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Been thinking about this, partially because of threads on RPG.net, and partially because it's the one thing that seems to get people's hackles all atwitter. Go ahead, chop my character to little bitty pieces, but god forbid that he be /persuaded/ to lower his weapon. Like the fact that PCs will often rather die than be captured, there's a weird disconnect there, and it's reflected in the mechanical landscape of many RPGs...social skills and abilities tend to be rather sketchy, limited, and often Do Not Apply to PCs. This makes playing either a socially strong or socially weak character to be more difficult and often useless. And, fair caveat, I really don't like consent based gaming, so yeah, I want robust mechanics to handle these situations, just as for combat.
1. Political Influence Rules. A system where every character has a Status resource, and that resource determines social class (Not wealth! The two do not necessarily go together, /especially/ in societies where social status is based on breeding) within their native culture. If you broke it down into a 1-10 spread, slaves would be 1, the average adventurer or merchant type would be 3-5, a typical noble courtier would be 6-8, and most royalty would be 9-10. In attempts at political contests, your Status and the Status of your target would give you modifiers to the difficulty...affecting the social position of someone more powerful than you is harder than harassing a member of the lower classes. There would be penalties to your Status outside of your native culture; nobility in one land is likely to be seen as an amusing barbarian with pretentions in another land.
Political attacks could be skills based, depending on the type of attack. Proximal attacks would not involve confronting the target directly...rumormongering, persuading mutual acquaintances to support you not them, etc. These would require a Diplomacy skill to initiate, and a Perception-equivilant check to notice before they reached critical range, and then a Diplomacy check to counteract. If unnoticed in time, or unsuccessfully countered, the target would temporarily lose a certain amount of status, based on the degree of success. Direct attacks would be against the target openly: snubbing, a contest of wits, etc. Self attacks would be for the purposes of boosting your own Status, not attacking another specific target. If you can boost your own Status, or depress another's Status for long enough, you can bring about a permanent change in Status. A 'critical failure' on your part or critical success on your target's part could create a backlash against you.
2. Social Influence Rules. Unlike political influence, this is person-to-person, and all about getting one person, or a small group of people to agree (or at least go along) with you long enough to accomplish your goals. Your stereotypical persuasion/lying/impersonation/seduction attempts. Honestly, the typical skill+stat attempt is, in my opinion, fine for these purposes. I would like to see a more unified mechanic for resisting these attempts, however, and for Status differences to give modifiers one way or another. (Despite the huge numbers of gamers playing Teh Great Rebels With Authority Issues, most people /are/ more impressed by a higher status person than by a lower status one.)
1. Political Influence Rules. A system where every character has a Status resource, and that resource determines social class (Not wealth! The two do not necessarily go together, /especially/ in societies where social status is based on breeding) within their native culture. If you broke it down into a 1-10 spread, slaves would be 1, the average adventurer or merchant type would be 3-5, a typical noble courtier would be 6-8, and most royalty would be 9-10. In attempts at political contests, your Status and the Status of your target would give you modifiers to the difficulty...affecting the social position of someone more powerful than you is harder than harassing a member of the lower classes. There would be penalties to your Status outside of your native culture; nobility in one land is likely to be seen as an amusing barbarian with pretentions in another land.
Political attacks could be skills based, depending on the type of attack. Proximal attacks would not involve confronting the target directly...rumormongering, persuading mutual acquaintances to support you not them, etc. These would require a Diplomacy skill to initiate, and a Perception-equivilant check to notice before they reached critical range, and then a Diplomacy check to counteract. If unnoticed in time, or unsuccessfully countered, the target would temporarily lose a certain amount of status, based on the degree of success. Direct attacks would be against the target openly: snubbing, a contest of wits, etc. Self attacks would be for the purposes of boosting your own Status, not attacking another specific target. If you can boost your own Status, or depress another's Status for long enough, you can bring about a permanent change in Status. A 'critical failure' on your part or critical success on your target's part could create a backlash against you.
2. Social Influence Rules. Unlike political influence, this is person-to-person, and all about getting one person, or a small group of people to agree (or at least go along) with you long enough to accomplish your goals. Your stereotypical persuasion/lying/impersonation/seduction attempts. Honestly, the typical skill+stat attempt is, in my opinion, fine for these purposes. I would like to see a more unified mechanic for resisting these attempts, however, and for Status differences to give modifiers one way or another. (Despite the huge numbers of gamers playing Teh Great Rebels With Authority Issues, most people /are/ more impressed by a higher status person than by a lower status one.)
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The Medieval Player's Manual from Green Ronin has some seriously badass rules for (Medieval) Academic Disputation treated as a combat, with all the weight and depth given to d20 combat.
The Penumbra line over at Eden games has a Social D&D trifecta of goodness - Dynasties and Demogogues for Political Intrigue, Crime and Punishment for Courtroom Drama, and (much less useful), Love and War has some stuff on Chivalry, but not much for what you want.
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I haven't had the opportunity to engage in any social combat yet, but I think it works a lot like physical combat, only substituting the appropriate Social attributes (Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance) for Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina (though I forget exactly what corresponds to what), and adding social skills like Performance and Presence to the roll as needed.
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I confess, I've always wanted to play in a game set at some high-level, finicky Court, like an Imperial China analogue, that was nearly /all/ intrigue and social-fu.
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I admit, an IN game would make me all warm and fuzzy, but there are plenty of other systems it could work for, too. :D
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I yearn for more IN. Crazy, strange system that it is, I am sad not to be involved in a steady game any more.
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The equivalent combat feats would be something like: "Demonstrate a headlock on another player" in order to get a +1 to hit.
Social Feats/abilities of the characters should /not/ rely, in my opinion, on the social abilities of the player, any more than Combat Feats/abilities should rely on the player's physical prowess.
But I'll still have to look it up...Feats are only a small part of the whole thing.
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That's why I like MUXing. People expect to wait at least a few minutes for a reply, so you have time to think of an appropriately devastating comeback to the insult that just got hurled at you without feeling like you're being put on the spot. :)
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Speaking of which, Birthright's probably worth a read or two there. Both systems make the domain itself the repository of a (vastly truncated or very different) sheet, for the most part, with abilities of the characters interacting with said sheet as they're designed to do so.
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...in other words, it's Exalted.
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That's a choice that a player is free to make, but the whinging I get when their choice becomes a negative in-game can be quite frustrating. A player won't argue with me if I tell him that his strength is too low to lift a portcullis, for example, but if I tell him that his 6 Charisma is too low to convince somebody of an outrageous lie or make a good impression upon a group of rich merchants, I get complaints.
Bah Humbug. Much of it could be overcome with decent roleplay, but we don't get much of that in my group, sadly.
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And, with d20, I think at least a part of it is that in the Core Book, Charisma is just not as well /defined/ in its influence and abilities as most of the physical attributes are. Charisma is this kind of vague mishmash of physical appearance, social acumen, and 'presence'. A high Charisma can mean a pretty person, and ordinary-looking person with a silver tongue, or an ugly and scarred general who is rough-spoken but massively imposing.
While skills help defining what 'kind' of Charisma a character has, it's still sort of just...out there.
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Hm. Hmmmmm.
I wonder if this is also partly a case of being terrified to let a GM have that much power. Either fear of railroading ("this NPC, Marietta Suzzannee, is SO CHARISMATIC that you MUST do as she asks!") or sadistic GMing ("you are locked in dungeons, stripped of all your gear, and mocked! Roll new characters"), or... something.
There's a primal fear to surrendering to NPCs that I do not understand, even though I have fringes of it myself.
A non-system specific set of suggestions for getting players willing to have their PCs surrender now and again... That might be very interesting as a gaming product.
Now, for a more pertinent comment... GURPS Goblins, of all things, has a Status mechanic that works more broadly than your suggested one, but hopefully could be scaled back...