Table of Contents
Prestige
What you know is only half of your skill set; the other half is who you know. In Unbound Tales, your contacts and your social influence is measured using the Prestige system.
Prestige is applied in categories; there is Noble Prestige, Commoner Prestige, Guild Prestige, Mercenary Prestige, Temple Prestige and many others. The Director can cheerfully create their own as well; if you do something that particularly benefits any person who practices carpentry, he could create a Carpentry Prestige.
Prestige is applied in points. So long as you are engaging socially with any person that belongs in a category for which you have points in Prestige, you may add your Prestige points in that category into your total die roll.
For purposes of Prestige, the skills to which these rules apply are Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation and Performance.
Aria Swiftfoot, Gnomish Mage, approaches the Librarian of Sarpentis and requests access to their tomes of history. Unfortunately, being untrained in Diplomacy and having a bad Charisma, Aria is rolling with no bonus, and has slight on the skill check as well—not a good position to be in! Luckily, Aria has a point in Academic Prestige, and the Librarian of Sarpentis certainly qualifies. She gains a +1 bonus to her skill check.
Gaining Prestige
Every character starts with at least a few contacts. Almost every back-story will grant you one point of Prestige in a given category. A few give you a choice of two categories. Some classes also grant you initial Prestige.
At the end of a story, the Director may elect to grant you one point of Prestige. Said Prestige will be in the category of individuals most helped by your actions in this story. You killed the vampire ravaging the small village? That would be Commoner Prestige. You recovered a kidnapped Guild artisan? Clearly that would get you some Guild Prestige. Recovered an ancient religious relic, and restored it to its rightful home? That is obviously Temple Prestige.
Spending Prestige
You can temporarily reduce your Prestige in a given category to affect the outcome of a skill check. This represents you trading in favours. As usual, the subject of your skill check must fit within the category of the Prestige being expended. If you couldn't add the Prestige to your skill checks, you cannot expend Prestige to affect a skill check!
When making a Deception check, you can spend one Prestige to avoid the permanent loss of Attitude should your lie be discovered.
When making a Diplomacy check, if your skill check would grant you a temporary bonus in Attitude, you may spend one Prestige to permanently improve the subject's Attitude one step.
When making an Intimidation check, you may spend one Prestige to avoid the permanent loss of Attitude.
When making a Performance check, you may spend one Prestige to convert a failure into a success.
Expended Prestige is recovered at the end of each story arc. For each category of Prestige that you reduced in one of the above manners, you may replace one expended point whenever the Director informs you that a story has ended.