I am not trying to say that you are reaching for rule zero. I am saying that I don’t believe there’s any point in arguing about what the rules permit the DM to do, because they permit anything. I say this as a defense against the repeated assertions that I’m claiming the rules disallow the DM from resolving actions taken to force a PC to make a particular decision by way of an ability check. I am not. I am only saying that I do not see anywhere in the rules where it is suggested that the DM ought to do so.
And there is nowhere that it's suggested that the Roleplaying Rule has the primacy that you give it. Both are equally unmoored, and both don't matter according to your argument that everything is permitted. If you start with everything is permitted, then any argument that follows that tries to suggest that this thing is more permitted than the other is an utterly failing argument -- you've successfully spited your own face when you waggled your cut off nose at others.
Ah, ok, I see the confusion here. I too am arguing the premise as presented
by @clearstream as a means of resolving the conflict with the “roleplaying rule.” They presented the argument that the “roleplaying rule” represents a dichotomy between roleplaying - wherein the player decides what their character thinks, says, and does - and mechanics, wherein the rules say what the PCs think, say, and do. They suggested that the DM has the authority to suspend roleplaying (as they are defining it here) in order to rule that an action made with the intent of forcing a PC to make a particular decision has an uncertain outcome. Rather than dispute the premise of this position, I argued it as presented, saying that I do not see a suggestion in the rules that the DM ought to “suspend roleplaying” in order to get around the “roleplaying rule.” Is that a bit clearer?
This is exactly what I'm arguing, so no, I was already this clear. I very easily followed that argument, and was countering your position here as equally unmoored because that authority has to exist for PC actions to operate, and if the authority exists there, it exists everywhere. We we accept this premise, you cannot question where the authority exists in the case of NPC vs PC social moves as if it doesn't because it would rely upon the same authority present for PC vs NPC social moves. You're creating a special distinction for one while ignoring that the same applies to the other -- which is special pleading.
I am not engaging in special pleading. My critique of the “suspending roleplaying” argument as presented is that the rules do not seem to suggest that the DM ever suspend roleplaying. On the contrary, the same rules state that roleplaying is involved in all parts of the game, so suspending it would seem to go against that. The only thing that’s “special” about actions made to force a PC to make a particular decision is that they are the only type of action that, as far as I can tell, would require the suspension of roleplaying in order to allow to have an uncertain outcome in the face of the “roleplaying rule.”
Wait, you just said you were engaged with the premise that there's roleplaying and then there's mechanical resolution per
@clearstream. This argument discards that and returns to "roleplaying is always active so there's no distinction." That's a party foul in the discussion -- you've move the goalposts from the current argument to a different one to dispense with the already conceded premise of this argument.
Yes. This is and has always been my position.
This is not so. In my reading, CHA checks are no different than any other ability check in that they can be used in what you call DM solo play. CHA checks are also no different than any other checks in that they cannot be used to force a player character to make a specific decision. My position treats all ability checks as equal in this.
No, you've created two arbitrary categories and binned checks into one or the other and then said "all checks in bin one are the same as each other and all check in bin two are the same as each other." You then try to claim that this is treating all ability checks the same -- it's not. Bin one is treated differently from bin two. Very differently. This is not treating all ability checks as equal!
The argument is that you are exactly doing this -- you are treating the two bins differently at different times. In some cases, ie when the PC uses them, all bins are equal. In other cases, when a PC is not using them, the bins are different. So bin two gets flipped around depending on who's using it. Yes, I know the argument that this isn't so because it's whether or not it's uncertain, but that uncertainty is directly tied the what's in bin two. And the justifications for this are thin as heck and require imaginative excuses like "I'm not telling a player what their PC thinks on a insight vs deception check because I'm describing what they see!" But you haven't at all addressed the counter argument to this that shows you're either creating player side puzzles to solve to find out what their PC thinks of the information or that you're just avoiding certain phrases to do the same on the PC side. This a rhetorical device where you're pretending there's a difference here, but the very nature of this action by the player is to find out what their PC thinks about the NPC. I do not see how this can actually be avoided.
Charm Person imposes a specific exception to the “roleplaying rule.” It says that the affected character has the Charmed condition (which has specific rules that contradict the roleplaying rule) and it says that the charmed creature treats the caster as a friendly acquaintance - again, a contradiction of the roleplaying rule, assuming the charmed creature is a PC.
It does not apply the Charmed condition. I know, weird, right?
I don’t think we’ll be able to agree on this, because I can’t fathom how one could conflate what someone knows with what someone thinks. Knowledge is information a person has access to. Thought is mental manipulation of information. The roleplaying rule, as I read it, says that the player gets to decide what to do with information they have access to (“decide what the character thinks”). Character knowledge is independent of this. To trot out a very tired example, a player may think they know that fire stops a troll’s regeneration, and the roleplaying rule allows them to decide that their character thinks that as well. But, if the DM is using a custom stat block for a troll that gains temporary hit points when it takes fire damage or whatever, then what the player has decided the character thinks clearly does not line up with reality; they do not actually know that the troll’s regeneration will be stopped by fire damage (because it won’t). They can declare some action with the intent of gaining this information, such as thinking back to their grandfather’s stories of trolls to try and remember if they have any special weaknesses. The outcome of this would probably be uncertain, or at least, the roleplaying rule does not preclude it’s uncertainty, because it says the player decides what the character thinks, not what they know.
The idea that the processes of the brain and cognition make such a distinction -- that thought and memory are not intimately interconnected and that thinking on a thing alters the memory of the thing -- is fascinating to me. It's basically arguing that your understanding of these things is controlling for all play everywhere such that you can universally say that your understanding of knowledge and thinking means that these mechanics in this game are distinct. I find that a fascinating example of motivated thinking.
For the reasons above, I don’t believe any of these “issues” are a thing if we assume the roleplaying rule are actually a thing. You seem to be stating that they are issues with my interpretation, and then accuse me of engaging in special pleading when I demonstrate why they are not.
Yes, we've covered that you find your handwaving to be sufficiently vigorous that you can claim that your approach, of all approaches, is the most indicated by RAW and RAI. That any counter argument doesn't matter because of Rule Zero, but that this one is the most suggested. That you have to make an unsupported assumption to start, and that the entire argument fails absent that unsupported (and actually somewhat countered) assumption, is ignored. That your reading requires many other unsupported changes -- or rather than the only support for them is the Roleplaying Rule, itself supported only by the unsupported assumption -- is similarly ignored. Satisfied that all counterarguments are ignored, the argument that your interpretation is the most supported forges on, totally ignoring that it's built on quicksand.
