Social Attacks

S

ShootingStar

New Member
Can social attacks be made during combat?


    If so do you follow normal social combat rules whilst inside combat rules?


                                                                                   ~confused
 
The fight would need to stop and people would roll Join Debate.  If someone keeps on fighting you while you're trying to orate, I would let combat keep on rolling.


If the Storyteller decides that a given player's action (intimidation, plea for mercy, supernatural manifestation, whatever) causes everyone to be willing to Join Debate, or at least to hold off on fighting, then sure, you can do that.


You as the ST could also rule that some persuasion or other social attempts can be made in "combat time".


So basically, "no, unless the ST makes an exception".
 
The sort of situation I imagined when I read this was some sort of climactic showdown between two people of opposing ideologies. As they fight, one of them... the smart, cunning one most likely... begins to berate the other for his choices, pontificating even as they exchange blows, trying to distract their opponent or drain their resolve.


In that case, the one would be making a social attack on the other, attempting to force the other to either stop fighting or lose willpower.


Example: Darth Vader vs. Luke before Palpatine. Luke and Vader are engaged in combat, but all the while, both Vader and the Emperor are making social attacks against Luke, to turn him to the Dark Side.


So what rules do you use there?
 
In that sort of case, for Vader I'd think it would be a flurry involving his combat actions and his social attack...but that the social attack would need to be maintaigned between actions for a number of tics or some such...certainly wouldn't go off right away. For Palapatine, similar, save that he isn't flurrying. This is entirely conjecture, mind, nothing official, but say something along the lines of habing the social attack need to be maintaigned for a certain number of either tics or actions, and then rolled...obviously getting some stunt dice if it's even worth existing...since 'I say something to break his confidence' is about as anticlimactic as possible. It would never work if you actually limited it to the time needed for a usual social long tic to happen, save for during combat, most fights are done well before then...but has enough nifty factor to be something worthwhile. Perhaps make it require 2 flurries including the miscelaneous action of the social attack or some such... more if one wishes to pontificate longer, but then that could be multiple attacks easilly enough.
 
The wiki's social combat page has a decent house rule for this:


Social combat during physical combat is much more difficult, but myth and cinema are full of ongoing ethical debates between lethal opponents during epic battles. If two characters are locked in debate while physical combat is occuring, play out social combat actions as a series of Miscellaneous Actions (Speed 5, DV -0) which may be flurried with attacks or other actions. A single social action must be played out as a number of sequential Miscellaneous Actions equal to the Speed of the social action (so a Speed 5 social action requires five Speed 5/DV -0 Miscellaneous Actions, with the actual effect being rolled during the last action).
 
Sounds pretty appropriate to me. :) And much less cumbersome than leaving the battle to join debate and then retrun to battle or some such.
 
In Champions I'd call it a Presence Attack.  I can see the hero doing a awesome combo against a target while trying to turn the minions to his side.  A dramatic speech to appeal to their morality.
 
It strikes me that some social attacks should be possible as a single action in combat time. Most notably attempts to intimidate an opponent.


With a stunt it could be possible to invoke any commonly understood concept (such as pleading for mercy, and hopefully forcing a compassion roll), or some specific concept that is known to the your opponent (“I didn’t kill your familyâ€
 
There may be another way to mix social and standard combat, taking a page from how shaping combat works. Essentially, in 1E, shaping and standard combat happen at the same time, with initiative for both tracked independently. The trick is that you only get one shaping action per scene. This action can happen at any time in the scene, as long as you go in (shaping) initiative order.


It wouldn't surprise me if 2E shaping combat actually happens on a social time scale, but time will tell.


Taking the basic idea, what you could do is allow everyone to make a single social action per scene, if they want to. Maybe they have to take a DV penalty for the scene to use it. You could probably keep Join Debate out of it, though it might be needed to resolve "who argues first" in some instances.
 
It's worth noting that Crafty Observation Method allows you to make an Investigation attack as a Spd 6*, DV -1 combat action. I think it'd be easy enough to allow an equivalent charm to be made for Presence and Performance too.


*No speed is listed, so I used the default Simple Charm speed.
 
I'd agree a charm would probaly be neccessary in most cases.


another possiblety is to give a painful penalty, to players who try doing so, so only those with BIG ability+attribute pools can do so.
 
another possiblety is to give a painful penalty' date=' to players who try doing so, so only those with BIG ability+attribute pools can do so.[/quote']
The problem is, with Solars, a huge die pool is child's play. A charm one step up from the excellency isnt that hard to aquire, and it seems like a small cost for being able to fast-talk your opponent into joining your cause, rather than having to spend all that time to beat them up.
Click to expand...
 
My players are demons for using Social charms in combat. I'm shockingly lenient in this regard, and I do allow them to use their charms for simple two-word phrases sometimes.


I avoid situations in which someone can effectively employ "Dominate 2" on someone and force them to sit down and stay while they load a shotgun.


I think I'll just put the foot down someday and disallow it, or at the very least command that they take a variable-tick DV-3 action for as many ticks as it takes to concisely say what they want to enhance with charms.
 
Social combat normally takes long ticks. I believe we're investing seconds per post. Perhaps, in a way, this represents the subject matter of the thread we now tread upon? Rapid, frenzied posts in an otherwise relaxed social setting?
 
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