D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[Aldarc]

This topic gets re-hashed a lot, it seems, and in general my stance is that social skills don't 'work' on other PCs.

But I was just reading some of the early materials for Stonetop, a kickstarted PoA game, and came across this:

View attachment 147502

I like that a lot. It leaves the target PC fully in control of the player, but also provides a framework for Cha skills to 'work' on other PCs.

I don't have an elegant way to map that to 5e rules, but thought I'd throw it out there as a middle ground between the two sides of the debate.

EDIT: Try again on the attachment....
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I somehow missed this thread. When I saw the title, I was considering posting this same bit from Stonetop - as I also recently re-read this Move and recalled our heated discussion about social skills - only to find that you have beaten me to the punch. Now I have 20+ pages of reading to do in this thread.

In Venture City, a superhero supplement for Fate (which, overall, is very bad and feels like it was written by someone who barely has any idea how Fate works, but anyway), there's Influence superpower. Or maybe it called something else, I only have Russian translation.

Anyway, it works as a Rapport vs. Will attack. Then, the target can decide whether to take mental damage, or oblige. It works quite well.

Brian Engard, one of the co-authors of Venture City, has his name attached to some high profile and highly regarded supplements for Fate, including Fate Core, Fate System Toolkit, Fate Adversary Toolkit, Bulldogs, Atomic Robo, Uprising: The Dystopian Universe RPG, Dresden Files Accelerated, etc. I'm not sure if such an accusation questioning his understanding of Fate would hold much water.

Can it be used one PC to another? If so, I feel it suffers the technical flaw of being able to be used unreasonably an XP generator. One could say - don't use the rules unreasonably - but that is no excuse for badly written rules.

Therefore, is Parley solely NPC to PC?

Yeah, I thought of that as well. I think it is a design flaw, but....I guess I just wouldn't play with people who abused it.

You are welcome to ask Jeremy Strandberg on the Dungeon World Discord. He's quite open to discussing his design decisions and the like, and it's still open to clarification. That said, fishing Parley vs. PCs for failed rolls and -6 XP seems a bit silly because a 6- roll also forces a hard move against the PCs by the GM. If you really want to fish for that XP, then you have to be prepared for hard move after hard move against your characters. Moreover, it's seems like the easy fix is simply to say that XP is not generated in these situations.

 

[HammerMan]

Your goal was to rip off the bar. You succeeded. Any assumption that ripping off the bar would open the door was clearly faulty.


We're talking about game mechanics. If the outcome of a Charisma(Persuasion) check does not result in the desired goal, it is a failure. In other words, the NPC was not persuasive because the PC did not do what they wanted.

but as a PC I clearly wanted to open the door... just becuse you do something, doesn't mean you get the results you WANT... also if I failed the str check i would fail to rip the bar off and not know it had other seals on it.

 

[HammerMan]

There is a meaningful difference between those things. Falling down is something that happens to the character, regardless of their input. Being friendly to an NPC is something the character does, which requires their input. The former is a cause and effect relationship out of the character’s control, the latter requires an active extertion of the character’s will.

so (not withstanding data turning off his emotion chip) how many people have MORE control of there emotions then there body when pushed?

 

[HammerMan]

You mean the 3.5 edition where the persuasion skill (diplomacy) explicitly only influenced NPCs?

Diplomacy (Cha)​

Check​

You can change the attitudes of others (nonplayer characters) with a successful Diplomacy check; see the Influencing NPC Attitudes sidebar, below, for basic DCs. In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party.

***

Influencing NPC Attitudes​

Use the table below to determine the effectiveness of Diplomacy checks (or Charisma checks) made to influence the attitude of a nonplayer character, or wild empathy checks made to influence the attitude of an animal or magical beast.

thank you, @iserith likes to claim it is others that rule based on privus editions, but that is never said in 5e

 

[HammerMan]

Whether or not to get pushed is not something you can decide. It happens to you, or it doesn’t. What to do when someone threatens you is something you can (and must) decide. I don’t understand how the difference could be the least bit unclear.

but you don't get to decied how well the other creature/pc/npc did... you only get to respond to the stimulie

 

[HammerMan]

Nope. There's not one iota in social interactions that specifically contradicts the player making the decision about how his PC thinks or acts.

and there is nothing that says how intimidate works at all...

 

[HammerMan]

What do these have to do with social skills?

because those rules are only PC facing like skill/stat checks are... except of course the general of the game, with no carve out for "PC only"

the only rule in the game that is PC only is Death Saves.

 

[HammerMan]

And I pointed out that 2 monsters in the MM from A-D have intimidate, and 4 have persuasion. Not one Angel, Demon, Devil or Dragon can has the intimidate skill. And only 4 dragons(3 of which are good) have persuasion. 85 monsters and only 6 have those skills.

If these skills were supposed to be used against PCs and not say for use against other NPCs or to inform the DM on how to roleplay them, many more monsters would have those skills. I mean, the whole devil schtick is to persuade people to make deals, except not one of them is actually proficient in it.

the limited number shows that they DID think about them useing it... and most of the time that book is for vs PCs... it is why good has persuasion... only a few creatures have more then cha mod... why, to be used

 

[HammerMan]

Menacing Attack is a Battlemaster Maneuver that explicitly has the possibility of imposing the Frightened condition upon a creature. Clear enough rule, right?

Now, can you show us where in the rules it explicitly details that an attempt to intimidate a creature has a chance of imposing the Frightened condition? Or, more specifically, where in the rules it states that the success state for a Charisma(Intimidation) ability check is that the target of said intimidating action is now suffering the Frightened condition?

no, becuse that isn't what it does... it also doesn't give the PC control of an NPC, or the frightened condition to the NPC...

what it is, is a test to see how intimadating the character (PC or NPC ) is and then the narration follows.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

no, becuse that isn't what it does... it also doesn't give the PC control of an NPC, or the frightened condition to the NPC...

Agreed.

what it is, is a test to see how intimadating the character (PC or NPC ) is and then the narration follows.

Meaning that they succeed in their goal - or not - for most ability checks, right? That is, most ability checks are binary in that they have a success state and they have a failure state. Do you agree that's how the 5e rules generally portray ability checks?