I have a player with a Minstrel that has been using Sharp Tongue (RANK 3) as social combat during actual combat. He’s been wreaking people with it. The book says that allowing this sort of thing during combat is at GM discretion (page 99: "This might even be possible in the midst of combat").
I am torn — on one hand my player is a great role player, and his player isn’t much of a fighter, so it’s nice that he can be involved. On the other hand it doesn’t feel super realistic, and he is one shotting my NPCs (and last week, my mini-boss). I would love some advice/thoughts/shared experiences on this.
I asked over on the Free League discord and this were some of their suggestions:
* You could make them get mad at him and target him as a risk vs reward thing
* You could add disadvantage based on how noisy the fight is
* Fight fire with fire. Use monsters and opponents that deal Empathy damage.
* Also not everyone will be smart or dumb enough to get an insult, so you can have some stuff go right over their head
* Give the opponent bonuses to resist Manipulation while in combat, in order to have a 50% chance of success for the minstrel. And if he fails, he becomes a prime target. This way he should in the end think twice about using it, and he will be thrilled when succeeding.
Thank you in advance!