Maelora suggested it, so here it is: what's the best usage of Scathing Tirade you've had in your game? What's your Politico's most crowning moment of awesome?
Here, I'll lead off -
Shouting minions to death had always been fun, but my best useage ever was the time I made a Sith turn tail and run. We were playing in a KotOR, Sith/Republic Cold War game, and we were on a backwater primitive world that a Sith Lord (and his apprentice) had set up his own personal little empire over the natives.
We had managed to get hired onto the Mercenary Squad that the Lord kept on hand to help rule over the natives with an iron fist, and more or less had free run of his castle while we tried to figure out a way to assassinate him and rescue a prisoner he had in his dungeons. And how to do it without getting killed - the lord was exceptionally badass, and while we were pretty good, he significantly overpowered us. If it came to a fight, we would be in a world of hurt.
We were spread out all over the estate, looking for an angle, when I passed by the servant/slave quarters. Inside, the apprentice was ripping into a young girl for some minor indiscretion - spilling soup or the like. Basically he was being a big bully for no real good reason. And as these things tend to do, it was about to escalate from shouting to beating to killing.
Yeah, this would not stand.
As he was about to go for his saber, I boldly stride into the room calling him out. "What kind of small unit needs to beat up a girl to prove he's a man"
Now, keep in mind, Princess Saleena was not a fighter. I don't think I had anything more than 3 greens in my blaster. I had the Force, but all I ever did was buy the Exile tree so I could get one Force Die and drop 10 points in move - it was mostly for color for the character's background. Going toe-to-toe with a sith apprentice, I kept thinking "Geeze, she's gonna die!" - but a character will do what a character does, so in I go.
The one thing I did have? Supreme Scathing tirade and a nearly fully upgraded Unmatched Expertise. Dropping Expertise, turning the difficulty down to Simple, I take the strain hit and lay into the apprentice with my three tirades. . . and roll REALLY well. Bam, three massive hits to the strain, I insult his pride, his honor, his *****, and utterly destroy his standing in front of all the slaves.
Strained below zero, the apprentice turns and runs out of the room, properly shamed. As I breath a sigh of relief, I realize that he's almost certainly going to report this uppity mercenary to his master, who will then come down and retaliate against the slaves and the mercenaries for their impudence. I had just unleashed an S-storm upon all of us, and we were nowhere near ready.
. . . .however this meant that we did know where the master was going to be in a very short few moments! Getting the others, we gathered all the explosives we had on hand, every grenade, packet of C4 or bic lighter - and rigged the slave quarters to blow the hell up. Now, normally a Dark Lord would easily sense something was wrong and not walk into a crude trap like that, but we were wagering that the Lord would be so blinded by anger at this slight, that he would stride in and not sense trouble.
Which is exactly what happened. We blew him the hell up, straight out killed the apprentice and weakened the Lord so much that we were able to rush in and finish him off with not much of a fight. We overthrew the Sith and liberated the planet from it's oppressors.
And thus ends the tale of how a truly epic Scathing Tirade saved a planet.
Edited by Desslok