The Gaming Den

Getting 10% off should be ad-hoc if you're going full social combat, or just reduced to a single check (negotiation skill roll). A 10% discount would be the merchant choosing (rather than being forced) to yield early to avoid further threat.

Maybe have a tacked-on system where, if you want to haggle over prices, you get one attack, and a discount dependent on how hard you hit in that one attack. If you want to press further, the merchant hits back. Possibly even do an initiative roll for such negotiations, so the merchant might have a chance to hit you before you even try, and just run for one combat round.

This goes along with that whole difficulty thing. I guess another Social/Combat option I neglected to mention was surrender. If the merchant is attacked and sees that the player REALLY once that pitiful 10% off he can just say "ok" (surrender) seeing as though if he's not defeated immediately he probably doesn't have the resolve or any real benefits from trying to defend against it and combat can end early and everyone can go home early. That's a busy merchant and he has harder deals to handle than that.

Changing the subject, I don't really see a whole lot of need for specialized maneuvers on nonspecialist characters. Instead, you have an analogy or two for every normal combat maneuver, available to everyone. Disarm might have taking an item, which analogizes to physically pulling the sword out of someone's hand and running off with it, except that it's easier if their psychological grip is weaker instead of physical grip, so, while it's easier to get a few coins or gems (from a rich adventurer) that way, it's harder to get their sword or even their whole wallet, as one analogy. It might also have another analogy where you stop someone from attacking effectively (maybe call it "shaming" or something).

You also have your default move, analogous to autoattacking, and analogies for the rest of your combat maneuvers, and then you just need to bring social abilities into line with physical abilities (that is, taking HP in the same quantities), and then figure out the consequences of being dropped (bearing in mind that beating someone in social combat is as hard as killing them, so you should gain as much). I personally like the idea of a suggestion or geas more than charm, though, for consequences.

On this we agree. I think that most maneuvers should be general. Just like anything can run, jump, attack, and hide many social maneuvers should be things anyone can do. There's no need for spell related equivalences if we're just allowing spells to be used in social combat (and i readily assume we are) we just have to adjust the effects depending on how social combat goes.

Whut?

This is d20 this time round right? The only thing that is outrageous at low level is taking on much higher level opponents. And thats not a circumstantial modifier now is it?

Ragged street rats convincing level appropriate opponents to surrender and assist them is pretty important.

I'm very much not on board a system where level 1 street rats social fighting level one giant rats aren't allowed to attempt anything better than a 10% discount on giant rat merchandise.

I expect them to be doing things riding giant rats into their next battle.

And really when they are level 13 demigods I sorta expect them to still be doing basically the same thing only with dragons.

So this whole "certain social options don't open up until high level" really doesn't sound especially nice to me.

I'm not saying the options aren't available. They are but you'd have to have modifier's and abilities that make the combat lean your way in order to do it. Making it more unlikely that you'd be able to pull off outrageous maneuvers at starting levels.

A street rat forcing some random person to surrender their belongings isn't an outrageous maneuver. To place it in the frame of what I've posted so far it would be a Market arena Social combat. The street rat would go through by using intimidation with goal "take your stuff for free". While the target would be on the defensive with goal "keep my stuff". The target's apparent risk if unarmed and untrained against an armed or physically intimidating mugger would be high. While the mugger's would be relatively low. Though it will likely increase the more time it takes to complete (assuming there are authorities that might stop him) which would tactically make him use his big threats to start off like, "I'll kill you!" and "Hurry Up!" Both just threatening actions really if you wanna keep it totally abstract. While the victim (most likely a commoner) can at this point try and run or surrender. Now if he runs it starts a fight and that goes over to combat. If he surrenders, mugging is successful. If he decides to hold on for some reason than its likely he has something of importance on him. This might increase his apparent incentive to hold on to it. If this is the case he might resort to using rhetoric in hopes of delaying the encounter until the mugger's apparent risk is as high or higher than his forcing the mugger into making a beat him in this social conflict faster (to kill off his Social HP), retreat, or start a fight. If what the victim has on him is worthless than the victim has no incentive to keep it and he will most likely lose to the fear built up by intimidation or surrender before then fearing that the mugger might resort to violence before his social hp runs out.

There is a point where you have to make SOME decisions.

The decision on whether to run, sword, or social is a tactical one that you pretty much HAVE TO (and should) leave in the GMs hands. Much as the choice on whether the character involved will sword or run when faced with an opponent set on swording in the current rules.

That's sort of OK. What you need to do is make the social, flee, and attack all be viable and interesting options in at least some likely in game circumstances.

When it comes down to choices its about making those choices interesting and viable. Choices aren't in and of themselves bad. Its choices between "Infinity", "Screw You", and "Wait, what the hell would that even MEAN?" that are bad.

I can agree with that but I'd like for PCs to be able to wrangle people so that they can't always use a "retreat" maneuver in social combat. But I suppose that could just be another maneuver set. Maybe something like "trapping", "force combat", or "lure"

A lower level opponent is only the same as a higher level opponent with a "lesser combat goal" to defeat if, and only if, the higher level opponent has any reason at all to submit to that lesser combat goal.

If Achilles MUST cop the big one when you kick his ankle then that does in fact make him a lower level challenge. But if the only thing that makes that a victory is Achilles for some inexplicable reason agreeing to stop the fight at that point...

Well I think the problem is pretty clear.

But even lower level opponents have situations that would be favorable for them. Such as having a lot of allies around, having sufficient cover, being hard to find, etc etc etc. A lower level social combat being waged over low level goals means nothing to a higher level person. A beggar combating for a few copper doesn't mean much to the wealthy merchant and will likely be met with a retreat maneuver "Shrug off". If higher level combatants meet up and one decides to pursue a low level goal (10% off) different abilities and maneuvers might come into play "such as raise the stakes" or "Bait and Switch" that could easily escalate this or the other side may surrender purely for the convenience or add in a little social poison maneuver like "guilt trip" or "you're breaking my balls man". They would be easily as likely to throw some rhetoric at them to soften them up or test their defenses for the REAL negotiations.

But how do you define the amount of inconvenience?

Who does that? On what scale? By what terms?

Do we have a guide? A table? What?

But still more importantly. When you achieve the minor inconvenience (or not), why doesn't the social combat continue with retaliations from the loser or pressing for more from the winner?

A set of Tables I'd wager. Again if this is going to be as deep and detailed as combat there will be quite a few modifiers. In combat you have many things that affect attack bonuses, targeting, circumstantial bonuses, other skill uses, are you standing/sitting? Do you grab him with one hand or two? Did you charge before Bull Rushing? and I'd imagine the same things would put into Social Combat though I still only have a vague idea of what other people want out of this.

Also: I don't know why you might want to step out. I find your hard hitting questions useful for ironing out the edges of this thing. Hell in just a few hours yesterday and some pondering today I have a bit of a framework for a social combat system I hadn't even planned on making. Since I'm still trying to amass a collection of various d20 products and people's house rules and home brew material I'd love to see some of your work so I can extract ideas for my own project.

But it is also and importantly true that many times only one person will care about the outcome of a conversation. The king doesn't give a crap who inherits Eisenport, he just needs someone to end up being the Count. Obviously, you want to end up getting the county, and during your conversation you're going to try to convince him that you'd be a good candidate. But he's not opposing you in any meaningful fashion. And he might rule against you anyway.

In this case the King will just use a "surrender" maneuver and let you have it. The only way you'd be opposed in this situation is someone else is trying to take the position. At this point you'd have to use your social skills against each other until someone loses which would have the King picking the winner.

Frankly, the combat model doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, because there's no obvious "opponent" in many such conversations. You have some goal of getting information or getting someone to enact some plan or whatever, but there's no opponent. No opponent means no combat. There are already models in d20 for generating variable levels of success in the absence of meaningful opposition, such as Jumping and dare I say it... Diplomacy.

This is untrue. The only way you can do anything social is if there is another person. They might not be an opponent in the adversarial sense so I guess you'd call them a target. A target is just that until it opposes you. If the target doesn't care about your efforts than they can surrender or retreat (shrugging you off). This would mean part of the strategy of social combat will be preventing that from happening by approaching a target with the right maneuvers.

And while I think the d20 system goes seriously off the rails as far as numeric discipline goes, and I would genuinely like to see a system more engaging than "shake the bard at it" - the fact remains that the game doesn't really get anything by modeling trying to convince the janitor that the Regelians are attacking as a sword fight. He's not fighting. He doesn't have any goal that involves anything analogous to knocking you out.

-Username17

Well rallying the janitor would be about as useless as killing the janitor. Killing him is covered by the combat rules no matter how trivial it is. If the social system is going to be the same than having rules for it will happen. Does it matter if you do it? No. Just like it wouldn't matter if you started murdering beggars in the night. But since it is covered in combat then convincing a beggar to leave you alone should be covered by social combat.

Now here's the question: How do you fiat up 5 possible outcomes for everything, and how is this any simpler than using MTP on the entire process instead of as a means of adjudicating the outcome? Currently you only need to fiat up two outcomes, and since it is fiat it likely is not decided in advance.

This is easy as well. If we have different ways of attacking in Social Combat and there are different social status effects and damage tracks you can have those social damage tracks produce different results. You can intimidate someone to get what you want but their disposition towards you worsens making it more likely they'll try and screw you over later. Seduction requires you spend more time and possibly resources with the target but improves their disposition towards you which is likely to give better results. You can of course go with the tried and true Diplomance which won't change their opinion of you but is the most straightforward form of social combat. You can Bluff and falsify your way through it which will emulate the effects of the other combat forms but the effects will be more temporary and the disposition will always be worse off if your bluff is discovered. There are probably a number of other ways to do it but those are the ones that come off the top of my head.