Social Stigma

[Kzach]

I know 4e doesn't like penalties but in creating a setting I want to convey a certain amount of tension between races, even allies or even between human factions.

So I wanted a simple system that would work nice and easily with a low amount of in-game complication. I'm not sure if this has been done before and if it has, oh well, I'll live.

Basically, every race or faction in a setting has a Social Stigma listing. Under this, there are listed the races that have an adverse reaction to that particular race. Only races with established nations where Diplomacy matters, should be included. Monster races just work by the regular DC rules.

The number next to each race indicates the penalty the character, or anyone with the character, suffers on Diplomacy rolls when dealing with that race.

Half-elf

Social Stigma
Mongoloids (human nation) 2, Elves 1, Eladrin 3, Orcs 5.

So if anyone in the party was dealing with Elves whilst a half-elf was with them, then they'd take a -1 penalty to their Diplomacy rolls.

 

[Fede]

It's a nice and simple idea, i suggest extending the penalty to Bluff (and maybe streetwise) checks, because (following your example) an eladrin would be extra wary and suspicious when dealing with someone who associates with half-elves, hence the -3 penalty.

 

[77IM]

I like the idea. I personally have trouble tracking large matrices of minor modifiers, so I prefer a system of a few descriptive names. I would use a system of initial attitudes. Borrowing from the old NPC attitude table from 3.5, I'd say something like this:

Half-elf

Social Stigma
Unfriendly (-2): Eladrin, Mongoloid (human nation)
Hostile (-5): Orcs

Personally, I don't find -1 penalties worth worrying about, nor find the difference between -2 and -3 interesting, which is why I would clump everything together as either Unfriendly or Hostile. (I understand that some people prefer more granularity, so for them a system of free-form penalties might work better than clumping everything into two groups.)



You might also find it easier to group these by cultures having the adverse reaction, rather than those receiving it. For example,

Mongoloid (human nation)

Initial Attitude
Unfriendly (-2): Dwarves, Half-elves, Nordic (human nation)
Hostile (-5): Gnolls, Orcs, Islander (human nation)

Since you're the one running the NPC, this allows you to look up the NPC's race and quickly see the modifier for all the PCs, rather than having to look up every PC's race to see what the modifier for the current NPC should be.

-- 77IM

 

[Kzach]

I like the idea of Unfriendly/Hostile. That works well. But I'd prefer to keep the book-keeping on the player's end

 

[Smeelbo]

I like 77IM's take on it. The reaction modifier "belongs" to the character reacting, not the character being reacted to. That is, a racist reaction is a property of the racist, not of the race.

Smeelbo

 

[77IM]

To clarify, I was suggesting that the penalty apply to the PC's rolls, but that the DM keep track of which races give a penalty, as opposed to asking the players to keep track of whether their race receives a penalty. So the players are still the ones doing the math, but the DM is telling them to do it.

In my experience, players tend to "forget" about their penalties. They (usually) don't do it intentionally; it's just that there's no incentive to remember a penalty so subconsciously they slack off about it. I would expect that relying on players to know their racial oppressors would result in a lot of "oh, wait, I should have been taking -2 penalties against this guy for the past encounter..." I think this is one of the reasons 4e has minimized penalties; those same players would be eager to apply bonuses.

-- 77IM

 

[Kzach]

In my experience, players tend to "forget" about their penalties.

IME, I forget penalties more often than players do. It's one of the things I like about 4e, that it put more of the math into the player's hands.

 

[77IM]

You and I should swap players. ;}

-- 77IM