How to reach Dresden level health status

[InFerrumVeritas]

This is one instance where I am going to go against RAW apparently - on the stress track thing.

I am not a hero - at least not anymore. ;P  But if I am dealing with a mental or social consequence, like... "Crushing worry about debt", and I were to get into a fight, I could still be "brusied", "ankle sprained", and "wrenched arm".  Those are three physical consequences on top of a social or mental consequence... and it's /realistic/.

I know it's a game, and I know that not all RAW are going to 100% emulate RL or canon, but come on.  We are playing heroes or villains.  I just don't jive with the party giving a bad guy a minor, moderate, and serious social consequence in an argument a couple of days before a battle....

And then the bad guy only having a minor physical consequence during the fight because his moderate and serious slots are filled up with social stuff.

To me, that makes no sense.

So now rather than argue that, I think it would be cool if someone  could get an official Fred word about social conflict during combat.

Um, I did.  I emailed him.  He replied.  It was from evilhat email with the name Fred Hicks attached.  I then quoted it here.  Why don't you read my post on the previous page?  Your request was fufilled.  You (and I) were wrong.  I disagree with it and want to talk to my GM about houseruling it because it seems silly to me.

FROM FRED:
"Four, period, as imolied by the character sheet -- but you can gain
additional typed consequence slots through stunts and their ilk."

[Sanctaphrax]

Pretty sure that that's not what he means, InferrumVeritas. I think he's asking about the usefulness of social attacks during physical fights.

Personally, I like the current ambiguity. Talking down your opponents should be occasionally viable, I think. But certainly not always.

I view consequences as an out-of-game abstraction, so the interaction between various types of consequence does not bother me at all.

[BumblingBear]

Pretty sure that that's not what he means, InferrumVeritas. I think he's asking about the usefulness of social attacks during physical fights.

Personally, I like the current ambiguity. Talking down your opponents should be occasionally viable, I think. But certainly not always.

I view consequences as an out-of-game abstraction, so the interaction between various types of consequence does not bother me at all.

Yeah - Sancta is right.

I am asking about something else entirely now.

[Richard_Chilton]

I'd say that you can mix social in with physical because there's nothing stopping you from turning a social encounter physical.  Seriously - can't we all picture:
Player: "He did how much social stress? Ouch.  Okay, I'll take 'can't take the heat' as a moderate to soak up most of that, then I draw my gun and shoot him."
GM: "Huh? But..."
Player: "Yeah, I know he has those henchmen and there's that camera on the wall, but there's no way I'm going win this socially so I'm shooting him."
GM: "But this a social combat and..."
Player: "Gun.  Him.  Bang."

No GM would say you couldn't do that.  For that matter, being taken out socially could mean being forced to attack someone when they have their henchmen around and camera recording everything.

So if someone can turn a social conflict into a physical one, why not at least allow them to try to turn a physical one social.  Something like:
Player: "Damn, that's a big gun.  Okay, so I'll take 'only a flesh wound (ouch)' as moderate, duck behind cover, and yell over  'Frank, I've got your kid'."
GM: "Huh?"
Player: "I can't take this guy physically so I want to do something social.  Look, when we were staking him out we learned all about him and his family, right? So I'll use investigation to declare that I know his daughter's schedule and that she's on a field trip today so he can't contact her right away.  I tell him we've got his little girl and if he doesn't drop the gun then maybe she's not coming home tonight.  That's deceit, right?"
GM: "Um, isn't that a bad guy move? You're playing a hero and ..."
Player: "I'm playing a smart hero and I'm bluffing.  Grabbing the kid, that's a bad guy move, but saying I have her? That's nothing.  Maybe it will take an exchange or two but I might take this guy out socially.  I sure as shit can't do it physically."

If that were to happen I'd do one of two things:
GM: "You can roll, but it won't work.  He doesn't actually care for his family."  (or maybe: "He yells back 'You can't have her - I just sacrificed her to the Dark Ones! Her blood tasted better than her mother's! Bwahahaha!'.")

or

GM: "Um, well, um, okay, next round I'll shift things around so your initiative order is your social one.  Um, and you're doing some physical stuff, so -1 for combining skills, and he'll get to tag 'distracted by the gun fight', but go for it."
Player: "Cool! And next round I'll take out my cell phone and tag it.  I'll say something something like 'She's safe now, but drop the gun or one word from me and they'll start beating her like a red headed stepchild.' and keep bluffing until he drops the gun or someone else brings him down.  And I'll keep making new stuff up, stuff that he might believe.  Saying we're going to kill an innocent kid is over the top but I can bluff about someone taking a belt to her - he should believe that.  If nothing else I'll make him use a consequence or two for social stuff."
GM: "Um, you can't tag your cell phone and he won't see it because you're behind cover, but you could add it to the lie.  Pointing out that you have a way to contact whoever has her can be part of the lie but the cell phone..."
Player: "Then I'll spend a FATE chip and declare that 'It looks like I'm talking to a psycho babysitter' and tag that.  Maybe make something up about her.  But that's next round.  This round I roll and I get ..."

I mean, it's not like we are talking one second rounds.  An exchange is an exchange and lasts long enough to do something simple.  Yelling something in a firefight, that's something Harry might do.

Richard

[fantazero]

I want an official (at least as official as we can get) word from Fred on this.

As I said, saying, "I've got AIDs!" in a fight fight is very likely to take the opponent out or cause a concession.

To me, that is a social or mental attack.

I think that it was just misworded in the book.

Such as, "A social attack takes place when no bodily harm is being done" or something like that.

Another option is, if in a grapple, you look the other person in the eye, as they are on top of you and say "I Sh*t my pants! /sob", it works in real life, it will work in the game :-p

[Taer]

From a purely game-balance perspective, I would have to say 'no' to dealing social stress while in the midst of physical combat.

Why? Because, plainly, social skills are more generally useful.

You can go into social conflict with cops, with Maeve, with the Senior Council, hell, you can have a social conflict with Mab or the Erkling. Social conflict is, well, more socially acceptable. It is far more broadly applicable - you can go into social conflict with virtually anyone there is and not worry too much about the consequences of your actions. It will generally give you better and more peaceful resolutions to any conflicts than physical violence.

Physical conflicts, on the other hand, have far more vast and far reaching consequences. You can pick a fight with cops - but that's assault, you'll be a wanted man later. If you pick a fight with the Erkling or Mab, be prepared for a dark and awful fate. So, physical conflict is much less applicable in most situations, far less versatile and can generally get you into much more trouble than social conflict. Therefore, it has to have advantages to compensate for that.

To put it simply, let's say you have Soulcrusher McFightmaster and Charisma Sparklypants. The former is largely incapable of threatening the latter in social conflicts. The reverse - that Sparklypants can't really threaten Soulcrusher in physical conflicts - should also be true.

So yeah, I'd say limit social skills to maneuvers in physical combat.

[Khalis231]

From a purely game-balance perspective, I would have to say 'no' to dealing social stress while in the midst of physical combat.

<snip>

To put it simply, let's say you have Soulcrusher McFightmaster and Charisma Sparklypants. The former is largely incapable of threatening the latter in social conflicts. The reverse - that Sparklypants can't really threaten Soulcrusher in physical conflicts - should also be true.

So yeah, I'd say limit social skills to maneuvers in physical combat.

QFAWMOO.

Quoted For Alignment With My Own Opinion. We've debated the "how" of keeping physical and social stress separate, but this post really gets at the "why."

[noclue]

This never feels lie a problem to me. Probably because SotC only had one stress track. To me, the question is always does taking stress make sense in context given the situation? If no one's brain is breaking, then seems like dice should be rolling.

[Falar]

This never feels lie a problem to me. Probably because SotC only had one stress track. To me, the question is always does taking stress make sense in context given the situation? If no one's brain is breaking, then seems like dice should be rolling.

Point of order, Spirit of the Century has two stress tracks - Physical and Composure. I know 'cause I was just looking over the book today to see how they went about doing Minions and Companions.

[Becq]

It seems to me that so long as the social attack is one that fits into the (physical combat) scene, it should be fine.  I think that the examples Richard gave fit in.  Likewise, Intimidation attacks seem like a viable candidate: "Ok, I just ripped Goon A's head off last exchange.  This exchange I'm going to growl at Goon B and demand that he drop his gun ... or else."  At the other end of the spectrum, sowing rumors about the foe's distinct lack of endowment to make his coworkers laugh at him does not strike me as an appropriate action to take between gunshots.

[noclue]

Point of order, Spirit of the Century has two stress tracks - Physical and Composure. I know 'cause I was just looking over the book today to see how they went about doing Minions and Companions.

You're right. We've been playing sotc without any stress tracks at all. House rules mess with the memory.

[Falar]

You're right. We've been playing sotc without any stress tracks at all. House rules mess with the memory.

Spirit of the Century is also REALLY WEIRD to compare Dresden Files to because the characters are so much more powerful. You have ten aspects, none of which have to be a trouble or a high concept and you receive ten fate points each session and you have the equivalent of five refresh spent in powers/stunts. Not to mention you start out with five boxes of stress instead of 2.

It's really pretty amazing how much of a variance you can get with Fate 3.0 and shows how much simple changes can ripple out through the rest of the system. It is REALLY hard to give well-built SotC characters a huge challenge, but that goes with the kind of game it's made to be. Pickup, single session, in and done.

[newtinmpls]

I really like this:

"The answer (as I see it), is because consequences aren't an objective measure of your ability to absorb punishment. They're a narrative measure of your character's ability to affect the plot by deciding where and how much the enemy hurts him. Having a consequence slot taken up with "crushing worry about debt" doesn't mean your character can't suffer three or more physical injuries, it just means that the character doesn't have the protagonist-power to keep the opponent from deciding exactly how much injury they want to inflict via a taken-out result. It's not like the character has lost the ability to defend himself (that's represented by skills), the character just doesn't have as much narrative control in the greater context of the story."

If anyone has read Charles T. Tart, they might be familiar with his concept of Attention-Awareness; it's related to the idea of Gate theory for pain, and the reason you "don't notice" some things when distracted by others.

I guess another way of saying it might be that at some point, when a character has "too much on his plate", one more thing - any one more thing - will be enough to take him out. Consequences are measuring how full the plate is. So to speak.

[Never_never]

Hey, first post here, just wanted to say this thread has helped answer a few questions I had, so thanks for that.

I'm not sure how it's MEANT to be handled but, in our sessions we required a appropriate aspect to be invoked/tagged before a social attack could be used in a none-social situation, one that we agreed as a group would cause enough stress to actually be relevant to a fight. Whether it was one the PCs discovered about the target, or a particularly clever one added by a maneuver would depend on the situation.

For example, in the case of storm front Harry invoked a aspect involving Vics wife, so he could do a social attack.

However i'm quite happy to admit this is really more of a misunderstanding turned home brew rule, just figured I'd throw it out though.

[Sanctaphrax]

That sounds like a good way to handle this.

Might not be "canon", but who cares?