House Rule: Social Combat

[dataweaver]

An idea that was inspired by White Wolf's Exalted and Green Ronin's Mecha and Manga: I'm looking into ways to treat aggressive social interactions as a form of combat.

 

The core idea is that social interactions are a kind of mental combat that anyone can engage in, not just people with mental powers.

 

First of all, the Characteristics: it's mostly possible to divvy up the existing characteristics into physical and mental characteristics, and to draw parallels between them. The mental analog to STR is PRE; the mental analog to DEX is INT; the mental analog to CON is EGO. These aren't perfect analogs; in particular, PRE is like DEX when it comes to interaction skills (as things stand right now); and before 6e, EGO would have been like DEX when it comes to mental combat values. Speaking of mental combat values, OCV matches up with OMCV; DCV matches up with DMCV. Also: in this system, your mental combat values represent social savvy as well as psychic finesse.

 

SPD transcends the physical/mental divide, unless you really want to mess with the headache of tracking physical and mental actions on different phases; I don't. I tend to think the same of REC and END: they straddle the divide, being equally applicable to both the physical world and the mental world.

 

BODY and STUN are both physical, and neither has a mental analog in the current rules. However, I could see giving both of them mental analogs, mostly useful in Horror Hero: the mental analog for BODY would be MIND, and would represent the integrity of your mind (i.e., your sanity). The mental analog for STUN would be COOL - where loss of MIND leads to insanity, loss of COOL leads to emotional outbursts. This means that there's an analog to Normal Damage and Killing Damage as well: normal mental damage is stuff that puts you on edge; mental killing damage is stuff that directly assaults your sanity.

 

PD and ED normally don't have parallels; but in a game with MIND and COOL, you might pair them with Presence Defense and Mental Defense respectively. In effect, physical and energy attacks are roughly analogous to psychological and psychic attacks. Just like a normal human's natural combat capabilities are physical and not energy, his natural mental combat capabilities are psychological and not psychic. (Annoyingly, "physical" is used in two different senses in Hero System: "physical" as opposed to "mental", and "physical" as opposed to "energy". The latter is a subset of the former.) Another difference between psychic and psychological attacks: a psychic attack involves some sort of direct mind-to-mind contact; a psychological attack only requires a means of communicating with your target. OTOH, it can often be rendered ineffective by a language barrier; psychic attacks typically don't have that problem.

 

Skills: many (most? all?) Interaction Skills would operate like Combat Skill Levels rather than like ordinary skills. This would remove the link between Interaction Skills and PRE, and would instead result in them enhancing your MCVs in appropriate circumstances. The net result would further enhance the body/mind parallel.

 

Powers: If you're using the new mental characteristics, Mental Blast no longer affects BODY or STUN; instead, it affects MIND and/or COOL. By default, it's a psychic attack, and so must overcome the target's Mental Defense; but there are possibilities in defining it as a psychological attack instead. There are variations on Healing and Regeneration that deal with MIND and COOL rather than BODY and STUN.

 

Interactions: social interactions are resolved as a form of mental combat, with Interaction Skill Levels affecting your OMCV and DMCV respectively. "Psychological maneuvers" would probably mirror the existing list of Interaction Skills. If your gambit is successful, roll dice based on your PRE, much as if you were attempting a Presence Attack. (In fact, the Presence Attack rules are subsumed into this system.) Most or all of the bonuses and penalties listed for a Presence Attack become modifiers to the Mental Combat Values instead. If you're using the new mental characteristics, the result usually counts as damage to MIND or COOL (after you've applied the appropriate Defense); if not, adapt the Presence Attack table to reflect the "social maneuver" that you were attempting.

 

Related ideas: A side effect of the body/mind duality is that the Spirit rules from long ago (a 4e supplement, IIRC) could be more thoroughly integrated into 6e: a spirit is a character type that has no physical attributes, not even BODY or STUN; to hurt it directly, you must somehow attack its MIND and/or COOL. An automaton could be revised to be a creature that has no mental attributes, and thus is immune to mental combat. Automatons and spirits could each come in two forms: basic and advanced. Basic automata would lack CON; basic spirits would lack EGO. In effect, spirits would be a revision of 6e's computers. This could be used to represent ghosts and zombies in a Horror Hero game, or hardware (i.e., machine automatons) and software (i.e., machine spirits) in a Cyber Hero game.

 

Also related is my proposal elsewhere for treating PRE as a Mental Power.

 

This is an "alpha version", probably full of bugs. I'm looking for constructive criticism here: don't just point out problems; propose solutions. As well, I'm looking for ways to expand on this idea: how far can the analogy be usefully taken? Is there a social analog to Grappling? Is there a social analog to area attacks? etc.

 

Final note: if done right, I'd like these rules to be the sort of thing that one might be willing to include in 6e's equivalent of The Ultimate Mentalist, to represent "mentalists" who have no psychic powers.

[the fox]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

Well, to begin with, after your extended metaphor/introduction for 'the mental equivalent of BODY and STUN', MIND and COOL, we are given very little actual mechanics, just vague descriptions of a combat system, one that will covert Skill Rolls into PSL's "if it has to".

[torchwolf]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

An idea that was inspired by White Wolf's Exalted and Green Ronin's Mecha and Manga: I'm looking into ways to treat aggressive social interactions as a form of combat.

 

The core idea is that social interactions are a kind of mental combat that anyone can engage in, not just people with mental powers.

 

 

I see what you mean, but a case could also be made for treating social interaction as something else than mental, since PRE is involved in most social interactions. I can see from your other thread that you consider PRE to be a purely mental characteristic, though I would disagree slightly.

There have been some use of Martial Arts Maneuvers to represent verbal combat, though I'm not certain any of those were serious.

 

I think PRE is extremely similar to STR; you roll dice for a PRE Attack based on the Char Value, and you can even use Haymaker with it. If anything, I would equate PRE to social STR. Now that we're talking 6E, I would suggest adding OSCV and DSCV (Social Combat Value) with a base of 3 each.

PRE as STR: For instance, mechanics for a “staredown” are resolved in Ninja Hero as PRE vs PRE Rolls, but I think it might also work like PRE dice vs PRE dice, count BODY. Loser gets temporary -1 CV (from loss of face/confidence). This would be “flexing social muscles”.

 

 

As for MIND and COOL, I've been working on something along those lines in another thread: Variant types of damage. I think I will fiddle some more with that...

 

 

STUN has always been used to represent other things than pure pain as well; sleep, shock, etc. It really doesn't matter if the source is physical, mental, spiritual, or whatsit – it measures “points-until-unconsciousness”; not necessarily damage.

BODY represents “points-until-death” which is rather more absolute, but consider this: can a mind die while in its body, without its body dying as well?

 

 

Under Transform, EGO can be used to represent the Mind, and PRE is suggested to represent the Spirit (6E1 p305-306), though in damage tracking, STUN suffices.

 

 

SAN is suggested as a possible Char for mental (or rather, psychological) stability, but there are as yet no guidelines as how to inflict SAN loss – possibly you can just use a “Sanity Blast” type attack to do this using AVAD and ACV, or something similar.

I've thought of this variant: the new PRE guidelines are more extensive, and gives suggestions for time to recover. The effects model, in a way, temporary psychological damage. You could count the “BODY” on the PRE dice used in a large PRE Attack and inflict it as SAN to represent more lasting effects – voila: a minimum of new mechanics (SAN Char, counting “BODY”) and very little extra bookkeeping. You can add Presence Defense there and have it act normally (including vs the “BODY”). I would suggest you would Recover SAN equal to EGO per month, possibly faster under psychotherapy.

 

As for the Spirit Rules, they were in Horror Hero (4th Ed) along with Shock and Stress Rules. The Spirit Rules were reprinted in Hero Almanac #1, I think.

Judging from Showcase #8, there will be some 6E Spirit Rules in the APG (I can't wait for that!).

 

 

Those are my thoughts on the subject – as for the Social Combat System, I'm sure there are analogs to the physical combat system, though I suggest you do a search for the various social systems already posted here by Sean Waters among others. They're full of interesting ideas.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

I think you have some good ideas there.

 

Instead of using OMCV and DMCV, I might suggest using two separate Characteristics for Offensive and Defensive Social Combat Value (OSCV and DSCV). These would simulate what was done in TUM to create Intelligence Combat Value (ICV) and Presence Combat Value (PCV), as well as the Comeliness Combat Value (CCV) that I suggested in my COM-based PDF. I'd cost them the same as OMCV and DMCV, but just have them apply in cases of social combat instead of psychic combat. (Of course, in a game where there is no psychic combat, it's just a matter of name-changing.)

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

I think you have some good ideas there.

 

Instead of using OMCV and DMCV, I might suggest using two separate Characteristics for Offensive and Defensive Social Combat Value (OSCV and DSCV). These would simulate what was done in TUM to create Intelligence Combat Value (ICV) and Presence Combat Value (PCV), as well as the Comeliness Combat Value (CCV) that I suggested in my COM-based PDF. I'd cost them the same as OMCV and DMCV, but just have them apply in cases of social combat instead of psychic combat. (Of course, in a game where there is no psychic combat, it's just a matter of name-changing.)

 

I think extrapolation to differing forms of "combat"* for different games and settings would make a lot of sense. Presently, we have two levels of task resolution. Many are resolved with a simple one roll, or opposed roll, system. This covers things like social interaction ("roll your Conversation skill"), a court battle (PS law, etc.), medical research (roll your skill, Dr. Bashir) and even presence attacks (either it works or it doesn't and we move on), pretty much anything other than physical or mental combat.

 

In some games, mental combat doesn't exist, of course, and we simply ignore OMCV and DMCV, as well as some other abilities or aspects of abilities (eg. there is no need for mental defense, and Ego does not resist psychic powers as we don't have them in the game).

 

In a game of, say, renaissance court intrigue (or high school social infighting), perhaps we would use a more detailed and granular social combat system, based on OSCV, DSCV, presence-based skills being converted to "martial maneuvers" for social combat, and a much more granular, incremental resolution system akin to physical combat's phase by phase actions gradually wearing down an opponent. This additional granularity would acknowledge, and signal, that social conflict is a centerpiece of this campaign.

 

At the same time, some games might look at physical combat and decide that it's not a significant component of the campaign, and is not something we want to focus a lot of time and attention on, so in that renaissance court intrigue game, physical combat might be resolved by a skill vs skill contest (Fisticuffs or Brawling roll, with a complementary STR roll; Dueling roll, with a complementary DEX or Swordsmanship roll; what have you) instead of the more detailed physical combat system using games that focus more on such conflicts.

 

Similarly, a St. Elsewhere game might have a more detailed resolution mechanism for dealing with medical issues, a CSI game might have one for hiding and unearthing clues to the crime, and a Perry Mason game might use a detailed mechanism not dissimilar to social combat in the courtroom.

 

* The term "combat" should, I think, be understood to mean a detailed granular conflict resolution mechanism. Presently, mental combat and physical combat have rules at this level of detail.

[Utech]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

I'm all for exploring along these lines. I started a social combat beta test at Hero Central but decided to shelve it when 6ED was about to arrive. Seemed silly to beta test 5ER rules when 6ED was right around the corner.

 

That corner's been rounded. Go for it!

[The Main Man]

Re: House Rule: Social Combat

 

I will add that now that since 6e does not have Figured CHAR, it is relatively simple to install new CHAR.