D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[Ovinomancer]

well by RAW the DM is incontrol of everything but PCs (including all things the PC feels,sees,smells,tastes, and like 20 other senses) in my home games it is a little diffrent becuse we all like to horse around and add little things, but that is still 90% of my game.

nope, infact since we all know my defualt answer is "Yes, and" they almost never need to ask may they, or what will happen if...


except the part where the players trust the DM to control the world (including NPCs and Monsters) in ways that make the game fun and playable with a bit of challange.


again being successful at something AND getting someone (or something) to react to your success the way you want are two different things.

You ripped the bar off the door
You climbed the tree
You growled in a mencing way
You spoke an oddly specific and way overly gross and gorey speech and made him believe you meant it
You recalled the lore you asked to recall

none of these go father...

if the door is still magically sealed and locked it isn't openable even though you wanted to open it
If there was nothing up the tree you climbed it, but found nothing
If growling at the guard made him yell for back up you still scared the poop out of him
You made a great Intimidate check (even if the way you said it freaked out the table and paused gameplay)but instead of just taking your money he fell back scared and those dogs you wanted to buy are now in full protector mode.
If the lore isn't enough to know who cast the spell, you still made the check and sucseeded in remembering it, I gave it to you, but you still need to find out who cast the spell.

So, I need to make a check to growl in your game, with the outcome of that growling to be left to the GM? Or to speak in a certain way, with no expectation of outcome? I have issues with some of the others, but these stand out as fairly glaring.

As I've said, you're absolutely fine to do all of this -- the rules of 5e are terrible in this regard and leave entirely open the GM ignoring the results of a roll or finding a way to walk back or thwart any success however they want. Totally fine. I disagree violently that this is the only way to play, a particularly great way to play, a useful counterargument to engaging with player intent, and has anything at all to do with trust. The trust bit is usually a smokescreen for "just go along with this, the cool story I'm telling will be worth it in the end." I have loads of trust for my players and from them when I run 5e, and I don't do anything at all like many of the examples you're suggesting here.

 

[Lyxen]

Weird. I mean, if I search a door for traps, I usually say something like, "Bob searches the door for traps." I include my intent. But, you're saying that this causes arguments? I'm not sure I follow that. It seems the problem you're describing is much larger in scope and actually something different.

This is not exactly what I'm saying here, our problems where more of the kind of "I want to prevent him from fleeing, so I position myself between him and the door", to which someone said "that is stupid, because you are now in the area of the fireball that I was about to cast, and you are an idiot because if you want to prevent him from fleeing, you'd better [other action]." followed by a lot of arguments especially if other people join in. Now, a player just say "I position myself there.", end of story, and no one is allowed to comment, it's just a description of what the character is doing.

As for your example, the wording there might be a bit of the problem because of the use of the word "for". Let's see what happens if you state "Bob examines the door to see if there are hints that it might be trapped", or actually just "Bob examines the door for anything unusual" or even "Bob examines the door". It's enough for the DM to see if the character gets some information, using the passive or asking for a roll.

I mean, if I want to intimidate a captured kobold into sitting quietly, can I not include this as my intent? Do I just say I'm intimidating the kobold and hope the GM takes it at the same face value I intended it? Or should I just expect to get what I get?

First, it would often be resolved by "I pull out my weapon and shout at the kobold, and I tell him to sit down quietly or by the gods I will rip out his head". The PH insists that this is social interaction and mostly around roleplay after all. Now, in the case of some players, they might want to be use the 3rd person for various reasons, but it would still involve a description of the actions AND a voiced request to the kobold to sit down quietly, both of them, so the actions are clear.

The actual intent of why the kobold needs to sit down quietly is something else entirely.

 

[Voadam]

Finally, to drive home the point about social skills and the problem with the Roleplaying Rule -- insight vs deception. If the PC is declaring an action to get a read on an NPC, that can be resolved by the PC's Insight vs the NPC's Deception. The result informs the PC of how their character thinks on the topic. Yes, I'm aware that you can take pains to carefully state the result in a way that doesn't directly tell the player how their PC thinks, but that's just a smokescreen, because the player is fundamentally asking to resolve what their PC thinks of the NPC. Unless you stick to just describing facial tics and eye shifts, in which case you're either encoding the same info into a puzzle for the PC or just providing largely useless information the player can't reconcile, the result of this check will be telling the player something their PC thinks. And this is a specifically allowed interaction in the rules, so it's 100% under the "all text is rules" assumption. We now have to engage in some form of special pleading to excuse this violation of the rule (probably under some form of "specific defeats general" which then opens new fronts against why CHA checks, being more specific, don't overrule the Roleplaying Rule). There are logical holes all over this argument as well. It's not really the argument's fault, though, 5e is written in a loose manner that defies strict interpretation. I happen to agree in large part with the approach you employ, I just can't stand behind this argument to support it.

I'd say from a natural language approach there is a qualitative difference in the control of thoughts when a player says they want to use a skill to gain information versus being influenced to do something by a charisma ability check in the context of roleplaying a character.

Animal handling to intuit an animal's intention, insight for most any use, medicine to diagnose an illness and all the knowledge skills all provide information, which is technically thoughts, but that seems a different concept from the roleplaying subsection of social interaction quote

"Roleplaying is, literally, the act of playing out a role. In this case, it's you as a player determining how your character thinks, acts, and talks."

Arguably in using the knowledge functions of the ability checks the player has determined their thoughts by initiating the trigger for the discretionary DM call to use an ability check. This would be different from someone else initiating a thought for the character through an influence ability check.

 

[Charlaquin]

Menacing Attack?

Contains in the text governing it an explicit and specific exception to the player deciding what their character does.

 

[Maxperson]

Then contrast that with the entire chapter in n combat, where “might” is used primarily to describe possible decisions made by the combatants, not the implementation of the rules.

Two different sections being different doesn't mean anything. Not all sections have to be written and run the same way.

Nowhere in the section on Interaction does it say anything like, “If the DC is met or exceeded, the target’s attitude increases by one step.” It might do that.

"If the adventurers say or do the right things during an interaction (perhaps by touching on a creature's ideal, bond, or flaw), they can make a hostile creature temporarily indifferent, or make an indifferent creature temporarily friendly. Likewise, a gaffe, insult, or harmful deed might make a friendly creature temporarily indifferent or turn an indifferent creature hostile."

The bolded section is something like, "“If the DC is met or exceeded, the target’s attitude increases by one step.” The DM has to decide if the outcome is in doubt. If it is he sets the DC to increase required to shift the attitude up or down.

The whole thing is predicated on DM judgment calls, not implementation of an algorithm. Even the initial conditions and DCs are just the DM picking stuff.

Not the whole thing. A lot of it, yes. The DM makes the judgement if what has been done is automatically successful, automatically a failure, or if the outcome is in doubt and sets the DC. That part is judgment. That the rule is for him to do that is not judgment. That's what is written on page 244 of the DMG.

 

[MGibster]

and how does that influence play out? Once someone is intimidated how do they react?

For me, it depends entirely on the situation and the personalities involved. In a Trail of Cthulhu game I ran, a player character detective with the NYPD tried to use intimidate against a mid-level mafia boss. The threat basically amounted to, "If you don't cooperate, I'm going to arrest you." I explained to the player that such a tactic would not work on the mafia boss. He's been brought up to adhere to omertà, the code of silence, and speaking to authority figures isn't something he can bring himself to do, especially in front of his subordinates. But, as experienced detectives, you know this. You'll need to find another tact to get the information you want." In other situations, was able to intimidate others with threats of arrest to get the information they wanted.

If a PC makes their intimidation roll, I typically have them get whatever they were trying to accomplish be it information, avoiding a fight, etc., etc. But sometimes it does depend on the personality of the NPC being intimidated. A gang leader might not be able to back down in front of his subordinates without losing their respect. So he might have to escalate the situation in order to save face or contrive some reason to let it go. "Eh, you're lucky I'm in a good mood or I'd kick your butt. Get out of my sight."

 

[Charlaquin]

Is it right then, that we agree that game mechanics can override player decisions about their characters? So that the character behaves as the mechanic would have them, rather than as the player might decide. We agree that such mechanics include spells, and magical and non-magical features, right?

Yes.

Would you agree that by RAW, an NPC can use Insight to learn that a character is lying to them?

An NPC can attempt to discern information about a PC’s emotional state based on their body language and other such nonverbal cues. If the outcome of that action is uncertain, the rules support the DM in making a Wisdom (Insight) check to resolve that uncertainty.

 

[Maxperson]

I don't want to go over all the rules again, but above, it just mentions "someone", it does not specify whether that someone is a PC or an NPC, actually.

It's talking in natural language to the player and says the DM calls for the roll. The context is for use by a PC on an NPC. Not vice versa.

And as you point out here, except in the case where the attempt is on a NPC to change his attitude (which is a DMG rule), we still don't know how it works, there is no technical effect associated with success or failure.

Success on trying to make the creature more friendly is a shift up one step. Failure is it doesn't shift up one step. Success on trying to make an NPC dislike you is a shift down one step. Failure is it doesn't shift down one step.

Page 244 of the DMG gives you the examples under Changing Attitude.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes, the rules on Intimidate describe what that skill can do. For example, Intimidate can pry information from a prisoner.

Proficiency in Intimidate can allow a character to add their proficiency bonus to an ability check (typically a Charisma check) being made to pry information from a prisoner. Such a check might need to be made of the outcome of said action is uncertain.

 

[Lyxen]

It's talking in natural language to the player and says the DM calls for the roll. The context is for use by a PC on an NPC. Not vice versa.

It might be for a PC to use on another PC, is what I was saying, nothing here prevents it.

Success on trying to make the creature more friendly is a shift up one step. Failure is it doesn't shift up one step. Success on trying to make an NPC dislike you is a shift down one step. Failure is it doesn't shift down one step.
Page 244 of the DMG gives you the examples under Changing Attitude.

I gave that one as the example of where the effect is determined, but the PH rule about using a Charisma check is wider than changing attitudes, so what I'm saying is that there is only one type of case (changing attitude) where the effect is determined by the rules, in all other cases there is no specific effect described (even the tables in the DMG are only examples).