Converting Exalted 3e's social influence system to 3.x

[Castilonium]

There are a lot of problems with 3.5e's and PF's social skills. Diplomacy's DCs are static numbers, it's easy to get a high bonus in intimidate but not to increase the your ability to resist intimidation, and high bluff effectively lets you rewrite reality via people's perceptions and beliefs. I like Exalted 3e's social influence system because it makes social interactions more dynamic, nuanced, and defined. It's a great framework for creating the logic of a dialogue with outcomes that have long-lasting consequences, and it helps visibly track character development through roleplaying. I want to try and convert it to 3.x.

Yes, I've seen Rich Burlew's houserules for diplomacy (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jFppYwv7OUkegKhONNF.html). They're not what I'm looking for.

This link (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?770267-Exalted-3e-Social-Influence-301) explains Exalted 3e's social influence in detail and has RP examples.
This link (http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1180122-ex3-social-system-cheat-sheet-and-flowchart) is an awesome fancy 2 page flowchart.

Intimacies are easy enough to add into 3.x, but since the games use different math, the bonuses and penalties for intimacies need to be different. I'm thinking +2/-4 for minor, +4/-6 for major, +6/-8 for defining. Or maybe +2/-5 for minor, +5/-7 for major, +7/-10 for defining. Any other suggestions for this?

Resolve is the big lynch pin that's giving me trouble figuring out how to convert. Integrity factors into resolve, and it's a skill you'd buy just like diplomacy or bluff. But there is no skill like integrity in 3.x. What would be the best solution?
Create integrity as a brand new skill. But that would spread people's skill points thin if they want to put points into it.
Bake its functionality into sense motive. But sense motive is already used for important stuff. And it doesn't make sense that reading someone's intentions would make you more resistant to their influence.
Make it a will save. But saves scale poorly in comparison to skills. The math would be off.
Make it a DC like 10 + HD + wisdom modifier. But that has the same problem that things like intimidate and Rich Burlew's diplomacy houserules do.
Something else. Really, I'm open to suggestions.


No need to convert guile. Sense motive vs bluff handles that well enough. But what should the penalty to a player's bluff be when someone uses read intentions while they're unaware? -5?

Finally, I have to put willpower in. Maybe it'd be as simple as giving every player 5 willpower and have them be restored the same way they would be in Ex3. Any suggestions?

[Segev]

I’d have intimacies have ratings that scale up indefinitely. Building an intimacy up one point requires exceeding Resolve by the intimacy’s current rating.

Resolve is 10+Wis mod+relevant intimacies’ ratings. If an intimacy is being built, it can’t apply to Resolve. It can apply if being eroded.

Social attacks roll d20+social attack bonus+ target’s relevant intimacies. Overcoming Resolve let’s you either influence the target towards a particular action or away from one, or let’s you attack an intimacy or try to build one stronger.

Influence applies a morale bonus towards actions in line with the influence, and a penalty towards actions opposing the influence. The value of the bonus or penalty is 1 plus 1 for every 5 by which Resolve was beaten.

Influence fades at one point per day. It can be built higher by repeated social attacks, but the Resolve of the target rises by the amount of influence already on him.

Influence can be eroded faster by social attacks, but the influence adds to the targets Resolve, and the target must apply any intimacies that were used to create the influence to his Resolve, too.

[Castilonium]

I’d have intimacies have ratings that scale up indefinitely. Building an intimacy up one point requires exceeding Resolve by the intimacy’s current rating.

Resolve is 10+Wis mod+relevant intimacies’ ratings. If an intimacy is being built, it can’t apply to Resolve. It can apply if being eroded.

Social attacks roll d20+social attack bonus+ target’s relevant intimacies. Overcoming Resolve let’s you either influence the target towards a particular action or away from one, or let’s you attack an intimacy or try to build one stronger.
That sounds completely and totally different from Ex3's system, Segev, and it has a lot of problems. It doesn't take into account social skills at all, unless you're adding skill bonuses into "social attack bonus." In which case, social attackers will easily be able to pile influence on people because Resolve in your model scales with nothing but wisdom and intimacies, not HD or skill bonus.


Influence applies a morale bonus towards actions in line with the influence, and a penalty towards actions opposing the influence. The value of the bonus or penalty is 1 plus 1 for every 5 by which Resolve was beaten.

Influence fades at one point per day. It can be built higher by repeated social attacks, but the Resolve of the target rises by the amount of influence already on him.

Influence can be eroded faster by social attacks, but the influence adds to the targets Resolve, and the target must apply any intimacies that were used to create the influence to his Resolve, too.
This just turns social attacks into glorified buffs and debuffs, and doesn't allow social influence to actually persuade targets to do what you want. It's also ripe for abuse, allowing people to give their allies a humongous nigh-permanent morale bonus to just about everything for free. The action economy of using social attacks during combat under this model would be untenable.

I appreciate you taking the time to try and help me, but this isn't remotely what I'm looking for.

[Serafina]

Fundamentally, you run into the issue of D20 having too-heavily-scaling modifiers, even compared to Exalted. Especially in the case of skills. And that's not easy to solve, sadly.
Basically any solution that scales with the ever-increasing numbers of skills also makes it so that no non-specialist of equal level is able to convince anyone of anything, unless the intimacy-modifiers are so high that equal characters are basically guaranteed success. If this were 5E, with bounded accuracy, this would be ever so much easier.

Fortunately, Exalted3E-style intimacies aren't just modifiers, they also provide limits of what sort of interaction works.
A large problem of D20 Social was always it's ludicrousness - you have high Bluff and you're able to convince anyone that they're a newt, have high Diplomacy and anyone is instantly your friend, etc.
With Intimacies, you're only able to influence someone if you directly target one of their intimacies in a reasonable manner - can't convince a normal person to lay down their life for me, I need to target a relevant intimacy for that. And higher-level intimacies can only be built over time, and by targeting other intimacies.
So that'd already help.

Another possibility is to just strip out Diplomacy entirely. The skill no longer exists. You're using Charisma checks instead.
This immediately reduces the number difference. When comparing level 1 and 15, you're going from +9 to +33, to a much more reasonable +5 to +7. It also preserves the role of characters who're traditionally good at diplomacy - those have high charisma, which still helps a bunch.
You can modify feats, traits and class features that interact with diplomacy. Reduce bonuses to +1 or maybe +2, and if there's one that lets you add another ability score, you don't add it but instead swap it outright (so you could make a wisdom-check in place of a charisma-check, or the like). If there's anything that work off getting high diplomacy-checks, replace that with bluff or sense motive or knowledge (nobility), whatever is appropriate.

And then it's the Charisma-check versus a DC based on the targets Wisdom, and of course the intimacies.
The challenge here would be to find a reasonable calibration - you want a character who isn't a charisma-specialist to be able to convince people, after all.

You can keep Bluff vs. Sense Motive, as well as Intimidate.
But how should Intimidate work? I'd say that a succesful Intimidate instills a temporary minor Intimacy of fear towards the intimidator. That makes it good to get minor things, and work towards major things, but you still need the whole charisma-check mechanic to keep everything in check.


In summary:
- Diplomacy is no longer a skill
- Social Interaction is a Charisma-check against a DC that is increased by Wisdom, modified by Intimacies
- Succesful Intimidate gives the target a temporary Minor Intimacy of Fear
- Bluff and Sense Motive still work normally

[Ukimoni]

Honestly I myself have also been trying to get Intimacies into 3.5, the only problem I encountered is that no matter what it's too strong in lower levels and irrelevant at higher levels and scaling is...hard to balance. I did come up with an idea to just make each level of intimacy a multiplier of a bonus depending on the severity of the situation. ie you'd get a higher bonus trying to pull a loved one up from a cliff face drop of 100ft over a drop of like 20ft. That way you have more control of the bonuses and since things get more serious the more you adventure the bonuses scale.

[Segev]

Part of the issue is that Exalted's social system just doesn't mesh with d20. Though yeah, I was thinking your "social attack bonus" would probably be skill-related. You'd have to be careful about allowing skill-boosting items to apply to it, so I'd probably not make it a "skill roll." It'd be a social attack roll, with a bonus of Diplomacy Ranks+Cha+(whatever else).

One thing to ask yourself: how do you interpret social influence in Exalted 3e? At what point does the player lose control of his character, if at all? If "never," what good are Intimacies and influence? (It's been forever since I read 3e's rules, and I don't recall how they differ from 2e's in this respect.)

[Serafina]

Intimacies don't mesh with the skill system of D20 due to the scaling system.
Which is a good reason to not make social influence skill-based. Charisma checks are an easy replacement.

And yes, in Exalted the social rules can lead to your character being forced to act in a certain way.
However, this isn't an intrinsic part of the Intimacy-system. You could make player characters immune to social influence, or simply penalize them in some manner when they refuse to have their character act in a certain way (heroic willpower can be draining after all).


As for Willpower, there's several options:
- it's PC and Major NPC only, and it can be spent in a lot of other ways - something like action points or hero points (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/hero-points). In addition to those other uses, they can also be used to deny one social influence outcome, similar to Willlpower. In this case, most NPCs can't resist social influence that much.
- It's something that everyone has, recovers regularly (such as on rest), and which can be used for minor boosts - small bonuses to skill checks or something like that would be a decent idea - in addition to it's social use.
- It's a resource you build up over the course of the day, such as Grit/Panache. Characters can spend feats/traits/skill points to get alternate methods to gain or use it.

I'd personally go with the latter, along with giving players free picks of those extra options.
Each player picks a stat (possibly just mental stats), and just like with Grit they gain that much "Willpower" at the start of a day. (It doesn't stack with Grit or anything, it just works similarly)
They also pick a recovery method or two that suits their character - such as succeding at significant knowledge-checks, finding hidden things, intimidating a major foe, difficult feats of athleticism and so on.
And they start out with a basic ability to spend it - something simple such as being able to add 1D6 (or a fixed number) to certain skill checks, or possibly the ability to automatically stabilize.

Then they get to pick a "Willpower talent" every couple of levels - say, every three or so?
Those can be spent on advanced recovery methods - such as succeeding at a save, or landing a critical hit, or saving someone from death via healing. Or they can be spent on alternate ways to spend willpower - such as healing, or re-rolling saves, or a surge of movement, depending on what you like.
For ease of play, I'd recommend not giving most NPCs anything other than social influence to do with their willpower, or just the basic "boost a skill" option.