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Weekly Wrecana - Social Challenges (another 6 part)
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<blockquote data-quote="Garthanos" data-source="post: 7060264" data-attributes="member: 82504"><p><strong>Social Skills</strong></p><p></p><p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130531133225/http://community.wizards.com/wrecan/blog/2010/02/08/social_challenges_2:_social_skills" target="_blank">SOCIAL CHALLENGES 2: SOCIAL SKILLS</a></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">This is the second of six blogs I will be presenting on how to design and execute Social Challenges for your party, blending role-play and dice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><em>Note: I have edited this blog based on the comments of aoirorentsu, below. I have also changed the discussion on Duplicity based on other comments. Thanks for the great ideas!</em></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">In this second blog, I discuss two design flaws when it comes to the primary Skills that govern social challenges. The first flaw is that Bluff and Diplomacy do not appropriately cover the ways that people persuade one another. The second flaw is that Diplomacy is the only Social Skill that does not afford a benefit outside the Social Challenge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>Flaw One: </strong>A Persuasive Argument </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">As it presently stands, attempts to persuade others through deception use Bluff and attempts to persuade others through honesty use Diplomacy. This means a character can be more persuasive lying than when telling the truth and that doesn’t make much sense. Imagine a scenario in which a warlock trained in Bluff, but not Diplomacy, knows a horde of gnolls is slowly advancing towards a village. The warlock needs to convince a village that they need to start preparing fortifications. Astonishingly, the warlock finds it easier to warn the villagers of a fictional danger to their town than of the actual gnolls. Moreover, the warlock would have an easier time convincing the villagers to build fortifications if there were no gnolls advancing at all. It’s bizarre.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">In order to fix this anomaly, I propose two fixes. The first brings Social Skills into alignment with how people actually interact and persuade one another. The second changes how lying and deception mechanically works.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>On Rhetoric</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Aristotle, in <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html" target="_blank"><em>On Rhetoric</em></a>, identifies three methods by which people convince others: pathos, logos, and ethos. I’ll take each in turn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>Pathos </strong>appeals to people’s emotions. Sometimes you appear to their fears ("The Redcoats are coming!"), sometimes you appeal to their anger ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"), and sometimes you appeal to their hopes ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!"). <strong>Bluff </strong>should govern emotional appeals. (Bluff still retains the ability to lie; however, in Social Challenges, as shall be seen, the benefit of having a personal ability to bluff is somewhat lessened by the fact that your companions who are not so dishonest are likely to expose your lies though involuntary reactions.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>Logos </strong>appeals to people’s reason, convincing people to agree with you through intellectual force and a command of facts. <strong>Diplomacy </strong>should govern logical appeals. The appeal is still based on Charisma, not Intelligence, although having command of the facts (through appropriate knowledge checks) should grant circumstantial bonuses.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>Ethos</strong> appeals to your own character. If you exude confidence, you are more likely to get people to do what you want. <strong>Intimidate </strong>actually approximates this ability best. While Intimidate is generally described as a character who instills fear in the Intimidator himself, this could easily be expanded as anybody who exudes the confidence necessary to instill an emotional reaction in the targets. In addition, where characters are familiar to one another, a level of trust is earned which obviates the need to project confidence. This might manifest as a situational bonus, or even obviating the need for a roll at all. ("If Barney says the gnolls are coming, they are coming. Man the barricades!")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"><strong>On Duplicity</strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Lying is not a matter of persuasion. That is why it is opposed by Insight (on an individual level) and not Will. A lie allows you to make appeals without being limited by what is actually true, and this is a huge benefit. However, getting caught in a lie undermines your credibility. A successful lie, in other words, aids your appeal to emotion and reason, but at the expense of an appeal to character if caught. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">For this reason, a successful lie does not represent a success in a Social Challenge. Rather, a successful lie allows you to make an appeal you could not make if limited to truthful statements. But because an exposed lie risks ruining your credibility, it increases the difficulty of the challenge, for those who are not good liars. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">In Social Challenges, which are group endeavors, it is insufficient for the liar to be a good bluffer. The entire party (or at least those members who realize the liar is lying) must participate in the charade. If any party members reveals, through involuntary facial expressions, that there's something amiss, the lie could be exposed. This is represented by a penalty to the roll in a Social Challenge.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">[h=1]Flaw Two: A Diplomatic Endeavor[/h]Every social skill is useful outside a social challenge, except one: Diplomacy. Perhaps this is because Diplomacy is so powerful in Social Challenges that it need not have other uses. However, by limiting Diplomacy to rhetorical arguments, and delegating emotional arguments to Bluff, the usefulness of Diplomacy has been reduced. Diplomacy should therefore have a use outside of Social Challenges, just as Bluff and Intimidate do. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Diplomacy should be as useful in combat as the other social skills. Thus, I propose the following house rule: Once an encounter, as a free action, if you are trained in Diplomacy and your action causes an enemy to exit a square adjacent to an ally, roll a Diplomacy check. If the check exceeds an opposing Insight check made by the enemy, your ally may make a basic melee attack targeting that enemy as an immediate interrupt. This applies even though forced movement generally does not provoke opportunity attacks. Essentially, you use your communicative abilities to rapidly inform your ally of an opportunity you are creating, and the Insight check represents he enemy's attempt to protect himself against the opening you are describing to your ally.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">With these small changes to Social Skills, we are ready to address designing Social Challenges in my next blog.</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Garthanos, post: 7060264, member: 82504"] [B]Social Skills[/B] [URL='https://web.archive.org/web/20130531133225/http://community.wizards.com/wrecan/blog/2010/02/08/social_challenges_2:_social_skills']SOCIAL CHALLENGES 2: SOCIAL SKILLS[/URL] [FONT=Tahoma]This is the second of six blogs I will be presenting on how to design and execute Social Challenges for your party, blending role-play and dice. [I]Note: I have edited this blog based on the comments of aoirorentsu, below. I have also changed the discussion on Duplicity based on other comments. Thanks for the great ideas![/I] In this second blog, I discuss two design flaws when it comes to the primary Skills that govern social challenges. The first flaw is that Bluff and Diplomacy do not appropriately cover the ways that people persuade one another. The second flaw is that Diplomacy is the only Social Skill that does not afford a benefit outside the Social Challenge. [B]Flaw One: [/B]A Persuasive Argument As it presently stands, attempts to persuade others through deception use Bluff and attempts to persuade others through honesty use Diplomacy. This means a character can be more persuasive lying than when telling the truth and that doesn’t make much sense. Imagine a scenario in which a warlock trained in Bluff, but not Diplomacy, knows a horde of gnolls is slowly advancing towards a village. The warlock needs to convince a village that they need to start preparing fortifications. Astonishingly, the warlock finds it easier to warn the villagers of a fictional danger to their town than of the actual gnolls. Moreover, the warlock would have an easier time convincing the villagers to build fortifications if there were no gnolls advancing at all. It’s bizarre. In order to fix this anomaly, I propose two fixes. The first brings Social Skills into alignment with how people actually interact and persuade one another. The second changes how lying and deception mechanically works. [B]On Rhetoric[/B] Aristotle, in [URL='http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html'][I]On Rhetoric[/I][/URL], identifies three methods by which people convince others: pathos, logos, and ethos. I’ll take each in turn. [B]Pathos [/B]appeals to people’s emotions. Sometimes you appear to their fears ("The Redcoats are coming!"), sometimes you appeal to their anger ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!"), and sometimes you appeal to their hopes ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!"). [B]Bluff [/B]should govern emotional appeals. (Bluff still retains the ability to lie; however, in Social Challenges, as shall be seen, the benefit of having a personal ability to bluff is somewhat lessened by the fact that your companions who are not so dishonest are likely to expose your lies though involuntary reactions.) [B]Logos [/B]appeals to people’s reason, convincing people to agree with you through intellectual force and a command of facts. [B]Diplomacy [/B]should govern logical appeals. The appeal is still based on Charisma, not Intelligence, although having command of the facts (through appropriate knowledge checks) should grant circumstantial bonuses. [B]Ethos[/B] appeals to your own character. If you exude confidence, you are more likely to get people to do what you want. [B]Intimidate [/B]actually approximates this ability best. While Intimidate is generally described as a character who instills fear in the Intimidator himself, this could easily be expanded as anybody who exudes the confidence necessary to instill an emotional reaction in the targets. In addition, where characters are familiar to one another, a level of trust is earned which obviates the need to project confidence. This might manifest as a situational bonus, or even obviating the need for a roll at all. ("If Barney says the gnolls are coming, they are coming. Man the barricades!") [B]On Duplicity[/B] Lying is not a matter of persuasion. That is why it is opposed by Insight (on an individual level) and not Will. A lie allows you to make appeals without being limited by what is actually true, and this is a huge benefit. However, getting caught in a lie undermines your credibility. A successful lie, in other words, aids your appeal to emotion and reason, but at the expense of an appeal to character if caught. For this reason, a successful lie does not represent a success in a Social Challenge. Rather, a successful lie allows you to make an appeal you could not make if limited to truthful statements. But because an exposed lie risks ruining your credibility, it increases the difficulty of the challenge, for those who are not good liars. In Social Challenges, which are group endeavors, it is insufficient for the liar to be a good bluffer. The entire party (or at least those members who realize the liar is lying) must participate in the charade. If any party members reveals, through involuntary facial expressions, that there's something amiss, the lie could be exposed. This is represented by a penalty to the roll in a Social Challenge. [h=1]Flaw Two: A Diplomatic Endeavor[/h]Every social skill is useful outside a social challenge, except one: Diplomacy. Perhaps this is because Diplomacy is so powerful in Social Challenges that it need not have other uses. However, by limiting Diplomacy to rhetorical arguments, and delegating emotional arguments to Bluff, the usefulness of Diplomacy has been reduced. Diplomacy should therefore have a use outside of Social Challenges, just as Bluff and Intimidate do. Diplomacy should be as useful in combat as the other social skills. Thus, I propose the following house rule: Once an encounter, as a free action, if you are trained in Diplomacy and your action causes an enemy to exit a square adjacent to an ally, roll a Diplomacy check. If the check exceeds an opposing Insight check made by the enemy, your ally may make a basic melee attack targeting that enemy as an immediate interrupt. This applies even though forced movement generally does not provoke opportunity attacks. Essentially, you use your communicative abilities to rapidly inform your ally of an opportunity you are creating, and the Insight check represents he enemy's attempt to protect himself against the opening you are describing to your ally. With these small changes to Social Skills, we are ready to address designing Social Challenges in my next blog.[/FONT] [/QUOTE]
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