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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4302451" data-attributes="member: 54846">Off-topic:Kamikaze, I understand what you mean about "taking the complexity out of combat", but then, everyone might feel like a Fighter. The "I hit, I do damage", just with all the PCs. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />However, one of the things about Exalted I really liked was that, while there were definite combat powers (and everybody could get any power), at least half the powers were non-combat based. There were powers that let you charm people, find out what about an individual it would take to bribe them, and be the life of the party. There were bureaucracy powers, letting you speed up or slow down an organization's activity, or motivate them for a single cause. There were Investigation-based powers, allowing you to find clues or detect lies. There were craft-based powers, allowing you to double your efforts, find the weaknesses in other creations (in order to sunder them). There were Presence and Performance based powers, allowing you (among other things) to intimidate people with your mere existence, entrance people with your voice, or to train soldiers into elite fighting forces in x3 the time.In other words, you could play an entire game as courtiers and socialites, using your social powers to become manipulators in the court. You could play generals who created and led armies, but didn't have to fight. You could be Mother Theresa/Ghandi, an utter pacifist, if you pleased, and you feel as though you have the potency in the game to get things done just like the asskicker beside you.However, in systems like D&D, the non-combat stuff usually came down to one roll or two. Even tricking out your bluff or diplomacy to a fat +20, it was still just a single roll, or a series of rolls, and that's it. Now, imagine if there was a way to have non-combat abilities that played off your skills. The same way Bluff allows you to feint in combat for sneak attack, you could use Bluff to catch your opponent off guard long enough to cause him to hesitate and sputter after a good verbal reparte. Or a diplomacy ability that allowed you to undermine the other person's argument along with rolling high. Along with skill challenges, there's the notion of 'skill combat'; Spirit of the Century, and (soon to be released) Dresden Files RPG have the notion of combat in three tiers: Physical, Mental, and Social combat. They work on the same rules, with skill x versus skill y rolls, but failure during the "rounds" can cause penalties, with lasting effects - loss of prestige, embarassment, fatigue/confusion, and so on.</blockquote>

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