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

iserith said:

I think there is a misunderstanding here. What @Bawylie is saying is that no matter how it is presented by the players, as long as the goal and approach is the same, the DC is the same. So let's say you have the Cha-10 character's player give a first-person in-depth reasoning for why the king would benefit from lending the vanguard to the dance competition. Tears are in the eyes of everyone else at the table after this thespian finishes his or her speech. In an alternate reality where the same situation is playing out at the table, a Cha-20 character's player just says "Hex Arcana tries to convince the king to lend the vanguard to the dance competition because it will show a friendlier side of the guard to the people and improve their reputation."

The resulting uncertainty is the same as is the difficulty since the Cha-10 character's player has said the same thing with more (and perhaps more stirring) words. The DM is judging the goal and approach, not the word count or acting ability of the player. So it does matter what you say. It does not matter how you say it, provided you have at least said what you want to do and how you want to do it. (Although it might matter in another way, such as if you might earn Inspiration by using flowery speech or perhaps by being blunt and to the point.)

"I persuade the king, Persuasion X" is insufficient here because the DM cannot judge the goal and approach and decide if there is uncertainty, a meaningful consequence of failure, or set a DC. Further, the "lead up" would never be contradicted by the roll in the method described above since the roll determines the outcome - the king does or does not approve the request (or approves it at a cost or with a setback for the PCs).

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If you don't mind me adding to this excellent example...

I hope, but don't require, that in both cases the player brings in their character's personality, whether that means using the formal bond/trait/flaw/ideal or just the persona and quirks that they've developed for this character. And that could be done in "acted" 1st person, un-acted 1st person, or 3rd person.

But that's just for the enjoyment of everybody at the table. It's not going to effect the mechanical difficulty of the task they are undertaking.

Elfcrusher said:

If you don't mind me adding to this excellent example...

I hope, but don't require, that in both cases the player brings in their character's personality, whether that means using the formal bond/trait/flaw/ideal or just the persona and quirks that they've developed for this character. And that could be done in "acted" 1st person, un-acted 1st person, or 3rd person.

But that's just for the enjoyment of everybody at the table. It's not going to effect the mechanical difficulty of the task they are undertaking.

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The characters of my regulars in the Eberron campaign are a pretty uncharismatic lot. I think the highest Cha is 10 and nobody really has those skills trained. (They call themselves Tools Integrated and they're more troubleshooters than talkers.)

Still, they find themselves in social interaction challenges with some frequency. So what we'll tend to see is that they will make their case in a way that plays into their personal characteristics so that they can claim Inspiration (see The Case for Inspiration) and then spend it right away to improve their odds of success. So Arthur d'Cannith might overcome his sheepishness and be the first among his comrades to step forward to talk to the king (to continue with bawylie's example) because of his bond "I am determined to impress the leaders of my house, and to become a leader myself." He then states his goal and approach (usually first person for this player) and, if I call for an ability check, spends the Inspiration straight away.

iserith said:

The characters of my regulars in the Eberron campaign are a pretty uncharismatic lot. I think the highest Cha is 10 and nobody really has those skills trained. (They call themselves Tools Integrated and they're more troubleshooters than talkers.)

Still, they find themselves in social interaction challenges with some frequency. So what we'll tend to see is that they will make their case in a way that plays into their personal characteristics so that they can claim Inspiration (see The Case for Inspiration) and then spend it right away to improve their odds of success. So Arthur d'Cannith might overcome his sheepishness and be the first among his comrades to step forward to talk to the king (to continue with bawylie's example) because of his bond "I am determined to impress the leaders of my house, and to become a leader myself." He then states his goal and approach (usually first person for this player) and, if I call for an ability check, spends the Inspiration straight away.

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I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it. But I think it's freakin' brilliant.

Elfcrusher said:

You apparently missed my response the first time you leveled this accusation. This thread has grown so long that it's easier to re-type it than go searching for it, but here's the gist:

- I was focusing on the problem solving, not on character differentiation, so didn't try to address that. But since you bring it up:
- The wizard (who took on the task of figuring out the house, while the other characters focused on other stuff) used both Investigation and Arcana in finding the clues I mentioned.
- In the interactions with the "Lady" I mentioned, leading up to the dramatic rescue, other characters used both Wisdom and Charisma based skills, as well as some class and subclass abilities.
- Although the players followed one particular path of breadcrumbs (that I expected, knowing how they were playing their characters) there were some other possible solutions that I had left clues for, and if they had come up with something totally unexpected I would have adapted to that as well.



You seem to have this picture in your head of us/me only ever resolving things by players using their own mental faculties.

Then again, I have a picture in my head of your players only ever resolving things by rolling dice, without ever doing any thinking for themselves.

Probably both images are wrong.

But I will say that I care about "Jorune the character" far more in terms of the personality and quirks that the player has created, than I do about the numbers written on a character sheet. And maybe that's the biggest difference between the way the two factions see the game.

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Yawn... again with the stretches of how you see others.

I stated numerous times very clearly that the differences I see is in the perception of how often one has seen in play resolutions that are solely driven by player and where character does not get referenced - stats wise. That we all seem to combine them and use them both, but on what grounds and to what degree. Heck up above in what you quoted I even made specific reference to auto-success with no roll- yet you cling to tossing out the straw man of us always rolling and even get to throw in an added USB that somehow that also brings in "never thinking".

But hey, par for the course.

As for your deep concern for Jorune's personality and quirks, those matter to me as GM somewhat as far as they apply to what kinds of things I might want to include to offer up "hooks" which is certainly critical to my style of GMing. Frankly, I use class, background and race as " hook fodder" probably more than "personality" because those are more defined, less subject to swings.

But on the very nuts and bolts level, I need to care about their stats too, a lot, as far as how they impact the results as well as setups.

But mostly, the personality of a PC is a bigger aspect of the player-side than the GM-side in my games, since that is all theirs to define and not something they have to "assign" or trade- off - like stats are.

5ekyu said:

Yawn... again with the stretches of how you see others.

I stated numerous times very clearly that the differences I see is in the perception of how often one has seen in play resolutions that are solely driven by player and where character does not get referenced - stats wise. That we all seem to combine them and use them both, but on what grounds and to what degree. Heck up above in what you quoted I even made specific reference to auto-success with no roll- yet you cling to tossing out the straw man of us always rolling and even get to throw in an added USB that somehow that also brings in "never thinking".

But hey, par for the course.

As for your deep concern for Jorune's personality and quirks, those matter to me as GM somewhat as far as they apply to what kinds of things I might want to include to offer up "hooks" which is certainly critical to my style of GMing. Frankly, I use class, background and race as " hook fodder" probably more than "personality" because those are more defined, less subject to swings.

But on the very nuts and bolts level, I need to care about their stats too, a lot, as far as how they impact the results as well as setups.

But mostly, the personality of a PC is a bigger aspect of the player-side than the GM-side in my games, since that is all theirs to define and not something they have to "assign" or trade- off - like stats are.

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I'm not a big fan of block lists, but given that we seem unable to have a civil conversation perhaps we should stop engaging with each other.

Elfcrusher said:

I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it. But I think it's freakin' brilliant.

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I think that most every style of resolution will indeed produce very expected results in chargen. It's nothing new for players to tend to dump stats thry think they can "work thru" at the player level and spend on those that they see involved more directly at the resolution level.

It's the logical outcome. It likely impacts a wide variety of things, including core aspects like classes selection if those are tied to these.

Whether it's good or bad or whatever is a matter of taste.

For me, I dont really want wizard vs sorcerer vs warlock or paladin vs ranger vs fighter being decided on whether or not they see in play me in a practical sense showing resolutions that put some of their core needed scores in "less demand". Its not technically my job by the rules to portray each class or race as equally good options, but my experience tells me it's more fun overall when they seem to be.

So I reject mostly approaches which work against that.

Elfcrusher said:

I suspect some here will call this gaming the system or cheating or "challenging the player not the character" or find some other way to denigrate it. But I think it's freakin' brilliant.

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Well, we wouldn't want a system that encourages careful attention and skillful play while also incentivizing the player to portray the character faithfully, now would we? That would be daft.

Hussar said:

Heh. Ok, fair enough. I over reacted. But, you have to understand what this looks like from my side of the screen.
"We play this way..."

"Well, I play this way because that's what the rules of the game says"

"Yes, we get that but, we don't like that way, so we don't play that way."

"Well, that's what the rules say and I am following the rules of the game.

"But, we don't really care what the rules of the game says, our way works for us."

"I'm only following the rules of the game. If you would just follow the rules of the game, it would work so much better for you."

On and on and on. While I realize you are just stating why you play the way you do, and that's fair, repeating it so often does look very much like an appeal to authority. On my good days, I just ignore it. On my bad days, well, it just flies up my left nostril.



See, to me, this is a perfect example of why I don't play this way. If, as [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] says, " it doesn’t matter how good of an explanation either Player gives", then why am I giving any explanation at all? If the DC is static, then what's the point? I can be as silver tongued or as tongue tied or just say, "I persuade the King, Persuasion X" and the end result is identical. Me, I would much, much rather that the player narrates the results than the lead up to the roll. The lead up may be contradicted by the roll. The results won't be.

Now, OTOH, if, as say, [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] says, we are playing to the player and not the character, then what I say absolutely matters. If I can say it right, I won't even have to make a check, or, depending on how well I do it, my DC will be reduced (which effectively grants me bonuses on my die roll). Again, and I think I stated this way, way back in the early pages of this thread, it makes me, the DM, too visible as now I'm judging performances, which I don't want to do.

So, I'd rather be like [MENTION=6674266]Ba[/MENTION]ywilie where it doesn't matter what explanation the player gives and then take it a step further and skip the explanation (which doesn't matter) and go right to the result, which does matter.

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This was my fault for trying to use an example. Dang.

Alright, we seem to have missed a key component. The two adventurers both tried to do exactly the same thing (get think king to loan the vanguard for the dance competition) in exactly the same way (by pointing out how much goodwill the vanguard would earn among the common people). I judged that thing hard (because the king doesn’t care too much about the vanguard’s reputation among commoners) and set an appropriately hard DC.

In that example, it did not matter how good of a speech either player gave. That approach to achieving that goal was Hard.

Now let’s change it up and say the Cha 20 adventurer trained in persuasion still wants to do the same thing. Get the king to lend the vanguard for the dance competition. I’ve already determined that’s a Cha (persuasion) check DC 20.

But - our Cha 10 character is going to try something else. The goal is the same (get the king to lend the vanguard for the dance competition). But they take a different approach. They say “my uncle is a powerful diviner and if you lend me the vanguard for the dance competition, I will introduce your vizier to my uncle.”

I think this is more interesting to the King than the goodwill of the common people. He’s going to get something out of this that may pay off well over time. A vizier that has an “in” with someone who can read the future is pretty good. So I’ll say this is a DC 10 because the king values the connections of his vizier more than the reputation of his vanguard.

Both adventurers have the same goal. The Persuasive character faces a hard check (but he’s got a +8 to the roll). The Cha 10 character faces an easy check but has a +0 to the roll.

The approach they employ to achieve their goal helps determine the DC. This is why “I persuade” isn’t good enough. One of those characters offered a more persuasive incentive than the other. They are rewarded with a lower DC (or as others might do - maybe they get advantage on the roll).

Because I won’t set the DC until I at least know what they’re trying to do and how, it’s not fair or appropriate for a roll before I decide on a DC.

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Finally let’s consider that our Cha 10 character tries a different approach altogether. The goal is the same. But they say “I am taking your vanguard with or without your permission. This is merely a formality to let you know where they are. My uncle is an extremely powerful sorcerer and will raze your kingdom if you oppose me in this most trivial of matters.” As a DM I am not certain whether that is true (in which case Intimidate might apply) or not (in which case Deception might apply). The king isn’t sure either. So I ask the player what is more accurate - are you bluffing or threatening? (They don’t have training in either so they simply decide they’re threatening). I think that might work and ask for a DC 15. If they can credibly deliver that threat, the king will lend the vanguard (and remember this insolence for a long time).

It wouldn’t be enough to say “I intimidate” and throw dice. If the character threatened something the king didn’t fear or value (“do it or ill tel everyone you’re mean!”), it might not have a chance to work at all. Whereas if the threat included something the king valued highly (“do it or I’ll fireball you this instant!”), there might have been no chance to fail.

Elfcrusher said:

We​

It was a thread from a couple of years ago. I described a warlock who was brilliant, but at key moments (specifically, when called upon to make Int checks or saving throws) she often hid her genius from her companions.

Some people howled and screamed and called this cheating; others thought it was totally fine. Revealed a big divide.

Bringing this back on topic, it seems like a bunch of people only have one conception of what 8 Cha means. Maybe it’s a charming, eloquent character with a hot temper. Whenever she rolls low it means she can’t help herself and lashes out at the person she is talking to.

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So having a temper is part of cha? Possibly.

Yardiff said:

So having a temper is part of cha? Possibly.

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In the sense that it's a turn-off when somebody blows a gasket. It's the opposite of charming and persuasive.

Another version of Cha 8 is an articulate and engaging person who nevertheless responds to people with snark, derision, and intentional mischaracterization of the other person's statements, all of which leads the other person to actually want to disagree with the character, regardless of how sound the arguments are.

Maybe THAT will sound familiar to folks around here. Although really that would be Cha 4 or 5, not 8.