D&D 5E Persuasion - How powerful do you allow it to be?

[Celebrim]

I consider the whole 'retry' thing barely worth discussing.

The answer is, consider the circumstances of the fiction and use the mechanic that most makes sense for the circumstances of the fiction. If it doesn't make sense for the PC to just bat their eyes harder and get a retry, guess what? That's how you know you shouldn't allow a retry.

We could spend a lot of time backing that assertion up from the rules, but then very much we'd be getting into a really rules lawyerly discussion where you were trying to get the letter of the rules to override the spirit of the rules.

In this specific case of a failed seduction check, we are think obviously dealing with a skill check with consequences - that's one of the reasons we bothered to roll in the first place. If the skill check failed, then the reasonable consequences are the Priestess now realizes that you have dishonorable intentions. She is now less friendly toward the PC with all the consequences that entails, including more difficult seduction checks in the future - if and when based on the play it would make sense for those to be earned.

The rules are tools. This isn't hard.

 

[iserith]

We could spend a lot of time backing that assertion up from the rules, but then very much we'd be getting into a really rules lawyerly discussion where you were trying to get the letter of the rules to override the spirit of the rules.

It really doesn't take much time at all to show what the rules say about the matter and I think it's valuable to show that the rules have us covered in this case, especially to people involved in this discussion who don't play D&D 5e. While the section to which I referred in my previous post is in my view probably one of the most sloppily written in the book, it is at least in line with what I imagine you think is the "spirit" of the rules and supports your own preferences. No rules lawyers need be retained here.

 

[Celebrim]

It really doesn't take much time at all to show what the rules say about the matter and I think it's valuable to show that the rules have us covered in this case, especially to people involved in this discussion who don't play D&D 5e. While the section to which I referred in my previous post is in my view probably one of the most sloppily written in the book, it is at least in line with what I imagine you think is the "spirit" of the rules and supports your own preferences. No rules lawyers need be retained here.

I actually fully agree with you on all points above except that you will find that for a certain category of rules lawyer, no amount of time will ever be enough to show them what the rules say about the matter. No matter how tidy your argument, no matter how obvious the conclusion, they'll boldly stand there and tell you that black is white and white is black for certain values of "is".

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Given enough time, people can be persuaded into almost anything.

People in the real world have been persuaded to buy products that they don't need. They have been persuaded to reverse strongly held moral stances. They have been persuaded to commit suicide.

Many of the instances described in the OP seem like things that absolutely could be accomplished via persuasion, though not necessarily in the sort of time-frames that an adventurer typically has to act in. Some of these acts might take hours or days, rather than minutes or seconds.

 

[Celebrim]

Given enough time, people can be persuaded into almost anything.

People in the real world have been persuaded to buy products that they don't need. They have been persuaded to reverse strongly held moral stances. They have been persuaded to commit suicide.

Sometimes. And yet, we see cases where people will risk or accept torture and death rather than be persuaded as well. I don't think it necessarily follows that because people can be persuaded, that they will be persuaded, much less that because some or even most people were persuaded everyone would be.

Many of the instances described in the OP seem like things that absolutely could be accomplished via persuasion, though not necessarily in the sort of time-frames that an adventurer typically has to act in. Some of these acts might take hours or days, rather than minutes or seconds.

I also don't think that it follows that a persuasion skill check necessarily corresponds to minutes or seconds of in game activity. I think it would be perfectly valid to establish a scene, engage in some RP to establish the character of the relationship between the Priestess and the NPC, and for the player to say, "On the pretext of friendly conversation and banter, I'm going to spend the evening trying to seduce the priestess.", and then to use a single skill check to resolve an entire evening of gradually increasing intimacy leading up to the PC's pass at the Priestess. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say as I'd only allow the skill check in the first place if some plausible circumstances like that preexisted in the fiction. Something boorish like walking up to the Priestess and saying, "Let's get naked, babe.", would either not get a roll, or else would get one with a huge circumstance penalty because it doesn't establish a reasonable basis in the fiction.

This gets back to my discussion of "intelligent strategy" in your social challenges. Just as combat has tactics that make it easier to succeed, so the player needs to demonstrate good tactics if they want to play a successful Diplomancer. I have nothing against Diplomancer as a concept, and consider it a valid character with examples in fiction. I don't say, "No." to these sort of things. But I do assign difficulty based on the circumstances of the fiction with the intention of producing a transcript of play that is a good story. In the case of seducing the Priestess, that probably involves a series of reasonable steps with less risk and less difficulty than frontal assault on her most cherished values, and that may in fact require days of time - the social equivalent of laying siege to a well fortified town - and multiple checks to resolve the series of steps that gradually erode her fictional positioning and put her in precarious position. I don't as a DM have a stake in whether or not the player succeeds in their goals - that is to say I don't care what the resulting story is. I only care that the resulting transcript is a good story.

 

[iserith]

This gets back to my discussion of "intelligent strategy" in your social challenges. Just as combat has tactics that make it easier to succeed, so the player needs to demonstrate good tactics if they want to play a successful Diplomancer. I have nothing against Diplomancer as a concept, and consider it a valid character with examples in fiction. I don't say, "No." to these sort of things. But I do assign difficulty based on the circumstances of the fiction with the intention of producing a transcript of play that is a good story. In the case of seducing the Priestess, that probably involves a series of reasonable steps with less risk and less difficulty than frontal assault on her most cherished values, and that may in fact require days of time - the social equivalent of laying siege to a well fortified town - and multiple checks to resolve the series of steps that gradually erode her fictional positioning and put her in precarious position. I don't as a DM have a stake in whether or not the player succeeds in their goals - that is to say I don't care what the resulting story is. I only care that the resulting transcript is a good story.

My experience is that most DMs do not put much thought at all behind their social interaction challenges. I try to make mine at least as involved as a combat challenge with multiple objections to overcome and stakes that really matter. And because any ability check will come with a meaningful consequence for failure, the last thing anyone wants to do in my game is roll a fickle d20, so you don't see players pushing for ability checks. When they do have to roll, resources like Inspiration get spent to mitigate risk on par with combats.

 

[pemerton]

I typically use Passive score for repeated attempts at the same thing. So if seducing the priestess is DC 30, you'd need a +20 bonus to succeed on retry. BTW I cap DCs at 30 and bonuses at +20. Obviously opposed rolls can go over 30, but 'passive opposition' can't give higher than a 30 DC.

A character with CHA 30 PB +6 and Persuasion expertise would get +22 RAW, so this can come up although usually it's only an issue with AC.

Just for clarity - so the first attempt is rolled, and then the retries are adjudicated via the passive number? So like you say in the last para it's hard to win on a retry without very big numbers (or more mundane-level DCs).

 

[Celebrim]

My experience is that most DMs do not put much thought at all behind their social interaction challenges.

My experience is most GMs don't put a lot of thought behind their combat challenges either. Or their skill challenges. We could have a whole other thread on good encounter design. There is a lot of terrible encounter design out there where the GMs tend to fault the rules, and there has been a lot of false paths pursued in game design with the goal of making good encounter design (or good narratives for that matter) something that just naturally falls out of the rules. But while I agree with you that good mechanics sustain and enrich a challenge, I feel that for the most part that's a problem of the Art (of gaming) that can't ever be fully solved with the Science (of gaming). A game can at most provide you with a good toolset. But a game can never just turn GMs into skilled craftsmen just by giving them good tools. It's a great start, but the skills of choosing and using those tools will still have to be acquired.

 

[iserith]

Just for clarity - so the first attempt is rolled, and then the retries are adjudicated via the passive number? So like you say in the last para it's hard to win on a retry without very big numbers (or more mundane-level DCs).

Personally, and without judgment as to whether its workable or fun for S'mon's group, I think this muddles the rules for passive checks which are used to represent the average result for a task with an uncertain outcome done repeatedly (such as searching for secret doors while traveling the dungeon) and the rules for retrying a task that has already failed. I discuss the differences as presented by the rules as I see them upthread.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Manbearcat - I'm only seeing fragments of this conversation, but the following quotes seem to focus on the core of it:

That is pretty much what I figured.

Inferred...incorrectly...and then extrapolated a lot of incorrect downstream things from a bad initial inference.

The argument has historically been the idea that Shrodinger's output x from a particular type of GMing technique/action resolution scheme tends toward incoherent fiction y. The entire point of my post was to illustrate that even something completely out of continuity, not expressed by an on-screen-established causal chain (Flashbacks) has absolutely no problem being causally-coherent and internally consistent with established continuity.

But I guess I whiffed.