Well, first off, just saying "it fails" and not specifying further consequences is appropriate. Not every miss needs to result in a hard move--sometimes it's just a miss.

That said, when you want to make a move on a player who fucks up a read or manipulate roll, you can try turning their move back on them. For instance, on a failed read, you could ask them a question and have whatever person or situation they were trying to read act on that knowledge. On a failed seduce or manipulate, they may harden their target's position and make it even more difficult to dislodge them, or perhaps just plain piss them off if they're particularly clumsy about it. You could also have the target end up manipulating them instead, making them act under fire if they don't accept the target's counteroffer (offering them a carrot probably isn't as appropriate for a failed roll).

I've had MCs react to a missed read roll by having the situation read the would-be reader and to a failed manipulate by making the target even less compliant. Not sure I've seen the reverse-manipulate before, but if memory serves, that's how it works for the skinner's hypnotize ability, so it seems like at least some of the time it would probably fit for a failed seduce or manipulate.

When the party in question is inclined to just plain accept the offer as it is, you probably don't need to call for a roll to manipulate, unless the offering player wants to do so themselves. When the other party, however, would have reason to stop and consider and maybe counter-offer or decline, then a roll to manipulate may be called for.

Of course, manipulating the savvyhead may have ended up being good for them both--did it? When you manipulate another PC into accepting an offer, you can offer them more than whatever tangible benefit you put on the table--you can also offer them an experience point, which everyone loves. My angel may have manipulated (or, well, seduced, by virtue of "you're cuter when you're alive") our driver into buying herself some armour after she got badly wounded in a firefight, and thus our driver ended up doing something that was good for herself and she got XP out of it.

Does changing playbooks wipe any of your ungiven future improvement slots for re-use, like +1 any stat, or is that strictly a One Time Only deal?

I would add: Be mindful of the risks--don't back down from making a move on something you want on account of a reasonable amount of trouble, but don't pick fights with an army over a quarter, and consider trying less-hard moves (like reading, or getting allies, or casing the joint, or finding out where they sleep at night, or just waiting until someone doesn't have backup) to stack the odds in your favour before making a hard move in dangerous circumstances.

Make those moves, though. If I were your MC (I'd be a shitty MC for many reasons, but I won't get into that), I'd be sorely tempted to throw some moves at you to make inactivity far more dangerous than making a move.

For the Hard, yes; she's a combat driver. (It appears to be the only Driver line with Hard+1. Hard is a pretty damn powerful stat, as I learned playing Daryl the Muscle who is a bloody fucking runaway freight train who has been described as a "murderous gorilla" by her enemies and a "monster" by her own goddamn employer) so I could see that being the reason--but none of the other playbooks put that kind of premium on Hard. Then again, none of the other playbooks are driving a 3-armour tank with 3-harm close/far area machine guns strapped to the sides that also gives them a +2 on aggro/seize rolls, so that might be a loaded comparison.

The Operator, however, doesn't appear to have anything remotely like that going on. The stat line is kind of boring and doesn't really have anything that seems to be at a premium (just Cool+2 Hard=0 Hot=0 Sharp+1 Weird-1). It couldn't be that it's a line with Sharp+1, as the Operator gets other stat lines with good Sharp and no such premium. It's also not that it gets a penalty to neither Hard nor Hot, as there's an Operator line that actually gets +1 to both of those (and it's the only Operator line that gets a positive Hard, and it doesn't even have a Sharp penalty, just the same Weird penalty 3/4 of the Operator lines do--Cool+2 Hard+1 Hot+1 Sharp=0 Weird-1). I could see balance reasons to put a higher premium on Hard+1 for the Driver, but the Operator line genuinely comes off as in error, unless there's something I'm missing.

Oh, I'm aware. I'm just wondering how they should be amended, or if you decided to leave them that way for balance reasons or something along those lines.

NINJA EDIT: The gods are perfect? Even that sounds awfully idealistic for you, Vincent.

This is perhaps moving just a tiny bit off-topic, but with the thread named what it is, it has to be said.

The Touchstone has shitty Weird, which makes them terrible at using this move. This is a little saddening, as we all know what everyone would immediately start thinking of a Touchstone with healing touch (and the Weird to use it) as. Now the question is, is the Touchstone's shitty Weird an attempt to prevent such shenanigans, or is this entirely coincidental?

Sorry to necropost, but serious question:

Did the "one-point-short" stat lines of the Driver and Operator ever get fixed? In the playbooks I downloaded (wasn't more than a few months ago), they're still a point short. I don't know why it's been bugging me, since I haven't played a Driver or Operator, but someone in a game I'm in is playing a Driver and using the one-point-short line and so it's been sitting in the back of my head whispering to me like the goddamn maelstrom.