers increase their ability to read people's body language.
- Shamans can often double dip on charisma since their tradition emphasises charisma. Other magicians whose tradition is charisma based are also as good.
- A cyber Face will often take tailored pheromones to help improve people's reception to them within smelling range.
- A technomancer can emulate Empathy software without the other party realizing that they're being analyzed.[1]
References[]
- ↑ In SR5 charisma also acts as a technomancer's Matrix attack status.
Comments[]
A Face is colloquially called a "pornomancer" in the Shadowrun player community. The term was coined on Dumpshock to describe a social adept hyper-optimized for social tests.
When a table of players is small and not all specialties can be covered, the most convenient GM character to run is often a Face; this is particularly likely to blur the lines with the Fixer role.