Madwand/Social-Fu

This page is my attempt to create house rules for social-fu that succeed in the following three criteria:

1) Social-fu is fast to resolve and fun. The Exalted are still cool, extras are still extras, and the game doesn't have to stall for an hour or more every time a PC wants to fast-talk his way past a guard or persuade a captive to give up his evil ways. These rules require only a single roll to resolve.

2) The player is happy: his social-fu works reasonably often, you don't need more than a few charms to do reasonably well as a social character, you don't need enormous numbers of successes to accomplish anything reasonable.

3) The ST is happy: the ST feels that the rules for social-fu are reasonable, important NPC's aren't helpless against social effects. The number of successes needed scales reasonably with the power of the effect the PC is trying to obtain.

These rules expand on and clarify the rules for social Abilities as they are presented in the Core. That is, 5 successes is a legenary effect. For more on this idea, read: Setting Difficulties in Exalted. These rules expand upon the idea of setting a base difficulty for a social roll by noting circumstances that may make the roll easier or more difficult.

The base difficulty for any social roll lies between 1 and 5. As a rule of thumb, the base difficulty should be set according to how drastically a successful result will change the life of the target. 5 successes would be the base difficulty for social actions that completely change the life or worldview of the target. The base difficulty is then increased or decreased according to circumstances:

||Difficulty||Circumstance|| ||+1|[social effect is in conflict with a target's virtue > 2|| ||+1|[per x2 people affected (does not apply to Performance)|| ||+1|[some prior influence is present to prevent social effect (such as prior orders, or religious indoctrination)|| ||+1|[if attempt to use social effect is hurried (such as in combat)|| ||+1|[if attempting to convince a social superior|| ||+1|[if attempting to convince someone character knows to be much more powerful|| ||+1|[if character is in greatly disadvantaged situation (for example, character has been captured)|| ||-1|[if plenty of time is available|| ||-1|[if circumstances are greatly to the advantage of the character (for example, a captive audience)|| ||-1|[if attempting to convince a social inferior|| ||-1|[if attempting to convince someone who believes themself to be much less powerful than PC|| ||-1|[if social effect is in accordance with a target's virtue > 2||

Social defense:

Exalted cannot be manipulated into (directly) suicidal actions, nor against actions that directly contradict their Nature. Mortals and extras however, can. Charms can bypass that restriction, even for Exalts, according to specific Charm descriptions.

Any important NPC may spend 1 temporary willpower to subtract their permanent Essence in successes from any social roll targeting them. Extras may never defend in this manner.

Examples:

Attempting to convince a young Dynast to join the cause of a Solar Anathema he has just engaged in battle with:
Base difficulty 5 (life changing result)
+1 Dynast has a Valor of 3, and doesn't want to back down from this fight
+1 Prior religious indoctrination dictates Anathema are to be hated and feared
+1 The attempt is being carried out in combat
Giving us a difficulty of 8, which may be increased by the Dynast's Essence if he spends 1 willpower.

Attempting to convert a captive Yozi cultist into loyal obedience:
Base difficulty 5 (life changing result)
+1 Religious indoctrination makes this cultist a zealot
-1 Cultist is currently being held captive
-1 Character has already demonstrated the power to subdue the cultist
Giving a difficulty of 4. If the cultist is not an extra, the difficulty may increase even further.

Fast-talking your way past a guard:
Base difficulty 2 (difficult task, it is the guards duty to stop intruders, but only minor personal consequences if the guard fails)
+1 Prior orders have been given to the guard to prevent unauthorized people from passing.
-1 Character has demonstrated nobility, and is clearly socially superior to the guard.
Giving a difficulty of 2.

Comments

Ok, a system like this needs a lot of comments and playtesting. What do people think? -Madwand

I Dig so far, but how about Gender, appearance and Sexual orientation? Say the guard is male and hetero, and the PC is an appearance 2 female. I could figure out stuff for this of course, but this adds more rules and crunching which goes against what you're trying to accomplish. Hmm.... Still like though ~ BrigandRansom , trying not to gum up a fast system

Attempts at physical seduction should often be done using Appearance rather than Charisma or Manipulation as the rolled Attribute. I haven't mentioned much about Attributes or Abilities above because I don't beleive that much needs to be changed about their use from the Core. That said, the list of circumstance modifiers I gave is probably not complete, perhaps we can think of others to add? -Madwand

I'd say either -1 if target finds you attractive, or -2 if your appearance is 4 or greater. That sound good to you? ~ BrigandRansom thinking of another artifact for ArtifactRelay