Nekomimi-Maiden/SocialCombatRedux
Social Attributes
The three social attributes in Exalted are rewritten as follows:
Eloquence governs how well a character's ideas are communicated and received, once an opponent is forced to listen. Someone with Eloquence 1 stumbles over her own words, stammers, and otherwise makes a very negligible impression. Someone with Eloquence 3 is a well-trained speaker, clearly presenting her ideas and swaying those who will listen. Someone with Eloquence 5 can change a spiteful enemy to an ally if given a moment to speak.
Guile governs the extent to which a character can convince others to consider her points, and how well she conceals her motivations; a character with Guile can make those around her lower their defenses and think over things they might reject out of hand otherwise. Someone with Guile 1 is generally excessively blunt, gratingly honest to a fault, or otherwise puts people off of listening to her. Someone with Guile 3 is adept at smooth-talking her way through touchy situations, and rarely if ever shows her hand. Someone with Guile 5 can make a tribe of starving wyld cannibals consider the merits of an agrarian lifestyle -- even while tied up in their warming stew pot.
Composure measures a character's resistance to the finely honeyed words and phrased statements of others, whether through natural caution, sardonic suspicion, or measured analysis. Someone with Composure 1 is gullible and naive, the proverbial sucker born. Someone with Composure 3 has a healthy tendency for cynical rejection or analytical consideration of promises and offerings. Someone with Composure 5 is harder than a brick wall.to convince of anything outside their interest.
Obviously, Lunar charms will need rewriting and adaptation to be refit into these altered attributes.
Social Influence
Social influence is normally levied as a dramatic action, which typically takes up to one minute per social attack, but may be performed as a speed 6, DV -2 miscellaneous action in normal combat by accepting a -3 internal penalty to the social roll. The Monologue action is added to normal combat as well, as a Speed 6, DV -2 action that gives +1 die to the following social influence every second tick, which may be aborted early for a partial benefit.
When attempting social influence, the intent of the influence is stated first. This generally falls under the form of a natural Compulsion, Illusion, or Emotion - "Form an alliance with my nation". "Buy wares from me". "Believe my report of an army camped to the south". "Form an intimacy of love towards me". The character declares any charms she intends to use on the social influence, and the target [or targets] choose their form of resistance.
The target of the social influence then chooses their form of defense:
They may attempt to Ignore the influence through sheer will, using their Dodge MDV [(Willpower+Integrity+Essence)/2]. However, if this method fails, they may not spend willpower to further mitigate the effects afterwards. The use of Dodge MDV represents a refusal to engage; if it is overcome, they find themselves listening despite their best efforts.
Another option is to Refute the argument as it's being made, whether through raising counterpoints or heckling the attacker to disrupt their flow and bolster the character's confidence. This uses their Parry MDV; since this is generally lower than Dodge MDV, the character has the option to spend willpower to further mitigate the argument.
The third choice is to Deny the social influence, drawing upon the character's strength of virtues and willpower to completely reject the social influence. This costs a virtue channel in addition to the willpower cost Refuting takes, but it perfectly defends against an attempt to gain social influence.
A fourth option, of course, is to Accept the social influence. While few heroes find this tasteful, simply going along with someone else's authority, masses of simpler people are usually easily swayed to throw their lot in with a particularly convincing speaker; as a result, Accepting the influence grants the character a point of temporary willpower, once a scene.
The willpower cost for Refuting or Denying an argument is generally 1, but charms may raise this. Upon spending 3 points of willpower Refuting or Denying natural mental influence, the cost to Refute or Deny further NMI for similar purposes of influence drops to 0 willpower.
The character's MDV may be modified at this point by relevant Intimacies, high Virtues, and the bonus for Motivation. Bonuses from these are not capped; however, the penalties imposed may not exceed the attacker's Eloquence.
Once the form of social defense is chosen, if the social attack has not been completely prevented - whether through being Denied or use of an appropriate social charm - the social attacker then rolls her attack roll, and subtracts the character's MDV. If the character Refuted the attack, they may spend willpower at this stage, rolling their Willpower and adding successes directly to their MDV. If any successes remain, she adds her Eloquence to her successes to produce her Raw Damage, which is then reduced by the target's Composure and rolled. Every success adds a point of Social Influence. Once the total influence accumulated equals the target's Conviction, they are subject to the influence, which is typically a Compulsion, Emotion, or Illusion effect.
Compulsions compel a particular sort of action or behavior. Typically this is a single action, though if the consequences are ongoing, the Compulsion is broken after [Conviction] scenes of performing the compelled act. NMI Compulsions cannot force someone to take an action that would harm them or their traits, including backgrounds. "Protect me" is acceptable, but "die for me" is not. "Loan me your spare knife" usually works, but "give me your daiklave" is forbidden. Telling the security guard to ignore you won't work if you're clearly a thief (as he'd lose his job), but if you can convince him you're a guest and permitted in the area, it is valid.
Emotions forge an intimacy towards a person or ideal, making future influence easier by giving an appropriate hook to play off of and impose MDV penalties. The intimacy can be broken as normal. In addition, the character suffers a -1 internal penalty on actions that contradict the emotional context of the intimacy, until they have suffered the penalty for [Conviction] scenes.
Illusions force a character to consider a belief to be true or false. Illusions are the most fragile of social influence, broken the moment the target is convinced of proof of the reality -- whether by stepping outside and seeing that the leaves have not yet turned brownor by receiving reports of the truth. A character laboring under an Illusion who attempts to take an action that would disregard the Illusion - ignoring the report of an army as unimportant, preparing for invasion by a Deathlord dffering peaceful coexistence - must spend 1 willpower per scene to do so.
Social Abilities
The previous system's definitions of Performance, Presence, and Socialize are obsolete. All social abilities work equally well for targetting individuals, social groups, and masses of unrelated people. The distinction comes in their usage; each ability is related to a particular sort of Influence. Using an Ability for the wrong sort of Influence imposes a -1 external penalty on the roll and necessitates a stunt.
Performance relates to the inspiring of hopes, dreams, and fears; Performance is linked to the Emotion influence.
Presence is the ability of command and force of personality; Presence is linked to the Compulsion influence.
Socialize governs rumor, belief, and manipulation of perceptions; Socialize is linked to the Illusion influence.
These three abilities are used for most social influence. However, other abilities have roles to play.
Investigation, in addition to its' uses for studying crime scenes and finding evidence, is linked to understanding the mind. A social influence action can be made to study someone in order to determine intimacies, virtues, and motivations. If the subject in question is being tested or displayed - a loving husband doting on his wife, a compassionate man listening to a speech filled with hateful rhetoric, and so on - this can be done with Perception. If attempting to get someone to 'spill the beans' with leading questions, the attribute used is Guile.
Bureaucracy is generally beyond the scope of social influence.
