). And I was thinking, you'd never be able to pull something like this off in D&D because the players would always want to take advantage of their stunned opponent and just attack them, screw any monologue!4E seems to be very focused on combat, with little encouragement or focus on roleplay. Just look at the powers, 95% of them are combat related.
So I had this idea the other day. Have an additional category for Roleplay Powers. Make it seperate so that you don't take anything away from players who want to pick combat-related powers. Here is an example of what I was thinking of.
Stunning Monolgue Defender Attack 1
You get your opponent in a compromising position, giving you time to try and appeal to their senses.
Daily ✦ Roleplay, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Primary Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. Reflex
Hit: Opponent is stunned until the end of the encounter. If any side uses an Attack Power
Effect: You and your allies gain a +4 power bonus to Diplomacy checks when interacting with the stunned target, as long as the target remains stunned.
Special: If you or your allies make an attack while the opponent is stunned, they immediately lose the stunned condition and may take their full turn before your or your allies can react. This may change the initiative order.
maybe you should be able to make people surrender with any social skill diplomacy or bluff
maybe that would decreace intimerdates powers
So yeah, your idea is kind of unnecessary.
Also, there's a reason that there are few mechanics for role-playing; it's just a bad idea in general. The game should not tell me or my group how to role play. We will role play the way we want to, and we don't need special mechanics to role play well.
So go ahead and let your players engage their opponents in dramatic dialogue, but there's absolutely no need for it to exist mechanically or impact mechanics at all.
To encourage Roleplay in my group i have implemented a reward system, whereby if a player does some amazing roleplay, or gives a heartfelt monologue, or bring up their characters history/background when it's relevant, I give them an RP token (a red poker chip!).
They can use these chips one of two ways; Spend 1 chip for a +2 to attack or damage for one attack (only one token per round), or, exchange 5 tokens for an action point.
This may, on the face of it, appear a bit powerful, but im pretty stingy with handing them out. I have noticed a big improvement in the groups efforts to roleplay.
Example: My party and I were try to escape a group of Ninjas in a 1930s-era seaplane. The start up time on the plane was something like four minutes...we would have been toast. I dropped the Monologue card, and rampled on about how, as a 1940s pulp-hero sidekick, the only thing that had been going well for me in the present was finding out that you can get pre-mixed cherry coke in shatter-proof bottles (perfect for you utility belt, if you don't mind the fizz!) That game session was fourteen years ago, and I still laugh about it.