Pedantry maybe, but this is several (dozen?) orders of magnitudes off.
The Kurosawa enovy wasn't referencing Head Nod #235271 in the Lore Update, every movement she made was within a library of dozens or hundreds. If the envoy can do it, then we know it's possible and it's very tractable for someone with a powerful memory like Hazou. The empirical evidence does not agree with your interpretation (which is itself incompatible with an Iron Nerve usable during combat, which is even more chaotic and nuanced that socialization).
If Iron Nerve were vulnerable to combinatorial complexity in the manner you fear, Hazou would find it impossible to use Iron Nerve to enter a fighting stance. A fighting stance at the superhuman levels ninja operate on requires more nuance and precision than a social pose. It is explicitly not the case that a Kurosawa has to memorize an entire full-body configuration for any given movement - I believe
@Jello_Raptor had a modular-processing based thesis on Iron Nerve computation which squared with the available evidence.
Ok, obviously more working memory is going to help, but the same argument applies to existing social skills, which don't use Int in this manner. If we're actually even arguing about anything anymore, it's this.
Normal socialization is completely different from "search through a library of expressions, deploy the most appropriate for this situation, execution is guaranteed." Normal socialization is "improvise based on circumstances, with mental resources divided between strategy and physical execution / delivery."
The specialty skill we are talking about refers only to nonverbal communication; word choice remains in the realm of Diplo / Decep. It is a processing layer that facilities extremely consistent and capable nonverbal communication by using the Iron Nerve, primarily by searching through a library of hundreds / thousands of expressions. From what you're saying, you agree that INT is the primary Attribute used in the search but believe it would take hundreds of INT to be practical because the search space would traverse billions of options. But that's already been disproven by the Lore Update, as mentioned above. Hundreds of options is empirically enough to negotiate well on an international level.
So, again, INT to organize and utilize the library, MAN or WITS to strategize and decide which elements to put together when. MAN seems more likely, but it must be easier than normal Decep or Diplo because execution is taken care of. Hence, INT x 2 MAN x3, or INT x2 MAN x4 WITS x4.
Sure. I just think it's unlikely to happen, because Int-as-established doesn't really translate well to socials-as-established. Probably not impossible to create something that does this well, but my objection in the first place was predicated on rejecting something that was very obviously an attempt to start from nodes "immensely useful to character" and "using something we have plenty of without any real cost" and then making a passing Nara-like stretch but not expending any great deal of effort towards the "actually makes sense given established mechanics" node.
Again, I feel like your paradigm is extremely uncharitable to the playerbase. I understand it's your genuine feeling, but I think your particular cluster of intuitions is extremely inappropriate for evaluating my proposal.
To say that the "payoff stage" is simply "getting something without any real cost" is just a complete values clash. Your previous statements clearly indicate you think there should be some kind of payoff stage. It is internally inconsistent to believe the payoff stage should exist and then to immediately turn around and label our actions "attempting to get something without any real cost." The cost was the INT investment, which consumed enormous amounts of XP but had no benefit besides serving as a pre-req.
I do not understand your preoccupation with existing mechanics. While they are a useful guideline, most of the existing mechanics outside the core ruleset were written by the players. I think Dealmaking and parts of the new Med skills are the primary exceptions. Roki, Iron Nerve, Frozen Skein etc were all written by the players. That said, I do not see any part of my original proposal that does not "make sense given established mechanics." An x2 requirement Primary Skill should have a high power level, as both Diplo and Decep are x2 Primaries. And you agree with me that INT is the most logical primary skill for memory & recall, given that petaflops are not required (as I proved above). Not to mention if the power level is too low, players simply won't be interested in spending XP on it.
Given the outcome is good for everyone (Hazou finally gets to the payoff stage, Players have much less fear of voting for social interaction, GMs have much more freedom in writing social scenes), an Attribute x2 (or x1, if the GMs prefer) Skill should be appropriately powerful for its steep requirements, and Intelligence actually is the primary attribute when dealing with memory and recall of large libraries.
"Players have much less fear of voting for social interaction" is probably the most important of those factors. The players have seen what trying to socialize with Hazou's skill levels and plan complications leads to, so without a strong social boost Hazou is going to be confined to extremely awkward or tediously structured interactions forever
, which is bad because he's our
viewpoint character. Hazou's skill levels are so low partially because he dumped a large fraction of his XP into INT, XP that is currently only supporting one Skill, so to me it makes perfect sense to solve all these problems in one stroke.
