D&D General "I roll Persuasion."

[Bill Zebub]

People acquiesce under social pressure. That's no more "unrealistic" that ending a physical battle in defeat.

Show me the rules that model this. Something analogous to HP and death saves.

Or are you just saying that you think it would be ok to have rules modeling this, even though 5e doesn’t?

 

[Celebrim]

When a police officer threatens you, you'll likely acquiesce. When a doctor is telling you about your physical condition, you'll likely acquiesce. When your boss tells you to do something, you'll likely acquiesce.

Two of those situations involve the threat of some sort of physical force or consequences. They are obey me or else situations.

And I suspect that you only believe the one about the doctor because you've never been a doctor.

So in that your hypothetical social combat system that covers the general case, does a 1st level police officer win the social encounter with a 2nd level thief look like from a social perspective. How has the most social hit points? Why does the police officer win here? Or not? How is your social combat system going to handle all the different sorts of complex social relationships that can exist between people in the general case? And how much does your system care about level as opposed to reputation and rank?

Or think about how things change if the stakes change. Cop says, "Move along." Ok, fine. Cop says move along to a protestor. Same thing? Why not? What changed in the social combat system. Cop says, "Shoot your wife." Different? How does the social combat system know?

When your significant other wants something that you really dont, you'll likely acquiesce. Likely being the key term that you wont protest the situation, but there will be points that you just cant let it go.

Again, I don't disagree but make a system of it.

 

[Maxperson]

I consider this a special case of thinking about it and realizing social combat is really nothing like physical combat at all. For example, you probably have no problem conceding that a character can be knocked unconscious and dragged off to jail against their will, something provided for in many systems. But the truth is in a social encounter, you can be as obstinate as you want and never have to yield anything. We have any number of Enworld threads as proof of that. So what do you do for "combat" in situations where "social hit points" are infinite?

In addition, a social combat system removes agency from the players. An NPC who defeats a PC in a social combat to get you to dance naked on top of a table has made that PC do it almost surely against the player's will.

Also, how would mass social combat work? If 5 people are all "attacking" you socially to get you to do something, do they burn your will down far more quickly than 1?

 

[Maxperson]

People acquiesce under social pressure. That's no more "unrealistic" that ending a physical battle in defeat.

I gave in to peer pressure once on a field trip when I was about 8. My classmates talked me into stealing a small knife from a gift shop. Then they turned me in to the teachers. Lesson learned. Since then no amount of pressure has been able to get me to do something I don't want to or know is wrong....................unless there are external pressures like a parent saying if I don't do it I will get beat or no dinner. Simple verbal pressure, though? Nope.

 

[Maxperson]

When a police officer threatens you, you'll likely acquiesce.

Under threat of pain or arrest, yes. That's not social combat and peer pressure. That's a real threat of danger.

When a doctor is telling you about your physical condition, you'll likely acquiesce.

No. You'll listen, because you WANT to know about your health. Someone who is crazy enough to not want to listen to a doctor about his health won't be pressured into it. There's no contention there.

When your boss tells you to do something, you'll likely acquiesce.

Not for any social reason. You want to keep your job. Again there is an external threat causing the acquiescence, not some social talking to.

When your significant other wants something that you really dont, you'll likely acquiesce.

Not because you've been defeated, but because you love your significant other. In this case while you may not want to do the dishes, you DO want to make her happy and that want wins out so you do the dishes.

 

[pemerton]

Do you think any edition of D&D has gotten social encounters "right"?

I like skill challenges. I think they have some strengths compared to social conflict systems where both the players and the GM roll (eg Burning Wheel, Prince Valiant, Torchbearer, Marvel Heroic RP).

 

[Azuresun]

Another problem with social system is what happens when optimisation and min-maxing is applied (or poorly balanced or outright game-breaking combos), and you get the social equivalent of Hexblade dips or one-handed quarterstaves. We accept that combat is a bit abstracted, a bit cinematic and it's going to produce the odd "huh?" moment, but we can accept that because most of us don't have much experience of actual deadly combat, and we're used to stylised depictions of it in fiction where drama matters more than strict realism. We all have experience with talking to people, and it's much more jarring and immersion breaking when a social system produces degenerate, nonsensical or absurd results.

Exalted 2e is my go-to example here. It had a social system that was strongly based on the combat system, with the same level of complexity. And once the min-maxers had worked it over, you had a situation where the best way to persuade someone was to follow them around, browbeating them with unthinkable requests until they had lost their will to resist and would agree to anything you asked them, regardless of how absurd or debilitating it was and the optimal way to play was to punch someone in the face as soon as they started trying to persuade you of anything. There's an in-depth (and very funny) breakdown of the flaws here:

Why don't 2ed & 2.5 Social Combat work? - Onyx Path Forums

I'm in a bit of an argument with a friend, and need to collect some points. So, as said above. Why do those Social Combat rules suck so bad that we need to chug 'em out with the bathwater in 3rd Ed?

forum.theonyxpath.com

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think @Bill Zebub has the right take on this. Unless you have players willingly to play along with the apparent "logical results" of any type of social combat and change their character's opinions or views based upon what the dice said at the conclusion of the combat... you're not going to get effective results.

I mean heck... we already see the issues noawadays with just things like Intimidation. If @el-remmen was to run one of their polls to ask "If a DM rolled Intimidation against your PC and succeeded, would you go along with the result?" I'm pretty sure we'd see plenty of folks vote No, and reply with that their character's reactions are their own-- the player's decision, the player's choice-- and dice rolls can't and won't force them to behave or react differently. And if that's true, then bothering with an entire social combat system isn't going to make things different.

 

[Ondath]

Social combat doesn't fit my playstyle (or my group's playstyle), simple as that. I wanted to codify some mechanics on how people could use their social skills for my home game at some point, and the players were largely opposed to the idea. To them (and after thinking a bit, I agree), we use abstract rules for combat because nobody at the table knows how combat would actually feel, let alone combat with magical abilities. The abstract rules of hit points and saving throws and Armor Class are all there so that we can create the fiction of what is happening in the combat despite having no actual combat experience. The abstract rules allow us to produce a result that's close to what we'd expect from fictional representations of fantasy combat (which were shaped by D&D in the first place, but that's an entirely different debate).

As for social encounters? Well, we all have experience with that. We know what it feels like when somebody can't respond to a knockdown argument (not that it happens a lot in real life), or when we correctly intuit somebody's disposition to us, or when we manage to lie through our teeth. If we try to use abstract rules here, it just stops feeling like... an actual social encounter. It feels more like a CRPG's attempt at replicating social encounters, which are needed in a computer environment, but make no sense when all sides in the encounter are actual human beings with some social experience.

So the only kind of social encounter rules I use nowadays are DM-facing rules to help me generate an NPC's initial disposition and some fast-and-loose rules on how to respond to general requests. The rules in the DMG (which set DCs for the DC a request would get depending on its difficulty), coupled with a 2d10 Reaction roll to establish an NPC's initial disposition (friendly-neutral-hostile) and some loose advantage/disadvantage rules when the players exploit an NPC's traits or flaws, are all I need. The rest would just get in the way of how everyone imagines a social encounter to be.

 

[Azuresun]

I mean, look, if eight people are trying to seduce me-

--then you might be the protagonist of a harem anime.