@mietze said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
I’m just saying I do not understand why loss of agency is not decried in the case of combat—but any attempt to use social skills to mitigate things (not reverse or dictate per de) is treated as if that means someone’s character is being puppetted.
Because you're confusing social skills with social powers. Strength, agility, stamina, these aren't skills - they are powers or if you prefer forces which affect the real world through physics. Charisma, manipulation, wits, these aren't powers - they are skills which affect nothing but the perceptions of others based on your employment of tactics, whether you learned them from reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or just lying to parents and teachers your whole life.
Firearms and melee, again, relate to the handling of physical objects that affect the real world through the application of forces. Intimidation and subterfuge, on the other hand, relate to particular forms of social maneuvering.
Your argument is literally identical to the argument that you should be able to mathematically win a gun or a knife fight by rolling Intelligence or Wits and some appropriate science or math skill, or that you should be able to punch a hole in a brick wall by succeeding on a Small Unit Tactics check.
Social skills are designed for use in situations where your target is unwitting or undecided. Charisma helps people like you better, which is fine if they just met you but if they're a cold-blooded assassin sent to kill you by a religious cult then why should they spare your life when the cult probably prepared them for this by making them kill their own family as an introductory task? Manipulation helps you lie better or convince somebody that your way of doing things is right, but using the example of the religious cult they have a whole mountain of indoctrination on one side of the scale and no matter how well you can possibly roll you can't amount to more than a few pebbles or maybe a rock on the other side without a months-long dedicated de-programming session first. Even intimidation, if somebody has you on your knees and a loaded gun to your head and some kind of payday waiting after they pull the trigger, isn't going to make any difference - they're already risking life in prison or the death penalty, and if that isn't incentive enough not to start out in the first place what on earth is begging for your life going to accomplish?
You see these things happen in movies because it's in the script. There's always some backstory explaining how or why the assassin was already willing to turn their back on their government or cult or occupation, and the begging is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Trying to replicate that effect in an RPG, with no backstory against the opposing character at all, is insane. It's an MMO or a MUD mentality.
If the assassin was your best friend since childhood sent to kill you by your mutual mob boss? Totally different conversation. Social roll it up.