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

[Voadam]

But there is utility in being able to describe those different styles and preferences.

A table in which adjudication of fictional positioning is more important, in non-combat non-spell resolution, than are checks, is a table where playing a rogue rather than a wizard or a bard is probably less attractive unless you really like sneak-attacking.

Some skills are more amenable to non dice resolution than others are.

Lock picking is a tough one to describe your way through for example, much more so than handling a first person in character social interaction without rolling dice.

 

[Oofta]

Take my playstyle preference of separating roleplay portrayal from ability stats.

Take a player who has seen the movie with smart charismatic bare knuckle boxing Robert Downey Junior Sherlock Holmes. That player thinks RDJ punching Sherlock Holmes sounds like a fun D&D concept so they go monk for punching. Monk is MAD for pretty much everything but int and charisma. They do the stats for a regular monk and the low stats end up being int and charisma.

The PC takes a custom background as an investigator so they get the skill narratively and proficiency bonus mechanically when rolls come up but they are still not great at investigation rolls at low levels.

They roleplay being a charismatic investigator monk looking for clues, making deductions, going for witty quips on the player roleplay/non-mechanics end and effectively punching out bad guys as a member of a D&D party. The roleplay of a smart charismatic investigator is how they approach playing their character as a role.

Two views on this.

1 sounds like fun, cool.

2 That is cheating/bad roleplay, should have played an int class for that roleplay concept or been a monk with lower than normal monk stats to bump up the roleplay stats.

This sounds cool but because they decided to have a low int they aren't as good an investigator as they could be in my game if they had invested more in intelligence. Sorry, but a 5 int (or 8 int or even 10 int) Sherlock Holmes doesn't exist in my campaigns any more than an 8 strength body builder.

D&D 5E doesn't really model the reason that Sherlock was an excellent boxer (Doyle made him quite the Marty Stue in the novels) is because he uses his intelligence and deductive reasoning to analyze and predict his enemies weaknesses and probable moves.

P.S. Sherlock Holmes had a terrible charisma, he is so intelligent he has difficulty relating to most people.

 

[pemerton]

No. Just no. An actual rousing speech given in the lead up to a Charisma check or a Thieves Tools check or, indeed, any other check should not influence the game mechanics in 5e.

I don't know what it would have to do with using Thieves Tools.

But I also don't think there is any iron rule of RPGing that says knowing to stuff a shirt into a quiver to stop arrows rattling is helpful to play, but knowing how to give a rousing speech is not helpful to play.

Not everyone playing this game is an extravert

Nor is everyone playing the game knowledgeable about how to sneak, or how to decipher magical runes. Nor is everyone good at optimising their spell use.

I don't know of any a priori reason why social capability is off-limits in a way that technical or tactical ability is not.

 

[Cadence]

I don't know what it would have to do with using Thieves Tools.

But I also don't think there is any iron rule of RPGing that says knowing to stuff a shirt into a quiver to stop arrows rattling is helpful to play, but knowing how to give a rousing speech is not helpful to play.

Nor is everyone playing the game knowledgeable about how to sneak, or how to decipher magical runes. Nor is everyone good at optimising their spell use.

I don't know of any a priori reason why social capability is off-limits in a way that technical or tactical ability is not.

In my example of doing extra things to sneak, I think I would like to give the same bonus to someone who said "I'm going to take extra time and precautions making sure nothing I carry can mess me up." without specifying (so, they're paying a cost in time). Similarly, if the rousing speaker said "I'm going to draw on my knowledge of local legendary heroes to be inspirational" it feels like that should go for as much as naming them or putting a speech together. I'm guessing in practice I'd be at least marginally more inclined to help the character whose player was more knowledgeable about what they were going to do... but I think I'd rather unintentionally do that than not reward creativity at all.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I don't know what it would have to do with using Thieves Tools.

But I also don't think there is any iron rule of RPGing that says knowing to stuff a shirt into a quiver to stop arrows rattling is helpful to play, but knowing how to give a rousing speech is not helpful to play.

Nor is everyone playing the game knowledgeable about how to sneak, or how to decipher magical runes. Nor is everyone good at optimising their spell use.

I don't know of any a priori reason why social capability is off-limits in a way that technical or tactical ability is not.

Ok, I'll try again since it appears I have not been clear enough...

"My PC gives a rousing speech to embolden the soldiers" will have the same mechanical resolution as the player giving an actual rousing speech.

"My PC takes measures to keep her equipment quiet" will have the same mechanical resolution as "My PC stuffs a shirt into a quiver to stop the arrows from rattling around and also does B which is a thing I learned at summer camp and also C which I saw on a Navy Seals video and also D from yada yada".

I am NOT saying reward the player who has special technical/tactical expertise at all.

There's reasonable specificity and then there's extra. An actual rousing speech might be fun and entertaining but it does not earn the extrovert at the table any better mechanical benefit than the third person description given by the introvert. Similarly, someone with lots of stealth experience IRL who can describe a great many things they can do to be quiet does not gain any more mechanical benefit that the person without that same IRL experience who shorthands the action declaration, as long as it is reasonably specific enough to adjudicate.

I'm not sure how else to explain it. It seems you want to additionally reward players with real world expertise for BOTH social and technical/tactical situations when the game requires no such thing for EITHER.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

In my example of doing extra things to sneak, I think I would like to give the same bonus to someone who said "I'm going to take extra time and precautions making sure nothing I carry can mess me up." without specifying (so, they're paying a cost in time). Similarly, if the rousing speaker said "I'm going to draw on my knowledge of local legendary heroes to be inspirational" it feels like that should go for as much as naming them or putting a speech together. I'm guessing in practice I'd be at least marginally more inclined to help the character whose player was more knowledgeable about what they were going to do... but I think I'd rather unintentionally do that than not reward creativity at all.

Of course.

We want to do what we can to encourage player creativity in-game but, at the same time, not penalize players for not having expertise in real life. Right?

 

[Bill Zebub]

But I also don't think there is any iron rule of RPGing that says knowing to stuff a shirt into a quiver to stop arrows rattling is helpful to play, but knowing how to give a rousing speech is not helpful to play.

My test is whether anybody at the table could do the same thing. If one player is an actor in real life I’m not going to give them extra credit for delivery. But if they think of a clever way to leverage in-game knowledge to describe a compelling rousing speech…something that anybody at the table could, in theory, have thought of…then I’m fine with it.

Similarly, if the Afghanistan vet starts spouting small unit tactics, that’s not going to help. But if somebody comes up with a “so crazy it just might work” plan, the sort of thing that might be considered “good tactics” in a cheesy action movie, that might win points.

I guess at the end of the day I don’t think coming up with plans and ideas is all that related to the Intelligence attribute. Certainly in real life people who I don’t consider all that intelligent sometimes suggest surprisingly good ideas. And, also, coming up with good ideas is just simply a major part of playing D&D. We don’t ask people who dump Str or Dex or Cha or Wis or Con to just sit out a huge part of the game.

It’s not a Roleplaying Exam, or a Roleplaying Job, it’s a Roleplaying Game.

 

[pemerton]

They roleplay being a charismatic investigator monk looking for clues, making deductions, going for witty quips on the player roleplay/non-mechanics end and effectively punching out bad guys as a member of a D&D party. The roleplay of a smart charismatic investigator is how they approach playing their character as a role.

Two views on this.

1 sounds like fun, cool.

2 That is cheating/bad roleplay, should have played an int class for that roleplay concept or been a monk with lower than normal monk stats to bump up the roleplay stats.

Suppose you have a bard and a wizard PC in the same group. To what extent do those players think that this charming, deductive monk is stepping on their toes?

That strike me as the number one question here.

 

[pemerton]

My test is whether anybody at the table could do the same thing.

I'm pretty confident that I could play RPGs for another 30 years and not think to specify that I stuff something in my quiver to stop the arrows rattling.

Does that mean that, at your table, @Cadence doesn't get any benefit for declaring that action?

If one player is an actor in real life I’m not going to give them extra credit for delivery. But if they think of a clever way to leverage in-game knowledge to describe a compelling rousing speech…something that anybody at the table could, in theory, have thought of…then I’m fine with it.

I'm not sure what the "in theory" is doing here. I mean, I guess in theory I could think to stifle the noise of my arrows; but in theory I could also give an impassioned speech. (That doesn't require superhuman abilities. People do it all the time.)

I guess at the end of the day I don’t think coming up with plans and ideas is all that related to the Intelligence attribute. Certainly in real life people who I don’t consider all that intelligent sometimes suggest surprisingly good ideas. And, also, coming up with good ideas is just simply a major part of playing D&D.

Sure. But I don't see why inhabiting your character and portraying them with verve and passion is not also a major part of play. Which sometimes can include speaking their part.

 

[pemerton]

In my example of doing extra things to sneak, I think I would like to give the same bonus to someone who said "I'm going to take extra time and precautions making sure nothing I carry can mess me up." without specifying (so, they're paying a cost in time). Similarly, if the rousing speaker said "I'm going to draw on my knowledge of local legendary heroes to be inspirational" it feels like that should go for as much as naming them or putting a speech together. I'm guessing in practice I'd be at least marginally more inclined to help the character whose player was more knowledgeable about what they were going to do... but I think I'd rather unintentionally do that than not reward creativity at all.

I think the abstract descriptions are far less interesting and don't really contribute to the shared fiction.

They also don't seem to be equivalent to the more concrete ones: I can intend to muffle all the things I carry, but what if I forgot about my bag of coins hanging from my backpack? I can intend to be inspirational, but what if I get my legendary heroes mixed up (eg mistake my Gawaines for my Galahads)?

So to my mind it's not just about rewarding creativity but respecting concrete contributions to the fiction. Again, as I've said, I prefer RPG systems that make it easy to do this in a systematic fashion.