Skills used by players on other players.

GameOgre said:

Please explain how someone who is shy and quite at the game table ( a new player perhaps) who is playing a Highly Charismatic Bard skilled at persuasion is on equal footing when the INT 6 wis 8 Barbarian half orc played by a long time rpg veteran who is also a skilled used car salesman?

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Equal footing in what sense?

Both can attempt to persuade equally -- the ability to attempt is equal.

I will consider the approach and goal used, not the acting. The shy player can say their character attempts to convince the majordomo to allow the party an audience with the king because they've shown loyalty in the past and the situation is grave and that will have the same effect as the barbarian's Shakespearean soliloquy. If uncertain, the DC will be set the same based on goal and approach and a roll asked for.

If the dice are rolled, the bard will have the better chance to succeed at the DC.

Use the Characters stats and skills or use the players. Those are the only two choices here. Those that choose to use the players...fine. Whatever floats your boat. I just do not like that at all.

I make the PC use his skills and stat mods most of the time in game even when normally I can see a reason not to.

For instance the used care salesman playing that barbarian might make a highly skilled speech that should win over any resistance to his cause because...he is a used care salesman and knows what to say but I have him roll and use the barbs scores because although he gave that speech what his character said was along the lines of "You $%$%'s better tow da line an elp me or else".

Not all players are created equal and that includes role playing.

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I'm confused, why do you think I use player skill at oration as any kind of determining factor for PC success?

Oh. I see. You're saying that the used car salesman player is better at getting their way with the shy player in real life and that you'd use mechanics in game to let the shy player get their way over the UCS player's PC. If just left up to the players, the shy player will lose out even though, in game, they're the dominant personality. I see that, but then have to ask if game mechanics are really the right way to deal with real world player problems. If the USC is dominating the game IRL side, that's a player problem -- you shouldn't be using mechanics to correct that.

And, everywhere but interparty, the bard will clearly excel. The barbarian will have trouble with NPCs while the bard will not, because with NPCs we both use PC abilities when dice are rolled.

GameOgre said:

Not all players are created equal and that includes role playing.

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But you are telling the player of the barbarian that he can't role play his barbarian. He can't decide for himself what his barbarian thinks.

This whole thread you seem to want to reduce personal decisions to roll play, letting dice for persuasion dictate what others think. If you want to allow the charismatic character opportunities to shine, it should be with NPCs, not PCs.

GameOgre said:

Not all players are created equal and that includes role playing.

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I pretty much agree with this but also have no issue with it.

If a player thinks up a well thought out tactic or makes a strong case in a social encounter (i.e. persuasion) then I as DM will likely assess the DC to be lower should I deem a roll to be necessary in order to determine success or failure for the tactic or the argument made respectively.

EDIT: People learn and hopefully get better at it, that is life.

ClaytonCross said:

If you want to make an task impossible … ok, but you then apply an effect on skill test failure and skill test success in which they might achieve a partial goal even if they stated goal is impossible. I the example of the king and the money I already said I would "not allow the the king be persuaded to give way all his treasure" but I would require a test, I would punish a failure and I would reward a success based on the skill used.

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That part is totally fine and I completely agree with it. Well, I don't think you have to have an actual test. I think it's fine to just narrate it. But let's say you allow a roll, and the Bard rolls a natural 20, and has Guidance, and Expertise in Persuade, and 20 Cha, and he's level 17. Ok, so now he's rolled 41!!!! So the King smiles and calls the Bard silver-tongued, and gives him some kind of reward, and everybody at the banquet cheers. Whatever.

I agree with all that. That's fun. I'd rather play with a DM who did these sorts of things.

But not doing any of that and just saying, "Naw, there's no way you can convince him..." is just simply not loss of player agency. It doesn't prevent the player from controlling his own character. Whether or not the DM allows dice to be rolled, and whether or not he takes into account how the dice fall, has absolutely nothing to do with player agency.

Think about this: what if the player tries the same trick on a statute of a dead king? Should the DM ask for a roll and consider the results? If you do think so then we probably should stop discussing this. But if you agree that case is over the line, let's talk about why. It's because in your opinion the attempt to Persuade should have some kind of affect, but on the statue it shouldn't. But the king and the statue are not your characters; they belong to the DM. Only the DM gets to decide what his/her characters think and do. (Maybe the King is a pre-programmed automaton, and the statue is some kind of petrified king that retained it's mental powers.) So your insistence on rolling dice for the attempt on the King is, ironically, "loss of DM agency".

By the way, the reason I'm so insistent on precise use of language here is that loss of player agency is a real problem at some tables, and I don't want to see the term debased/clouded by attempts to use it in other contexts, such as "The DM doesn't share my ideas of how this fictional world should work."

Rya.Reisender said:

I just don't allow any offensive actions between party members, including convincing and casting charm spells and whatsoever.
I also don't tell my players what they should do. They can try to do whatever they want.

If my party can't decide which plan to follow, I allow them to all roll persuasion to see which plan to go for (because my second unwritten rule is no splitting up).

So in the situation at hand, I'd say you can tell the player that the other PC sounds convincing, but it's still the player's decision if he listens to it or not.

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I used to play that way, too. I highly recommend you at least try [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s method of the target narrating the result. I've found that when you simply ban PvP some players get frustrated. I mean, that is loss of player agency, in its rawest form.

But if you let them do it, then have the target narrate the result, the aggressors tend to be a little bit disappointed/frustrated, but not as offended/outraged as when you just tell them they can't do it. I've found it really defuses the situation, and can sometimes become quite funny.

(Of course, if you play with a regular table and when you said "No PvP" everybody nodded in agreement, none of this is an issue.)

Those are great examples in terms of getting at some nuance here. Let's investigate:

clearstream said:

I like your examples, especially the first one that I've quoted. Some other ways to narrate it -

Loss of Player Agency?
"My character Dross will try to Stealth"

"Dross is in the middle of a brightly lit room, so can't take the Hide action at present." (Loss of agency?)

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No loss of agency. The player can still narrate that his character tries to hide, and the character is free to do so. It's probably* going to be an automatic failure, the game mechanic of the "Hide action" cannot be used, but the character can still try to hide in the lower-case sense.
*Subject to conditions. The only other occupant of the room might be blind, for example, in which case the lighting is irrelevant. However the DM rules.

"Dross is under a Dominate Person spell right now, so can't try to do that!" (Loss of agency!)

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Yes! Loss of agency! That's specifically written into the rules; it isn't the DM taking away agency.[/quote]
"Dross is under the Sorcerer's Charm Person right now; looking hurt that Dross might be abandoning him, the Sorcerer succeeds on his Persuasion check to beg Dross not to go sneaking off!"[/QUOTE]
Yup, loss of agency according to the rules. Again, not the DM taking away agency, though. "Because magic."

"McFace earlier persuaded Dross that the best way to approach this job is stay out in the open where everyone can see him, is Dross still going ahead?"

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If, by "earlier persuaded Dross", you mean that Dross's player agreed to be persuaded, then sure. If you mean that Dross' player was not persuaded and the DM ordered him to comply, then yes that is very much loss of player agency by DM fiat.

Where I stand is that I have no issue with game mechanics inserting themselves between player and character with respect to character thoughts, acts, and speech. And I believe that the majority of our community has no issue either, because they attest that they are okay with magical compulsion from spells. Rather, I believe it's the ambiguity and open-ended nature of Persuasion that indicates it can't be used like Dominate Person. Chances, costs and risks are ad lib. It's not clear what precedents are being set or how repeatable it should be. The problem isn't that game mechanics mediate what a character thinks, does or says. Because there are game mechanics that do exactly that. The problem is that skills are not the right mechanic for doing that in a clear-cut or strongly-leveraged way.

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As you may have noticed, the distinction I and others use is the one you note: whether or not game mechanics define the loss of agency. Which tends to mean magic. (But not exclusively: being unconscious or dead is also a form of loss of agency.) And the reason magic is ok is that it is not saying anything about the character. It totally hand-waves the mental state of the PC. I might say, "My character hates water and would never, ever, ever jump in a lake." A Charm spell doesn't change that fact. But if you Persuade me to jump in the lake it is basically saying that my statement wasn't true after all, that I'm not really defining my character's personality.

Where problems arise is where the DM takes away agency because he thinks the story should go a certain way.

(And even I recognize there are some grey areas where that's ok. For example, DM narrates a cut scene where the PCs are captured, stripped of weapons, and thrown in jail. Is that loss of agency? In a way, because it prevents me from casting Time Stop and trying to prevent the whole thing. But I also recognize that D&D is REALLY BAD at "getting captured by the guards" kinds of scenes, so I'd probably grumble a little bit but go along with it.)

One of the problems here is that we're really interleaving two discussions: agency and PvP. For example, Player A casting Charm Person on Player B is clearly "loss of player agency within defined mechanics" but it's not ok (for a lot of us) if forces player B to engage in undesired PvP.

Using Persuasion on another PC, and requiring both a roll and compliance with the result, is bad because it violates both principles: it's both loss of player agency by DM fiat and forced PvP.

I dislike players like the half orc barbarian player. He creates a character with huge holes, ie his weak mental abilities, and has no problem letting the Face cover for him when dealing with NPCs but he doesn't want to ever be subject to the negatives.

In my opinion you must force the weaknesses in all situations or you are telling your players to just create combat monsters and ignore all other skills.

The half orc would certainly use his skills if he decided to pick pocket another player. Or his stealth if he decided to sneak out to go drinking when all the players decided to stay in and rest before a big battle.

In reading the posts of people who are using mechanics to influence decisions players make for their own characters, there seems to be an undercurrent of player issues at the table for which this method was deemed a solution. As has been stated, using mechanics to solve player issues is not ideal and, in fact, often leads to the sorts of problem that kicked off this thread.

Elfcrusher said:

As you may have noticed, the distinction I and others use is the one you note: whether or not game mechanics define the loss of agency. Which tends to mean magic. (But not exclusively: being unconscious or dead is also a form of loss of agency.) And the reason magic is ok is that it is not saying anything about the character. It totally hand-waves the mental state of the PC. I might say, "My character hates water and would never, ever, ever jump in a lake." A Charm spell doesn't change that fact. But if you Persuade me to jump in the lake it is basically saying that my statement wasn't true after all, that I'm not really defining my character's personality.

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So it seems like where we diverge is that I think of Persuasion as "just another game mechanic". And I don't think of agency as all or nothing. I think it is possible to lose agency over some things, without losing all agency. And I am not concerned that some agency can be lost to being grappled (speed 0 = no agency to move), being in the wrong circumstances (bright light = no agency to hide), or being under the effects of a spell (dominate person = no agency to choose actions). Seeing as becoming grappled uses Strength (Athletics), I seem to have already conceded skills some power over some agency. Thus, as I see it, the problem with Charisma (Persuasion) isn't one of agency per se, but one of definition and degree. Being grappled is concrete. My character's speed is 0, but they can still cast spells or attack, and there are rules for getting out of the grapple. Where is the rule for getting out of "persuaded"? What can I do or not do? Grapple controls Speed. Persuaded potentially controls everything. That seems far too powerful, and not sufficiently well defined to feel really happy about.

When a character persuades a NPC, a neutral arbiter (the DM) decides what part of agency is given up, for how long, and what circumstances can interrupt that. A DM can hand wave lack of definition in that regard. When a character persuades a character, that lack of definition becomes a real problem. It puts a burden on a DM to very quickly come up with fair feeling parameters. I might simply lower the stakes for the Barbarian. "Look, if Face wins you must do something to help the villagers, but that can be anything from throwing them a few coppers, to going the full nine yards." The point isn't whether that is the right thing to do, the point is only to illustrate how ambiguous the terms of Persuasion are. I find it more rationally coherent to say that spells are accepted because they have strong mechanical clarity. Not because it's okay to lose agency to some game mechanics, but not others.

Elfcrusher said:

One of the problems here is that we're really interleaving two discussions: agency and PvP. For example, Player A casting Charm Person on Player B is clearly "loss of player agency within defined mechanics" but it's not ok (for a lot of us) if forces player B to engage in undesired PvP.

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That's true. I am addressing the agency discussion, and silent on the PvP discussion. They are both complex: it's often easier to make progress on one problem at a time.

JacktheRabbit said:

I dislike players like the half orc barbarian player. He creates a character with huge holes, ie his weak mental abilities, and has no problem letting the Face cover for him when dealing with NPCs but he doesn't want to ever be subject to the negatives.

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He is subject to the negatives though. If he has a low Intelligence, he will on average do poorly on Intelligence ability checks (such as when determining if he can recall lore or make a deduction) and Intelligence saving throws. If he has a low Wisdom, he'll perform badly on average on a number of tasks including Insight, Perception, and Survival, when asked to make a roll to resolve those actions. Plus he'll be worse at Wisdom saving throws than others with higher Wisdom and/or proficiency and that's a pretty common save to make in my experience.

JacktheRabbit said:

In my opinion you must force the weaknesses in all situations or you are telling your players to just create combat monsters and ignore all other skills.

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That's on the DM to create situations that involve tasks that may call for Intelligence and Wisdom ability checks and effects that require Int or Wis saving throws. One doesn't need to go down the rocky road of having players make checks to see if their characters can influence another player's character.

JacktheRabbit said:

The half orc would certainly use his skills if he decided to pick pocket another player. Or his stealth if he decided to sneak out to go drinking when all the players decided to stay in and rest before a big battle.

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The only thing this tells me is that the player, whenever possible, is having his character perform tasks at which the character has a better chance of success than other tasks. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do in my view.