Alright, I’m going to try and draft something at this point.
Credibility: Each character has a credibility score representing their ability to remain influential in a social encounter. When their credibility drops to zero, they can no longer influence the outcome of the social encounter as everyone else has stopped listening to them. If an effect brings their credibility back above zero, then they can once again exert influence on the outcome of the social encounter. Characters gain a credibility score based on their social class, their level, and their Charisma score. Classes which fill the role of logician generally have 9 + Cha credibility at first level and gain 6 credibility at each level thereafter. Classes which fill the Mud-slinger or Authoritarian role generally have 7 + Cha credibility at first level and gain 5 credibility at each level thereafter. Classes which fill the critic role generally have 6 + Cha credibility at first level and gain 4 credibility at each level thereafter. Specific social classes may have exceptions to this.
Social Defenses: Each character has 3 social defenses, Passive Insight, Passive Perception, and Will Defense. The first represents a character’s ability to predict where an opponent’s arguments are going. The second represents their ability to notice how their opponent is using body language. The last represents their ability to avoid being flustered.
Social Classes: In addition to their combat class each character chooses a social class at first level that represents how they handle themselves in a social encounter. Each class grants the character a basic social attack and base social damage, and a selection of social powers.
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Hmm… To this point I just seem to be duplicating what already exists for combat, essentially turning every character into a gestalt character with one class being a combat class and the other being a social class. I said earlier that I didn’t want to do that. I think I need to back up and think about this again.
Unless, of course, people would prefer something like what is proposed above.
Social HP ("Credibility" right now) are going to be a little strange. Even though regular HP are already pretty abstract, it does make sense that if I step outside of a tavern into a back-alley my HP will remain the same. Getting beat up in the tavern hurts my ability to fend off the thugs in the alley. When I lose an argument in the tavern, however, my credibility or other social standing should not be affected with the thugs I meet out back and try to talk my way out of a mugging.
That’s not to say that Social HP shouldn’t be used, but it’s more of a situation-specific HP that gets reset in new situations.
Also, rather than social classes that are chosen and leveled up, you can define roles, HP, and so forth off of a calculation using the BDII skills, abilities, and/or level. Perhaps your role is determined by your highest social skill. Then again, I’ve seen good write-ups of what different high/low combinations of INT-WIS-CHA look like. Regardless, since we’re not making a new game here, it would be better not to over-burden the process of preparing for a revamped social encounter.
Perhaps social HP can be equal to 5 plus WIS modifier times number of character levels. Thus, a 3rd level character with a 14 WIS has 21 Social HP. A 5th level character with 8 WIS has 20 Social HP.
I’m thinking that the general analogy should be
CHA ~ STR
INT ~ DEX
WIS ~ CON
CHA is used for “attacks”, such as Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate, much as STR is used for physical attacks. WIS is used for surviving attacks, including both Will Defense and Perception (Sense Motive), much as CON is used for surviving attacks with Fortitude Defense and HP bonus. I’m not quite sure about the analogy for INT, except that it helps with Knowledge, which might be used for avoiding attacks (knowing that a bluff is false or that the item in the intimidator’s hand is not a wand of magic missile), as DEX helps avoid attacks with both AC bonus and Reflex defense. Perhaps INT can also help with certain attacks (similar to ranged attacks), such as generating a reductio ad absurdum.
Social HP is awkward. What Denmark said, plus if a new event immediately begins with some people carried over from previous encounter what’ll happen to SHP?
If a PC was ridiculed in front of the noble he was trying to forge an alliance by the court jester (who promptly left) and then a rival noble (who may or may not have seen the previous event) came to dissuade the PC from allying with the other one, what happens to SHP? Restored? Partly restored? How much? Or is it all a single encounter? Then what did the jester do? If he dealt a whole lot of damage and left, but the other noble didn’t see it, why would the reduced SHP affect the conversation between PC and other noble? Because having just been ridiculed by the jester threw him off, and he’s having trouble concentrating now. Hmm, that might work as an explanation. But still it’s rather clumsy. And there might be situations such explanation doesn’t apply.
And then there’s the issue of memory. NPCs would remember, and that’d affect our future dealings. Let’s say there’s a ball. The PC randomly hits on a woman (a common occurance), fails miserably and ends up insulting her. A few minutes later, it turns out that she knows something important (*evil grin*). PC certainly can’t initiate a new encounter with her as if nothing has happened. What exactly will the effect be? Or a an encounter that ends with PCs in a good standing with a certain NPC. Next time they meet, NPC will be more amiable to them. How would that be reflected?
If these points can be addressed, there’s one other concept that’d be cool to implement: “Bloodied”. A renaming is necessary of course, but it’s one of the better concepts being brought on by 4E.
Even though regular HP are already pretty abstract, it does make sense that if I step outside of a tavern into a back-alley my HP will remain the same. Getting beat up in the tavern hurts my ability to fend off the thugs in the alley.
In 4e, how much hp you have for that alley fight will depend on two things: whether you’ve had a chance to rest for at least 5 min (a short rest) since the tavern brawl and whether you had sufficient healing surges left to fully restore your hp. If both are true, then you’ll be at full hp. If the first is true, but the second isn’t, then you’ll have only partially restored your hp. If the first isn’t true, then you’ll not have healed any hp (as the alley fight is then considered an extension of the tavern brawl encounter).
Credibility could have some similar mechanisms for restoration. However, said mechanisms might not be so strictly tied to time. Short rests and healing surges would correspond to your ability to make apologies for hurt feelings, explain yourself to friends and otherwise engage in the normal social niceties that can repair damaged relationships. Obviously such measures take time, but how much time can vary considerably more than the amount of time it takes to catch your breath.
Likewise the extended rest (which gains you back both hp and healing surges) needs a social equivalent. Something like a night out drinking with friends or other prolonged social contact where you have a chance to rebuild your image without really trying to get anything out of the encounter. Or maybe just sufficient time has elapse that everyone is willing to let bygones be bygones.
Since we’re just throwing out objections right now, what about the problem of multiple agents with competing goals? Getting ahead with one pretty much necessitates being hurt by the other? For a simple (even if a little silly) example, let’s say we’ve got five knights vying to be chosen as the champion of the two remaining nobles allowed to choose champions for the tournament. While arguing that one is more capable than any of the others would be an attack on the social HP of all other knights, what would arguing that since one grew up in the barony of one of the nobles one would make the most appropriate choice? Or even better, arguing that one has a vendetta against one of the nobles and thus will fight hard for the other?
So, I’ve been trying to think about how to structure the social encounter, and I’ve come up with some ideas that I want to bounce off of everyone.
For any given social encounter there are three parties to the attack: self, opponent, and audience.
Self: the PCs and allied NPCs
Opponent: NPCs who oppose the PCs proposed course of action
Audience: the person(s) whose course of action is to be influenced
Now, in any given encounter, a single character may fullfill multiple roles. For instance, when haggling with a merchant, the merchant is both opponent and audience. Or in a large diplomatic exchange, there may be a NPC noble who is both self and opponent to the PCs (i.e. he agrees with and argues for some of their points but objects to and argues against others).
Given those three parties, attacks can do one of three things: boost self credibility, detract from opponent credibility, or influence audience.
Boosting self credibility allows you and your allies to continue to influence the outcome of the encounter.
Detracting from opponent credibility serves to prevent them from influencing the outcome of the encounter.
Influencing audience serves to have the social encounter decided in your favor.
A social encounter would thus end under one of two conditions: one side is completely eliminated (i.e. has 0 credibility) or the audience is sufficiently influenced to adopt one course of action.
Such a system would neatly handle Denmark’s objection as we could imagine each noble as a separate audience and thus the last two attacks that he mentioned would serve to influence one in your favor, but not the other (and may even influence the other against you).
You’re getting there. I like this much better. It will serve as a good foundation.
Since all actions will have to be described, it’ll be fairly obvious what any action of one participant is to others. Will attacking be opposed skill checks, or attacks against a set defense? Probably second would be better (B:15 D:18 I:12 I:21), though opposed checks would certainly be more exciting.
How about “damage”? I’d say skill modifier determines the dice (rank_die): 0-5_d4, 6-10_d6, 11-15_d8, 16-20_d10… would fit 4e mold well. A conman of bluff +6 deals 1d6, while the barbarian with intimidate +18 deals 1d10. I would’ve preferred a set “x damage per rank” for I intensely dislike numerous dice on the table, but as this is aimed at 4e other way’d be better.
Then “healing”. Amount healed is bound to skill modifier like damage, but what of DC to “heal”? I’m not certain with this one.
And a new issue here: some particular statement intended to reinforce one’s position may end up hurting it. Fumbles may be crunchily unstable in combat, but the concept is needed in a social encounter rules set. Come to think of it, opposite can happen when one tries to attack another.
On fumbles, I’m against autowin/fail on a single d20 (%5 chance on a linear distribution is in no way a critical event, but an 18 or even 17 on 3d6 would be grand). So I always treat 1s as -10 and 20s as +10, plus reroll. So I propose 20 or lower than required DC is a fumble: Damaging self and healing opposition.
Then what about influencing the audience? How’d that work seperate from “trading blows”? An idea that springs to mind is one (or consecutive) skill checks of variable DCs (of variable skills) effected by participant’s HP: If you’re powerful (high mod) enough, you can knock the audience off for DC 45 bluff check in round one and win. OR keep fencing back and forth until you can achieve victory against a DC of 22. How exactly victory DC is tied to HP is the main issue here. Something simple, like -1 for each “x damage” to opposition would be fine.
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There’s still the thing about memory. Past dealings have to fit into all this somehow. And I’d still like to see some sort of bloodied status. It’s too good a concept to leave out.
Does a super-high bluff accomplish anything greater than making something false seem true? As in, even I get a 100 on my bluff that an army is going to invade in two days, that doesn’t necessarily convince everyone to follow my plan on how to respond to the invasion, whereas a 100 on a diplomacy check would seem to accomplish that.
I like the Self/Other/Audience division. This also allows for the social terrain thing to be clearly defined such that something like “if Self is in Authority position, +2 Bluff.”
You don’t necessarily have to wait for 20 below DC for a fumble. In 3e, catching someone who is falling requires a certain climb DC. If you fail by 5 or more, you being falling too, which is a pretty catastrophic consequence. I’d say fumbling should be fairly easy. Having a good enough skill bonus not to fumble should be a pretty big advantage. I mean, being able to argue for your side without ever screwing up and causing damage is a significant achievement.
Since I’m all into social terrain, I’d recommend that in a social encounter, you have Attain Position (or some such) as an action choice, along with Attack Other, Boost Self, and Influence Audience. So, just like tripping or tumbling to flank, one can sacrifice other options in order to attain a more advantageous position. Perhaps Attain Position (such as the moral high-ground) should have a corollary aspect of Attack Position where one attempts to alter the position of another. So, if one claims to be an expert in something, attaining the Authority position, somebody else can attack that position by discrediting the claim (opposed Knowledge rolls?).
Will attacking be opposed skill checks, or attacks against a set defense? Probably second would be better (B:15 D:18 I:12 I:21), though opposed checks would certainly be more exciting.
Given 4e’s move away from opposed rolls, I think it’s most likely that they’ll be against set defenses.
How about “damage”? I’d say skill modifier determines the dice (rank_die): 0-5_d4, 6-10_d6, 11-15_d8, 16-20_d10… would fit 4e mold well. A conman of bluff +6 deals 1d6, while the barbarian with intimidate +18 deals 1d10. I would’ve preferred a set “x damage per rank” for I intensely dislike numerous dice on the table, but as this is aimed at 4e other way’d be better.
Given that a skill in 4e has only two states, trained and untrained, linking damage to skill rank doesn’t allow for much variation. Maybe a system where each character gets a d4, d6, d8, & d10 attack which they get to assign to the four primary attack skills (bluff, diplomacy, insight, & intimidate). In this way each character gets to represent what their strengths and weaknesses are in a social encounter. We could also then have feats which increase the damage dice for characters that really want to be good at social encounters.
Then “healing”. Amount healed is bound to skill modifier like damage, but what of DC to “heal”? I’m not certain with this one.
Actually, “healing” should probably be a fixed amount for each character, like healing surges. It’s a fairly simple mechanic that 4e has introduced that I really like. As for the DC, I think that kind of depends on some things. In combat, an action that serves no other purpose than to heal an ally doesn’t require an attack roll, while one that heals an ally as a side effect, has to roll against the defense of the opponent appropriate for the attack portion of the action. I think we could probably do something similar here.
On fumbles, I’m against autowin/fail on a single d20 (%5 chance on a linear distribution is in no way a critical event, but an 18 or even 17 on 3d6 would be grand). So I always treat 1s as -10 and 20s as +10, plus reroll. So I propose 20 or lower than required DC is a fumble: Damaging self and healing opposition.
Skills never had the auto-success/failure in 3.5 and I can’t see that being introduced into 4e either. Even though we might refer to something as a social attack, it’s still a skill roll and so I don’t think we should be adding that rule to it.
That said, I agree there does need to be some rules about ‘fumbles’ in a social encounter, but it should be really simple. The -10/+10 rule from the 3.0 ELH was introduced to eliminate auto-success/failure in combat so that you’re Epic characters really didn’t have to worry about hordes of level 1 commoners, and it serves that purpose well, but I’m not sure that I like it here. I think it might be better to adopt a philosophy from d20Advanced and adopt a levels of failure system. So a particular risky attack might have the following entry attached to it:
Miss 1-5: Lose your next action.
Miss 6-10: Above plus deal damage to your own credibility equal to the amount that you would have inflicted on your opponent on a successful attack.
Miss 10+: Above plus your opponent may spend a “healing surge” to regain lost credibility.
Less risky attacks might not have some Miss entries, others might have different consequences for a miss (say reducing your audience influence or damaging an ally). This allows for a great deal of customization of a character’s attacks.
Then what about influencing the audience? How’d that work seperate from “trading blows”? An idea that springs to mind is one (or consecutive) skill checks of variable DCs (of variable skills) effected by participant’s HP: If you’re powerful (high mod) enough, you can knock the audience off for DC 45 bluff check in round one and win. OR keep fencing back and forth until you can achieve victory against a DC of 22. How exactly victory DC is tied to HP is the main issue here. Something simple, like -1 for each “x damage” to opposition would be fine.
That’s an idea I hadn’t thought of and will have to think about it.
What I had thought of was a system where there was a target influence level that had to be reached to end the encounter, and each side tracked their “damage” to the audience separately. The first to reach the necessary influence level wins the encounter. Furthermore, for really ambitious DM’s, they could use the amount of influence the losing side has with the audience at the end of the encounter to determine whether some compromises are in order and how significant they might be.
Since I’m all into social terrain, I’d recommend that in a social encounter, you have Attain Position (or some such) as an action choice, along with Attack Other, Boost Self, and Influence Audience. So, just like tripping or tumbling to flank, one can sacrifice other options in order to attain a more advantageous position. Perhaps Attain Position (such as the moral high-ground) should have a corollary aspect of Attack Position where one attempts to alter the position of another. So, if one claims to be an expert in something, attaining the Authority position, somebody else can attack that position by discrediting the claim (opposed Knowledge rolls?).
Attain and Attack Position would be a great place for other skill rolls to come into play. I still prefer them to be against fixed DCs rather than as opposed rolls, since that’s the way that 4e is moving, but haven’t really thought about how to set said DCs in a balanced fashion yet.
So looking at what I’ve wrote, I envision there being 6 combat options that a character might undertake:
Boost Self: Add to your own or an ally’s credibility
Attack Opponent: Detract from an opponent’s credibility
Influence Audience: Add to the influence of an outcome
Dissuade Audience: Take away from the influence of an outcome
Attain Position: Achieve a position in the encounter that will grant you or your allies bonuses
Attack Position: Take away bonuses or apply penalties to your opponents
(Note: some social powers might combine aspects from these options)
Each character would have a credibility score and each potential outcome of the encounter would have a target influence level (most encounters should have two, but a more complicated one might have more, so long as the extras are distinct, and not just compromises between other available positions).
Given that a skill in 4e has only two states, trained and untrained, linking damage to skill rank doesn’t allow for much variation. Maybe a system where each character gets a d4, d6, d8, & d10 attack which they get to assign to the four primary attack skills (bluff, diplomacy, insight, & intimidate). In this way each character gets to represent what their strengths and weaknesses are in a social encounter. We could also then have feats which increase the damage dice for characters that really want to be good at social encounters.
That looks good. I’ll suggest different dice for different classes. d4,d4,d4,d6 for the fighty type, d6,d6,d8,d10 for social-er types, etc… Alternately, all start at 3d4+1d6 but more social types get die increases every few levels.
Actually, “healing” should probably be a fixed amount for each character, like healing surges. It’s a fairly simple mechanic that 4e has introduced that I really like. As for the DC, I think that kind of depends on some things. In combat, an action that serves no other purpose than to heal an ally doesn’t require an attack roll, while one that heals an ally as a side effect, has to roll against the defense of the opponent appropriate for the attack portion of the action. I think we could probably do something similar here.
But then, combat healing is performed on self or willing targets. “Healing” here is done upon the opposition, who’d object to your strengthening of position.
I think it might be better to adopt a philosophy from d20Advanced and adopt a levels of failure system. So a particular risky attack might have the following entry attached to it:
Miss 1-5: Lose your next action.
Miss 6-10: Above plus deal damage to your own credibility equal to the amount that you would have inflicted on your opponent on a successful attack.
Miss 10+: Above plus your opponent may spend a “healing surge” to regain lost credibility.
I always prefer such systems to flat hit-or-misses. But I thought that sort of thing was considered too complex for DnD. Obviously I wholly support this one. Though 1-5 is better off being a simple no effect. Bump that list up by 5, add “autoheal opponent on 20+” and we’re golden.
And there’s a limited number of “healings” per encounter? I hadn’t noticed that. Sensible. Another issue: Can HP be boosted right from the start and how high would it go? And would a “double/triple/xiple the opponents HP so you seem indisputable” better win condition be than 0 HP?
What I had thought of was a system where there was a target influence level that had to be reached to end the encounter, and each side tracked their “damage” to the audience separately. The first to reach the necessary influence level wins the encounter.
Don’t like this. “Damaging” the audience looks counterintuitive. Though it might be one of those things that work better in practice.
So looking at what I’ve wrote, I envision there being 6 combat options that a character might undertake:
Boost Self: Add to your own or an ally’s credibility
Attack Opponent: Detract from an opponent’s credibility
Influence Audience: Add to the influence of an outcome
Dissuade Audience: Take away from the influence of an outcome
Attain Position: Achieve a position in the encounter that will grant you or your allies bonuses
Attack Position: Take away bonuses or apply penalties to your opponents
(Note: some social powers might combine aspects from these options)
Each character would have a credibility score and each potential outcome of the encounter would have a target influence level (most encounters should have two, but a more complicated one might have more, so long as the extras are distinct, and not just compromises between other available positions).
I think the number of core actions should be small. Splitting opposites of the same action is unnecessary. Boost: gain cred, Attack: remove cred, Weasel: get/remove bonus/penalty and Checkmate: affect the audience. Though I can see some stuff increasing “get bonus to self” while not affecting “remove bonus from opponent”. But those kind of things are better off being specified IMO.
That looks good. I’ll suggest different dice for different classes. d4,d4,d4,d6 for the fighty type, d6,d6,d8,d10 for social-er types, etc… Alternately, all start at 3d4+1d6 but more social types get die increases every few levels.
Makes sense. We can work out the actual dice spread for different classes later. For now I think it’s good enough to know that that’s how we’re going to handle “damage.”
But then, combat healing is performed on self or willing targets. “Healing” here is done upon the opposition, who’d object to your strengthening of position.
By the same logic your enemy in combat would object to the healing of your allies. Just because some one objects to something, doesn’t mean that he can do anything about it.
I always prefer such systems to flat hit-or-misses. But I thought that sort of thing was considered too complex for DnD. Obviously I wholly support this one. Though 1-5 is better off being a simple no effect. Bump that list up by 5, add “autoheal opponent on 20+” and we’re golden.
In general such systems are more complicated than I’d like, but I think in this case it’s better than rolling again. Also, forcing your opponent to heal is not a good thing for a miss. They have a limited number of healing surges and thus may not want to deplete one if they don’t have to.
And there’s a limited number of “healings” per encounter? I hadn’t noticed that. Sensible. Another issue: Can HP be boosted right from the start and how high would it go? And would a “double/triple/xiple the opponents HP so you seem indisputable” better win condition be than 0 HP?
Each character has a limited number of healing surge they can use per day. In any given encounter they can use one by themselves. Most healing powers also tap their healing surges and in between encounters they can use as many as they’d like to fully restore their hp. HP is limited to your max at all times. Some powers might grant temporary hp but it’s usually a small amount and multiple sources don’t stack. Credibility, as a social parallel to hp, would follow the same restrictions.
Don’t like this. “Damaging” the audience looks counterintuitive. Though it might be one of those things that work better in practice.
I agree that when it’s phrased as “damaging” the audience it’s counterintuitive. However, if I instead phrased it as “building up influence with the audience” it sounds okay. In addition, we could say that a character might have some base level of influence with a particular audience based on their past interactions with them. So the king’s advisor might have a starting influence of 10 with the king, while the party, who has never met the king before, starts at 0. Since both are trying to get their influence with the king to say 40 to get him to do what they want, the advisor has a distinct advantage.
I think the number of core actions should be small. Splitting opposites of the same action is unnecessary. Boost: gain cred, Attack: remove cred, Weasel: get/remove bonus/penalty and Checkmate: affect the audience. Though I can see some stuff increasing “get bonus to self” while not affecting “remove bonus from opponent”. But those kind of things are better off being specified IMO.
While I agree that fewer is generally better, I don’t think in this case that we gain much by trying to combine the opposites. Combat has 4 kinds of actions because there is no audience, but the break down is similar. Also some of those kinds of actions won’t appear on their own very often. For example, most combat powers which penalize your opponent or grant bonuses to your allies generally also deal damage, though not as much as a power that only deals damage. Like wise we might expect Attain and Attack Position to be generally combined with either Attack Opponent, Influence Audience, or Dissuade Audience most of the time. 4e has a design philosophy that even characters which specialize in “supporting roles” should feel part of the primary action.
By the same logic your enemy in combat would object to the healing of your allies. Just because some one objects to something, doesn’t mean that he can do anything about it.
I meant since improving your cred actually means you alter how people percieve you (instead of something you do on yourself like combat healing), there’s gotta be an opposed roll or something.
They have a limited number of healing surges and thus may not want to deplete one if they don’t have to.
Nope, they use *their* healing surge to heal the opponent.
I think influencing the audience is better done as various skill checks against some sort DC, instead of a “damage threshold”. That’d allow us to construct more complicated victory conditions (two high D checks, followed by a medium B check, and finally a low D check OR a single extremely high I check OR four consecutive medium I checks, OR etc). Of course damage threshold can work, but a more elaborate way for major encounters would be nice. Combat needs challenges other than beating the enemies to a pulp IMO, so here a way to win other than hitting others (be it opponent or audience) with words would be good. And in combat you can throw enemies to the pit, or swing on the chandelier or otherwise spice it up, while here such nonstandard actions aren’t really available.
I meant since improving your cred actually means you alter how people percieve you (instead of something you do on yourself like combat healing), there’s gotta be an opposed roll or something.
Improving your hp can alter how other combatants preceive you. Like wise improving your own credibility is doing something to yourself. Remember, credibility, as I’ve defined it, is a trait of a character, not an interaction between the character and the environment. Perhaps the term “credibility” is getting in the way here. “Resolve” might be better…
Nope, they use *their* healing surge to heal the opponent.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Sure, a really risky social power might have that kind of miss chance. What I provided was only and example, and one not even attached to any particular power. Each social power should have it’s own set of miss conditions that are appropriate for it.
I think influencing the audience is better done as various skill checks against some sort DC, instead of a “damage threshold”. That’d allow us to construct more complicated victory conditions (two high D checks, followed by a medium B check, and finally a low D check OR a single extremely high I check OR four consecutive medium I checks, OR etc). Of course damage threshold can work, but a more elaborate way for major encounters would be nice. Combat needs challenges other than beating the enemies to a pulp IMO, so here a way to win other than hitting others (be it opponent or audience) with words would be good. And in combat you can throw enemies to the pit, or swing on the chandelier or otherwise spice it up, while here such nonstandard actions aren’t really available.
The problem that I foresee here is that this then requires the DM to figure out what the various paths to success are, and probably rule on the spot when the players come up with a path he hadn’t foreseen. This leads back to a 2e style system where the DM essentially decides how the encounter is going to go with player input being of only secondary importance. Plus, with multiple paths like you’ve described, the DM needs to come up with and keep track of dozens of numbers (the DCs). In the system I’ve described only three are needed (the outcome influence level, and the starting influence level for each side).
As for non-standard actions, they are as readily available here as they are in combat. In combat when a PC tries to do something that isn’t explicitly on their sheet, then the DM needs to decide what modifier the PC needs to use on his die roll (is it a skill check, an ability check, or an attack?) and what defense they are targeting (is it AC, Fort, Ref, or Will?) in order for the PC to achieve the outcome they want. The same would go in a social encounter.
Okay, I’ve been thinking things over and I’m now questioning the need for Credibility/Resolve. Sure, it’s nice to be able to knock an opponent out of a fight, but in a social encounter it’s actually very rare for you to be able to completely shut out an opponent. They might be flabbergasted for a bit, but eventually they’ll regather themselves and resume participating. As a result, I think attacks that directly target one of your opponents are better handled via conditions (Dazed et al.) with a “save ends” notation.
This leaves only Influence as the trackable numbers for an encounter. We then might have something like this:
Influence: Each distinct outcome (i.e. uncomprimised position) has an influence score. In most cases each outcome’s influence score starts at 0. However, special circumstances may alter this (see below). The social encounter ends when one outcome’s score reaches a predetermined level (set by the DM ahead of time). When that level is reached, use the current influence of the other outcomes to determine how much compromise is warranted. If the those arguing for the winning outcome are not willing to accept the necessary level of compromise to “win” the encounter, then they may, with the DM’s consent, choose to extend the encounter by raising the required level of influence by 1/4th its current amount. Doing so does not give them any additional advantage, but it does give them more time to try and lower their opponents influence while raising their own to meet the new level. Of course, such a tactic might backfire on them if they aren’t careful.
Special Circumstances: In some cases the audience of a social encounter (i.e. the person or group who’s actions are being influenced) is predisposed towards a certain outcome before the encounter starts. In this case, that outcome should start with a non-zero influence. Be advised, however, that always setting up one side with an advantage, especially if that side is one opposed to the PCs, will tend towards your players avoiding social encounters all together.
At-will Social Assertions:
At first level choose two primary skill/social defense pairs (such as Bluff vs. Passive Insight or Diplomacy vs. Will Defense) to serve as your at-will social assertions. When using these assertions you may either influence the social encounter by 1d8+Cha towards or away from (chosen individually for each assertion and cannot be changed) a particular outcome. At 21st level increase this to 2d8+Cha. Use of a social assertion is a standard action.
At-will Social Attacks:
At second level choose two primary skill/social defense pairs (different from the ones chosen for your assertions) to serve as your at-will social attacks. When you use these attacks on an opponent they are stunned (save ends). Use of a social attack is a standard action.
Second Wind:
In a social encounter you can use your second wind (spending a healing surge) to immediately remove any ongoing conditions on you. Doing so is not an action and thus can be done even when stunned. However, you may only do so once per encounter and can only do so on your turn.
Primary Social Skills:
Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, & Intimidate
Social Defenses:
Passive Insight, Passive Preception, Will Defense
Social Conditions:
Dazed, Dominated, Marked, Stunned, Surprised
Encounter and Daily assertions and attacks would still need to be designed (which is part of the reason for listing all of the possible social conditions, even though I’ve only used stunned thus far).
