Should charismatic players have an advantage?

[Umbran]

Like I said, it's reminiscent of Harrison Bergeron.

No. It'd be like Harrison Bergeron if I gave the charismatic player an automatic penalty to do away with his natural advantage. I'm not doing that. I'm instead urging that charismatic player to do his best. And, if he does his best, he'll be rewarded.

If the non-charismatic player does his best, he'll also be rewarded.

And the culture in general does seem to be shifting towards this conception of fair - eg I saw recently that a disabled paralympic sprinter is to be allowed to compete in the regular non-disabled olympic sprint - but he gets to use prosthetic legs to help him; the non-disabled sprinters aren't allowed prosthetic aids. He wouldn't get too far without his mechanical legs. Likewise your weaker players are assisted by a lower roleplaying bar, your stronger players are handicapped by a higher difficulty setting, so that they are all 'equal'.

There is a huge difference here.

In the Olympic games, the various players are in competition with one another. The entire point of the exercise is to see which one of them can be the top in a given activity.

At my RPG table, the players are *NOT* in competition with one another.

The Olympics and my RPG have decidedly different goals, so it should be no surprise that we don't use the same methods.

 

[Janx]

Let's ask a related question: "Should an experienced player have an advantage?".

Picture the start of a new campaign. Player #1 has years of play experiences with the game. Player #2 has none. However, both their characters are 1st level adventurers; total neophytes, tyros, n00bs.

Should the experienced player pretend to forget everything they've learned about playing the game? And I'm not just talking about knowledge of the mechanics/rules/metagame stuff, I'm talking about all the play skills they've acquired over the years -- which, naturally, have been learned by the player and not by their brand-new character. Does "good roleplaying" entail making the same rookie mistakes campaign after campaign, while cannily refusing to learn from your experiences (all in the name of proper role-playing, of course)?

Is D&D the rare game where learning how to play it means you're playing it wrong (each time you start a new PC)?

this is an excellent point. Players have traits and experiences that help and hinder them in-game. It may be infeasible to negate that, and in fact may be considered a desirable attribute of the game.

I'm certain Gary expected his players to learn and improve their dungeon crawling tactics as they brought in new PCs. He probably did not want to experience the same stupid mistakes, and in fact ratcheted up his tricks based on players becoming wiser.

A player with social skills is going to know how better to navigate a social situation in-game than a tactless one. That alone is going to help the PC. The tactless player may have no clue that he should console the Baron. As such, he gets the default outcome of cranky Baron. The tactful player will attempt to break the news gently, thereby moving the GM, on behalf of the baron, to consider alternative responses.

A tactical minded player will always make smarter decisions than an impulsive player. One friend of mine almost got his PC killed in a Goblin version of Ewok village when he announced he was going to jump from one platform to the next. (at 1st level, with no info on how high we were, or how far the gap or jumping distance). I stopped him before the GM let him finish his action. But the guy was seriously going to have his PC jump a gap that I was mindful that we probably could not cross. All because he didn't think to consider that he needed more info BEFORE he tried his idea.

I don't think you CAN prevent this bleed-over of real world skill into the game, and we maybe ought to consider that as a factor in the game. It basically is a part of the game that your PC is the combination of his stats plus the player behind the wheel.

 

[Janx]

No. It'd be like Harrison Bergeron if I gave the charismatic player an automatic penalty to do away with his natural advantage. I'm not doing that. I'm instead urging that charismatic player to do his best. And, if he does his best, he'll be rewarded.

If the non-charismatic player does his best, he'll also be rewarded.



There is a huge difference here.

In the Olympic games, the various players are in competition with one another. The entire point of the exercise is to see which one of them can be the top in a given activity.

At my RPG table, the players are *NOT* in competition with one another.

The Olympics and my RPG have decidedly different goals, so it should be no surprise that we don't use the same methods.

I agree here.


I also see that the tactless player could actually LEARN to be more tactful by seeing somebody with skill at work.

It's easy to be all "I talk plain and straight, deal with it!" but in real life, these people need to learn to think before they speak and not tell the Baron "your evil niece killed some people when she escaped so we whacked her!"

When it comes to the social skills, people get all boohoo over the poor tactless ones like they need special rules to play with the big kids. You don't coddle stupid tactics. Why coddle stupid conversations.

 

[Desdichado]

Should the charismatic player have an advantage in in-game task resolution, especially at character-interaction stuff?

Yes. D&D is a social activity, and those who have better social skills will naturally do better than those who do not.

That said, I don't have a problem with mechanics that mitigate that somewhat. Regardless of how it's roleplayed, I want to see a Diplomacy or Bluff or Intimidate or whatever check result.

 

[Voadam]

I generally care more about a player's concept of their character and how they actually role play that character than what it says on the sheet or a dice roll.

I try to do a bunch of interaction as straight roleplay, no dice rolling, just verbal interactions. I sometimes do things second person and ask their general approach to how they do something and adjudicate ad hoc as seems reasonable. I sometimes have them roll if I want some abstractness with randomness. Things will sometimes flow between the three options.

I have little sympathy for someone who through their roleplay ticks off an NPC then says they are high Cha or diplomacy so the NPCs shouldn't react naturally to the insults.

I want my PCs to roleplay their characters the way they want to and think is right and I'll handle the NPCs as I judge is right. If a player wants to reflect their view of their mechanical stats thats fine. If they could care less about mapping their roleplay to their stats I'm fine with that too.

 

[Mort]

I generally care more about a player's concept of their character and how they actually role play that character than what it says on the sheet or a dice roll.

I try to do a bunch of interaction as straight roleplay, no dice rolling, just verbal interactions. I sometimes do things second person and ask their general approach to how they do something and adjudicate ad hoc as seems reasonable. I sometimes have them roll if I want some abstractness with randomness. Things will sometimes flow between the three options.

I have little sympathy for someone who through their roleplay ticks off an NPC then says they are high Cha or diplomacy so the NPCs shouldn't react naturally to the insults.

I want my PCs to roleplay their characters the way they want to and think is right and I'll handle the NPCs as I judge is right. If a player wants to reflect their view of their mechanical stats thats fine. If they could care less about mapping their roleplay to their stats I'm fine with that too.

If this is stated up front -then great, everyone knows what they're in for and probably likes it (that’s why their playing, after all).

But, if I didn't know this going in, made a negotiation heavy character (High Cha high diplomacy etc - sacrificing a bit of combat effectiveness and sacrificing other skills) this might be unfair, no?

 

[Voadam]

If this is stated up front -then great, everyone knows what they're in for and probably likes it (that’s why their playing, after all).

But, if I didn't know this going in, made a negotiation heavy character (High Cha high diplomacy etc - sacrificing a bit of combat effectiveness and sacrificing other skills) this might be unfair, no?

If you were making say a PF fighter and pumped up charisma in a point buy instead of more physicals or wisdom it would probably be a noticeable impact on your combat. You would have known that making the character but you would expect a bit more impact from your allocation so there would be that minor disappointment. It would be almost no combat impact if you made a high charisma paladin and maxed out diplomacy.

It would probably be about as unfair as making a ranger with favored enemies that come into play less than you were hoping.

In any case I believe it would be a minor matter at most in most games.

If I was filling in at a con as a DM and didn't get a chance to tell people my style ahead of time I don't believe I would feel I was being unfair by first person roleplaying or adhoc adjudicating DM-PC interactions where I felt it appropriate. Even if you made a mechanically oriented negotiator expecting a different DM.

 

[Mort]

If you were making say a PF fighter and pumped up charisma in a point buy instead of more physicals or wisdom it would probably be a noticeable impact on your combat. You would have known that making the character but you would expect a bit more impact from your allocation so there would be that minor disappointment. It would be almost no combat impact if you made a high charisma paladin and maxed out diplomacy.

It would probably be about as unfair as making a ranger with favored enemies that come into play less than you were hoping.

In any case I believe it would be a minor matter at most in most games.

If I was filling in at a con as a DM and didn't get a chance to tell people my style ahead of time I don't believe I would feel I was being unfair by first person roleplaying or adhoc adjudicating DM-PC interactions where I felt it appropriate. Even if you made a mechanically oriented negotiator expecting a different DM.

I'll ask the same question I asked earlier; other than "good faith" (which is important, but we are dealing with hypotheticals here and there's not always good faith at say cons) what's to prevent me from using my CHA as a dump stat because I know ability as the player is what's important. Or on the flip side, under this approach, what's the benefit of me not dumping CHA (assuming no other mechanical issues) and not bothering with investing in social skills?

Or another way - is it ok that the 10 CHA no social skills fighter is doing all the talking (because the player can) and the 18 CHA social skill maxed bard is standing back (because he knows the fighter's player is better at interactions)? Assuming this is a problem - how do you fix it?

 

[prosfilaes]

I'm not arguing for or against complexity, nor am I arguing for or against tactical proficiency. They exist in roleplaying games, and people who are better tacticians in games which reward tactical thinking or master whatever degree of complexity a game possesses will perform better than those don't. Likewise, roleplaying gaming is a social activity, and a charismatic gamer will have an advantage.

And that's not an absolute any more than the first two are. We can adjust the amount of advantage a charismatic gamer has up and down.

 

[Janx]

Or another way - is it ok that the 10 CHA no social skills fighter is doing all the talking (because the player can) and the 18 CHA social skill maxed bard is standing back (because he knows the fighter's player is better at interactions)? Assuming this is a problem - how do you fix it?

Whats the odds that a person with social skills wouldn't value their social ability and actual rate it high enough to not use it as a dump stat.

I bet there are some who might use it as a dump stat, betting that their social skill will make up the difference.

But the majority will probably rate it higher than that.