Phonelobster's Current Social Mechanics How Do They Work?

[PhoneLobster]

Question, I've read through the lengthy explanation here and I'm curious as to how these end states (both friendly and Seduced) play out outside of the encounters. Does being 'seduced' automatically 100% allow you to sleep with the target all the time or is it more of a disposition where-in they are more likely to do so? Same thing for 'friending' someone. After they are friended what 'mechanically' can you do with that or is it pure MTP from there?

I allow MTP with guidelines.

A social defeat state at a short term minimum should remove the target as an enemy in combat, and possibly turn them into an ally.

In the longer term it is less clear. Players should be permitted to argue that an NPC they have defeated with say Friendly attacks will do all sorts of things for them because they are now friends and trust has been established. It is specifically permitted that you CAN potentially work that into significant robberies or potentially fatal set ups, but those generally are Deal Breakers if caught out/survived. Though that is just a "can" guideline, players are expected to give a "He will now hold my mysterious possibly exploding luggage because we are friends" argument, the guideline is there just so a GM (or a player) doesn't say "well you can't do that because exploding me is too good!".

As to the "do I get sex" thing. I don't think I went into it here, but at some point I had an outlined that one in one of the iterations of these rules. The answer is "not 100% it's just more likely" and the determining factor is MTP.

Basically your social defeats, like say Friendly or Seductive leave a little bit of wiggle room for the defeated player in controlling their character. And so they are ALSO encouraged to do things like say "well since we are friends I think my character would be motivated to do..." And while they are given the general guideline that they cannot use this as an excuse to be a complete dick and totally subvert the "victory" of the winning player they certainly can at least use it for keeping their own character acting "within character" within the boundaries of providing the winner with SOME sort of longer term benefits.

Seduction based defeats specifically outline that the attacker has inflicted on the defeated target a "romantic interest" in the attacker, and while that entitles the attacker to the benefit of vague long term "influence/trust" that can be heavily exploited, and also specific short term minimums of "remove enemy, create potential ally" it does not actually entitle them to sex specifically.

Because the nature of the romantic interest the attacker has inflicted actually falls within the wiggle room of "Acting within character with this new motivation". If a player determines that their own character's idea of "Romantic Interest" is "I want as much sex as possible as soon as possible" that's ok, and if a player determines that their own character's idea of "Romantic Interest" is "I just want you kiss me, hold hands chastely and promise me things until we get married in two years" that is fine too. Either can be used as an excuse for providing the minimum rewards required regarding enemy removal, ally creation and ongoing trust.

So basically to some extent the benefits a Seducer gets for seducing people are somewhat guaranteed, but they don't include actual sex, which is still pretty much down to player interpretation of how their own character feels about romance and stuff with no direct accountability to the defeat state.

edit: Oh and there is a proviso that should a player declare their character's idea of romance involves "as much sex as possible as soon as possible" or something else potentially deeply inconvenient to the seducer in the short term that the seducer can put off satisfying any related demands for a minimum of one strategic turn without causing a deal breaker to occur. It's a kinda important proviso. Otherwise you'd have a crazy situation where Seductively defeating some would entitle THEM to make a close enough to 100% demand for sex from the seducer themselves holding any benefits of your victory hostage. That would be a bad thing.

[rampaging-poet]

I just ran the numbers on the formula I posted earlier. Overall, beating someone up before seducing them is only optimal for seven of the four hundred possible pairs of (Attack Bonus - NDef Bonus) and (Social Bonus - SDef Bonus). If you're not hitting at least nineteen times out of twenty, it will never be optimal. Even if you are, you need between zero and three points of Social Attack over their Social Defence: any more and you are flat-out better just talking to them, any less and the last-hit takes too long.

The biggest question is: how likely is it for these seven magic combinations of attacks and defences to come up? From what I remember of the skill lists, there are very few unconditional bonuses to hit. Since the attack wins ties, successfully hitting someone with absolutely no bonuses to NDef nineteen times out of ten requires a +3 bonus to hit. Conveniently, that's exactly the bonus characters with weapon specialization get. However, every Good Trait (with the possible exception of Mysterious with "worst normal defence bonus") grants at least +1 to Normal Defence, so our theoretical attacker needs to snag another accuracy bonus from somewhere. From what I remember there are few if any other +X vs All abilities in the list, so that means matching tags and using an attack your target is weak against.

The target may not have any bonuses to Social Defence from their Good Trait, but if they don't it will be even harder to reach the necessary level of accuracy. Our theoretical attacker can snag an easy +2 to Seduction attempts, which is optimal for targets with no Social Defence and can still catch those with a +2 to Social defence from a trait or skill. Note that if the target has any further bonuses to Social Defence, the attacker needs to match them for beating the target up first to be possible. Matching extra bonuses pushes those with lower Social Defence out of the sweet spot for the violence seduction combo.

None of this accounts for equipment. Armour adds to Normal Defence, making it even harder to reach 95% accuracy. Some other clothes and equipment can add to Social Defence. I can't remember any equipment directly adding to attacks.

Overall, a seduction-focused man with specialization in at least one weapon might have a mechanical incentive to beat up a naked princess before seducing her, but only if he can hit her with her particular Kryptonite. On one had that's acceptable because it will hardly ever occur in practice. On the other hand it's not because it occurs in a situation where the attacker clearly holds almost all the power unless they are both glass cannons. Fortunately, based on the skill list I've seen, picking up numerical bonuses to defences is easier than picking up numerical bonuses to attacks. You would need a very specific combination of specialization and favourable tag match-ups to punch through the defences and reach the seven numerical pairs where violence before seduction is optimal.

[MGuy]

Why not get rid of Seduction and just keep Friendly? If the results of both are so vague that it basically boils down to convincing your GM that you should get X from Y or convincing Y to do X because "friendship is magic" then why bother having 'romantic' interest as a thing you can get midfight? Why not just have 'seduction' be something you can achieve outside of combat with 'friends'. That way you at least can silence the Rules Encourage Rape meme people are thrusting upon you.

[PhoneLobster]

Why not just have 'seduction' be something you can achieve outside of combat with 'friends'. That way you at least can silence the Rules Encourage Rape meme people are thrusting upon you.

Because I don't believe it will silence them. There have been accusations of rape, mind rape, love slaves and so on based purely on "System has broad social end states like Charm Person".

And in fact if you specifically state Friendly end states have potential sex in them then you won't even have changed the conditions they are criticizing as far as they are concerned.

Meanwhile just for a shot at silencing those critics... when describing Succubi Nymphs and Zorro Casanovas and so forth they are now just "friendly guys" who are entirely interchangeable with Care Bears and Inspiring Shonen for their actual mechanical abilities. And I stress a big thing with my system is, if you care about talking about it/describing it then it does something. I mean, if you go and wear a "Big Hat" it goes ahead and does stuff so you can go on about how awesome your big hat you wear is when it is doing it. If we are pretending Succibi Nymphs are different to Care Bears descriptively I want them to be different mechanically.

Of course you could just remove the potential archetypes and descriptions along with the relevant ability sets and the base social attack type. It still won't silence the critics though, and then you've lost the archetypes altogether. Which is no big deal on those occasions you are running an already censored game where it would be for some reason inappropriate to drop a fairly regular D&D succubus encounter onto the table, but is otherwise a loss.

[PhoneLobster]

Oh yeah.

I just ran the numbers

Thanks for that. Your posts on that sort of material are very interesting.

It's the kind of analysis I should do but generally don't these days.

As some quick answers to things that cropped up in your post...

If you're not hitting at least nineteen times out of twenty, it will never be optimal. Even if you are, you need between zero and three points of Social Attack over their Social Defence

That's going to be hard to achieve. Defenses are easier to get than attack bonuses, especially on Normal Defense.

If it IS going to occur I think it is most likely going to occur in the relatively early game, probably first 2 or 3 points of character advancement if both parties spend on nothing but normal offense, get some of the best options and benefit from all match ups and don't wear armor.

with the possible exception of Mysterious with "worst normal defence bonus"

The mysterious Mysterious ability Gives out Pretty 1 to SDef and Fast 1 Pretty 1 to NDef, so its a +2 NDef but with 2 keywords on it.

Might be too punishing considering the nature of the Mysterious active and it's high cost. But Mysterious is one of the new experimental traits.

Some other clothes and equipment can add to Social Defence. I can't remember any equipment directly adding to attacks.

It's very easy to get armors that add Armour bonus to normal defense, mists and robes that add Obfuscating, magic swirly lightning color that adds Magic bonus, and even items that add Evasive or Oil bonus. Most of those have simple item versions usable untrained by anyone and most of those can be stacked up with further improvements for those with proficiencies.

Items that add to SDef are I think fairly rare, but there are a number around that will add usually about a +1 Pretty to your social defense while maybe doing something else (usually including boosting your normal defense by the same or more simultaneously) and that's pretty much it.

Items that add to normal attack (conditional on keyword match ups) are common as dirt.

Items that add to Social attack exist, but are I think largely limited to wearing a suit that adds +1 to one flavor of social attack, I don't think it's conditional.