[Exalted] Quick Social Combat Fixes

[SagaciousAscendingHero]

Just some ideas I'm throwing around, wanted to see what people would have to say about it. Mostly looking for constructive criticism to aid in my fix, not reasons why it's no good. In other words, suggest solutions!! I included a poll so if you have nothing to add but to say you don't like it, now you don't even have to post.


SOCIAL COMBAT FIXES


- Appearance doesn't affect MDV's


+ Appearance + Linguistics is the base for social damage


- Integrity doesn't add to Dodge MDV


+ Integrity + Socialize is the base for social soak


+ Intimacies act as social health levels


+ Intimacies are rated by the associated Virtue


+ Choose a number of Intimacies for each Virtue equal to it's rating*


* the more virtuous you are, the more things mean something to you


- Social Attacks do not use speed and rate is irrelevant


+ Social Attacks use the same accuracy die pools & Parry MDV


SOCIAL COMBAT ACTIONS


Social Attack: roll accuracy, successes over MDV apply to damage


- raw damage: compare damage + extra successes to soak, Essence pings as normal


- post-soak damage: each success temporarily diminishes/builds an Intimacy


Study: +2 to next social attack, -1 MDV


Aid Attack: +1 to ally's accuracy


SOCIAL COMBAT MODIFIERS


Motivation: +/-1 to 3 to MDV, must spend WP to resist direct violations of Motivation


ST Discretion: may apply +/-1 to accuracy

 

[IanPrice]

I like some of this, but not all of it. Things I like:


- Appearance + Linguistics for effect scaling instead of MDV modifying.


- Intimacies as social health levels.


- All different virtues tying to different intimacies.


Problems with what I like:


- How does this Appearance change affect Perfect Symmetry and Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations?


- What happens when an Intimacy has been damaged to incapacitated?


- Are there social "wound penalties," representing emotional flux caused by someone's arguments, or embarrassment in the eyes of others? Or do partially damaged intimacies mean nothing?


- At what rate are damaged intimacies healed? Do you socially attack yourself, in essence, to rebuild your intimacies?


- What happens to damage in excess of existing intimacy levels? Does it automatically build a new intimacy in the same action?


Things I just plain don't like:


- Socialize for soak? Not an attribute? Really?


- So, what DOES add to dodge MDV? Just Essence and Willpower? Nobody gets an excellency to add to it then? Is there no dodge MDV anymore, just mental soak?


- I like speed and rate just fine, do not think they are broken and thus do not like the idea of "fixing" things by removing them.


- You limit ST Discretionary modifiers, and to such a small number? What? Why?


- What does willpower do now? Can it still be spent to ignore influence? Is there still a limit on how much must be spent to ignore natural mental influence? If it doesn't do that, how does that change Unnatural influence charms? You haven't said.


- If willpower spending is indeed out: In a single scene (up to about an hour of in-character time), these rules allow my character who is somewhat persuasive (let's say attribute + ability + specialty = 9 dice, with 8 base damage) to take someone who is not focused in social abilities at all (let's say 4 dice = MDV 2, with 4 soak, 2 virtues at 2, 2 at 3), and completely rewrite his intimacies. So, from gung-ho lusty fighter, to pacifist wishy-washy celibate, one hour, and I just met him.


Suggestions:


- Implement social weaponry (replacing the generic presence and performance actions) and armor. Weapons could be social tactics such as the Logical Argument (Presence): Speed 6, Accuracy +2, Damage +0, Defense +1, Rate 2; or the Song (Performance): Speed 5, Accuracy -2, Damage +7, Defense +0, Rate 3. Armor could be social attitudes or situations, such as Complete Indifference: Soak +10, Hardness 5, Mental Fatigue 2(spend 2 willpower at the end of each scene in which Complete Indifference is affected towards anyone), Mobility -3 (Penalizes social attacks and attempts to establish social surprise).


- Create Social Environment modifiers. Conversing with a fellow party-goer should be different from accosting someone on the street with a pamphlet, and very different from seducing the cute little thing you just met bathing in the woods. Factors should include relationship of speaker and listener, presence of other people and any relationships to groups represented by those people, and other things such as states of dress and relevant social taboos.

 

[wordman]

(I'm on the verge of a coherent thought about social combat, but am not quite there. So bear with me. This may ramble a bit.)


One thing that has always bugged me about social combat in Exalted is: what's the goal? That is, what are you really trying to figure out about the story by running social combat? Often, it seems like the goal is one of two things: a) subject someone to some sort of effect (compulsion, illusion, etc.) or b) making what is essentially a narrative change (e.g. changing someone's mind). Exalted, however, isn't particularly set up to track such things. That is, it can do all the skill checks and so on, but at the end of it, what is (mechanically) being altered is... sparse.


The idea of Intimacies as "health levels" is an improvement on that score, but it doesn't totally work. Suppose I want to convince the king to ally with another king, and he wants to convince me to instead assassinate that king. We argue. Cue social combat. How, exactly, is "intimacy damage" relevant to this particular conflict? Yes, it could be that we both have intimacies to this other king, but what if we don't? "The king has eroded your intimacy to your horse, therefore you must agree to assassinate the other king"?


What is actually being contested here is narrative control, yet Exalted really has no facility for tracking what that actually means, not even in Fair Folk shaping combat, which is supposedly all about narrative control.


It seems to me that, if you really want to have social combat, any system for it needs to start with the idea of mechanically representing the outcome of social conflict and working backwards from there. (Maybe there are several flavors of mechanical outcome, or whatever. The point is to have some type of meaningful stakes setting.)

 

[IanPrice]

To have a discussion with someone, it's necessary to have give and take - both sides must buy in, committing something to the conversation. Perhaps, then, natural-influence social combat ought to borrow the shaping combat mechanics, but with social stunts instead of shaping stunts - and what is taken from or given to the loser is based on the stakes of the conversation (instead of the staff/cup/ring/sword effects of shaping combat).


So each participant would declare a target for the conversation, or their intent to not convince others. Anybody who tries to convince others becomes more open to being convinced somehow.

 

[wordman]

I was thinking about something with a bit more teeth. Consider the following...


(Note, try not to consider this that seriously as a system. I have no idea if this would work or not. The point is really to illustrate the kind of "outcome mattering in the mechanics" that I'm talking about.)


Imagine a system with the following changes:

1. All characters now have new traits called, say, drives. These represent goals, beliefs and feelings that strongly influence the character. These probably replace Intimacies (but perhaps not). Drives come in three flavors:
   • Characters have one core drive, which replaces Motivation. It can be used like any other drive, but is more resistant to being altered (both by outside characters, as well as the PC herself). It is possible, though rare, to have more than one core drive, but this usually requires serious magic (e.g. a charm that would normally add Motivation).
     
   • Characters may have zero or more elected drives. These are "standard" drives, chosen by the player.
   • Opponents may place inflicted drives on the PC. PCs may use these drives to their own advantage as normal, but they are harder to get rid of than elected drives.

[*]All drives are connected to a Virtue. When anything below discusses mechanics around a specific drive in play, the Virtue to which that drive is connected is called the "driving virtue".


[*]Characters have some fixed upper limit of drives (combined) at once. This limit could be set by formula or whatever. Let's say, arbitrarily, it is fixed at five.


[*]If a character gains a new drive (of any kind), and this puts them over the limit, they must eliminate an elected drive of their choosing. If no elected drives remain, the Storyteller chooses an inflicted drive to eliminate.


[*]Any action a character takes, the player must choose and declare which drive is being served by the action. If this cannot be done (and sometimes the action just won't be relevant to any drives), then the character cannot use charms or stunts on that action. Existing charm effects remain, but any that require a per action activation cost cannot be activated. Does this seem like a severe restriction to you? It is supposed to be. This is where the "teeth" of the social combat come from.


[*]When acting to serve a drive, the driving virtue can be channeled without spending Willpower, though this still "uses up" the channel for the story.


[*]Players may invent and add new elected drives very easily, as often as the start of any tick in which they act. Given the previous two items, you can assume that players will keep at least one "drive slot" in constant flux, adapting to the most immediate goal. However...


[*]It is easier to socially attack existing elected drives (maybe a DV penalty is applied, or something). Also, a cost is paid if an elected drive is eroded (maybe some points of Willpower). Consequently, when a player adds a drive to the PC, they are essentially adding something that opponents can exploit.


[*]Also, it is difficult to abandon elected drives (maybe requiring Willpower or a failed roll against the driving virtue or some such). Generally it is easier to "push drives off the list" with new drives than to just jettison one.


[*]The point of social combat is to alter the drives of your opponent. If your social interaction isn't trying to do that, you shouldn't be engaged in social combat.


[*]At the start of social combat, the attacker announces they either seek to add an inflicted drive on the target, or remove a drive from the target. Compulsions, Illusions and Emotion attacks tend to inflict drives.


[*]The defender has two basic options. He can "counterattack" declaring that he is trying to inflict or erode a drive on the attacker. Or he can "fully defend", concentrating only on preventing the attacker from succeeding.


[*]It is possible for an attacker to give up the attack in mid combat. If the defender is counterattacking, they may force the social combat to continue. At this point, the original attacker may switch to "fully defending".


[*]Any character in social combat who is fully defending adds the driving virtue to his social DV. If the attacker is inflicting a drive, this is the virtue from the intended inflicted drive (which is chosen by the attacker).


[*]Drives have a certain number of "health levels". I dunno... three times the driving virtue? Some fixed number like five?


[*]To erode a drive, "damage" is done against it in social combat. When the levels reach zero, the drive is eroded.


[*]To inflict a drive, social attack successes add health levels to it. These are "phantom" levels until the maximum number is reached, at which point the drive is inflicted.


[*]Willpower may be spent to ignore damage. Exact amount would depend on how health levels work. A point of Willpower would ignore more damage from natural influence than it would for unnatural (and this is the only difference between the two).


[*]The core drive gains automatic "Hardness" and armor against social attacks.


[*]And so on....


Again, the main point here is the idea to add a mechanical consequence to social attacks that is more wide reaching than Intimacies or "I made you spend Willpower". This kind of approach also makes it a lot more clear when to use social combat and, importantly, why. (I also kind of like that drives play into the "Exalted are ruled by their emotions" in certain ways. It could probably also be tweaked to make Virtues more interesting.)

 

[Brickwall]

I actually like this system because it's a lot more flexible, and really helps to define characters in social combat.


Please, however, reorganize the list to put #5 after #7 to avoid giving people heart attacks.


I think the exact mechanics need to be hammered out before any final judgment can be rendered, but I so far like it better than current social combat.


I think this should be reorganized to be more easily readable than this list of numbers. I will perhaps think of helping with this. We'll see what I can get to.


Oh, and just switch the name from "drives" back to Intimacies. It will make it a lot easier to translate from the Charms in the books, and there's no reason these shouldn't replace Intimacies/Motivation.

 

[cyl]

I like both suggestions, though I really have to make a comment about the object of the social combat, which defines the rules that could be applied to it.


There are 2 basic objects for a social combat:


- fighting for something: A wants something out of B, B can defend if he does not want to concede or counterattack if he wants something out of A.


Example: I want you to like me. I want you to believe in God etc etc


- fighting over something: that one is much more complicated IMO than attack vs defense / counterattack and has more to do with normal combat because it is a battle of willpower and resolve to see who wins over his opponent... and the consequences of that victory.


Example: negociating prices (which should be different than A saying - I want a better price and B saying - I want a better profit), negociating the surrender of an army, arguing about philosophy and the righteous action.


Drives / intimacies are really a good idea, but, they only take care of the first object, the second often remain usually forgotten / dealt with and enforced through the use of charms.


IMO we would need to have a separate system for both objects.


One is pertinent for drives / intimacies, but the other one would need to be closer to regular combat with health levels etc etc and reflect the conflict (that is not necessarily present with Drives).