D&D 5E Menacing and Diplomat from UA Skill Feats

[Jester David]

While I agree with some of your considerations about Diplomat and its effects in the game (I'll use some stuff in this thread when I answer the survey), I don't think that either feats are easy to get or skill bonus are easy to accumulate. Feats are hard to come by, and most characters who would want to take Diplomat as a feat would be better just maxing out their main ability scores before doing that. Charm person (the spell), on the other hand, is really easy to get. I'd go as far as saying that it's hard to think of a 1st level party with no way to access charm person. You'd have to go without a Druid, Wizard, Sorcerer, Warlock or Bard to end in that situation, and if that's the case, I believe it's a good thing that any character can get a similar ability with a feat.

The difference, spells and the like have a saving throw. And things like Magic Resistance and Legendary Resistance.
Diplomat's Insight roll to counter is basically a Wisdom save without the above. But instead of a set DC you roll *and* get to double your proficiency. Provided you roll higher than an 8 the save DC would be higher...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you are in melee with the target it can break down to 1 attack to give the enemy disadvantage on all their attacks. Good, but not gamebreaking against a single foe most of the time.

Nitpick: it's disadvantage on all their attacks and ability checks. Including, for example, its next attempt to resist your Menacing; or its attempt to resist the Grapple/Prone you inflict with two of your other attacks in order to give advantage to all of your allies' melee attacks and free up that 1 attack per turn so you don't need to keep re-applying Menacing every turn.

It's still not overpowered to this powergamer's eye, mostly because it only works on humanoids at close range. But I dislike the design. For one thing, Wisdom (Insight) seems like the wrong opposed roll--am I supposed to believe that being brave requires you to be trained in interpreting interpersonal nuance? Bah! Humbug! It should be checking against morale, but 5E doesn't have a Morale stat, so UA settles for something that is easy, obvious and wrong. It would be somewhat less wrong to resist the check with the monster's highest attack roll bonus (as a proxy for its self-confidence, thus resistance to intimidation). Note that the DMG Disarm maneuver already does this: opposed roll between attack roll and skill check, although in the other direction.

So I'm actually fine with the idea of a fighter burning an attack to try to intimidate a foe, and I'd let you do so with no feat required, and so I dislike the feat both on the grounds that it's imposing an unnecessary feat tax, and because the implementation is poor.

 

[flametitan]

Nitpick: it's disadvantage on all their attacks and ability checks. Including, for example, its next attempt to resist your Menacing; or its attempt to resist the Grapple/Prone you inflict with two of your other attacks in order to give advantage to all of your allies' melee attacks and free up that 1 attack per turn so you don't need to keep re-applying Menacing every turn.

It's still not overpowered to this powergamer's eye, mostly because it only works on humanoids at close range. But I dislike the design. For one thing, Wisdom (Insight) seems like the wrong opposed roll--am I supposed to believe that being brave requires you to be trained in interpreting interpersonal nuance? Bah! Humbug! It should be checking against morale, but 5E doesn't have a Morale stat, so UA settles for something that is easy, obvious and wrong. It would be somewhat less wrong to resist the check with the monster's highest attack roll bonus (as a proxy for its self-confidence, thus resistance to intimidation). Note that the DMG Disarm maneuver already does this: opposed roll between attack roll and skill check, although in the other direction.

So I'm actually fine with the idea of a fighter burning an attack to try to intimidate a foe, and I'd let you do so with no feat required, and so I dislike the feat both on the grounds that it's imposing an unnecessary feat tax, and because the implementation is poor.

What about an opposed roll vs your Charisma saving throw? Charisma in 5e represents your sense of willpower and presence (and already reflects resisting standing your ground against things like possession.)

I could see a Charisma saving throw being made to represent your stubbornness against a foe trying to scare you off.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What about an opposed roll vs your Charisma saving throw? Charisma in 5e represents your sense of willpower and presence (and already reflects resisting standing your ground against things like possession.)

I could see a Charisma saving throw being made to represent your stubbornness against a foe trying to scare you off.

That's plausible.

You could also just make it a Charisma save against e.g. a flat DC (6 + Charisma (Intimidation) bonus), no opposed roll.

 

[Hussar]

It's not 10 rounds, it's 1 minute. It's spending 60 seconds flattering or delaying the dragon from attacking (how long did Bilbo interact with the dragon) and then it is unable to target you with attacks and you have advantage maintaining the charm so long as you keep talking.
You can just imagine players pullling up a stopwatch as they talk and saying "okay, that's 61 seconds. Make an Insight check. Legendary Resistance doesn't apply."

But, that's the thing. The opponent had to be pretty willing not to eat you in the first place. You had to spend at least one minute delaying the monster from attacking you. Which, likely, took at least one Diplomacy check. Which had to succeed. It's not like you just stand around whistling in the wind while the 1 minute passes. If the creature was hostile to begin with, likely combat will start before that 1 minute is up.

And, note, I'm presuming that the feat will be changed that if you attack the target, it is no longer charmed. That's a bit of a no-brainer and an obvious oversight.

And, note, in that 1 minute, you CANNOT attack the dragon. At all. Any offensive actions on the party blocks the feat. If you can stand in front of a dragon for a full minute, convince it not to attack you, and not do anything offensive, I'd say you earned a charmed effect.

And, as far as granting free charms goes, let's not get too far off the ranch here. It takes a minute to take effect. That's a BIG deal. By the time you manage to get the charm effect in place, most likely there wasn't going to be any combat in the first place. All this does is codify that. I don't see this having much of a practical effect very often.

If the potential for abuse is low, the ability for use is also low. Then why does it matter if the feat goes away or is completely reworked?

Why do you think the ability use is low? I can think of many situations where this could really help. Any scouting action particularly. Lets you get past that open door without worry. Let's you do all sorts of things, without having to resort to magic in order to do what you're supposed to do.

---------

And Menacing again, is just not really a problem. It's so short ranged, and it eats your attack, and, in order for it to be reliable, you need to burn so many character resources that it's not even funny. I really don't see what the issue here is.

 

[Satyrn]

Heh. Sorry, was reading without my glasses, [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION].

The thing is, by the rules, the player CAN'T try this. Full stop. You cannot enter a clearly seen area with stealth.

In my post you quoted, I referred to the rule that says the players can try it, though. Well, tecnically, it says the DMs can rule it's possible but that amounts to the same thing.

It's in the sidebar on hiding.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am not particularly hyped by this sort of feats, but I think they would be fine, I wouldn't have much problems allowing them.

Basically, these two feats in particular allow a character to "upgrade" their skill to replicate the effects of a spell.

• IMHO, charmed and frightened supernatural conditions and should not be the result of a skill check. An NPC may find you charming, or be frightened of you. I may even borrow from those conditions - but I want more flexibility to deal with results than the conditions allow.

I don't think that conditions themselves are supernatural, in general. And these two feats seem to be intended as non-magical in nature.

It's true that these feats aren't flexible. If a PC tries to charm or intimidate an opponent with normal means, typically the DM is quite free to handle the situation the way she wants, while these feats grant a clear-cut result.

• Many, if not most, players will expect to follow the wording of the text which is very mechanical. "If you do X you get a contested skill check. If you succeed Y condition is imposed on the target".

I think at least the DM can choose to give (dis)advantage to either roll, but once the opposed checks are done, the effects should pretty much conform to the description of the condition.

• A PC is far more likely to win an opposed skill check than a target failing a save. Based on a quick check of stats from a spreadsheet I downloaded, creatures in the MM have a +1 to their insight check. At a certain point, depending on the build, a PC is guaranteed to win every skill check against the vast majority of creatures.

This is probably true, especially if the PC was already proficient and now also got double bonus from the feat.

Rather than just drop the whole idea, if the problem is that overall they are too strong feats compared to others, I'd just remove the ability increase from them, to tone the feats down. The various restrictions could also be revised, e.g. limiting Diplomat to humanoids only.

• In addition, certain monsters have counters to spells. Either the capability to literally cast Counterspell, magic resistance, legendary saves. No such mechanic applies to contested skill checks.

Yes, and this makes a non-magic ability that replicates a spell definitely better than the original spell.

I think this is actually a good idea, much more interesting that granting the PC the ability of casting Charm Person or Cause Fear. Because in general the game already has quite a lot of magical abilities... IMHO it's better to add non-magical options rather than even more magical ones! In addition, it can serve low-magic settings or "grim'n'gritty" adventures better.

As for the action economy of Menacing, I am not really sure... I think it's ok as an attack, but if you change it, what are you going to replace it with? A bonus action? The problem is that as a bonus action it then gets in the way of other class abilities.

 

[Hussar]

Let's break down the diplomacy feat and unpack it completely. The feat grants, after 1 minute the following two effects:

1. Advantage on diplomacy checks
2. The baddy won't attack you.

Now, let's back up a second. Any group with a rogue with expertise in Diplomacy gets the same bonus as this feat grants. A second PC with diplomacy (hardly a rare thing) can grant Advantage on every single diplomacy check. Now, since I haven't heard a single whisper of a complaint along the lines of a Diplomancer dominating the game, I'd say it's pretty obvious that granting advantage on a high diplomacy skill is not game breaking. In three years of 5e, no one has complained about this, so, AFAIC, it's a complete non-issue.

Which gets to the second part- the no attacking. Thing is, if you step back for a second, you realize pretty quickly that this won't actually apply very often. If you've used diplomacy on an NPC to change its reaction to neutral or better, why is that NPC attacking you? By the time the charm effect kicks in, the odds of combat are probably very low anyway. It's not actually going to change anything.

Where I can see this coming in most often will be in negotiations. Bartering for equipment, that sort of thing. Which is fair enough. You spend a feat, you get cheaper equipment. Cool. Smaller groups, where the odds of doubling up on Diplomacy proficiency will likely get more mileage out of this than larger groups.

But, in any case, the odds that you can stand around something for a full minute and it hasn't already attacked you means that it's probably not going to attack you at all. It's a nice ribbon, but, hardly the game breaking mess that people seem to be thinking that it is.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Okay then, a challenge:
For your next session, give your party face the charm benefit for free. Tell them to go nuts. Play the session and watch what they do.

If the feat isn't broken or problematic, nothing of interest should occur. Nothing that dramatically changes an encounter will happen.

I would totally do that, if we didn’t end the last session with the party face using his persuasion skills to convince a god-like being to fight them. Kind of hard to give him a new ability that can’t be used in combat right before he throws down with my Hybrid Aboleth Beholder.

And the other half of the party is potentially engaging in PVP.

And, as a swashbuckler, his Panache already lets him charm humanoids all the time.


However, I find your conditions problematic.

If a new ability does not allow for interesting things or dramatic shifts in the encounter… then it is a bad ability.

Spells dramatically shift encounters. Ranged Attacks dramatically shift encounters. Stealth dramatically shift encounters. Every ability in the game offers something that has the potential for interesting changes to the game, that is the point of new abilities isn’t it?

Nitpick: it's disadvantage on all their attacks and ability checks. Including, for example, its next attempt to resist your Menacing; or its attempt to resist the Grapple/Prone you inflict with two of your other attacks in order to give advantage to all of your allies' melee attacks and free up that 1 attack per turn so you don't need to keep re-applying Menacing every turn.

It's still not overpowered to this powergamer's eye, mostly because it only works on humanoids at close range. But I dislike the design. For one thing, Wisdom (Insight) seems like the wrong opposed roll--am I supposed to believe that being brave requires you to be trained in interpreting interpersonal nuance? Bah! Humbug! It should be checking against morale, but 5E doesn't have a Morale stat, so UA settles for something that is easy, obvious and wrong. It would be somewhat less wrong to resist the check with the monster's highest attack roll bonus (as a proxy for its self-confidence, thus resistance to intimidation). Note that the DMG Disarm maneuver already does this: opposed roll between attack roll and skill check, although in the other direction.

So I'm actually fine with the idea of a fighter burning an attack to try to intimidate a foe, and I'd let you do so with no feat required, and so I dislike the feat both on the grounds that it's imposing an unnecessary feat tax, and because the implementation is poor.

Good nit to pick, I keep forgetting the ability checks part of frighten

And I do agree that insight might not be the best defense, it seems to be their go to “defense stat” for persuasion, deception, intimidation, ect. A morale stat could be good for stuff like that, but I doubt the designers will add a new stat for this section, we’d have to homebrew it in… or wait.. isn’t there a variant for morale in the DMG? I’m AFB, but I think it was with the Honor variant.

 

[Oofta]

It's true that these feats aren't flexible. If a PC tries to charm or intimidate an opponent with normal means, typically the DM is quite free to handle the situation the way she wants, while these feats grant a clear-cut result.

If these feats make it into a book I chose to use in my home game, my house rule will probably be that, as a DM I get to decide the result.

Intimidate the leader of the bandits? Sure. He attacks the person who intimidated him, provoking opportunity attacks and attacking with such abandon that he provides advantage to everyone else attacking him and he has disadvantage on saves.

Fighting conscripts? You may be able to demoralize several opponents, based on how high you get more than one may flee the battle and you think if you do it again others will be even more demoralized and susceptible.

Basically I want to reward my players investment in a feat, I just don't want the result of that to be a hard coded power like 4E had.