Social Combat is ruining my campaign

[Gylthinel]

I wonder if anybody else has this issue?


My group is having a hard time with social combat, because willpower is a perfect defense. I refer only to natural mental influence, of course, and this is where the issue really lies. We want saavy people to be able to influence others, but with the way the RAW works (or even Tickless Social Combat, if you've tried that), it just doesn't flow well, because the only way to "hit" is if your target LETS you hit. And since most people don't like getting manipulated, the end result is a lot of motes and activity being spent, but nothing actually happening.


Thoughts? How to fix this issue? Is there something better than the RAW/Tickless Social Combat out there?

 

[Brickwall]

This is why most people don't really USE Social Combat. You can make use of social Abilities and MDV and such without necessarily going by all those rules. Just break whatever parts of the social combat rules are holding you down.

 

[Dracogryff]

Part of the issue I've notices most people running into with Social Combat is that they take the automatic stance of 'someone's trying to manipulate me, I must spend a willpower!' without once considering whether the person is actaully going against their intimacies or motivation. If I have an NPC going into social combat with a PC, they won't spend willpower to resist stuff unless it happens to be against their beliefs or motivation or intimacies. If it isn't, and the PC beats their MDV...they'll quite possibly reconsider.


However, I also admit that I haven't run into a situation where the stuff hasn't been completely roleplayed out, with only an occasional roll if it's necessary to see if things are getting anywhere, so I'm not too sure how the actual 'Social Combat' system actually works...but I've never had an issue with social stuff being an issue in games I've played in, or run.


Being an Anathema and going out of your way to save the life of someone who believes in the Immaculate Order after they've been betrayed by their own comerades is a great way to confuse them... *chuckles* And to me, an example of a time when it might not be appropriate to spend a willpower to resist an attempt to persuade them otherwise. Generally, I've come to the conclusion that one should save the die rolls and stuff for when using Charms, or when it seems important...otherwise, let people RP it out. *shrugs* May not work for everyone, though.

 

[Nemal]

I wonder if anybody else has this issue?

Nope! Our group uses Social Combat as written and it's worked perfectly so far.

My group is having a hard time with social combat, because willpower is a perfect defense.

You probably missed the part of the manual that states that you can get past the "maximum 2 willpower per scene" limitation with a stunt. Stunting is so easy as to make that limit irrelevant...

Thoughts? How to fix this issue? Is there something better than the RAW/Tickless Social Combat out there?

Yeah.


Tip 1: Use SC -sparingly-.


Do not roll Join Debate unless everyone agrees they don't want to roleplay out the conversation.


SC is not a set of rules to arbitrate conversations, it's an abstraction to use -instead- of conversations.


"I crush his pitiful logic with charisma and powerful arguments!" is a perfectly valid social stunt.


Tip 2: Just like in physical combat, if one combatant is outmatched, don't roll for it.


An extra attacking a Charm-enhanced Solar is not interesting combat. You'd just say "Ok, you beat him up". Treat SC the same way- if the extra has an MDV of 3 and the Solar has a dice pool of 10 + delta appearance... dude, he can convince the extra of anything. Don't bother rolling.


Tip 3: Remind your players that being convinced is not the end of the world.


State the intent of each social attack ahead of time, making it clear. Giving someone an intimacy towards bunnies is -not- the sort of thing you should be spending willpower against.


And there you go. The system's not bad, really, it's there so you don't have to roleplay out your character's entire presidential campaign. Save it for challenging opponents and super-debates, and use SC to rule out what happens in those conversations you don't want to roleplay out.


SC allows you to go "My character takes a tour around the country gathering support and recruits for the army", and gives you an idea of what happens.

 

[Gylthinel]

Part of the issue I've notices most people running into with Social Combat is that they take the automatic stance of 'someone's trying to manipulate me, I must spend a willpower!' without once considering whether the person is actaully going against their intimacies or motivation. If I have an NPC going into social combat with a PC, they won't spend willpower to resist stuff unless it happens to be against their beliefs or motivation or intimacies. If it isn't, and the PC beats their MDV...they'll quite possibly reconsider.

Tip 3: Remind your players that being convinced is not the end of the world.
State the intent of each social attack ahead of time, making it clear. Giving someone an intimacy towards bunnies is -not- the sort of thing you should be spending willpower against.

These two quotes pretty well sum up the major issue, I think. Because there's significant disagreement on what WP should be spent on. Defending motivation and intimacies is easy, but a character has a personality and drives that are outside the scope of those things.


Example: big bruiser leads army to assault city. Breaches outer defenses at great loss of life, breaks into city, fights into the head hancho's inner sanctum and slays his bodyguard. Bruiser then offers the hancho a chance to surrender, which the hancho declines. A few rounds later, hancho is on the ground, defeated. He tries to convince Bruiser to not kill him. Now, Bruiser does not have an intimacy towards killing this guy. But, he did fight an entire war to get to the guy, and then offered him a chance to surrender, which he declined until he was thoroughly defeated. So, the question: a good time to spend WP? Oh, another thing to consider: he's compassion 1, Valor 5 and Conviction 5.

 

[cyl]

Well Balance the factors:


1/ does the guy represent an actual threat now that his city have been taken, and big guy knows he can crush his skull when he wants ?


2/ if yes, then he can try to persuade the big guy to let him live (though if somehow one of the big guy's intimacies came into play it would become harder like "Tyrants -" or "defeated opponents pathetically begging for their lives -")...


3/ if you don't want to mess with the head of your pcs, then have him roll compassion, if he fails, he can kill his ennemy without a single ounce of remorse, if he succeeds he can't.

 

[skafte]

I know that using real world logic to argue Exalted is almost never a good idea, but I think this is one of those cases where it may work.


First of, players should to a big degree be allowed to spend all the willpower they want, else they will start to feel cheated and that they are not the ones players their character.


I believe that a character that spends WP to resist everything also should have a very high conviction, as to not just go with the flow.


Would you irl (in real life) spend wp to resist everything? Like when your gf wants to stay home and have a romantic evening and you wanted to go out with your friends. Like when you stay for a last drink (and first gets home in the morning), because somebody told you "stay for another beer". There are plenty of situations where you, and your character would never spend wp to resist. If a person really wants to use wp all the time, just tell her that every time she talks with another person it's a SC situation (which it actually is, but normal people would never play it like that), when the group is arguing about to loot the manse or slauther the city someone in the group have to give, and they don't spend wp.

 

[strawberryleaves]

These two quotes pretty well sum up the major issue, I think. Because there's significant disagreement on what WP should be spent on. Defending motivation and intimacies is easy, but a character has a personality and drives that are outside the scope of those things.


Example: big bruiser leads army to assault city. Breaches outer defenses at great loss of life, breaks into city, fights into the head hancho's inner sanctum and slays his bodyguard. Bruiser then offers the hancho a chance to surrender, which the hancho declines. A few rounds later, hancho is on the ground, defeated. He tries to convince Bruiser to not kill him. Now, Bruiser does not have an intimacy towards killing this guy. But, he did fight an entire war to get to the guy, and then offered him a chance to surrender, which he declined until he was thoroughly defeated. So, the question: a good time to spend WP? Oh, another thing to consider: he's compassion 1, Valor 5 and Conviction 5.

With this example, I don't think SC should be invoked at all. The bruiser offering the boss a chance to surrender wasn't a social attack, was it? Thus, the boss begging for mercy shouldn't need to be one.


One of the groups I was with toyed around with the idea of a social health track independent of willpower; the experiment didn't yield an improvement over the current system, though.

 

[Lord Kamina]

Part of the issue I've notices most people running into with Social Combat is that they take the automatic stance of 'someone's trying to manipulate me, I must spend a willpower!' without once considering whether the person is actaully going against their intimacies or motivation. If I have an NPC going into social combat with a PC, they won't spend willpower to resist stuff unless it happens to be against their beliefs or motivation or intimacies. If it isn't, and the PC beats their MDV...they'll quite possibly reconsider.

Tip 3: Remind your players that being convinced is not the end of the world.
State the intent of each social attack ahead of time, making it clear. Giving someone an intimacy towards bunnies is -not- the sort of thing you should be spending willpower against.

These two quotes pretty well sum up the major issue, I think. Because there's significant disagreement on what WP should be spent on. Defending motivation and intimacies is easy, but a character has a personality and drives that are outside the scope of those things.


Example: big bruiser leads army to assault city. Breaches outer defenses at great loss of life, breaks into city, fights into the head hancho's inner sanctum and slays his bodyguard. Bruiser then offers the hancho a chance to surrender, which the hancho declines. A few rounds later, hancho is on the ground, defeated. He tries to convince Bruiser to not kill him. Now, Bruiser does not have an intimacy towards killing this guy. But, he did fight an entire war to get to the guy, and then offered him a chance to surrender, which he declined until he was thoroughly defeated. So, the question: a good time to spend WP? Oh, another thing to consider: he's compassion 1, Valor 5 and Conviction 5.

In that example, the guy trying to convince his enemy not to kill him has a penalty of 2 in virtue of his Social attack going against the other guy's high valor.

 

[wordman]

I'd love to see a comparison of a list of design goals for what the social combat system as written is supposed to do vs. what the math says it actually does. I'd wager they aren't at all close. (Actually, I'd also wager that the "list of design goals" never actually existed, but that's another story).


Anyway, to the original poster: you might consider trying an alternate system I've been toying with. The social part of it is fairly modular, and could probably be boosted into canonical rules without much effort. The idea is basically to only use it for magical social/mental attacks. This works as you might guess: roll a pool vs. a mental DV. The difference is what gets done with the extra successes.


Successes essentially buy increased effectiveness in three areas, their distribution chosen by the attacker. In this way, mental attacks can be reasonably flexible, but with the intent that the result depends a lot on the relative power levels of the attacker and defender. Social characters can do bad things to extras, but will have a tough time against equally social characters and a very hard time against those more socially adept than themselves.


The system in general is here, with the social bit of it here. I haven't actually playtested this, so the numbers probably needs some tweaking.

 

[Persell]

Just out of curiosity, and don't take this as a bash either, but is there a part of the system you haven't at least partially rewritten?

 

[wordman]

Just out of curiosity' date=' and don't take this as a bash either, but is there a part of the system you [i']haven't[/i] at least partially rewritten?

Only the parts that are well-written.

 

[strawberryleaves]

Just out of curiosity' date=' and don't take this as a bash either, but is there a part of the system you [i']haven't[/i] at least partially rewritten?

Only the parts that are well-written.

Hmm. Wordman, ever seriously try to draft your own RPG?

 

[Gylthinel]

With this example, I don't think SC should be invoked at all. The bruiser offering the boss a chance to surrender wasn't a social attack, was it? Thus, the boss begging for mercy shouldn't need to be one.
One of the groups I was with toyed around with the idea of a social health track independent of willpower; the experiment didn't yield an improvement over the current system, though.

The bruiser did fire off a social attack to try to get the guy to surrender. That's the convention we have going on. He missed by a long-shot (he rolled "only" 8 dice, this gets into my other beef with social combat: average is worthless, above-average sucks, to do anything at all to anybody that's not an extra you have to devote a huge stack of points... but that's another thread).


That's interesting that the damage idea didn't work out. Why didn't it? I've been trying to push our system in that direction, but I've hit resistance.

 

[wordman]

Wordman, ever seriously try to draft your own RPG?

I've seriously considered it and half-heartedly tried, but never seriously tried. Chances are it would just end up looking like Unknown Armies, anyway.

 

[Nemal]

The bruiser did fire off a social attack to try to get the guy to surrender. That's the convention we have going on. He missed by a long-shot (he rolled "only" 8 dice, this gets into my other beef with social combat: average is worthless, above-average sucks, to do anything at all to anybody that's not an extra you have to devote a huge stack of points... but that's another thread).

Let's say I have Cha 3, Presence 3, App 3. (A socially "competent" character)


I'm talking to an average dude, who I'm guessing has App 2, Integrity 1 and Will 4.


An average roll hits. I'm not spending anything...?

That's interesting that the damage idea didn't work out. Why didn't it? I've been trying to push our system in that direction, but I've hit resistance.

I'm not sure what it would accomplish?


Is your problem with Social Combat that people don't want to spend their combo-fuel on social stuff? Because if it's not, changing the social "health track" isn't going to do much to help you...

 

[cyl]

Wordman: considering the average number of suxx reached in social combat, it's going to be really hard to get effects like tenacity or subtlety at interesting levels don't you think ?


Great ideas as usual.

 

[wordman]

Wordman: considering the average number of suxx reached in social combat, it's going to be really hard to get effects like tenacity or subtlety at interesting levels don't you think ?

Could be. I haven't run many examples. The main idea was that, for characters of roughly even power level, any mental effects wouldn't be ideal, but couldn't just be completely avoided. That is, it's meant so that there is a large range between "nothing happens" and "total success", which are really the only two choices in Exalted's Social Combat system. (Also, the way that duration works in Uncouth means that the results need to be a bit weaker, on average.)

 

[cyl]

Yep but considering the social DV modifications and the successes needed to struggle against an influence, it will be hard for someone to win over his opponent.


Regarding the previous example of the defeated man trying to persuade the big guy... Big Guy has +1DV (he tries to kill defeated man), and the defeated man needs a ton of suxx to be left alive for 20 minutes and escape the taken castle, and prevent the use of willpower to resist... around 9 to be exact.


Hard to be a trickster in those conditions.

 

[Lord Kamina]

Yep but considering the social DV modifications and the successes needed to struggle against an influence, it will be hard for someone to win over his opponent.
Regarding the previous example of the defeated man trying to persuade the big guy... Big Guy has +1DV (he tries to kill defeated man), and the defeated man needs a ton of suxx to be left alive for 20 minutes and escape the taken castle, and prevent the use of willpower to resist... around 9 to be exact.


Hard to be a trickster in those conditions.

+2DV, since it didn't really go against an intimacy, but rather against Virtues (Valor 5, Compassion 1)

 

[cyl]

Valor does not mean you kill everyone you defeat, neither does Compassion 1.


The corebooks explicitely states that you need to roll Compassion and fail to slay a defeated foe, because, in the eventuality of his surrender you naturally spare him, even if you are a selfish prick.

 

[Lord Kamina]

Valor does not mean you kill everyone you defeat, neither does Compassion 1.
The corebooks explicitely states that you need to roll Compassion and fail to slay a defeated foe, because, in the eventuality of his surrender you naturally spare him, even if you are a selfish prick.

I'm not saying he automatically slays him, but it's how I'd handle it. Given the circumstances, he has a 60% chance of killing the guy... And I would rule a guy with a high valor and low compassion would be less likely to listen to a foe asking for mercy.

 

[cyl]

I still don't know what Valor has to do in the equation...


But if I had to put it in, I'd consider the opposite, a guy with a high valor would let his opponent live so he can become a greater challenge next time, while someone with a low valor will ensure his rival will not come back from fear of facing him again.

 

[Lord Kamina]

I still don't know what Valor has to do in the equation...
But if I had to put it in, I'd consider the opposite, a guy with a high valor would let his opponent live so he can become a greater challenge next time, while someone with a low valor will ensure his rival will not come back from fear of facing him again.

I like handling Virtues as a whole, personalities aren't white or black.


I know this is not really a canon approach, though.

 

[cyl]

Well considering each situation calling for a virtue roll calls for a specific virtue and not the whole... I'm not sure I share your interpretation.


In this context, the situation calls only for Compassion. Conviction or Valor have nothing to do with sparing a life.