©2017 Your Name Here 1
Supplemental Rules: Social Combat
This Is Playtest Material
The material here is presented for playtesting and to
spark your imagination. These game mechanics are in
draft form, usable in your campaign but not refined by
design iterations or full game development and
editing. They aren’t officially part of the game and
aren’t permitted in D&D Adventurers League events.
If you decide you enjoy this material, it will be refined
based on your feedback, and then it will appear in a
Dungeon Masters Guild book.
A band of heroes stands before a frightened
crowd. They must rally the village to gather
resources and prepare to defend against the
coming marauders. Dissenting voices call for
retreat, others border on panic. The adventurers
exhort them to steel their will and follow their
cunning plan.
A paladin stands before the magistrates, ready to
present a case. Her roguish friend is in trouble
again, and this time it might be serious. Without
her friend's blades and keen eye for traps, they'll
never recover the relic in the dungeon.
Ten heavily robed figures stand over the body of
the Grand Magus. Before he can be entombed, they
must choose his successor from among their
number. They have been preparing positions and
alliances all through the Grand Magus's waning
years. The vote must be cast at dawn.
When to Use Social Combat
The three pillars of RPGs are combat,
exploration, and social interaction. Each can take
focus or be mixed together to create dynamic
worlds and tense scenes. Combat, of course, has
the most intricate mechanics and is tuned to
make physical conflict dramatic while keeping
the action moving. Exploration is handled with
Survival, Perception, Investigation, and other
checks to navigate traps, obstacles, and
distances.
Social interactions are usually represented with
one or two dice rolls using a Charisma linked
skill. This is great for a one-on-one interaction, a
quick deception, or short-term intimidation.
There are other kinds of social interactions that
make for great scenes and gameplay, though.
©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes
These homebrew rules are meant to support
those.
These rules aren't intended to replace the need
for roleplay. Very few players, however, have
experience in high stakes negotiations,
formalized debate, or even public speaking. Some
players may be uncomfortable with
confrontational conversation, even in roleplay,
and it's important to make your table fun for
them, too. When the party's barbarian lifts up a
portcullis, the GM doesn't lead the player to a set
of weights and make them do 10 reps. Rule
mechanics exist to provide resolution when PCs
are better (or worse!) at something than their
player. Additionally, most of the time social
confrontations are handled by a single character
in the group. This leaves the rest of the players at
the table without much to do. Employing social
combat rules brings everyone into the action.
Social Combat Mechanics
The Social Combat mechanics are intended to
mimic physical combat in as many ways as
possible. This is the basic concept for making
rule arbitration. The key difference is that mental
attributes will be substituted for physical
attributes. In general, substitute attributes as
follows:
• Strength = Logic
• Dexterity = Wisdom
• Constitution = Charisma
Except for attacks, when a bonus or modifier is
called for and more than one character is
speaking for the case, use the highest bonus or
modifier in the group.
Crafting a Case
Your case is a representation of the points and
arguments that support your goals or
conclusions. In social combat, it is the equivalent
of a creature that is created, defended, and given
attacks based on the skills of the participants
arguing for it.
Roll for Hit Points: First establish the initial
strength of your case by determining Hit Points.
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In the same way that physical Hit Points Social Armor Class Modifiers
represent resiliency, vitality, and resistance to Social Status Social AC
damage, Hit Points in social combat represent Ascribed Status
how robustly the points you've laid out can Inherited Wealth 11 + Wisdom
withstand critique and inquiry. (money, land, small
Make a Charisma (Persuasion) roll. The base DC business, etc.)
is 10, which gives your case 10 hit points. You
Inherited Minor Title 12 + Wisdom
gain an additional 1d10 Hit Points for each
(courtier, large business,
increment of 3 over the DC (+1d10 at DC 13,
etc.)
+2d10 at DC 16, +3d10 at DC 19, etc.). If multiple
PCs are making the case, any of them that roll Inherited Major Title 13 + Wisdom
above 10 count as an extra +3 to the top roll. This (duke, sheriff)
is your case's maximum hit points.
NPCs usually make the same roll for opposing Inherited Ruling Title 14 + Wisdom
(monarch, crime boss)
cases. In some cases, NPCs are advocating instead
for the “status quo;” that is, they don't have a
Advanced Age 12 + Wisdom
personal case or directly opposing view but are
invested in whatever state of affairs the Dominant Species 11 + Wisdom
characters seek to change. When this happens, (where applicable)
the GM should choose an appropriate challenge Achieved Status
rating for the social encounter and refer to the
Earned Wealth 12 + Wisdom
“Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating” table on (money, land, small
pg. 274 of the DMG to assign hit points to the business, etc.)
opposing case.
Determine Armor Class: AC in social combat is Earned Minor Title 13 + Wisdom
the measurement of how difficult it is to land a (senior clergy, guard
sergeant)
convincing argument against a case (and
therefore reduce its HP). Insight into your
Earned Major Title 14 + Wisdom
opponents upcoming attacks combines with (city councilor, college
recognized social status to reduce the impact of dean)
your critics' arguments.
A case's base Armor class is 10 + Wisdom Earned Ruling Title 15 + Wisdom
modifier. If any character arguing for the case is (governor, captain of the
guard)
proficient in Insight, then add that character's
proficiency bonus. This base AC is then modified
Heroic Accomplishment 13 + Wisdom
by any special social status recognized by those
involved. Titles, wealth, awards for heroic feats, Divine Power 12 + Wisdom
even advanced age could make attacking your
position more difficult while remaining civil and
sympathetic. Much like armor, a case's AC can
only be modified by a single status at once,
Social Combat Rounds
known as the master status. One round of social combat represents one
There are two types of status that add to Social minute of engagement. This is not set in stone.
AC, ascribed and achieved status. Ascribed status Sometimes a formalized social combat, like city
refers to social status that is inherited or given council debate or court proceedings, will have a
without personal effort. Achieved status refers to different pace. One minute is intended to be a
honors that have been earned through work or baseline.
expertise. See the table for suggested modifiers.

©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes 3

Actions in combat represent the give and take
played out in debate and conversational duels.
Each character involved in advancing a case may
take one action and one bonus action, listed
below.
If enough characters are involved that initiative is
relevant, roll 1d20 + Wisdom modifier.
Social Combat Actions
Attack: Employ one of a variety of methods to
weather down your opponents' case. Choose an
attack type representing the type of argument
you're using. Each is linked to a mental attribute
and has its own damage dice. Roll 1d20 and add
the attribute modifier linked to the rhetorical
weapon, then compare it to your opposing case's
AC.
• Logos (Int): 1d10 + Int. A logical appeal to
convince an audience by use of facts or
reason. Arguments based on legal
precedent, empirical evidence, and logical
conclusions fall into this category.
• Ethos (Wis): 1d8 + Wis. An ethical appeal
to convince an audience of the character's
credibility, or degrade that of their
opponents. Statements about
accomplishments, level of bias, or
connections and affiliation are Ethos
attacks.
• Pathos (Cha): 1d6 + Cha. An emotional
appeal means to persuade an audience by
appealing to their virtues, vices, and
bonds. This could represent calling for
mercy or unity, whipping up anger, or
relying on greed.
A player should roll their attack before role-
playing their character's action. If a character is
proficient in Performance, Persuasion, Deception,
or Intimidation they may choose to frame their
attack in such a way that they may add their
Proficiency bonus (but not the skill's linked
attribute, as that is determined by Logos, Ethos,
or Pathos). Expertise in a skill grants double
proficiency as usual.
©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes
• Performance: A character may use
relevant works of poetry or oration to
make their point.
• Persuasion: The most widely useful skill
in social combat, this is any attack that
highlights the benefits of a case using true
statements.
• Deception: Attacks may use false
information or manipulative language to
change opinions.
• Intimidation: Attacks can be framed to
invoke negative effects of opposition or
work to play on fear.
Deflect: By focusing on answering and opposing
opponents' points, you inflict disadvantage on
any attacks on your case until your next turn.
Cast a Spell: Spells with a casting time of more
than 1 action can be cast as a social combat
action, up to a casting time of 1 minute. Spells
with a casting time of more than 1 minute can be
cast over multiple rounds if the caster is
uninterrupted.
Help: A character can take their action to support
an ally by suggesting arguments, disparaging
attackers, having facts and figures ready, or even
cheering at the right time. When a character takes
the Help action, their player chooses an ally. That
ally gains advantage on their next attack.
Redirect: Turning the conversation to address
points that have already been made can refocus
parts of your case that have been weakened. This
action adds 1d8 hit points to your case.
Social Combat Bonus Actions
Shield: Proactively addressing weak points in
your case can foil incoming arguments. This gives
your case +2 AC until your next turn. A case may
benefit from up to two Shield actions.
Cast a Spell: Spells with a casting time of 1 action
or less can be cast as a bonus action in social
combat.
Pathos Attack: Of all rhetorical attacks, Pathos is
the quickest to invoke and the easiest to weave
linguistically into another attack. As a bonus
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action, a character may make an attack with
Pathos, using the rules above.
Social Combat Resolution
Social combats usually end in one of two ways. In
situations with a time limit, there will come a
time when a decision must be made, at which
point the case with the most hit points will be the
most likely to sway those making decisions.
Sometimes this decision is made by a single
judge, an audience, or the participants
themselves. In most other social combats, only
one case emerges with hit points left. This could
also happen during a timed combat, which would
leave all other cases completely undercut and
invalidated before judgment would regularly be
made.
When a case reaches 0 hit points, it becomes very
vulnerable. Some inherent flaw has been exposed
in the case, or the crowd has completely turned
against one side.
If a case receives damage that would drop it to 0
hit points and the remaining damage equals or
exceeds the case's maximum hit points, the case
is dead. Its points are so completely undercut that
not even the most persuasive argument can sway
judgment in its favor, or characters arguing in its
favor have been thoroughly discredited. The
case's allies may themselves have been swayed.
If damage reduces a case to 0 hit points without
killing it, it is in dire straits but it can be salvaged.
Attacks on a case with 0 hit points are made at
advantage.
If your case is at 0 hit points at the beginning of
your turn, you can only take two kinds of actions,
unless it is also stable.
Death Saves: If the roll is 10 or higher, you
succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure
has no effect by itself. On your third success, your
case becomes stable (see below). On your third
failure, your case dies. The successes and failures
don't need to be consecutive; keep track of both
until you collect three of a kind. The number of
both is reset to zero when your case becomes
stable.
©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes
When you make a death saving throw and roll a 1
on the d20, it counts as two failures. If you roll a
20 on the d20, your case regains 1 hit point.
Stabilizing a Case: A character may use their
action to attempt to revive elements of the case
and re-engage. You can use an action to make a
DC 10 Wisdom (Insight) check to stabilize the
case. A stable case no longer requires a saving
throw, and its allies may once again take actions
normally (including, importantly, the Redirect
action).
Damage at 0 Hit Points: If a case takes any
damage while it has 0 hit points, it suffers a death
saving throw failure. If the damage is from a
critical hit, it suffers two failures instead. If the
damage equals or exceeds your case's hit point
maximum, your case suffers instant death.
Social Combat and PC Options
There are many options available to player
characters that could come into play during a
social combat. Feats, background features, class
features, and spells can all alter the field one way
or the other. Since the social combat rules use
clear parallels with the combat system players
are familiar with, it should be easy to adjudicate
the effects of these features.
Generally, any effect that influences Charisma-
based checks should count towards social combat
attacks, since they use Charisma-linked skill
proficiencies. Features that add to attacks
without denoting ranged or melee and without
some damaging or physical effect should also
apply to attacks.
In this section, we'll list a few illustrations of how
common options can effect social combats. This
list won't be exhaustive, of course, but it should
help illustrate common effects and how to treat
them.
Backgrounds
Charlatan: Your False Identity feature may
qualify for higher status AC than your character
would otherwise have.
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City Watch: Depending on the status of the City
Watch in the setting, this could confer a higher
achieved status AC.
Folk Hero: This background may qualify for the
Heroic Achievement AC status.
Noble: While Position of Privilege provides an
obvious ascribed status, the Knight variant's
Retainers may be able to take actions in social
combat (at the DM's discretion).
Feats
Actor: A skilled Actor could take the risk of
assuming someone else's status AC during
combat, as long as their deception holds.
Diplomat: The charm effect of this feat does not
automatically fail during social combat. If your
check succeeds, the target is charmed and
becomes unable to make attacks against your
case.
Empathic: During social combat, this feat can be
activated as a bonus action and must be used on
the turn that it's activated.
Historian: This feat's bonus may be added to
allies' social combat attacks, as well as other
checks as normal.
Inspiring Leader: When a character with this
feat presents a case, that case gains a hit point
bonus equal to the character's level + your
Charisma modifier.
Menacing: A character may activate this feat's
benefits as a bonus action during social combat.
Example of Social Combat
Scraigon's sorcerer, a lizardfolk named Giz, needs
to rally his tribe to leave their swamp hollow. He's
discovered a mystical taint that's going to
overwhelm the lizardfolk village within the week.
Since Giz is known to have served the tribe well in
matters of the outside world, the village elder
Ihrtos has called the village together to hear Giz's
case. Gururt, the village's wealthiest hunter, is
loathe to abandon hunting grounds so familiar
and challenges Giz's claims.
©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes
Scraigon begins by making his case. Giz has an 18
Charisma, the Courtier background, and the
Diplomat feat (which grants double his
proficiency bonus). This means, at 5th level, he
rolls 1d20 and adds + 10. He rolls a 13, totaling
23. This means his case gets +4d10 to it's base 10
Hit Points. After he rolls these, his case has 31 Hit
Points.
Giz's Courtier background is an achieved status,
and his Wisdom bonus is +2. This gives his case
an AC of 15.
The GM determines that convincing the tribe to
take such drastic action as relocating over 100
lizardfolk, hatchlings and all, is a Challenge Rating
of 5 and assigns the case for the status queue 140
Hit Points. She also determines that Ihrtos will
only hear debate for 10 minutes (10 rounds)
before retiring to rest and deliberate. Since
Gururt is the most vocal opponent, she'll use his
statistics to to determine AC and take actions.
Gururt's Wisdom bonus is +3 and he has Earned
Wealth, so the status quo case also has an AC of
15. Giz has a strong case, but his work is cut out
for him.
Round 1
The GM rolls initiative using Gururt's Wisdom
bonus and beats Scraigon's roll. Gururt is
proficient in Intimidation and his best mental
attribute is Wisdom. The GM decides that he'll
make an Ethos attack framed with Intimidation.
She rolls a 9, and adds Gururt's proficiency and
Wisdom bonus to make 15. This is a hit, so Gururt
rolls 1d8 + Wis and deals 7 damage to Giz's case.
Gururt will use his bonus action to follow this up
with a Pathos attack, still using Intimidation.
This time the GM rolls a natural 20, so she rolls
2d4. Gururt has no Charisma bonus, and she rolls
6 damage for him.
Gururt jumps to his feet. “Our lands bring us great
riches! We claimed the finest point along the river
by the might of our tribe. If we relinquish it now,
who knows where this taint will chase us? Our
hatchlings will starve if we cannot find hunting
grounds as fertile as this.”
Gururt begins reciting the lineage of powerful
warriors that have stood in many battles, and the
clever wonder-workers that make magic for the
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tribe. He tells of other crises the tribe has faced
and how these mighty lizardfolk stood against
them.
“We do not run! Not from fey, not from soft skins,
and not from sickness in the magic. If we run, we
will show weakness to all that want what we have
and never again know rest in this or any land.”
Scraigon sees that his case only has 18 hit points
left. He can't take another round like that. He
decides to activate Giz's Diplomat feat as an
action. Gururt is proficient in Insight, but when
Scaigon rolls Giz's Persuasion, it is too much to
overcome. Gururt becomes charmed.
As a bonus action, Scraigon chooses to attack
with Pathos, using Persuasion. He rolls a 14,
adding +10 for his Persuasion and Charisma.
Scoring a hit, he rolls 1d6 + Cha and scores 6
damage.
Giz carefully chooses moments to agree heartily,
and enthusiastically echoes Gururt's points about
the strength of the tribe and it's notable members.
Before Gururt knows it, his points have been stolen
out from under him, and he is inadvertently
agreeing with Giz's interjections of praise.
Gururt pauses, trying to think of another tribe
member to praise when Giz cuts in softly. “We are
mighty, and our tests have built that might. Facing
this new journey can only make us mightier.”
Round 2
Gururt is charmed and can't make attacks, but the
GM still has plenty of actions to choose from.
Gururt only needs to keep the status queue case
intact to win, and so the GM decides to take the
Deflect action, followed up with a Shield bonus
action. Scraigon now has to hit a 17 AC with
disadvantage. Gururt can't attack, but the GM
doesn't have to end the encounter or even to
make it easy.
On Scraigon's turn, he knows he won't be facing
damage to his case. He also knows that he has
limited time to deal as much damage as possible.
He takes the Attack action, this time framing a
Logos attack with Persuasion. After disadvantage,
he rolls a 8 and adds +7 for his Persuasion
proficiency and Intelligence modifier, resulting in
a 15. A miss. Something about his logic failed to
make the point.
©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes
As a bonus action, he attacks with Pathos, again
framed with Persuasion. At disadvantage, he rolls
an 8 again, but this time adds his Persuasion
proficiency and Charisma modifier for a total of
+10.
Rolling 1d6 +4, he deals 7 damage. Giz tries to
leverage the momentum over the strength of the
tribe by comparing them favorably to the
liazardfolk and soft-skins down the river, but
Gururt continually points out that they are
stronger on their home ground.
Stymied, Giz stresses the threat of the corruption.
“Even on unknown ground, we are mighty enough
to face any challenge on the road. But even at our
strongest, and with all our allies present, we will
wither here and eventually be hunted like soft-
skins.” Ihrtos nods at this.
Rounds 3-6
The next few rounds go on like this. Gururt
remains charmed, but continues to make it
difficult for Giz to score much damage. Scraigon
and the GM trade a few quips and describe the
attacks and defense.
At the end of round 6, Gururt's case is still sitting
at 97 hit points. Scraigon's still has the 18 that
were left after round 1. Scraigon knows that the
math is against him and time is running out.
Round 7
Gururt continues to defend on his action, keeping
the case's AC at 17 and imposing disadvantage for
the round.
Scraigon decides to change his tactics, and risks
breaching the tribe's etiquette. He spends a
sorcery point to activate his Subtle metamagic
and casts Suggestion on Gururt as a bonus action.
Scraigon decides he'll suggest that Gururt just sit
quietly and listen. Gururt rolls 13 to save, and
fails. He's already taken his actions for the round,
so the bonuses he granted remain.
Scraigon follows this up with a Logos attack,
needing as much damage as possible. This time
his roll totals 19, and he deals 9 damage.
“Gururt, you are suggesting that we can stand firm
against a flaw in the forces of nature. This is not a
fight that can be won with teeth. Please, listen
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quietly a while, and I'll make it clear exactly what's
coming for us.”
Gururt, frustrated but compliant, takes his seat
and offers no further opposition.
Resolution
Scraigon now has three unopposed rounds to
take the status quo case's HP down and raise his
own case's HP. He'll have to balance actions spent
on Redirect with Attacks and hope the dice do
him some favors.
At the end of the allotted time, the GM compares
the remaining hit points of the cases and uses
them as a guide to determine whether Ihrtos is
swayed or not, and what actions he'll direct the
tribe to take in the face of this new threat.

©2019 Thomas Edrington and Scraigon Earhart-Stokes 8