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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7742634" data-attributes="member: 5142"><p>Please "note," to borrow your own imperative, Ovinomancer, that I have not advocated for forcing player choice. The pressing issue when players argue that their characters should be absolved from <em>mechanical</em> consequences of successful NPC rolls in what we may call "social combat" scenarios. Narrative consequences in any scenario are a given. And this becomes clear in the example that you raise below. </p><p></p><p>So, yes, let us note choices. Your examples here point not to the crux of the problem but cruxes, namely that there are narrative and mechanical consequences at play. The choice, the agency, for both the NPC and PC lies in the decision to engage in combat and how they go about it. They choose their target and how they fight (e.g., weapons, spells, maneuvers, etc.). The PC and NPCs can react and adjust what they do. These are narrative choices. They do not choose to hit. They do not choose to avoid being hit. These things are resolved in dice resolution mechanics. They "hit" and they are "hit" throughout the course of combat. But do note as well that players, particularly in at least 3-5e D&D, do not always have absolute authority over the combat narration of their characters, such that if they say that they are aiming for the eyes, and they hit their target, the eyes themselves are not necessarily what is "hit." The details of combat narration are often abstracted or left open for both GM and player input depending upon table preferences. </p><p></p><p>Many social scenarios, IMHO, are a form of combat. And as with combat, there should be <em>mechanical</em> consequences <em>for PCs</em> from a "hit" or a skill success made by NPCs. A successful social "hit" of a PC from an NPC's skill check would not necessarily take the form of "[getting] to tell you what your character does," and this appears to be an absurd extreme case rather than one that would be seen in actual play. As has been acknowledged by others in this thread, those pressing this argument are leaving out a tremendously large healthy middle range of alternative solutions. But a success and a fail for making a mechanical roll should have mechanical consequences and not just narrative ones. Hence my comparison with the invisible impenetrable force field that removes the player from consequences, which I hope you now understand is meant to refer to mechanical consequences, much as being "hit" in the context of combat. </p><p></p><p>So to bring back my earlier point, my issue is when an NPC succeeds at "hitting" a PC within the mechanical context of a social scenario but then the PC attempts to render themselves immune from mechanical consequences of that "hit." What that "hit" entails may vary depending upon the system. In Fate Core, for example, players can take Mental Stress (and Consequences) in social combat. And enough stress of any sort, whether physical or mental, can take characters out of play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 7742634, member: 5142"] Please "note," to borrow your own imperative, Ovinomancer, that I have not advocated for forcing player choice. The pressing issue when players argue that their characters should be absolved from [I]mechanical[/I] consequences of successful NPC rolls in what we may call "social combat" scenarios. Narrative consequences in any scenario are a given. And this becomes clear in the example that you raise below. So, yes, let us note choices. Your examples here point not to the crux of the problem but cruxes, namely that there are narrative and mechanical consequences at play. The choice, the agency, for both the NPC and PC lies in the decision to engage in combat and how they go about it. They choose their target and how they fight (e.g., weapons, spells, maneuvers, etc.). The PC and NPCs can react and adjust what they do. These are narrative choices. They do not choose to hit. They do not choose to avoid being hit. These things are resolved in dice resolution mechanics. They "hit" and they are "hit" throughout the course of combat. But do note as well that players, particularly in at least 3-5e D&D, do not always have absolute authority over the combat narration of their characters, such that if they say that they are aiming for the eyes, and they hit their target, the eyes themselves are not necessarily what is "hit." The details of combat narration are often abstracted or left open for both GM and player input depending upon table preferences. Many social scenarios, IMHO, are a form of combat. And as with combat, there should be [I]mechanical[/I] consequences [I]for PCs[/I] from a "hit" or a skill success made by NPCs. A successful social "hit" of a PC from an NPC's skill check would not necessarily take the form of "[getting] to tell you what your character does," and this appears to be an absurd extreme case rather than one that would be seen in actual play. As has been acknowledged by others in this thread, those pressing this argument are leaving out a tremendously large healthy middle range of alternative solutions. But a success and a fail for making a mechanical roll should have mechanical consequences and not just narrative ones. Hence my comparison with the invisible impenetrable force field that removes the player from consequences, which I hope you now understand is meant to refer to mechanical consequences, much as being "hit" in the context of combat. So to bring back my earlier point, my issue is when an NPC succeeds at "hitting" a PC within the mechanical context of a social scenario but then the PC attempts to render themselves immune from mechanical consequences of that "hit." What that "hit" entails may vary depending upon the system. In Fate Core, for example, players can take Mental Stress (and Consequences) in social combat. And enough stress of any sort, whether physical or mental, can take characters out of play. [/QUOTE]
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