If I use the Tier 2 talent (from Genesys) Inspiring Rhetoric, can I count myself as an ally? There are enough games that allow that, that I am unsure when it comes to this one.

Thank you.

Not per RAW. If it does effect yourself, talents usually say "your character and allies..." or something similar.

42 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

Not per RAW. If it does effect yourself, talents usually say "your character and allies..." or something similar.

Which makes the heightened awareness talent kind of funny. You make your allies more perceptive and vigilant but you yourself are not boosted.

It is a little goofy. I describe it as a: "Hey, Captain Percepto, what's rustling those bushes over there?"

5 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Which makes the heightened awareness talent kind of funny. You make your allies more perceptive and vigilant but you yourself are not boosted.

That was the intent.

8 minutes ago, Lorne said:

That was the intent.

I get that it was the intent, that doesn't make the intent less weird. Why do you make others more perceptive but not yourself? It's just one of those instances where the game mechanics don't sync up with logic and reason.

I tend to agree with GroggyGolem on this one.

I see the logic of all variants of yes you can/ no you can't on the following basis:

For inspiring rhetoric there's an argument that yes you could if you justify it in the narrative enough- clearly having that talent suggests being good at motivating and inspiring others, perhaps even when they're feeling less than inspired and motivated, rallying them and upping their resolve, so there's no reason why when you're up against it you couldn't do something such as saying "I need to get my resolve and determination to get through this back. I'm going to use my inspiring rhetoric to get myself back in the right frame of mind." or something like that. Thus you then roll to see if you actually buy your own motivational spiel!

With heightened awareness

Although the character with the talent has the heightened awareness I think the idea behind the talent is that this means they can keep that extra focus on what's around them so can look out for their allies that bit better thus allies using their perception and vigilance are also getting some input from this character. As to why perhaps they don't use it on themselves I think there's an argument for it being a choice of two options:

1. their heightened awareness would make them a bit more likely to succeed in a situation- maybe they do get the one extra die (but not two as to me heightened awareness suggests a slight cost in terms of being slightly less focused so if you're doing something yourself it's perhaps less beneficial than someone else doing something and you just using your extra awareness rather than you having to balance your extra awareness and your concentration on your own activity.) An example of when you may allow this extra die for the character with the heightened awareness is say some enemy tries to sneak up on them, if they're using the talent this might not be so easy but they've also got to process the 'what do I do' aspects of this, hence the single die suggestion, if it's someone trying to sneak up on someone else in their party and they're able to anticipate it ahead of time they can share/make use of this extra awareness and both characters have the benefit but it's aiding the ally character hence two dice but for the ally makes sense here. It could of course be used for an NPC who can aid the PC if they are on-side. In this case the PC could be the ally.

2. in other cases there is the justification for it not being of benefit to the character with the skill, if you're really focussed on a task however good your extra awareness is it's going to be compromised. How much depends on what suits the character, some will be less compromised than others.

Pages 20 - 21 of the CRB helps in determining such relevance in terms of player narratives, a player might say "I'm going to try and pick the lock but I'm going to use my heightened awareness talent to try to not be so focused on it that I'm too off guard", that kind of thing, so it's what makes sense. If using a talent would help it should help, if not or if it would make little difference then not- part of the fun and the game aspect of RPG's is 'what's the best choice to make' for this situation. if you didn't make use of a talent you may miss an opportunity or a threat - in that example someone clobbers you or robs you while you're trying to pick the lock.... The game and the situations in it should make it easy to judge how talents affect situations and the 'who can it be used on' aspects, common sense says what talents can be used on the self, other PC's, allies or NPC's - even things like objects and so on - inspiring rhetoric may not be much use on a table but it could get you through a locked door controlled by an artificial intelligence for example - and under what circumstances.

Remember if something's open to making things far too easy or being overused ( a 'win every time' choice) or OP it could also cost a story point.