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(S)word Schools; Words Hurt
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Topic Started: Nov 25 2015, 03:24 PM (456 Views)
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Divergent Reality
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Nov 25 2015, 03:24 PM
Post #1
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Quality Not Guaranteed!
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I have been batting around a concept for (S)word School tracks for characters that focus on social combat. Some basic archetypes like a professor, lawyer, high class social butterfly, etc. My questions before I start dedicating more brain to this endeavour are:
Is this necessary? Is it wanted?
To do: Expand on stunting in social combat. WIP
Classes on types of social attacks paired with favored action. Working on one example
Reworking of eroding resolve, changing attitudes, forcing opinions and breaking alignment. WIP
Intelligence and lore to refute - raises make no difference in social combat, the 'free raise' is useless.
Incorporate Faith WIP
Compelling Large Crowds Not Started
How will it change Exalts that use Resolve as a resource stat?
Soft Resolve - The stuff spent and restored on a daily basis. Hard Resolve (needs new name) - Represents the max limit of Soft Resolve, must be eroded to make someone go against friends, beliefs, faith and alignment. Takes longer to restore. Normal person one year per point, mortal hero one month per point, Exalt hero one week per point.
Hard Resolve = Willpower + Composure
Regain Resolve Alternate: 1/2 (Willpower + Composure) rounded down after eight hours rest.
Extended Mental Effort Extended Mental Effort: A person's mental reserves can only last so long. After spending and regaining Resolve for a continuous number of days equal to a person's Hard Resolve they are mentally fatigued and will be unable to regain their Soft Resolve as quickly. For each day beyond a character will replenish one less Soft Resolve per day until they restore zero Soft Resolve per day. At this point a character needs to rest a number of days equal to double their Hard Resolve minus Composure to regain their mental faculties.
After a week of hard fought court proceedings, Ace was spent. He was bleary eyed and his temper was short. He instructed his secretary to cancel any appointments for the next two weeks.
Tracy's character Ace has a Willpower of three and Composure of two granting him five Soft Resolve. The court battle went on for seven days, two longer than his five Hard Resolve allows him to fully endure. His natural recovery of two Soft Resolve after sufficient rest has been depleted by his extended efforts meaning he no longer restores any Soft Resolve. To restore this he needs to take double his Hard Resolve minus Composure days to recover. 5x2, ten days minus two Composure means he needs eight days to build back his reserves.
Social Combat Social combat, when a target loses two resolve they concede a point or idea to their opponent. At this point the loser would see things from their opponents view, agree to help, donate a few Thrones to their cause, or let them into the back of the club for a quick autograph.
If the opponent has only two Resolve they are generally so low on the totem pole they are only able to do small things. Anyone higher up will have more Resolve.
Loss of more Resolve mechanics and consequences.
Further erosion of Soft Resolve can be used to gain some further assistance or to butter up someone even further. Keep in mind that further buttering up of low level mooks is usually a fruitless endeavour.
Versus Social Combat: Longer debates between mighty mental manipulators take longer and have further consequences. Opponents with more than two Soft Resolve can continue arguing. Extra points of lost Soft Resolve further chip away at a strong willed person’s standpoint/political idea/religious tenants until they have no further options in wordplay (they run out of soft resolve) or they simply concede defeat before that point and move on. Losses of Soft Resolve in this manner do not cause someone to betray their king and country, they allow the winner to persuade more difficult points: The Greater Good is the best way due to..., the tax excesses would best be spent improving city infrastructure and here is why, Vectron is the best of gods HAIL VECTRON!
Will Breaking Will Breaking: It is possible to erode that which makes a person who they are. This can be done to brainwash minions, punish foes or to torture playthings. In order to erode someone's will to this point they must first have gone through long enough of an Extended Mental Effort to reduce their daily Soft Resolve replenishment to zero. From then on it takes a number of days equal to their Hard Resolve times the sum of their Willpower and Composure.
After Ace leaves for his vacation Abobo's goons gets a hold of him, they take the time to break Ace's will to lie about evidence obtained for the trial.
Ace has three Willpower and Two Composure giving him five Hard Resolve times five for the sum of Willpower and Composure. It will take at a minimum 25 days to break Ace's will. For non-heroes this is simply a number of days equal to their Hard Resolve. At the end of each day a character is allowed a Hard will save to avoid losing a point of Hard Resolve. The method used to achieve these ends are up to the GM or players. Be it hypno conditioning, magic, exposure to the unfiltered warp, stranding in the screaming expanses of Pandemonium, or through simple torture.
Add half their Faith, rounded down, as a bonus modifier to the roll?
Losing Hard Resolve is no laughing matter, for every three Hard Resolve lost the character rolls on the Shock Table found in DtD40K7thEd p.270. If the character’s Hard Resolve is reduced to zero they roll on the Derangement Chart DtD40K7thEd p.193.
After a character has had their Hard Resolve reduced to zero their will is broken. At this point they are subservient and able to be easily controlled. At this point a person can be convinced to betray king and country.
Characters can regain their Hard Resolve after escaping or being rescued. This healing takes time. For a non-hero they regain Hard Resolve at a rate of one point per year. Heroes regain Hard Resolve at a rate of one point per month and Exalts recover one per week. Any insanity and corruption earned remains.
Stunting Stunting in DtD social combat is quite different from shooty stabby combat. Stunts represent useful secrets, knowledge, or information on your opponent one can use in the war of words. These could be pict recordings, witnesses, miscellaneous evidence, bound daemons, etc. Keep in mind that the more outrageous the claim, the greater the burden of proof will be. Sometimes secrets are so damning and horrific that retaliation might be the refutation of choice.
One Die: a deep secret, something economically, politically, or socially embarrassing: light drug use, gambling, a mistress, organized crime involvement. Two Die: a deep, dark secret, something economically, politically, or socially damaging: heavy drug trade, secret identities, multi-sphere espionage. Three Die: a deep, dark, heretical secret, something economically, politically, or socially devastating: smuggling Modrons into Spheres, replicant, attempting to overthrow a god, roll for initiative.
Sometimes things go not as planned. The dice gods are against you or your buddy cursed your dice whatever the case you failed your stunt in social combat. For the rest of the scene you suffer a -1K1 penalty to all Social Attacks and Refutations as people no longer believe you because you are full of shit.
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weredrago2
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Nov 25 2015, 03:31 PM
Post #2
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He Who Posts Too Much
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Actually, I was thinking of something like that as well. A School for every Social Combat action. Necessary? Probably not. Wanted? Hell yeah.
Meanwhile, I've wanted to make Schools for other Vehicle Actions (Evasive Maneuvers and Chase, specifically). I'd love to pitch in on ideas for Word Schools.
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Guest
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Nov 25 2015, 05:24 PM
Post #3
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Unregistered
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Is this necessary? >in this game, in this SETTING is anything? Is it wanted? >might be cool
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Methodia
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Nov 25 2015, 05:44 PM
Post #4
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Mediocre Overlord
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I endorse this idea. (Even if the social combat system has some problems.)
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weredrago2
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Nov 25 2015, 05:50 PM
Post #5
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He Who Posts Too Much
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I've never deeply analyzed the Social Combat system. What's wrong with it?
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Methodia
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Nov 25 2015, 06:20 PM
Post #6
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Mediocre Overlord
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Doc and I basically had a mini argument about this one day that brought things to light. I'll ask him to explain more but I'll do my best.
One of the biggest problems of how the social combat works is in the resolution, and spending (and recovering) resolve. The book itself makes it clear that after losing two resolve you can't lose any more normally, but not as clear that you can stunt a social attack to approach someone again and make them lose more resolve. But losing resolve is part of the bigger problem. Imagine someone spends social combat lowering all your resolve to make your character do something like buy a timeshare. Finally you run out of resolve, and you give in. And then they turn around and ask you to do something like plant a virus in a computer mainframe. Despite it having nothing to do with what lowered your resolve, you are out of resolve and must accept. Basically the main issue is that resolve is a global pool, and even with other topics you are forced to change your mind.
Edit: Recovering resolve is abysmally slow, once per day IF you make a roll.
Edited by Methodia, Nov 25 2015, 06:22 PM.
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Doc
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Nov 25 2015, 06:55 PM
Post #7
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Just a Guy
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Jon Chung put it much more eloquently than I. His points are, admittedly, about Exalted 2nd Edition, but DtD basically copied its social mechanics wholesale, so I feel they're basically accurate here.
That said, I'll ramble for a moment.
- At zero resolve, convincing somebody to take an action - an act I'd assume the convincing party is good at, since they reduced the convinced party to zero resolve - suddenly becomes a lesser type of mind control. Without a certain feat (
the name of which escapes me Armor of Contempt), you can tell that person to do basically anything, such as murder their family. Even with Armor of Contempt - which prevents them from betraying their Alignment at zero resolve - the list of things you can force them to do against their will is... staggering.
- Outside of being a Duelist, Social Combat and Normal Combat operate on two different timescales. Most of the time, this isn't necessarily a problem. The problem arises that most people would rather avoid the whole mind control thing, so they'd rather not engage in conversations that seek to erode their resolve or what have you - this is particularly notable for Perpetual, since it uses its Resolve as its Resource Stat. Now, one of the easiest ways to avoid Social Combat is to just Declare Normal Combat and walk the fuck away - you shift to Normal Combat Time, and get something like ten rounds compared to the Social Combat's ONE round. And while that's certainly what I would actually do if I was being forced to talk about something I'd rather not, I'm pretty sure it's a bad thing that most of any XP spent on social stuff is trivialized by somebody declaring their intent to stab you and/or run off.
Again, unless you're a Duelist. In which case you're engaging in Insult Sword Fighting, which is sure to be fun for all.
With that aside, a Social Sword School might be neat.
Edited by Doc, Nov 25 2015, 07:01 PM.
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Eisenritter
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Nov 25 2015, 07:42 PM
Post #8
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Old Iron Knight
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Count me in as someone who has considered it in the past and deemed it unnecessary. Problem with "schools of negotiation" is that you can count the number of possible approaches on one hand... passive, aggressive, neutral, ingratiating, apathy. That's it. At which point, you may as well leave it to the character(s) to determine how the approach is going to go down.
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Methodia
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Nov 25 2015, 08:08 PM
Post #9
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Mediocre Overlord
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Divergent Reality, I like this idea enough to have started making a rough draft of a (s)word/debater school already, but I'm curious to see what you have, especially as a base system with the universal advantages/disadvantages. You should post what you have after finishing it up. Someone will find a use for it. I've been wanting to make more social classes, this will inspire me to do so probably.
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Divergent Reality
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Nov 25 2015, 10:25 PM
Post #10
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Quality Not Guaranteed!
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I am currently limited to my mobile which, thankfully, has my notes on it. As soon as I have some time to myself (with an infant and family around lol) I will post what I have.
I have started on universal advantages and disadvantages plus a professorial type of (S)word School.
As doc noted, the zero resolve thing needs some work. Maybe treat it as temporary morale and permanent damage, where that permanent damage takes weeks to erode and years to regain, but the temporary may be lost in an afternoon, but is regained in a couple days.
I will think about these things while socializing with family.
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