I’m DMing a 5e game and I really don’t like how tacked-on social encounters feel. I could certainly use some homebrew systems, but tracking them is still fairly arbitrary since 5e just doesn’t have good underlying mechanics for them.
I really like the implementation in Modiphius’ Infinity 2d20 system, where you have separate “wound” trackers for combat, social encounters, and hacking. Combat of all 3 types works basically the same too; there’s no need to learn wildly different rules. I played the Song of Ice & Fire RPG a while ago and remember liking its implementation too, though I don’t remember the rules.
What are some other systems that treat social encounters with the same importance as combat?
I second Genesys especially for social encounters. It doesn’t over complicate but enables doing “damage” in a back and forth between sides through opposing checks depending on the argument approach. Also as a system it greatly lends itself to role playing and descriptive play through the mechanics themselves.