D&D 5E Roleplaying in D&D 5E: It’s How You Play the Game

[HammerMan]

Yes, seriously.

Play your character, not someone else's. (players offering uninvited suggestions to other players is one of the biggest sources of out-of-character arguments around here, and it's taken decades of smackdown-hammering to get people to bloody well stop doing it)

I am getting a distinct feeling that people being friends at some of these games is rarer then I thought.

 

[HammerMan]

Personally I would not enjoy a game where there were never any ability skill checks less than one that uses them. If someone at the table knows military tactics (or is just good at making up convincing B.S.) it would only have minimal effect.

Yeah I have a player (for 20ish years) who was but now is exmilitary and a huge history buff, and we had for several of those years (and a few before) a salesman who could talk himself into sounding right on anything... the number of times the smooth talker convinced DMs something would work due to "I know from XXX" and telling a good story for a week or two later for the military guy to come back call BS, and show the real stories the other guy embellished or whole sale lied about were legion... another reason not to let people convince you with out of game skill...

 

[HammerMan]

A clever DM can get around players trying to "out-smart" their INT or "charm-up" their CHA, and have fun while doing so. I mean, maybe a low CHA character has a low CHA partially because they're not nearly as charismatic as they think they are, and maybe one definition of a low intelligence person is someone who thinks they're much smarter than they actually are. So even as a smart player with a low INT character comes up with a clever idea that is inconsistent with their character, the DM can either say, "Wrong" or just make them roll for it. Similarly with CHA.

yup...that is what I have been saying.

 

[HammerMan]

Let's go with the exact extreme example.

A player comes to me as DM and says they want to imagine their Str 8 Con 10 stat warlock as descriptively having the mighty thews and physical prowess of Conan.

I would tell them I have no problem with them describing their character how they want, but they will still have a -1 on strength checks. If it does not cause a dissonance problem for them and is what they want to play, I am fine with accommodating the descriptive self image they want for their roleplay character.
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Aesthetically I prefer to have the game not incentivize slotting mechanically optimized character builds into only certain roleplay roles. I prefer to have mechanics and roleplay be separate.

If you come to me with an 8 str 10 con character and try to describe him/her as strong looking or above average health looking I would call for a check, disguise, persuasion, something depending on how you are hiding your below average str.

If someone looks like heman and has a carrining capacity of 60lbs I am going to ask for a BIG explanation.

 

[HammerMan]

Ah, so it's another one of those things that's meant to prevent "cheating", like requiring somebody to act intimidated if an NPC "uses intimidate" on them.

I would compair both to rolling a 3 and saying "nat 20"

Imagine a game in which you (as a player) don't see other players' character sheets, and you also don't see their dice rolls. All you know is whether they succeed or fail when they do roll dice.

well half of that has been true for 2 years for me... on roll20 we don't see the sheets but we do see the rolls. before that though (actually back in 2e and 3e mostly) I also played with a big group in my buddies basement. we all sate in comfy chairs but spread out, it was rare to see the sheets or rolls.... so not hard for me to imagine.

Now imagine that you're playing a character with a low attribute, but you describe (and roleplay) your character as being exceptional in the associated areas...but with some kind of restriction or limitation. So you have Strength 6, but you describe yourself as being a hulking, muscle-bound brute, but when you were a child you accidentally killed your puppy, so you are hesitant to use your strength and went to wizard school. Or....well, you get the idea.

yup... would not have lasted long when we did keep secrets, too hard to maintain the lie...now that we are all open it would go better as we all came up with excuses for it... but ut stilll isn't something i would want to do more then once in a blue moon.

Would be kind of fun, and possibly illustrative.

could be... but it reminds me of the "I wont use the light saber so it is just a fancy tube on my waist" issue we had back in 3.5 where a player in a multiverse game came in as a jedi... got the DM to rule (based on d20 starwars) that lightsaber crits did con damage but promised not to use it... then game 3 or 4 started using it... I see the infinity more likely end to this story is the player asking "just this once can I get the bonus that I RP I have to keep the game consistent" and then THAT leading to hard feelings at the table or more and more "Just this once"

 

[Oofta]

I think it would be a blast to play a fighter who believes he has a divine patron, and constantly invokes his god, and then convinces himself (and tries to convince others) that, whatever happens, it's proof of his divinity.



Same thing. "I was perfectly silent! It was your heavy breathing that alerted the guards!"

Ok, that one could get annoying because there are mechanical consequences to thinking you're stealthy when you're not.

I had a wizard that was convinced he was a cleric, does that count? Behold the holy (magic) missiles of Tyr!

 

[Voadam]

If someone looks like heman and has a carrining capacity of 60lbs I am going to ask for a BIG explanation.

He-Man wears a loin cloth, boots, and chest strap. He carries a sword or an axe and a shield. That seems to be within 60 lbs.

Alternatively all the He-Man male characters are based off the same He-Man action figure body sculpt. If you want to play wizard Skeletor with a magic staff, you still get the He-Man body image. Which can be fun.

 

[Voadam]

I have to confess that I can barely get my head around this! Maybe it's my primordial RM/RQ-ness; but for me the way that I express that my PC is muscled is via a high STR score; is charming is via a high Persuasion score; etc.

And then, as per @Hriston's OP, roleplaying consists primarily in saying what my PC does, having regard to what their build suggests they can do. And the GM's job is then to adjudicate the outcome of that, via application of the rules.

For me it is probably coming from a background as a kid running around in the woods with sticks pretending to be a dwarf with an axe from Middle Earth.

B/X D&D stats were rolled and had very little mechanical interaction in the game as written so there was a natural emphasis on think up your roleplay concept yourself and go. Part of the big appeal of D&D for me was to roleplay out whatever roleplay concept you wanted, not to build out your roleplay concept mechanically (not a lot of options when you roll dice in order) or to direct yourself to roleplay out the stats you roll.

 

[HammerMan]

He-Man wears a loin cloth, boots, and chest strap. He carries a sword or an axe and a shield. That seems to be within 60 lbs.

Alternatively all the He-Man male characters are based off the same He-Man action figure body sculpt. If you want to play wizard Skeletor with a magic staff, you still get the He-Man body image. Which can be fun.

yes they all had his body type... but none of them had a str of 8...

 

[Bill Zebub]

could be... but it reminds me of the "I wont use the light saber so it is just a fancy tube on my waist" issue we had back in 3.5 where a player in a multiverse game came in as a jedi... got the DM to rule (based on d20 starwars) that lightsaber crits did con damage but promised not to use it... then game 3 or 4 started using it... I see the infinity more likely end to this story is the player asking "just this once can I get the bonus that I RP I have to keep the game consistent" and then THAT leading to hard feelings at the table or more and more "Just this once"

So that’s yet another argument based on not trusting other players. I see a pattern.