clearstream
(He, Him)
My gods I know what you mean. I constantly wish to be more a peacemaker, read others posts more carefully, understand their point of view with greater empathy. And then...
Skills used by players on other players.
clearstream
(He, Him)
I believe that an important job (of the many jobs) that rules and DMs do, is validating player actions. If I rolled against a character ability that I invested in, and made it, I feel like I deserve it. If I just declare it happens... then that can come to feel invalid. There are narrative approaches that also work, although so far I find they serve smaller groups - one or two players - due to the effort to weave validation out of narrative alone.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
I suppose it depends on what you mean exactly by "rules." My read on D&D 5e is that since the DM is tasked with deciding whether or not there's some kind of roll to resolve your proposed action, then the best strategy (if more success than failure is the goal) is to work to remove uncertainty from the situation and/or the meaningful consequence of failure, if you're able to. Those two things need to be present for the DM to call for an ability check. Remove at least one of them and the DM doesn't call for a check (in theory). It's not always possible, but this seems like the appropriate way to approach it.
Class features, skill proficiencies, feats, equipment, Inspiration, etc. then become your "insurance," if you will, something that bends the chances of success in your favor for those times you do have to roll. With that in mind, I detect some contradictions when someone desires the dice to "ratify" their decisions and to make the action "real" when the best outcome is for the DM to simply narrate success instead of asking for a roll.
As an aside, I've discussed this with my regular players and they tell me that needing to roll an ability check in my games is fairly terrifying, compared to other games, because I do take the "meaningful consequence of failure" bit quite seriously. Rather than a result of "nothing happens," something will happen and it's not going to be good. So you want to avoid that roll if you can, and spend Inspiration if you fall short of automatic success. Which incentivizes the players to go after getting Inspiration more times per session, which naturally means the characters are being very colorfully portrayed according to their personal characteristics. It's an interesting feedback loop.
My gods I know what you mean. I constantly wish to be more a peacemaker, read others posts more carefully, understand their point of view with greater empathy. And then...
And then... somebody on the internet is WRONG!!!
Pretty much my first thought. I don't think I've seen anything in the rulebooks or official modules that refers to the DM having NPCs use social skills on PCs other than perhaps Deception (so a player can use Insight), and an NPC succeeding in that case only means that the PC can't tell if the NPC is being deceptive or not.
I think that having the PCs get to the villain's lair and having that villain tell them that "No, he's really a good guy, the PCs have no reason to oppose him, and they should actually give up all of their treasure to him" followed by telling the players that the villain successfully rolled a 34 on his Persuasion and therefore the PCs MUST do as the villain so reasonably suggested is a good way to never DM for those players again. Most players do NOT like the in game skills used on their characters to tell them what to do.
Heck, I'm not a fan of the social skills most of the time anyway, except for minor encounters where the DM really doesn't want to get into the NPC's head to figure out how they would respond and simply lets a roll determine the result.
TaranTheWanderer
Legend
Thinking about it a bit more:
The big issue is things like, "I grapple the my comrade" happens on the character level. It's a physical action that happens in the story itself.
"I disagree with my comrade" happens on the meta level. OOC, The player thinks about their character and decides how his or her character would react to what is happening in the story. Sometimes that's influenced by stats, or how you envision the personality of your character or sometimes it's based on Meta knowledge. Then the character reacts that way, on the narrative level.
This is why I think it's perfectly fine to discuss these things on the Meta level.
Bob wants to persuade Frank. Out of character, Bob asks Frank if Frank thinks his character can be convinced or lied to or whatever. This is how you get a character to buy-in.
But I see no reason why an NPC can't persuade a PC. "I know you aren't likely to help but this NPC wants to try to convince you to help them, against your character's better judgement. Is that reasonable? Ok, lets make it a test."
Obviously, you don't always have to make it a test. You can just rp the NPC and see if you can convince the player by playing to what you think would convince their character.
I think, with a normal physical conflict all the OOC consequences are assumed. Reaching 0 hit point (meta health)could result in defeat and possibly result in death. The stakes are assumed. If you lose, you might lose the McGuffin you were protecting.
There's no reason why you can't have a conflict where the stakes aren't assumed and where you need hammer those details out. Why should giving up the McGuffin always be a result of losing a fight? Why can't you set up a conflict where defeat means being convinced to give it up to someone? It would be an interesting way to run diplomatic talks which often involve the pcs trying to convince the NPCs but rarely involve the NPCs trying to convince the PCs.
In any case, as someone mentioned, I find, with PVP most players just hammer this crap out among themselves and if they want to settle it with roles, they will and it's the DMs role to be arbiter and make sure things are fair.
The big issue is things like, "I grapple the my comrade" happens on the character level. It's a physical action that happens in the story itself.
"I disagree with my comrade" happens on the meta level. OOC, The player thinks about their character and decides how his or her character would react to what is happening in the story. Sometimes that's influenced by stats, or how you envision the personality of your character or sometimes it's based on Meta knowledge. Then the character reacts that way, on the narrative level.
This is why I think it's perfectly fine to discuss these things on the Meta level.
Bob wants to persuade Frank. Out of character, Bob asks Frank if Frank thinks his character can be convinced or lied to or whatever. This is how you get a character to buy-in.
But I see no reason why an NPC can't persuade a PC. "I know you aren't likely to help but this NPC wants to try to convince you to help them, against your character's better judgement. Is that reasonable? Ok, lets make it a test."
Obviously, you don't always have to make it a test. You can just rp the NPC and see if you can convince the player by playing to what you think would convince their character.
I think, with a normal physical conflict all the OOC consequences are assumed. Reaching 0 hit point (meta health)could result in defeat and possibly result in death. The stakes are assumed. If you lose, you might lose the McGuffin you were protecting.
There's no reason why you can't have a conflict where the stakes aren't assumed and where you need hammer those details out. Why should giving up the McGuffin always be a result of losing a fight? Why can't you set up a conflict where defeat means being convinced to give it up to someone? It would be an interesting way to run diplomatic talks which often involve the pcs trying to convince the NPCs but rarely involve the NPCs trying to convince the PCs.
In any case, as someone mentioned, I find, with PVP most players just hammer this crap out among themselves and if they want to settle it with roles, they will and it's the DMs role to be arbiter and make sure things are fair.
TaranTheWanderer
Legend
Double post. If you are running social rolls this way, I can see why you dislike social skills.
This is what I"m talking about stakes. It doesn't matter if the villain rolls a 34 on persuasion. If the stakes were to simply let the Villain live while they take his loot, then the 34 just means he's done a good job at convincing them that he's not so bad and now they will let him live. Not to do whatever he tells them. If you establish what 'losing' and 'winning' means, then you obviously aren't going to end up with the problem of the characters being forced to do exactly what the villain wants.
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
Why isn’t Joining the villain a valid way to lose?
Not how *I'm* using them. But that's the OP and some others interpret them, where X rolled well (or over Y), thus X gets their way in having things happen. I don't think I've made it a hard and fast rule, but generally any attempt to influence somebody has to have a reasonable chance of success with what the PC's proposing. Otherwise, it's a "Nice try, but no matter how good a spin on it, they're not going to do it." Maybe they get a really good Persuasion roll, and the NPC softens slightly to them. However, most of the people I play with will not accept any attempts to use Persuasion/Intimidation/etc. on their PCs regardless of the softer approach in your example. Even in your example, where an NPC successfully persuades them to let them spare him, they might accept it but would have a good chance of being annoyed OOG.
Oofta
Legend
Do people really want to have an NPC that can defeat the PCs with a simple persuasion check that forces the PCs to surrender or accept that they should join team BBEG?
To me it's one thing for a villain to use deception, even a persuasion or intimidate check to influence behavior. But force it? I've always run that what works for the PCs works just as well for NPCs. But if I have a villain with a sky-high persuasion, I would never consider the possibility that the NPC could make a single opposed roll to convince the PCs he's really a good guy.
To me it's one thing for a villain to use deception, even a persuasion or intimidate check to influence behavior. But force it? I've always run that what works for the PCs works just as well for NPCs. But if I have a villain with a sky-high persuasion, I would never consider the possibility that the NPC could make a single opposed roll to convince the PCs he's really a good guy.
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