EccentricNed
New Member
After reading the social combat rules and discussing them with a player, I feel that Social attacks are too easy to defend against for 2 main reasons. The incorporation of Willpower into the DDV, and the 2 Willpower limit before a player will half a perfect defence against mundane social attacks.
For the Dodge thing, the ability of a character to Dodge an attack in Social character could easily double their ability to parry without much trouble. You can't really draw a parralell with combat dodge, because Dodge 5 is the pinnacle of human achievment, as is Dex 5. But Willpower 5 is nothing special, it's about average. Most starting players will have Willpower 6-8. Average Humans can ignore conflicting beliefs better than they can do just about anything else. So, what to do?
Using Willpower makes sense in this situation more than any other stat so you can't really choose another. The only real solution, is to somehow make Parrying a social attack better. When one Dodges a Social attack, they just ignore all the points the enemy rose. But, when they parry, they are analysing what he said and either finding flaw or turning it against him. Â Lets say that you are arguing against a deeply Catholic racist who wants you to kill an African American. Now, if this was Exalted, a dodge would be to say just to say "No," more or less. But a parry would be to bring up that catholic faith states "Thou Shalt Not Kill," so it's against his religion to do so. The difference: dodging protects you from being influenced, but parrying both protects you and attacks the opponent's belief. In otherwords, you get a counterattack when you parry.
By allowing automatic counterattacks when you parry, you can convince your enemy that his belief is flawed through arguement, making him turn to your side. You might be better at ignoring him, but by parrying you are trying to find fault in what he says, and turn it back on him so he sees it too and maybe is turned to your side which means it is much easier to ignore a conflicting belief then it is to fight it. So, the huge benefit granted by using willpower instead of an attribue with a 5 point limit is offset by the ability to immediately counterattack, perhaps with a bonus of how much their PDV is larger than the successes of the attacker.
As for the 2 willpower thing, it annoys me because both a 100 Success Attack and an Attack 1 success higher than an enemy's DV can both be resisted with the same effort. Added to the lack of mechanical effect other than you can't spend willpower once it reaches 0, then some way to limit spending Willpower to ignore amazing, airtight and logical arguements represented by huge rolls is needed to make trying a social attack worthwile.
Lets say you have a Character who refuses to believe in Spirits. Up walks a a Spirit and says "Hi, I'm a spirit and clearly I exist. Watch me pick up this rock and throw it at you, proving your belief is wrong." The Character can spend a Willpower and ignore the spirit's arguement. The Spirit tries again, perhaps throwing a few rocks and a stick. The charatcer spends another Willpower. So, now unless the Spirit tries a new approach or uses mind affecting charms, he will always fail to convince the guy that he is real.
The way it is now, it's literally having a perfect, automatic defence against mundane attacks after being wounded twice. So, one must try to find a way to limit access to this perfect defense for social attacks to be worthwhile. Perhaps if the net successes are larger than (Virtue+Integrity+Specialty+Essence)/2 they can't spend Willpower to ignore a successfull attack. Where the Virtue used is decided by the storyteller to fit the situation(Temperence if being bribed, for example). By taking Virtue and Integrity into account, a character's nature and stubbornesses define if he can push himself enough to ignore a how convincing an arguement can be before he can't will himself to disbelieve it. Which makes sense mechanically and makes the risk of a character being persuaded possible. This limit could also be applied when the 2 willpower points have been spent to automatically ignore a successfull attack.
Of course, social attacks that directly oppose a character's Motivation are always resisted, and Intimaces could allow Willpower to be spent regardless of the Threshold.
For the Dodge thing, the ability of a character to Dodge an attack in Social character could easily double their ability to parry without much trouble. You can't really draw a parralell with combat dodge, because Dodge 5 is the pinnacle of human achievment, as is Dex 5. But Willpower 5 is nothing special, it's about average. Most starting players will have Willpower 6-8. Average Humans can ignore conflicting beliefs better than they can do just about anything else. So, what to do?
Using Willpower makes sense in this situation more than any other stat so you can't really choose another. The only real solution, is to somehow make Parrying a social attack better. When one Dodges a Social attack, they just ignore all the points the enemy rose. But, when they parry, they are analysing what he said and either finding flaw or turning it against him. Â Lets say that you are arguing against a deeply Catholic racist who wants you to kill an African American. Now, if this was Exalted, a dodge would be to say just to say "No," more or less. But a parry would be to bring up that catholic faith states "Thou Shalt Not Kill," so it's against his religion to do so. The difference: dodging protects you from being influenced, but parrying both protects you and attacks the opponent's belief. In otherwords, you get a counterattack when you parry.
By allowing automatic counterattacks when you parry, you can convince your enemy that his belief is flawed through arguement, making him turn to your side. You might be better at ignoring him, but by parrying you are trying to find fault in what he says, and turn it back on him so he sees it too and maybe is turned to your side which means it is much easier to ignore a conflicting belief then it is to fight it. So, the huge benefit granted by using willpower instead of an attribue with a 5 point limit is offset by the ability to immediately counterattack, perhaps with a bonus of how much their PDV is larger than the successes of the attacker.
As for the 2 willpower thing, it annoys me because both a 100 Success Attack and an Attack 1 success higher than an enemy's DV can both be resisted with the same effort. Added to the lack of mechanical effect other than you can't spend willpower once it reaches 0, then some way to limit spending Willpower to ignore amazing, airtight and logical arguements represented by huge rolls is needed to make trying a social attack worthwile.
Lets say you have a Character who refuses to believe in Spirits. Up walks a a Spirit and says "Hi, I'm a spirit and clearly I exist. Watch me pick up this rock and throw it at you, proving your belief is wrong." The Character can spend a Willpower and ignore the spirit's arguement. The Spirit tries again, perhaps throwing a few rocks and a stick. The charatcer spends another Willpower. So, now unless the Spirit tries a new approach or uses mind affecting charms, he will always fail to convince the guy that he is real.
The way it is now, it's literally having a perfect, automatic defence against mundane attacks after being wounded twice. So, one must try to find a way to limit access to this perfect defense for social attacks to be worthwhile. Perhaps if the net successes are larger than (Virtue+Integrity+Specialty+Essence)/2 they can't spend Willpower to ignore a successfull attack. Where the Virtue used is decided by the storyteller to fit the situation(Temperence if being bribed, for example). By taking Virtue and Integrity into account, a character's nature and stubbornesses define if he can push himself enough to ignore a how convincing an arguement can be before he can't will himself to disbelieve it. Which makes sense mechanically and makes the risk of a character being persuaded possible. This limit could also be applied when the 2 willpower points have been spent to automatically ignore a successfull attack.
Of course, social attacks that directly oppose a character's Motivation are always resisted, and Intimaces could allow Willpower to be spent regardless of the Threshold.
