D&D General "I roll Persuasion."

[Umbran]

That's not accurate. I will not steal anything. Just won't. No amount of talking, tricking or manipulating can get me to do it. There are things that will fail across the board.

Will you ever help someone recover stolen property?

 

[Bill Zebub]

The hang-up seems to be no one wants to suffer the consequences of defeat,

Isn't that also the case in combat? "Thanks for that 1 HP; now I can jump back to my feet with no impact on performance."

Social interaction may be a lot less fleshed out than real combat...and a lot less fun, from a game design perspective...but I find it approximately as realistic. They're both hovering at about 3.7% realistic.

 

[Reynard]

What might be an interesting compromise mechanic is if you had "social hit points" of some sort that if completely defeated left you exhausted or some other status effect, but it doesn't cause you to do the thing. However, you can avoid "social hp" damage by conceding points or moving your position a little -- kind of like choosing to take consequences instead of harm in FitD games. This way, your noble, resolute paladin can stick to his moral guns no matter the pain, and your more... "ethically maneuverable" sorcerer can win the argument through guile.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

There are 2 aspects of social encounters that I think could be improved:

1) it would be great to have a multi roll resolution system. For important situations you don't want it resolved in 1 or 2 rolls and/or DM fiat. Some kind of improved skill challenges can do this. If done in the background this doesn't even have to much disrupt the current 'just act it out' style as well.

2) it would be great have more tactical levers within a social encounter. This one is trickier as some folks don't want this in their social and there are not many examples of it done well. This can be done at a generic metacurrency level -- rerolls of skills, etc. It could be different kinds of social "attacks" and "defenses" and "HPs". The Fate game Diaspora had one of the more creative takes -- you draw a map with stakeholders as pawns and there are multiple victory conditions depending on whether you "influence" the pawns into the right areas on the map representing supporting your position, take out the pawns directly, or run out of time.

The interesting thing about 5e I think is that the skill system is so non-defined it actually fits well into skill challenges and other structures where skill roles should be fairly broad in what they can do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What might be an interesting compromise mechanic is if you had "social hit points" of some sort that if completely defeated left you exhausted or some other status effect, but it doesn't cause you to do the thing. However, you can avoid "social hp" damage by conceding points or moving your position a little -- kind of like choosing to take consequences instead of harm in FitD games. This way, your noble, resolute paladin can stick to his moral guns no matter the pain, and your more... "ethically maneuverable" sorcerer can win the argument through guile.

I’m really not a fan of this either, but a system where being “socially defeated” allows you to choose to take a penalty or do the thing is massively preferable to one where you are just forced to do the thing.

 

[Medic]

Isn't that also the case in combat? "Thanks for that 1 HP; now I can jump back to my feet with no impact on performance."

Social interaction may be a lot less fleshed out that real combat...and a lot less fun, from a game design perspective...but I find it approximately as realistic. They're both hovering at about 3.7% realistic.

For me, the disconnect here is really that it's feasible to masterfully deceive someone without any "social combat" at all. Combat as-is exists as a stand-in to simulate actually stabbing and battering another being, whereas I can run a succubus that plays PCs against each other unassisted, maybe with a Deception roll now and again if her behavior ever comes under any serious scrutiny.

 

[Reynard]

One of the reasons I think a social combat system would be worthwhile is that I think players in general are pretty bad at choosing "defeat" even when "in character" or "dramatically appropriate." Not too long ago we had a thread about refusing to run away, and I am still suffering from the one about taking a bath. I have said before that I like the PCs in my games to act something like real people, and real people (paragons of virtue and unbreakable wills aside) acquiesce points and lose arguments and negotiate badly and succumb to peer pressure and break under interrogation all the time. I know we are talking about heroes here, but unflappable, indominable heroes are, well, boring. Go reread your Iliad and Odyssey, your Gilgamesh and Beowulf.

 

[Reynard]

For me, the disconnect here is really that it's feasible to masterfully deceive someone without any "social combat" at all. Combat as-is exists as a stand-in to simulate actually stabbing and battering another being, whereas I can run a succubus that plays PCs against each other unassisted, maybe with a Deception roll now and again if her behavior ever comes under any serious scrutiny.

But, usually, you can't play a succubus that uses seduction to cause a PC to betray their king but this is a real thing that happens all the time in both fiction and reality.

 

[Medic]

But, usually, you can't play a succubus that uses seduction to cause a PC to betray their king but this is a real thing that happens all the time in both fiction and reality.

I can't remember the last time a succubus turned me against the highest representative of a sovereign state, but I guess I'll take your word for it.

 

[Campbell]

Regardless of the systems involved I would like if we would all do a much better job of accepting and honoring the contributions everyone brings to the shared fiction. Really consider what your character do in those moments of tension. Treat descriptions of how persuasive, attractive or threatening a given character is with the same respect you would a description of their physical prowess. Play to that instead of preconceived notions of who the characters we play (including NPCs) must be.

All too often I see players and GMs not respecting the shared space and not really being a curious explorer of the fiction. Instead of thinking 'my character would never ...' maybe try to approach things from the perspective of 'How would Ragna respond?'.