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

[Swarmkeeper]

Pretty much. There can be other factors that affect the DC or grant advantage/disadvantage such as using leverage based on PC knowledge or previous interactions.

I have some great players who simply are not very eloquent, and sometimes have a hard time expressing their goal and how they're approaching it. I don't want to penalize them for it.

I feel like this is a bit of a common ground breakthrough here. Thanks.

I'm hoping you are now realizing that in our game, expressing a goal and approach is not truly difficult. "I want to convince the guard to let us past" (goal) "by dropping the name of the guy we met last session" (approach). No rousing speech, no special words, no extraordinary knowledge needed, no penalty for 3rd person roleplay. Perhaps using that in-game knowledge in the approach earns them advantage, just like in your game.

Not so different in the end, right? (setting aside your preference for being ok with "I roll Persuasion" and my preference for not being ok with it, of course)

 

[Oofta]

I feel like this is a bit of a common ground breakthrough here. Thanks.

I'm hoping you are now realizing that in our game, expressing a goal and approach is not truly difficult. "I want to convince the guard to let us past" (goal) "by dropping the name of the guy we met last session" (approach). No rousing speech, no special words, no extraordinary knowledge needed, no penalty for 3rd person roleplay. Perhaps using that in-game knowledge in the approach earns them advantage, just like in your game.

Not so different in the end, right? (setting aside your preference for being ok with "I roll Persuasion" and my preference for not being ok with it, of course)

I think there are many different approaches.

I also think it's difficult to express how we really run our games on a forum and it's incredibly easy for things to get misconstrued or stated in a way that is not clear. If we actually sat down at a table there would be obvious superficial differences but ultimately the game would play much the same way. I think the spectrum of how different tables handle things as explained in The Role of Dice (roll for everything to roll for nothing) is a bigger differentiator than details of how statements of intent are made at the table.

 

[Mannahnin]

I know this is out in the weeds, but paper and dice World of darkness has stats (not exact but kinda like D&D) with a rating of 1-5 (some big thing are better then human and 6+ but think about it like monsters having over 20 str) but the LARP (minds eye theater) had just words... you had X number of strength traits... and you spent them, so if you used all 8 of your strength traits you ended the night weaker then someone who started with 3 but only spent 1... it was weird.

As I recall you only lost traits if you lost in challenges. So the only way for that 8 Physical trait character to wind up weaker than a 3 Physical trait character by the end of the night was to lose 6 or more physical challenges (well, maybe fewer if they Overbid and still lost). Which seems reasonable. You'd practically never get into that many challenges as I recall, and if you lost that many, losing the traits (though you could also spend a Willpower to refresh one trait category per session) could reasonably represent being exhausted by losing all those fights/challenges.

 

[Voadam]

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.

How is this even possible?

Easy.

Each of the classes have some mechanically balanced for combat optimized builds independent of roleplay considerations. So a tank fighter build is combat balanced against a wizard or warlock. As a concept point buy should turn out characters who are mechanically balanced in combat but are different stat arrays based on the class mechanics.

If you untie the characterization roleplay roles from the stats then you can play any mental stat roleplay role with any combat stat-class build with no incentivization to only play specific stat builds for the class. So your tank fighter with whatever set of stats can be BA Barakus, or Hannibal, or Face, or Murdock from the A-team with no mechanics incentive to go with a different stats build. The choice of roleplay role is simply which one would be fun for you to roleplay and the same for the stat-class build mechanics. The same thing with a Charimatic Merlin wizard concept or a dim bulb but high skilled at combat magic wizard concept.

If you roleplay to the mechanics there is a lot of structural incentivization to go with specific class-stat builds to play certain roleplay roles.

 

[HammerMan]

your tank fighter with whatever set of stats can be BA Barakus, or Hannibal, or Face, or Murdock from the A-team with no mechanics incentive to go with a different stats build.

the problem is you play Hannibal as smart, but he isn't when ever dice matter. You play face as charismatic but he isn't when dice roll... Then you end up with all three having the same Str and Con of BA Barakus...(I am not touching Murdock with the ten foot pole)

 

[pemerton]

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.

This thread has also had me thinking about B/X, but differently: for example, the B/X INT chart tells you what your linguistic ability is based on INT, including literacy. And its fairly relentless correlation of various stats with class and race tends to drive home the correlation of stats to fiction.

Eg given that Hercules is given as an example of a fighter (at least if memory serves correctly), and fighters benefit from high STR, it would never occur to me in playing B/X to assert that my 6-STR character is as muscled as Hercules.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Advising other players occasionally is of course not a problem, but I can see how it might be annoying if it became habitual. I certainly have heard stories where people complain about a fellow player who tries to backseat drive how to play their character.

And conversely, we all know about the player who is so “in character” that they steal from the party, or refuse to heal the non-believer, or whatever.

The solution to jerks is to not play with them, not legislate play styles.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Not only the 5 int Sherlock Holmes, now we have the 5 strength bodybuilder/WWE wrestler.

What is this 5 Int Sherlock Holmes thing?

 

[Bill Zebub]

But there's some people, absent the smackdown hammer, who just can't help themselves from telling other people how to play their characters;

For example, “The NPC rolled 23 on Intimidate, so you wouldn’t do what you just did.”

 

[Mercurius]

I don't see the benefit, to play, of the GM using the adjudication of the fiction and of action declarations to tell a player that their self-conception of their PC is wrong. To me that seems more like something to be discussed in a non-resolution context.

I mean, why not just tell the player that the truth about their PC will reflect the PC's attributes?

Sure, you probably want to clarify to the player that a 6 INT means that they aren't all that smart.

But this could also be a fun--agreed-upon--approach to such a character. A low INT PC can be played as thinking they're smart, when they're not.

That said, there are instances--as I think others have pointed out--where a player uses INT or CHA as dump stats and just tries to roleplay their way out of it. I wouldn't necessarily call that cheating, but it goes against the spirit of roleplaying your character as accurately as possible and even seems a variant on min-maxing.