If an NPC is telling the truth, what's the Insight DC to know they're telling the truth?

Yardiff · Apr 19, 2019

Ristamar said:
Being an adventurer with a class level would likely indicate some ability to formulate a plan and execute on the battlefield, even at level 1, IMO. Much a like a "low INT" guy that only played a year or two as a QB at a small high school probably has a lot more practical knowledge of the tactics and strategies of football than most "high INT" armchair quarterbacks that have zero experience on the field.

I don't think this is a good example. Being that the coach of the team is the one calling the play?

Bawylie · Apr 19, 2019

Oofta said:
I admit that I struggle with the eloquence/good argument from a player with a PC that has a low charisma and I'm not always 100% sure how to handle it. On the one hand, I want people to contribute. I want people to be engaged and feel like they can speak up.

But ... people frequently play opposites. The guy that has good, persuasive arguments will play the low charisma tank. The guy that's not all that great at communicating ideas or coming up with persuasive arguments that doesn't necessarily like speaking up is playing the PC with the highest charisma at the table. The high intelligence wizard isn't the sharpest tack in the drawer and so on.

So that's my dilemma. How do I balance PC skills (which I try to rely on) vs player skill or lack therein. If you have a 20 charisma but just called the king an incompetent fool, it makes no sense to not give them disadvantage or increase the DC if a persuasion check is even possible.

In any case, I'm sure there's no one answer for all tables. There's probably not even one answer for my table.

Yeah, insulting the king doesn’t go over well no matter what your charisma is.

Let’s take 2 adventurers. One with Cha 20 and Persuasion and one with Cha 10. Both wish to convince the king to lend them a vanguard for use in a dance competition in the slums. The king feels this is a terrible use of trained soldiers. Both adventurers decide they will attempt to persuade the king to lend the vanguard by convincing him it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people. The king sort of cares about his soldiers’ rep but not much.

As DM, I judge this to be a difficult task. The goal is clear - get the king to lend the vanguard. The approach is clear - try to convince him of the reputation benefits. The DC is clear - 20 for a hard task.

The adventurer with 20 Cha and Persuasion needs to hit a 12. The adventurer with 10 Cha needs to hit a 20.

It’s way more likely our silver-tongued ally will succeed than our more blunt ally. But the DC is a 20 regardless. What’s more, it doesn’t matter how good of an explanation either Player gives. No matter how many eloquent words the player of the blunt character uses, the DC is still 20 for this particular approach to this particular goal. And no matter how much of a mumble-mouth our player of the Cha 20 character is, they’ll still have a +8 to the roll.

Pretty neat, eh? The scenario challenges the players. The difficulty of the task challenges the characters.

Yardiff · Apr 19, 2019

Elfcrusher said:
You apparently have never met Jezebel, the 5 Int genius warlock.

So what is the genius part of this character?

Ristamar · Apr 19, 2019

Yardiff said:
I don't think this is a good example. Being that the coach of the team is the one calling the play?

Of course. Because the quarterback is obviously a mindless automaton with no ability to learn.

Yardiff · Apr 19, 2019

Ristamar said:
Of course. Because the quarterback is obviously a mindless automaton with no ability to learn.

He could very well be. All he needs to do is follow instruction and use his amazing skill to throw the ball.

iserith · Apr 19, 2019

And this is why examples are bad in partisan discussions. They distract and obfuscate as they get weaponized in the debate.

Ristamar · Apr 19, 2019

Yardiff said:
He could very well be. All he needs to do is follow instruction and use his amazing skill to throw the ball.

It's certainly a possibility. But that could likely be a reflection of his personality and attitude rather than his "low INT." Either way, it's the player's right to choose which variant of the fiction is representative of their respective character.

Hussar · Apr 19, 2019

Charlaquin said:
First off, I think not knowing the PCs’ stats is an Iserith thing, not a “middle path” thing. I personally do like to know what all the PCs stats are, cause I find it helps me build challenges appropriate to the party. That said, I do think you’re right on the money in terms of this being the core of our disagreement. I’ve seen it referred to as “challenge the character, not the player” to put a spin on it that favors your style, I’ve described it as placing success and failure on the player’s decisions over random chance, which I think casts my style in a more positive light. But at the end of the day, this is what it’s about, one way or another. Personally, I HATE when the result of the die roll determines what the character does or says. It’s MY character, I should be the one to decide what they do or say, not the dice. If at any point the result of the roll overrides my agency as a player, the dice are overstepping their role, in my opinion. Now, I’m well aware that others feel differently, and that’s fine. Some people find, the idea that the 8-Charisma barbarian could give a stirring speech without having to roll really high just as atrocious as I find the idea that “your character didn’t really say that, you didn’t roll well enough.” And there’s really no reconciling such diametrically opposed playstyles.

EDIT: I will say, I’ve been on the other side of this fence. I used to be very concerned that players being able to do well at things they had low stats in without at least rolling high was tantamount to metagaming, which I just kind of took for granted was a terrible thing. But when I actually tried running the game the way a lot of folks online had been recommending, I found that not only did it not ruin my game to stop worrying about metagaming, it actually made the experience significantly more enjoyable, both for me and for my players. Of course as always, your mileage may vary. But in my personal experience, the game got way better when I stopped trying to maintain a hardline division between player knowledge and character knowledge and police what characters “would do” or “wouldn’t do.”

This, so much this.

iserith said:
For most campaigns, I usually have more players than seats per session and more than one character per player. So I might have 20 PCs in a given campaign and no clue which players and which characters might be at a given session. So I can't keep track of who has what Charisma score or whatever. And anyway I see nothing in the rules that suggest I should.

I don't see anything in the game that suggests the DM should "enforce players actually playing the characters they made." They do that by default by simply playing, right? They're also rewarded with Inspiration when they play according to specific personal characteristics.

Yes, that's what I saw a lot of people doing in D&D 3.Xe and D&D 4e, particularly the latter. Mechanics first, fiction second. The mechanics were always "right," and you had to figure out how to make that make sense in context. "I diplomacy check that guy... oops, natty 1. I guess I insulted his mother."

Despite the perception some may have here, I bet I have more rolls in my game than most people's games. But only because my game is the sort of experience where you're going to be in situations with meaningful stakes for the entire 4-hour session. We aren't spending time ordering breakfast in inns, shopping, or interviewing cagey quirky NPCs to get exposition. We're boldly confronting deadly perils, engaging in high stakes diplomacy, and exploring our way through worlds of sword and sorcery.

And, right back to pointing to the PHB and the rules... I even SAID, straight up in the quote you quoted, that I'm not looking at the rules here. Good grief, can you not make a single response without appeals to authority? You complain about being attacked and having to defend yourself. Well, perhaps if you'd stop wrapping yourself up in the rule books EVERY SINGLE POST, you might have better luck discussing this.

Hussar · Apr 19, 2019

Elfcrusher said:
Ah, gotcha.

So maybe those people are also opposed to avoiding the fights through smart playing.

My motto remains: "Challenge the player, not the build."

And my motto remains:

Play the character you brought to the table, not yourself.

I have zero interest in challenging the player. Nor, as a player am I interested in the DM challenging me rather than my character.

iserith · Apr 19, 2019

Hussar said:
And, right back to pointing to the PHB and the rules... I even SAID, straight up in the quote you quoted, that I'm not looking at the rules here. Good grief, can you not make a single response without appeals to authority? You complain about being attacked and having to defend yourself. Well, perhaps if you'd stop wrapping yourself up in the rule books EVERY SINGLE POST, you might have better luck discussing this.

Who needs luck when you have RULES?