D&D 5E Persuade, Intimidate, and Deceive used vs. PCs

[sunshadow21]

I mean, that's how I'd run it if the Orc wanted to intimidate an NPC. Assuming the NPC is hostile to the Orc, a DC 20 Charisma check from the Orc would result in the NPC complying with the Orc's request to not fight him as long as that decision carries no risk for the NPC, i.e. there isn't someone else threatening the NPC with some consequence if s/he doesn't fight the Orc. This makes sense for an NPC because s/he is being run by an impartial DM, so the dice can inform the NPC's decision making, but a player is not impartial with regard to his/her PC. The player is meant to assume the role of the PC and advocate on behalf of his/her character at the table. Placing mechanical constraints on the player in the social pillar, the part of the game that is most about roleplaying seems to go against this.

And why must a DM be impartial with their NPC reactions while players have free reign to control how their PCs react? I have never allowed a single dice roll to fully control how my NPCs react, and I don't allow players to think that dice rolls have no impact on their character. In both cases, the dice roll is very real, and it has an impact, but it never by itself dictates every detail of how my NPCs react and I don't expect it to fully control a PC either, but I do expect a player to recognize that success or failure do put certain bounds on their character, and that certain action may be made easier or harder based on the dice roll. If one is going to simply ignore the rules for the social skills because of concerns about mechanical constraints, why bother roll dice and have a rule book in the first place? Mechanical rules and dice rolls should never be the only interaction on the social pillar, save for very simple situations like haggling with a shopkeeper, but used wisely, they can serve as a very strong starting point to build a memorable scene around, which in many cases would not happen without that mechanical reinforcement because it would never occur to the player to look beyond the initial failed attempt.

 

[iserith]

How is this any different from the player using the exact same skill to make the DM run an NPC a certain way? In neither case is the person using the skill able to fully dictate precisely how the character affected will react. The DM can no more force the player to respond a specific way to the skill being used on their character than a player can force a DM to respond a specific way when a NPC gets intimidated or fails to detect a lie or otherwise be effected by any of the social skills.

In your game, do players "use skills?" By that I mean do they say something like "I roll an Intimidate against that guard..." or "I intimidate the guard..." followed by an unsolicited roll?

For others who don't agree with me, is this representative of how you play?

If either side is expecting complete domination using these skills, disappointment will follow regardless of who is initiating it and who is having to respond. However, players who think that they are always going to have 100% complete control over every single action or reaction of their character when magic and/or combat is not involved is going to be as disappointed as the DM who believes the same about his NPCs and then finds himself dealing with a PC or two that have massive ranks in social skills.

I as a DM will only very rarely completely remove options, and don't usually place the entire outcome of such an encounter on a single dice roll alone, reducing the sting of getting intimidated to a fair degree, but I have no problem making it clear that certain actions will be easier than others given any set of circumstances and dice rolls. There is a definite difference between "trying to intimidate" and "being intimidating" and the responses should be different in both cases; in that particular case, having a rule that imposes a minor, but very real, effect can go a long way towards getting the players to accept the rp challenge as legitimate. I also play Pendragon, where such reactions are not only far more hard coded, but usually have far more drastic results than what most skill checks in D&D will yield, and the role playing in that game is far better than anything I've ever seen in D&D, even with so much of it seemingly created by the external force of the rules and not by the personal desires of the players. This doesn't mean that a DM should automatically expect a PC that was successfully intimidated to automatically respond in one given manner, any more than a player should expect an NPC to react exactly how they wish on a successful roll, but the player of that PC has to understand that rolling dice has consequences, they can be triggered by either side of the DM screen, and bad rolls at the wrong time will certainly make certain options notably harder. If a player is unwilling to accept this, they don't have to use those skills on NPCs, which will reduce the chances of them coming up at all; but if they wish to use them on NPCs regularly, those skills become fair tactics for me to use against them.

By the time a player is making the ability check in my game, we're indeed testing to see whether exactly what they want happens. The stakes are made clear by context or directly outlined e.g. "If you succeed on the Intimidate check, you will cow the orc, Beat Horsedeath, into surrendering. If you fail, Beat Horsedeath kills the hostage." When we've gotten to this point, the player has already established a goal and an approach and now I've decided that the outcome is uncertain.

 

[jgsugden]

Same discussion, new edition.

Players dictate the voluntary intended actions of the PCs. Dice handle the things that are out of their voluntary control. A PC may do something involuntarily as an immediate response to a stimulus - a response dictated by the DM after a roll - but how they respond once they get their wits is up to them.

Deception vs Insight: If the Deception is higher, then there is no outward indication that the listener picked up on that indicates there was a lie - no 'tells'. That doesn't mean there is no logic gaps in the statement that makes the lie unbelievable. You could roll a high deception and have a PC or NPC disregard what was said because - even though the lie was told very believably - it just doesn't make sense. If a PC lies to a guard and tells them that the PC was with the mayor when the murder took place and rolls a high deception, the guard might find the statement very believable - unless the guard was standing next to the mayor at the time. If so, he might respond, "Excuse me, but are you sure? I was with the mayor and I did not see you there. In fact, I'm sure you were not there." Had the deception roll been lower, the guard might have responded, "You can't even look me in the eye while you lie! Arrest him!"

NPC Persuasion vs a PC: The magistrate tries to convince you to take a quest. You're hesitant. He tries to persuade you... and rolls a 20! The DM should give you a bunch of good arguments, tell you find the magistrate likable, remind you that people will suffer if you don't take the quest - but the decision is yours on whether to take the quest. The DM might tell you that you feel a bit of guilt (an involuntary feeling) - but the decision on whether to act or not is the player's.

NPC Intimidation versus a PC: The magistrate tries to convince you to take a quest. You're hesitant. He tries to intimidate you... and rolls a 20! The DM tells you that you cower back involuntarily. You sweat. You blurt out an agreement to the quest without realizing it - then the moment passes and you have a chance to respond to the involuntary agreement you made. Your PC is still intimidated by the magistrate - but the player now decides how the PC wants to act. If the player says, "I don't back down - I tell him I refuse!", the DM responds with, "You attempt to speak, but find that all you can muster is a squeaking whisper. You try to look him in the eye... but find your gaze dropping. You squeak out some words, unsure whether he understood your refusal... until he responds, 'Did I stutter? You're taking this quest. Now get out of here.' You find your feet moving towards the door before you realize what is happening. You know you shouldn't be intimidated by this blowhard, but there is something about him that got to you..." If the player says, "I stop myself and refuse to take the quest!", the DM should say something like, "You steel your nerve and stand your ground ... shakily. You manage to utter, 'No'. You feel like your heart is going to burst from your chest. You turn your gaze to the magistrate and see fire in his eyes. "You're going to regret your disobedience. GUARDS!!!!!!"

 

[sunshadow21]

By the time a player is making the ability check in my game, we're indeed testing to see whether exactly what they want happens. The stakes are made clear by context or directly outlined e.g. "If you succeed on the Intimidate check, you will cow the orc, Beat Horsedeath, into surrendering. If you fail, Beat Horsedeath kills the hostage." When we've gotten to this point, the player has already established a goal and an approach and now I've decided that the outcome is uncertain.

Then I would expect, as a player at your table, for any such rolls initiated on the DM side to have the exact same kind of firm outcome, since similarly specific goals would likely be in play. Personally, I don't run my NPCs that black and white in terms of results. NPCs have their own motivations and concerns just like the PCs and very rarely will the PCs know all, if any of them, and therefore, the chances of pinning down results that specifically are slim to none. Similarly, I don't run NPCs as necessarily expecting such concrete examples of success or failure from PCs, as the NPCs will usually not know enough about the PCs to judge reactions that firmly. In the end, I tend to run my NPCs as organically as players run PCs; there is very rarely a predetermined outcome I have in mind when I have PCs roll, and I don't expect players to know in advance of any rolls I make how their characters are going to react. I tend to treat most social encounters a series of rolls as well, reducing the emphasis on any given dice roll, making success, failure, or stalemate, being decided multiple dice rolls and the role play behind each roll. I almost never boil down success or failure like you describe above to a single roll. Combat always requires multiple rolls combined with strategy and party teamwork. I treat non-combat scenarios the same way.

 

[iserith]

Then I would expect, as a player at your table, for any such rolls initiated on the DM side to have the exact same kind of firm outcome, since similarly specific goals would likely be in play.

But see, those rolls would never be initiated on the DM's side of the table when it came to Deceiving, Intimidating, or Persuading the PCs. In my view, the DM asks for rolls when the outcome of an action is uncertain. Since I do not control the PCs, the outcome is not uncertain because the outcome is whatever the players say it is, with respect to their own characters.

Personally, I don't run my NPCs that black and white in terms of results. NPCs have their own motivations and concerns just like the PCs and very rarely will the PCs know all, if any of them, and therefore, the chances of pinning down results that specifically are slim to none. Similarly, I don't run NPCs as necessarily expecting such concrete examples of success or failure from PCs, as the NPCs will usually not know enough about the PCs to judge reactions that firmly. In the end, I tend to run my NPCs as organically as players run PCs; there is very rarely a predetermined outcome I have in mind when I have PCs roll, and I don't expect players to know in advance of any rolls I make how their characters are going to react. I tend to treat most social encounters a series of rolls as well, reducing the emphasis on any given dice roll, making success, failure, or stalemate, being decided multiple dice rolls and the role play behind each roll. I almost never boil down success or failure like you describe above to a single roll. Combat always requires multiple rolls combined with strategy and party teamwork. I treat non-combat scenarios the same way.

I tend to treat social interaction challenges like anything else - as a series of obstacles set before the PCs and the players establishing their approach to overcoming those obstacles. The DM then judges those approaches relative to the goals and decides on success, failure, or uncertainty (and thus a roll). Sometimes there are a number of rolls, sometimes there are few, sometimes there are none. It depends on what the players decide they want to do.

 

[Ristamar]

NPC Intimidation versus a PC: The magistrate tries to convince you to take a quest. You're hesitant. He tries to intimidate you... and rolls a 20! The DM tells you that you cower back involuntarily. You sweat. You blurt out an agreement to the quest without realizing it - then the moment passes and you have a chance to respond to the involuntary agreement you made. Your PC is still intimidated by the magistrate - but the player now decides how the PC wants to act. If the player says, "I don't back down - I tell him I refuse!", the DM responds with, "You attempt to speak, but find that all you can muster is a squeaking whisper. You try to look him in the eye... but find your gaze dropping. You squeak out some words, unsure whether he understood your refusal... until he responds, 'Did I stutter? You're taking this quest. Now get out of here.' You find your feet moving towards the door before you realize what is happening. You know you shouldn't be intimidated by this blowhard, but there is something about him that got to you..." If the player says, "I stop myself and refuse to take the quest!", the DM should say something like, "You steel your nerve and stand your ground ... shakily. You manage to utter, 'No'. You feel like your heart is going to burst from your chest. You turn your gaze to the magistrate and see fire in his eyes. "You're going to regret your disobedience. GUARDS!!!!!!"

That would not fly at my table at all. My player's don't mind being gently sent along a railroad, but in that situation they would be less than pleased, to say the least.

Also, what was that 20 rolled against? A DC? A passive Charisma score? Skill don't have critical (auto) successes.

 

[sunshadow21]

But see, those rolls would never be initiated on the DM's side of the table when it came to Deceiving, Intimidating, or Persuading the PCs. In my view, the DM asks for rolls when the outcome of an action is uncertain. Since I do not control the PCs, the outcome is not uncertain because the outcome is whatever the players say it is, with respect to their own characters.

That's certainly one way of doing it, but far from the only way. I find that there are times where it's perfectly appropriate for an NPC to be in a position to influence the PCs beyond what the player has control over or knowledge of, especially since I am running a home brew world, where many of the traditional assumptions of FR and Greyhawk are not directly applicable, that most of my players are not familiar with. Controlling a PC is never my goal as a DM, but imparting character experience and knowledge very often is. And that goes both ways; I allow PCs to potentially influence NPCs through skills, role play, or whatever means they can think of. Relying solely on player choice of reaction when other things like character background or world background exist is not always going to get the best results consistently, especially in a home brew world. Using mechanics to reinforce world or character background is one of the few ways I have as a DM that doesn't involve stopping the game for a long lore explanation or taking control away from the player entirely.

They cannot be and are not the only things I use, but every edition since 3rd has had them for a reason. Imperfect as they are, they are still the best starting point that has been developed as far as many groups are concerned. Long time players and groups don't really need them as much, but they are still useful for a lot players and DMs just starting out as a way to get the role play started.

 

[iserith]

Relying solely on player choice of reaction when other things like character background or world background exist is not always going to get the best results consistently, especially in a home brew world.

How do you define "best results" here though?

Using mechanics to reinforce world or character background is one of the few ways I have as a DM that doesn't involve stopping the game for a long lore explanation or taking control away from the player entirely.

It sounds like you think that there is a "correct" way for a player to have his or her character respond to something. Would you clarify?

In addition, we have a mechanic for encouraging players to act consistent with their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws - Inspiration. I like that it's a mechanic to reward players acting a particular way if they so choose rather than one that is used by the DM to tell them how to act (e.g. "intimidated").

 

[sunshadow21]

How do you define "best results" here though?



It sounds like you think that there is a "correct" way for a player to have his or her character respond to something. Would you clarify?

In addition, we have a mechanic for encouraging players to act consistent with their personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws - Inspiration. I like that it's a mechanic to reward players acting a particular way if they so choose rather than one that is used by the DM to tell them how to act (e.g. "intimidated").

I have played with many groups and many players, and most, myself included, have one thing in common: they think they know a lot more about the world, their characters, and the campaign in general than they really do, and most of the assumptions players make are generally at least partially wrong. This has really only lessened when I've managed to play with the same people routinely for long periods of time, and even then, it can be surprising what assumptions others are bringing to the table. Usually the moments when those assumptions are most likely to come into play is precisely the moments that you are advocating leaving everything up to the player. This causes a lot of stress at a lot of tables. This is where using some of those mechanics on the PCs can help, if used right. You don't tell them them, "You're intimidated, take a -2 to all rolls for the rest of the encounter," you tell them "you are intimidated because (flesh out world or character history here to give them something to work off of), take a -2 to all rolls for the rest of the encounter."

Inspiration is a great idea, but generally requires the player to actually understand enough about the world, character background (i.e. what does being a noble of the city of Israth really mean?), how they fit in the world (do they agree with the general behavior of a noble of Israth or do they deliberately do something different?), etc. before that mechanic can really have full effect. Short of sitting everyone down and giving a long explanation or writing it all out, and hoping they take the time to read it, the moments where any of the skills can potentially be used are the only real chances a DM has to actually get across enough of this information for player choice and inspiration to really work. It sounds like your group can do this without a lot of heavy reliance on mechanics; most groups aren't that lucky. Most groups I've been in, that really doesn't happen; some or all of the players would play off the intimidation as a failed attempt, the scene largely ends up being a largely blah encounter, and the game suffers. There really does have to be some kind of mechanical oomph behind the perceived negative as most players will not touch anything that leaves them less than 100% total control, and therefore, never really grow either themselves as a player or their characters. It's the same reason that most negative stats tend to be downplayed by the majority of players. Any kind of exposure or weakness in the character is actively and quickly tamped down, leaving little room for the DM to expand the story, world, or characters beyond what the players currently know (or think they know) without a lot of force. Much of this is well earned on the player's part, as many have had bad experiences with DMs that went overboard, but ignoring the mechanics completely isn't going to resolve any bad experiences.

In the end, for those lucky enough to find a consistent group to play with, simply ignoring or choosing to not apply rules is a perfectly valid option because it can be done in a larger framework of trust and common understanding of what the game should do. For most, it isn't; sporadic and selective use of the rules when trust and common understanding is not already present, as it won't be in most pick up groups or organized play setting, actually makes things harder, not easier. Trust and common ground only come with consistency, and folks willing to bend the skills rules so far as to not apply them to PCs are generally also going to make other changes to the game that newcomers are not likely to fully understand and immediately appreciate. There's a reason I won't play 5E with just anyone, or for that matter, any organized play league now that I have other options; too much potential table variance makes it hard for me to understand precisely what I can reasonably expect in most cases. So, while your approach probably works fine for your table, it would absolutely collapse at many others. This is both the strength and weakness of 5E's making the DM the center of the game.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

e.g. "If you succeed on the Intimidate check, you will cow the orc, Beat Horsedeath, into surrendering. If you fail, Beat Horsedeath kills the hostage." When we've gotten to this point, the player has already established a goal and an approach and now I've decided that the outcome is uncertain.

How do you rule it the other way around? E.g. the org, Beat Horsedeath, is trying to cow the player character into surrendering.

Or, to phrase my question differently, are the social skills for PCs only?