Social Combat: An idea

[RandomCasualty]

1200349035[/unixtime]]
Past level 5, we're doing inhuman things. So, that's a non-argument.

Actually I didn't mean human in terms fo character, I was talking in terms of DM versus system. It's hard to algorithmically write rules for social situations because they're so complex. As PL pointed out you'd need a ton of modifiers.

Which is one reason that I said you'll always need some kind of DM adjudication, whether it's apply modifiers or just outright determining result.

With this system, it is now.

When you try to socially attack a person, they either don't figure it out and you beat the ever-living snot out of them socially (seriously, I've seen it happen and done it to people and have had it done to me) or you then go and engage in social combat.

Honestly, the whole idea of social attacks doesn't make a bit of sense.

I can see some kind of slander campaign in political elections being a sort of social attack, but that doesn't convince the person you're slandering, that just convinces other undecided people.

In your social system, you don't try to run fro president by getting votes, you run for president by just socially attacking the other candidates and convincing them to drop out of the race. That's dumb.

Much like D&D abstracts combat, we have to equally abstract diplomacy.

Only we really don't. The parts we have to abstract is the execution, not the content. We don't know how seductive your character happens to be, or how smooth you can talk. But we seriously want to know what you say. That's the fucking story. If you got no clue why your character is doing something, you've been disconnected to the point that you might as well just be moving peices around a chessboard.

Why did the king convince you to help him? What reasons did he give? You can't abstract that. That's shit I need to know.

You engage her in social attacks, mostly by using your concentration or sense motive to soak, and then maybe using your bluff or diplomacy to have her leave.

Really? Because honestly if you're just looking to shut someone down who is hitting on you, you can just ignore her. Or just give some dismissive remark. You by no means try to engage her in social combat. You just say "Ummm... no" and then it's over.

There's no combat, her seduction attempt simply fails, she gets the hint and she goes away. At least unless she's some kind of psycho stalker or something.

In any case, just b/c a PC can social combat, doesn`t mean that he can`t be told to run the fuck out of the dungeon by a monster that is more intimidating or better at lying than him.

Do you really want your brave hero getting told to leave the dungeon and then turning tail like a little girl?

[CatharzGodfoot]

1200365407[/unixtime]]
Do you really want your brave hero getting told to leave the dungeon and then turning tail like a little girl?

Isn't that cause fear?

One would hope that a 'brave' hero would not run, put perhaps a less resolute character would.

[Daiba]

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The King and his advisors can pull some legal loophole or honour loophole or w/e and make you realize "Oh shit, he's got us/our family/our chicken sandwich/our allies/our lives in his hands; we'll do his next job for him."

So the way you plan on making this work is by having the NPCs not fully take advantage of their success?

This system can't work without severe restrictions on what you can make the losing party do. Think about the ramifications on the small scale. Every time two peasants talk to each other, one of them walks away with everything the other person has. Joe and Bob have an argument at a tavern. Joe wins, Bob then forks over his wife and lands, put his children to the pitchfork, and then commits suicide. ?!?!?!?!?!

Edited for typos.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

I think we all agree on the following:
1. Mundane social abilities in dnd should have all characters playing the same game (on the RNG) regardless of characer type.
2. Mundane social abilities should be mostly tied to character level and not some resource that competes with a characters combat ability.

There is a third aspect of social interations in a level system that forces a choice:
3A: Mundane social abilities are as effective as the argument and the situation dicatates across all levels. So for example, a level 14 Paladin has the same mundane social ability he had at 1st level.
OR
3B: Mundane social abilities increase with level, analogous to ones increasing combat ability. So for example, a level 14 Paladin is significantly better at mundane social abilities than he was at first level.

I think that question needs to be answered before you can progress further.

[JonSetanta]

Winning social combat would be more of a debuff than auto-win in the desired outcome.
Namely, penalties elsewhere, such as other social reactions or skill checks.
Attack their confidence, enrage the enemy, make them suffer in despair, but NOT a Command effect.

[PhoneLobster]

Only we really don't. The parts we have to abstract is the execution, not the content. We don't know how seductive your character happens to be, or how smooth you can talk. But we seriously want to know what you say. That's the fucking story. If you got no clue why your character is doing something, you've been disconnected to the point that you might as well just be moving peices around a chessboard.

OK, so I think this is your main problem right there.

The way I envisage it is it goes like this.

Chat Chat Chat.

An impasse is reached, like players who don't feel secure with the information they have gathered or the assistance/opposition they encountered in chat.

Social Combat ensues, chatting goes abstract.

Opponents are defeated and though far from mind controlled they are certainly now sufficiently under the influence of the party to break any conceivable impasse.

Chat Chat Chat.

Quite simply the story event simulated by the abstracted social encounter is not the meat of what people do or say, its the bit in between that ALLOWS the story to progress with new things they can do or say.

And holy crap RC, if you can pull out flowery fluffy descriptions of a successful or failed sword attack how the heck can't you envisage attaching fluffy chat to a successful or failed Lie attack?

Why did the king convince you to help him? What reasons did he give? You can't abstract that.

Because he defeated you with abstract attacks.

If he Lied to you, you can't explain the lies, if you could, you wouldn't be confused by them.

If he Threatened you you needn't explain it, he is just a scary son of a bitch

If he Friendshipped you then again, its hard to put your finger on why, but he is just your kinda guy, a trustworthy pal.

If he Seduced you you just love the mad old monarch, and really? What makes anyone love anyone?

You don't even NEED explanations and that's even if you are so creatively crippled you can't envisage the social equivalent of saying "And I scream 'Die you son of a bitch' while I drive my sword through his larynx".

Really? Because honestly if you're just looking to shut someone down who is hitting on you, you can just ignore her.

So in your ideal holistic social system with minimal rules for influencing people...

People can just choose to ignore what minimal social rules there are and just not be influenced if they don't want to?

Sorry. That's just retarded.

Do you really want your brave hero getting told to leave the dungeon and then turning tail like a little girl?

I think RC that his point is that part of the whole point of social combat is that you might just lose.

Thats a big deal because some sort of risk investment is required for functional game play.

[RandomCasualty]

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Social Combat ensues, chatting goes abstract.

Opponents are defeated and though far from mind controlled they are certainly now sufficiently under the influence of the party to break any conceivable impasse.

Well, then you need modifiers, and a lot of them. Because seriously, it is mind control if you make the exact same roll regardless of what you're asking for. So you lose nothing by just going for everything the other guy has + making him your slave.

It's the exact same roll as just offering to borrow his horse.

Why did the king convince you to help him? What reasons did he give? You can't abstract that.

Because he defeated you with abstract attacks.

If he Lied to you, you can't explain the lies, if you could, you wouldn't be confused by them.

Well honestly I want to know what lies my character now believes, so I can roleplay him properly. Did he convince me to help him because I believe my hometown is in danger? Is the villain constructing the rod of ultimate doom? I mean what?

Because if I don't know why I'm helping the guy, I then can't explain why I'm not helping him anymore when someone else tries to convince me otherwise. Hell, I can't even explain to other PCs or NPC what my character thinks.

And how am I supposed to roleplay a character when I don't even know what his motivations or thought process is?

You don't even NEED explanations

Maybe you don't. I do. I'm actually trying to roleplay my character, not just treat him like a chess peice that randomly gets mind controlled and ordered to go some place so he obeys like a mindless automaton.

I mean, god talk about railroad DM plots. Think about what this social system is going to do. The DM doesn't need to have the king tell you why you need to kill the orcs anymore. He just makes him a guy with a bunch of social skills and says "The king convinces you to attack the orcs, you aren't getting paid, but it's abstract, so you agree without knowing why."

Lame. Lame. Lame.

People can just choose to ignore what minimal social rules there are and just not be influenced if they don't want to?

Yeah pretty much. That's how PCs work now in the social system, and it works fine. The broken part with 3.5 isn't that PCs can choose not get seduced by the succubus. It's that diplomacy can destroy any NPC instantly.

Hell we trust PCs to roleplay their characters well and react how they would react. Why not do the same of the DM and just go.

It's a heck of a lot better than a series of abstract bullshit that totally disconnects you from your character's thought process and/or makes him do completely irrational things.

I think RC that his point is that part of the whole point of social combat is that you might just lose.

Thats a big deal because some sort of risk investment is required for functional game play.

It's a ratio of risk versus reward. Social stuff in my system has less rewards, and thus less risk.

It's like saying that teleport should always have a chance to kill you, because having it work all the time without risk is required for functional game play. We have shit that doesn't have risk all the time. You scry on someone, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but the crystal ball doesn't explode in your face and make you blind. Sometimes your attempt to do something just fails and you don't care. If you can pick a lock and fail without consequence, I don't see a problem with having social attempts be the same way.

Not sure why social situations have to be this serious matter where you risk becoming someone's slave everytime you walk into a tavern.

[Crissa]

RC, your motivation is you have a sword sticking through your heart.

Oh, wait, you weren't asking about why we have Sneak Attack damage?

-Crissa

[Ice9]

It's the exact same roll as just offering to borrow his horse.

If you're asking to borrow someone's horse, you probably don't enter social combat in the first place. If you can convince him to lend you the horse by having a good reason or offering pay or telling him you'll kill him otherwise, no social combat is necessary.

Social combat is for the times when you don't have a convincing argument, or any sufficient leverage, but you want to make them do it anyway. Using it for borrowing a horse is overkil, just as using Wall of Force to stop a barfight is overkill - but you can do it anyway.

And yes, it isn't really cool when your daring hero gets intimidated by the orc chieftan and decides to run away; but it's no different than your sword-master hero getting unlucky in combat and being pwned by goblins. Risk is a factor in any combat.

[Ice9]

However, a good point has been raised. Can people with really good social combat skills just go around using it on everyone they meet? Could a PC with good enough social combat abilities get all their equipment for free and rouse up a small army of minions at any time?

This would probably be undesirable, so we can apply the same limiting factor there is in normal combat - wounds.

In social combat, even if you win, you can end up with social wounds - damaged reputation, loss of confidence, and so forth. These can be healed, but it takes a while. The more wounds you have, the more succeptable you are to be socially pwned yourself. So even people good at social combat tend to reserve it for the imporant stuff.

And this is why the king refrains from socially compelling you to do the quest without a reward. The wounds he sustains doing so would make him more vulnerable to the neighboring kingdom's ambassador and he'd probably end up giving away valuable mining rights for a pitance.

[Username17]

I think that it is important to note that classically a low level adventure involves you fighting an Ogre, and you engage in social combat to try to seize the high ground and shit before combat starts. The social action is a pre-game for the fight. But at high levels you are trying to get a homeland for the displaced halflings, and you engage in combat against the ogres in order to improve your bargaining position. The combat is a pre-game for the social contest.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

I agree with those as level appropriate encounters, but don't feel they should be meaningful as a guideline for how challenges should be overcome at various levels. 100% combat and 100% social options should be available at all levels.

Now I'd say that a classic low level encounter would be a social encounter where you encounter an ogre and instead of fighting convince him to be your friend and protect the village or something.

And a classic high level encounter would be a social encounter where you encounter an entire army of Ogres, or some Ogre King, and make friends and convince them to defend your empire.

Though you may combine combat and social encounters at any level you may also have social or combat encounters independent of each other at all levels.

At all levels of play it should be a level appropriate encounter to talk your way out without any physical combat before OR after.

Having social options play some sort of enforced second fiddle to physical combat at low levels only to reverse that at high levels is not precisely my preferred methodology.

[RandomCasualty]

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If you're asking to borrow someone's horse, you probably don't enter social combat in the first place. If you can convince him to lend you the horse by having a good reason or offering pay or telling him you'll kill him otherwise, no social combat is necessary.

Social combat is for the times when you don't have a convincing argument, or any sufficient leverage, but you want to make them do it anyway.

So wait? You want to let the DM have total control over the times when you have a good argument and the NPCs can just say no, but when you have no argument at all, you want to be able to magically make shit happen socially?

What the fuck?

And yes, it isn't really cool when your daring hero gets intimidated by the orc chieftan and decides to run away; but it's no different than your sword-master hero getting unlucky in combat and being pwned by goblins.

Well, no I think it is different. Getting beaten in a fight isn't nearly as humiliating as turning tail and running like a little girl.

I agree with those as level appropriate encounters, but don't feel they should be meaningful as a guideline for how challenges should be overcome at various levels. 100% combat and 100% social options should be available at all levels.

This I guess is where we disagree. I feel like there should be problems that can't be solved socially. I also feel like there should be problems that can't be solved via combat. So sometimes you've got to talk and other times you've got to fight.

And that's a good thing, because if you've got a social character, you don't want every single encounter turning into him talking to enemies while the fighter just sits there bored and one character solves the entire quest. Not to mention that if we do things your way, the bard will be the most powerful class, since you just walk around accumulating an army of slaves, and then you can win any social contest and combat contest, becuase you've got an army of ogre/giant/whatever slaves following you. The game doesn't become heroes versus monsters, it's just you sicking a huge army of shit on your enemy. Not only is that not particularly feasable, because it makes combats take forever to set up, but it's also pretty boring.

Social CR should be varied depending on encounter. Some encounters may have a particularly high combat difficulty, but a weak social difficulty, and others may be impossible to talk your way out of, but possible to fight your way out. It's a puzzle to figure out how to best use your skills.

I think that it is important to note that classically a low level adventure involves you fighting an Ogre, and you engage in social combat to try to seize the high ground and shit before combat starts. The social action is a pre-game for the fight. But at high levels you are trying to get a homeland for the displaced halflings, and you engage in combat against the ogres in order to improve your bargaining position. The combat is a pre-game for the social contest.

This is actually only doable if you've got a system of modifiers for your roll. See normally distracting someone with social skills while you get some free movement in pre-combat may be a pretty easy DC to do, especially against slow witted creatures like ogres. Intimidating them may be normally impossible, but you get a modifier for having kicked their asses.

[Judging__Eagle]

The reason that I want some sort of system for Social Combat, is that I often have Diplomancers in my play group, so some method of allowing them to do their thing, and bring in the other party members into the mix is a must.

If I can't bring in the liars, brutes, commanders and scholars to help out the silvertongues, then I can't have silvertongues in my game at all and we all know that these stories seriously have instances where someone has to plead a case, and someone else argues against them.


Also, in the 'voting' case, both attackers attack their audience or each other.

They attack the audience into voting for them, or they attack their opponent into making a goof.

Usually they do both and both are good options.

The voters have a massive hit dice pool, but tend to just take hits since they have low modifiers.

The opponent has his or her whole election team, who while having a smaller hit dice total than the electorate, have higher modifiers.

Of course, running a social combat election would probably have the different people running for office have to win over much smaller groups of voters at a time. At the same time, they could engage in attacking individuals of an opposing election team. Attacking the weakest perceived links into divulging sensitive information through blackmail or bribery.

Also, just b/c you beat someone at a social combat, it doesn't mean that you get everything that they own. You simply achieve the goal that you wanted. If a person is losing, they could simply pull out a weapon and turn 'social combat' into 'actual combat' or run away and recover.

Of course, this system needs some more clarifications; such as how Social Damage is repaired and what sorts of goals are defined as goals.

Social damage should heal at the rate of one hour per difference in hit dice between an individual and the highest hit dice of the highest attacker that attacked them. So, the 20th level paladin affects the 1HD peasants for 19 hours after the fact; but if the 15th level Bard got in the last hits, they'll will have been swayed by him for the same amount of time.

Additionally, once a person loses to an other at Social Combat for a specific goal, their Social Damage incurred is reset to zero. Their attacker retains any previously incurred social damage.

Why? Just b/c someone is impressive, doesn't mean that they were the ones that won the argument. In fact, the fact that a supposedly weaker person could pull the win in the end would stay in a person's memory as long as if the stronger person had won.

Usually a 'goal' should be for the target to perform a single task. So, "let me borrow your horse for today", but, even if you get the horse, it doesn't mean that you can also get the man's lunch money. Since the now horseless guy can continue to argue "you know what? you're not getting my horse" and you've already incurred damage.

So, equally matched people will probably beat a person once and take their winnings, further arguing could result in them losing their current gains.

Just some more ideas.

[Crissa]

1200473651[/unixtime]]If you're asking to borrow someone's horse, you probably don't enter social combat in the first place. If you can convince him to lend you the horse by having a good reason or offering pay or telling him you'll kill him otherwise, no social combat is necessary.

No, that is a social contest. You offered something. The test is: Did you offer enough, the right way, to the right person?

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

Also, just b/c you beat someone at a social combat, it doesn't mean that you get everything that they own. You simply achieve the goal that you wanted.

Why would I ask for less than everything they own? I haven't seen anything proposed to deal with this.

[PhoneLobster]

Why would I ask for less than everything they own?

Because in any same system everything they own is of basically no use to you.

And if you really do have significant influence over them then leaving much of the stuff they own with them is a better way of managing all that additional stuff you have access to and resourcing your new ally with stuff they need and can use.

Heck once you have influence over them you might even reasonably want to GIVE THEM stuff if their own resources fall short.

After all even if the ultimate use of the social victory you achieved is to convince the leader of the palace guard to suicidally attack the emperor you probably would prefer him to have your extra spare triple redundant magic sword, and you certainly won't take his regular sword that you don't give a damn about anyway.

And that brings on another point, some people don't seem to grasp why a system that potentially grants enough deceptive or emotional influence over someone that you COULD trick them to their deaths (like say convincing them the emperor killed their family and they should take bloody suicidal revenge) wouldn't ALWAYS be used to trick EVERYONE to their deaths.

The answer to that is much the same as with equipment. You don't want everyone dead. Especially people who you have such influence over. Even people you COULD have influence over are valuable to leave alive.

All the reasoning behind why you don't go around stabbing everyone in the face and taking all their stuff all the time is the same reasoning behind why you show restraint when you have a significant grasp over their actions.

You don't need to.

You don't want to.

Its out of character.

It makes other characters angry at you.

Its just plain stupid.

Of course all the reasoning behind not stabbing the merchant in the face and taking his stuff doesn't apply when it IS in character because you are playing some crazy stupid-evil character, or if you simply judge the situation to be sufficiently desperate or justified by context.

But, see the thing is that is why when push comes to shove if you really MUST you actually CAN stab the innocent merchant in the face and rob his corpse blind. Because for some characters and some stories that is exactly what the system must support.

And sometimes using your Liar social powers to leave your victim stripped of all his winter gear naked on a glacier while you ride off into the sunset with his dogs and sled is EXACTLY what the system must support.

Because sometimes you actually do that.

Maybe because you are an evil son of a bitch.

Maybe you just don't want to die.

Maybe you are the only one MUST travel on to save the universe.

But to argue that just because you CAN do something means you ALWAYS do it, is... absurd.

Its like saying because fatal combat attacks exist every time a valid target (including allies and other PCs) appears you will kill it. After all the option exists, so why wouldn't you always do that?

And take all their stuff.

[Ice9]

Social contest maybe, but not full-on social combat. And it doesn't need to be fully subjective - it can use the existing social rules or something similar.


Also, in some cases, you don't need any social skills to convince someone of something:
* If you're the only one able to defend their village, and they know it, they're not going to refuse you a horse because you didn't ask nicely.
* If you're offering to pay them thousands of gold for the horse, it'd be unusual, at the least, for them to refuse.
* If you threaten to kill them, and have the means and willingness to, you don't really need to Intimidate them. You may get better results that way, but few people will risk a fireball to the face for a horse.


Same reason you don't need a Spot check to see the Ogre 3' in front of you, and you don't need an Open Lock check if you smash the door down.

[Daiba]

1200565281[/unixtime]]
And that brings on another point, some people don't seem to grasp why a system that potentially grants enough deceptive or emotional influence over someone that you COULD trick them to their deaths (like say convincing them the emperor killed their family and they should take bloody suicidal revenge) wouldn't ALWAYS be used to trick EVERYONE to their deaths.

Maybe not, but it would be used far more than is realistic. Without any kind of graded success scale, people will choose the end-cases a lot more. Additionally, in your system people won't strike deals. While you might not take someone's stuff and force them to commit suicide, you are equally unlikely to offer trades, since you don't benefit from that at all.

I don't care how convincing you are, manipulating someone into doing something with disproportionate risk/reward is usually a difficult and elaborate task. As an example, bigger cons tend to be more difficult and complex. Simplifying that kind of thing into one conversation with difficulty unrelated to the goal is unrealistic, and bad for the game. Would you rather have one "conversation" where you talk some guy out of his imbezzled gold, or a cunning, days/weeks long scheme where every party member plays a different, but necessary, role?

[Judging__Eagle]

Ice9:

You do if the Ogre is making hide checks. It's attack rolls plus damage rolls to break something, sometimes a straight Str check.


I think that a definition of what a Social Combat "goal" is.

Right now, I see them as the equivalent of a Command spell, except that you get to define one action within 4 or 5 words. In fact, you get to issue a 4 word command that can only be performed once.

So, "give me your horse" works, since it's overall, one action.

While "give me your worldly belongings" will work, but will stop once the target has given you one object. So this won't work since it has 5 words. "Give me your objects" is shorter, but fails after it occurs once.


So, in summary, what happens when you win social combat:

You get to issue one 4 four word command that is performed once.

[angelfromanotherpin]

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So, in summary, what happens when you win social combat:

You get to issue one 4 four word command that is performed once.

Your examples are pretty reasonable, but what happens with that wording is that commands become:

"Cut your throat. Now."
or
"Sign over your kingdom."

and now we're right back in unreasonable territory.

[angelfromanotherpin]

As I see it, social combat falls under two fields: making deals, and debuffing. When Aahz talks a demon hunter into trading all his money and his sword for a junk-jewelry weapon, that's making a deal. When Wormtongue talks Eowyn into weeping, that's a debuff.

Deals are simple. One character proposes a deal. The mark gets a bonus to resist based on how unreasonable the deal is. If you offer a sword for a better sword, they get a small bonus. If you offer nothing for their kingdom, they get a recockulous bonus. Once a deal has succeeded or failed, it can't be tried again until the circumstances have changed significantly. (So, now that there are Cloud Giants running lose in it, how about that Kingdom?)

Debuffs are also pretty simple. One character proposes a debuff. The mark gets a bonus to resist based on how large and/or broad the debuff is, and a penalty if the character has a good 'in,' like knowing about their hopeless love or being a trusted friend, or whatever.

Now there's a lot of room for fine-tuning in there, like how many rolls are involved, and whether the social attacks can rebound on the attacker, but that strikes me as a good starting point.

[Crissa]

And it's pretty easy to have a scale for the DM to assign the value of your request again. 'All your worldly goods' and 'your kingdom' might be worth more to the character than their life, and you might have to demonstrate in deadly combat that you're capable of that.

This is also supposed to be a roleplaying game. When you kill characters or steal all their goods, you've left a footprint in the world. The DM isn't a stupid computer game - he can simply insert consequences for those actions.

And in fact, isn't that why we have a DM, for them to set up consequences for your actions? Otherwise, we might as well be playing Endless Quest instead of D&D.

-Crissa

[Draco_Argentum]

1200565281[/unixtime]]Its like saying because fatal combat attacks exist every time a valid target (including allies and other PCs) appears you will kill it. After all the option exists, so why wouldn't you always do that?

And take all their stuff.

No, its like saying every time combat starts it is fatal. This is largely true in D&D, everyone runs around with killer attacks so if a fight starts you don't hold back. Sure the other guy might cast sleep and not CdG you but you have no reason to assume that.

The difference is that combat is accepted as being take no prisoners as a genre convention. Clearly there is quite a degree of disagreement about social situations being all or nothing.

[Edit] Quote tags [/Edit]

[PhoneLobster]

OK, so in other words you are suggesting that if a character had a genuine outright killer social attack like "Suicidal Hypnotism of Doom"

They would then therefore use it on every target ever including passing peasants, allies, and other PCs.