D&D 5E Using social skills on other PCs

[Bill Zebub]

Where do thoughts and feeling come into it? The text says nothing about thoughts and feelings. It only mentions what a character does.

But, really, you raise a good point, that I started exploring above. Maybe the "thoughts" and "feelings" are a distraction, and the emphasis should be on action declarations. I.e., the player has sole authority over their character's action declarations, unless a rule specifically constrains their choices. The DM has sole authority over the outcome of those action declarations.

(There may be a hole in that definition...I just whipped it off.)

My reasoning, or the underlying logic, for that definition is that the player controls thoughts and feelings. But the action declarations are the visible manifestation.

 

[billd91]

("Feelings" would be an extrapolation from "thoughts", I suppose.)

Or it’s a song by Morris Albert…

 

[Bill Zebub]

Or it’s a song by Morris Albert…

I think Barry Manilow gets that ninja.

 

[Maxperson]

We can indeed. I rather think dismissing Jeremy Crawford’s rulings and how they would support or not support any interpretation of the rules is a good policy. I made a whole thread to that effect once.

I think the biggest take-away from Crawford's tweets is that an NPC can force a PC to fart.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I think the biggest take-away from Crawford's tweets is that an NPC can force a PC to fart.

Not my PC. She farts at will, and only at will.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Signature quote: “Pull my finger.”

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Okay. Now can you explain why they have no chance of success? If the roleplay rule prevails over all, why can't C say what their character does?

A player says how their character thinks, speaks, and acts. They can indicate an action the character is attempting to do. The "does" part, the actual outcome of the action, is adjudicated by the DM.
"My character flies to the moon"
Auto-fail...
"Want to try something else?"
This explicitly does not violate the roleplaying rule.

I've tried, but I keep hitting the wall of arbitrariness as to what is on and off the table.

Now this should be a spell!

 

[Maxperson]

So far as I can make out, that misreads the wording in question. Those words define what it is to be roleplaying. They do not impose any constraint on the DM.

It's written definitively. This is what the player controls.

C: I fly over to where the dragons are and...
DM: Um, look, your character cannot fly, maybe if...
C: But don't I get to decide what my character does (points at PHB175)
DM: ...
C: Okay, well if I can't fly there I teleport to...
DM: Sorry, but you also do not have the ability to teleport, would you...
C: Right, I dematerialise the dragons from here then, by thinking at them psionically!
DM: ...

J: I fly over to where the dragons are and...
DM: Um, look, your character cannot fly, maybe if...
J: But don't I get to decide what my character does (points at PHB175)
DM: And you did. You declared that your PC was attempting to fly, but the rules only give your PC a walking speed and you've invoked no specific rule to beat that general one.
J: Gotcha. Well then I walk over and start climbing the mountain to get there.
DM: THAT you can do.

Later
DM: The dwarf claims to know nothing about it, but...
C: I want to know if he's telling the truth!
DM: Okay, you can use your Insight against the dwarf's Deception
C: That's not right - I decide what my character thinks!
DM: Yes, but - your Insight is pretty good and he's willing to answer your, perhaps if you just roll...
C: Nope, there's no uncertainty here, he's lying!!
DM: ...

DM: The dwarf claims to know nothing about it, but...
J: I want to know if he's telling the truth!
DM: Okay, you can use your Insight against the dwarf's Deception
J: That's not right - I decide what my character thinks!
DM: Sure, do you think he's lying or telling the truth?
J: Nope, there's no uncertainty here, he's lying!!
DM: Excellent. Are you going to act on that belief?

Much later, C finally encounters a dragon
DM: Okay, so you failed your Wisdom saving throw against Frightful Presence and..
C: Oh no, nope, no way. I decide what my character thinks, says and does, and my character is not frightened - it doesn't affect me. Chaaarrrrge!!!
DM: ...

DM: Okay, so you failed your Wisdom saving throw against Frightful Presence and..
J: Oh no, nope, no way. I decide what my character thinks, says and does, and my character is not frightened - it doesn't affect me. Chaaarrrrge!!!
DM: Specific beats general I'm afraid. You can roll to save or just fail it. Up to you.

In case doubts arise about this, I count 76 MM monsters with one or more of deception, intimidation or persuasion. Using DNDBeyond. Three pages of 20 monsters each, and one of 16. Example, Bone Devil, deception +7, or Adult Green Dragon, deception +8, persuasion +8.

Take out deception. That skill isn't at issue here. It doesn't make the PC believe or do anything.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

The roleplaying rule doesn’t need to be given primacy. A rule applies unless a more specific rule contradicts it. And my argument does not suggest that anything is “more permitted” than others. The rules instruct the DM to do some things, and do not instruct the DM to do other things. My position is simply that making an ability check to resolve an action taken to force a player to make a certain decision for their character is in the latter category.

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.

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.

I haven’t moved the goalposts, I just misunderstood Clearstream’s premise. What I thought was arguing the premise as they presented it was in fact not. My bad there.

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!

No. I am not treating any checks differently than each other. If there are two bins, they are “actions with uncertain outcomes” and “actions without uncertain outcomes” all actions in the second bin are not appropriate to resolve with ability checks of any kind. All actions in the first bin are appropriate to resolve with ability checks.

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.

No, whether an action is taken by a PC or an NPC has no bearing on how it ought to be resolved.

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.

You’ve got that reversed. The certainty or uncertainty of an action is what determines which bin it goes in.

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.

These objections you raise do not actually conflict with my interpretation of the rules. But apparently there is nothing I can say to demonstrate that fact and won’t be dismissed as “special pleading,” so I’m just not going to bother engaging with these objections any more. I’ve demonstrated why they don’t conflict with my reading, no point banging my head against a wall if you’re just going to keep accusing me of making up “imaginative excuses.

It does not apply the Charmed condition. I know, weird, right?

It literally says “the creature is charmed by you.”

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.

Great. I’m engaging in motivated thinking, so you don’t have to actually address my argument, you can just dismiss it as illegitimate. Have fun with that.

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.

Mhmm. Go off.

This actually explains a lot. If your play approach is based on this particular reading of the rules, then attacking this reasoning means attacking the validity of your approach. That clears up a lot. I do not have this issue because while I was introduced to this approach by those making this argument, I eventually found this argument to be lacking in any real rigor and based on an assumption about play. So I took that assumption out, looked at play, and decided it lead to good places and so just went with explicitly stated changes with explicit premises of play to back them. Same end place, without the need to make a weak argument for superiority of interpretation. Felt loads better.

Your argument was that there is no path from the RAW that can arrive at the RAI. I tell you that I did in fact arrive at the RAI by following a path to the RAW.

 

[Charlaquin]

Okay. Now can you explain why they have no chance of success? If the roleplay rule prevails over all, why can't C say what their character does?

C has full authority to decide that their character tries to fly, or teleport, or psionically disintegrate a dragon. If the character has the ability to do those things - for example if they’re an Aarakocra, or an Eladrin, or an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer who knows the Disintegrate spell, that attempt might have a chance of success. In fact, in those particular three cases, I don’t see it having a chance of failure. If the character lacks the ability to do those things, they still have the authority to decide they try to do it, but since success is not possible, they will fail without a roll.