D&D General Your thoughts on "Social Combat" systems

[TheSword]

I consider what a person says to be more important than how they say it.

What they say determines the most plausible outcome. A good skill check improved the outcome, a bad roll lessens it.

If the party want to meet the king and give a plausible outcome then they’re going to meet the king.

I might ask for a persuasion/intimidate/deception roll though. If they roll badly then they may have to be vetted by flunkeys and will get to meet the king in a dark room under guards. If they roll well, they get ushered into the throne room as respected guests.

No rolling is going to make someone do something they don’t want to do. I see social ‘combat’ rules as frequently being coercive. I find that annoying.

 

[zarionofarabel]

The dice determine the outline, you fill in the script with improv. To that end, I like systems that give me the cards to play off of at the game table.

If my PC is in a tense negotiation with a crime lord, and the DM calls on me to make a roll to see if I've influenced that crime lord, I get excited. I do not feel like it is robbing me of my experience.

If I roll an intimidation and get a great result, I play it up and throw out my most menacing line I can muster. Even if I can't pull it off, the PC does, and I get the joy of being the cool guy in the room. If I get a bad roll, I get the role of the failure. I get to either play it up for laughs with a cracked voice, or say a threatening line and watch the DM turn it into a fail because I didn't know something ... it creates opportunities for us to role play the results.

I like how you describe this, especially the part where the dice roll (success or failure) comes first. I see that as a sign of a great player and good roleplaying. I usually see it used the other way, where the player delivers a line and then the dice get rolled determining whether or not the argument succeeds.

 

[cbwjm]

Something I wouldn't want from a social conflict resolution system is one where the players just roll a die to determine success or failure. If their social skills just become a replacement for role-play then it isn't a good system. It needs to interact with role-play rather than a case of a player coming to a social encounter and just saying "I roll persuasion to get past them".

 

[Stormonu]

Something I wouldn't want from a social conflict resolution system is one where the players just roll a die to determine success or failure. If their social skills just become a replacement for role-play then it isn't a good system. It needs to interact with role-play rather than a case of a player coming to a social encounter and just saying "I roll persuasion to get past them".

On top of that, I don't want it resolved with one check if rolls are to be made.

Roleplaying it out can be fun for most folks, but for those unfortunate souls with in-real-life low Cha (of which I've had I've had a few players, myself included sometimes), there are simply times you have to disentangle the player from their character and let the dice do the talking - unless you go back to the days that Charisma was only for how many meat-shields, er... followers your character could retain.

 

[Azuresun]

One that I found worked well was in the CRPG Last Word

The system from Exalted looks good too, but I've never got a chance to play Exalted[/url]

The principle behind third edition's system is good, though I found the execution to be very clunky.

Basically, characters have things that are important to them with three degrees of intensity. To get someone to take a course of action, you need to play on a tie, with the importance of that tie limiting what you can try and compel from them. So you couldn't persuade someone to "join my army and risk your life fighting beastmen" based on their Minor tie of "I like cats", though you could use that to persuade them to look after your cast for a week while you're on holiday. But if you can work in their Defining tie of "I would do anything for my family.", then you can potentially get them to risk their lives for you. And to resist a valid attempt at persuasion, they need to invoke another relevant tie. And then other parts of the system deal with things like discovering someone's ties, or evoking emotions to create temporary ties that you can exploit.

 

[Oofta]

I like how you describe this, especially the part where the dice roll (success or failure) comes first. I see that as a sign of a great player and good roleplaying. I usually see it used the other way, where the player delivers a line and then the dice get rolled determining whether or not the argument succeeds.

Not to pick on 4E, but that's one of the things I disliked about the skill challenges as presented in mods and run by most DMs. No matter what was said, no matter how convincing the argument, it just didn't matter. The DC was set, nothing matter but the die roll. So it set a pattern - figure out who had the highest mod, do some half-ass role play (if that) and roll the dice. It was all tactical, no "soul" for lack of a better term.

Some people may prefer that and I get it. For me when I DM I encourage the players to say what their PC's say, but I'm also okay with them just listing off their points because some people simply aren't that good at putting together cohesive arguments. Then depending on the points they're making I adjust the DC, potentially down to "not needed" or on the other extreme "roll initiative".

 

[Umbran]

I think that a "social combat" system would be useful for actual social combats, like a flyting, or a dueling banjos thing. Otherwise, nah.

It could be relevant any time the party is in negotiations, or they are in a contest to convince someone of a course of action against resistance.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not to pick on 4E, but that's one of the things I disliked about the skill challenges as presented in mods and run by most DMs. No matter what was said, no matter how convincing the argument, it just didn't matter. The DC was set, nothing matter but the die roll. So it set a pattern - figure out who had the highest mod, do some half-ass role play (if that) and roll the dice. It was all tactical, no "soul" for lack of a better term.

Skill challenges came out of the gate with borked math, and the rules did a truly terrible job of instructing DMs how to run them. Skill challenges could work well when run by the right DM, but in my experience most DMs did not run them
well, myself included. They ended up feeling awkward and artificial most of the time.

Some people may prefer that and I get it. For me when I DM I encourage the players to say what their PC's say, but I'm also okay with them just listing off their points because some people simply aren't that good at putting together cohesive arguments. Then depending on the points they're making I adjust the DC, potentially down to "not needed" or on the other extreme "roll initiative".

This is basically the same as what I do. The points they list are effectively their approach, and in social interaction scenes the players’ goals are often self-evident. You don’t have to make a convincing argument yourself, just say how you’re trying to be convincing, and depending on what the NPC cares about, that will determine if a roll is needed or not, and f so what DC.

 

[NotAYakk]

You could make a social combat system where the abilities let you apply stakes rather than conclusions?

Ie, without a skill check, it isn't possible to "raise the stakes" to the point where someone might lower the price, or change their mind, etc.

...

You could even make it a bit state machine based. A bunch of named social maneuvers that aren't mind control, and require you to have already gotten to a position in the social encounter to use.

Pivot
Requires a substantive agreement to have occurred. You can bring up a topic they would rather not talk about, and hostility of the response is dropped by a notch.

Raise
Requires a successful negotiation of terms. You increase the stakes of the negotiation; if you have bargained for a discount, the discount becomes larger. If you have agreed to do a task for a reward, a new thing is added to the task and the reward also grows.

Relationship Level Up
Requires a mutually beneficial alignment to have occurred (basically, you helped each other; maybe you finished a quest). You upgrade your relationship state from strangers to acquaintances, acquaintances to friends, or friends to allies.

Judo
Requires them to have gotten the better of you. You convert that into a minor concession.

 

[NotAYakk]

Skill challenges came out of the gate with borked math, and the rules did a truly terrible job of instructing DMs how to run them. Skill challenges could work well when run by the right DM, but in my experience most DMs did not run them
well, myself included. They ended up feeling awkward and artificial most of the time.

Skill challenges, out of the gate, could be used.

But... it helps if the players don't know how they work, and are predisposed to "take turns" and not just sit out and let someone else hand it. And that the DM just uses them as a narrative counter for when to finish a scene.

You ask for them to do something working towards their goal. Then you call for a skill check; on failure, you narrate both what goes wrong, and count up a failure count. On success, you gain narrate what goes right, possibly describe another complication this revealed, and count up another success count.

They lack mechanisms to enforce or encourage round-the-table turn taking. The DCs where off, especially at higher levels or under character optimization. The complexity was mainly about how long the challenge took (at the table) and not how hard it was. And they require a DM already capable of improvising complications to a plan.

About the only thing they do is tell the DM that every successful skill check should actually move the PCs a measurable, bounded below, distance towards their goal. But that isn't nothing.