D&D General Should players be aware of their own high and low rolls?

[Bill Zebub]

No, see my reply above.

There is nothing 'adversarial DM' about it. I trust my players to play their character accordingly, and to not metagame. I'm not forcing them to act in a certain way, just informing them that their PC finds the statement by the NPC to be (very Persuasive, Truthful, or Scary) depending on the social skill used, and then trusting them to play their character accordingly.

Just like I do as DM when they use their social skills on my NPCs.

Its a question of mutual trust. It's quite the opposite of the players and DM being 'adversarial' towards each other.

Sure, if everybody is on board with the same strict definition of roleplaying. But in that case this discussion is moot.

This debate really only applies where different participants have different notions of how the game works. If a player disagrees with you about some of your preferences (which are valid but not intrinsic to the game) then you can't really say it's a matter of trust, or that you're not forcing them.

 

[Bill Zebub]

And then when I set the DC, and you succeed, I'll just ignore your roll and do what the NPCs were going to do anyway, because 'whats good for the goose is good for the gander'.

You either didn't keep reading, or didn't understand what I was saying.

Nah. The DM sets the DC for skill checks. Not the player. The players trust the DM to do so fairly.

Sure, you can run your games that way, with asymmetric rules for PCs and NPCs, but make sure your players understand beforehand, because there's nothing in the rule book that says to do that. Every passage relevant to skill checks in the PHB and DMG describe PCs declaring actions. There is zero textual support for NPCs doing this to PCs.

 

[Flamestrike]

@Bill Zebub

From where I sit, you're a terrible roleplayer, and a metagamer for refusing to play your PC as if they were scared/ or intimidated or compliant if an NPC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

From where the players sit, I'm a terrible DM if I refuse to play my NPCs the same when your PC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

When you sit at my table, you agree to abide by skill checks against your character, and I agree to abide by checks made by your character against my monsters. We trust each other to roleplay, and not metagame.

If that doesn't work for you, then we have a different solution available to us. The door.

 

[iserith]

So social skills on monsters in the PHB dont actually do anything?

Skills don't really do anything at all on their own - they are just a mechanic used to modify ability checks, and ability checks are mechanics used to resolve uncertainty as to a task's outcome when there's a meaningful consequence for failure. Because the player determines what the character thinks, says, and does, not the DM nor anyone else, then whatever the player says the character does in the face of that NPC's task is what happens. That means the outcome isn't uncertain and since there's no uncertainty, there can't be an ability check.

Would your position be different if the Intimidate skill expressly granted the Frightened condition on a DC 15, instead of requiring the PC to simply act scared?

Would you allow it to be used vs the PC then?

The rules would have to change around the conditions under which an ability check was appropriate. One couldn't just slap on that rider and have it make sense. It's more fundamental than that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

@Bill Zebub

From where I sit, you're a terrible roleplayer, and a metagamer for refusing to play your PC as if they were scared/ or intimidated or compliant if an NPC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

I'm hurt. Deeply. (Note to @Umbran: no need to slap him for that on my account; it's funny not offensive.)

You don't even know how I would roleplay having an NPC trying to intimidate me without any dice being rolled and you've already concluded this? Sounds to me like you play some kind of mechanistic, board-game version of roleplaying where it's all determined by dice rolls instead of trusting the players.

From where the players sit, I'm a terrible DM if I refuse to play my NPCs the same when your PC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

You don't seem to grasp the part where if you want your NPCs to not be intimidated, you get to just to tell me I failed. It's right there in the book. No die roll needed.

But, yeah, if you do ask for a die roll I would hope you'd abide by the results. If you don't want to, don't ask for the roll. Or set the DC really high. I don't care. If I think you are unreasonable I may stop coming to your table.

When you sit at my table, you agree to abide by skill checks against your character, and I agree to abide by checks made by your character against my monsters. We trust each other to roleplay, and not metagame.

If that doesn't work for you, then we have a different solution available to us. The door.

So dramatic! "The door." Oooooh. (That was me having chills down my spine.)

How about, "Hey, it looks like we approach the game differently, and wouldn't enjoy playing with each other. Happy gaming anyway!"

 

[Maxperson]

I believe earlier when you and I disagreed on a particular passage from the DMG, some posters said that two different people can look at something and come to different conclusions. Couldn't that also happen with aspects of what the character knows or whether a given action requires specific knowledge to try?

Like what? Background? Both can look at and see what the PC knows from it. Game play? Both know what the PC has learned in game. Skills? Those are up to the DM to figure out, not the player so there is going to be no confusion there. Prior roleplay? Both are well aware of how the PC was roleplayed.

What specifically could cause such contention? Vague "Well it could happen." isn't good enough.

 

[Maxperson]

There very easily can be a difference in expectation about what is common knowledge in the fantasy world. What do PCs know about religions, about factions, about monsters and their proclivities, about geography and history, etc.? The disagreement can be based on those mis-matched assumptions.

That's what skills are for. What do you know about religions? Let's check the religion skill. What do you know about factions? Let's check history. Monsters? There are skills for that. Same with the rest.

It's not up to the player at all to decide what is or is not common knowledge. It's for the DM to either say yes to, or give a low DC if the common knowledge isn't quite common enough.

 

[iserith]

Like what? Background? Both can look at and see what the PC knows from it. Game play? Both know what the PC has learned in game. Skills? Those are up to the DM to figure out, not the player so there is going to be no confusion there. Prior roleplay? Both are well aware of how the PC was roleplayed.

What specifically could cause such contention? Vague "Well it could happen." isn't good enough.

So, is it your assertion that the DM and player will always be in agreement about what the character knows? There's no room for disagreement at all? Because I thought it was established upthread that two people can read the same information and come to different conclusions. If that is true, then it seems to me the same thing can happen with regard to background, race, class, backstory, past events, etc.

But even that doesn't address the fact that actions don't necessarily need prerequisite knowledge in order to be attempted. I don't need to know a troll is harmed by fire to lob a fire bolt at one. Or throw alchemist's fire on it. Or it hit with a torch. Those things can happen whether someone knows a troll is vulnerable to fire or not. So, this is another area of possible disagreement between the player and DM, unless you're asserting here too that the DM and player will always be in agreement about whether prior knowledge is necessary to attempt a given action?

 

[Lanefan]

@Bill Zebub

From where I sit, you're a terrible roleplayer, and a metagamer for refusing to play your PC as if they were scared/ or intimidated or compliant if an NPC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

From where the players sit, I'm a terrible DM if I refuse to play my NPCs the same when your PC succeeds in an Intimidate check against them.

When you sit at my table, you agree to abide by skill checks against your character, and I agree to abide by checks made by your character against my monsters. We trust each other to roleplay, and not metagame.

If that doesn't work for you, then we have a different solution available to us. The door.

While I completely see where you're coming from, I think you're fighting a nigh-unwinnable battle on this one. Player agency is important, and denying it is fraught with headaches.

The answer here IMO is to go the other direction: let players freely decide how their characters react - no rolling - while you decide how the NPCs react, again without rolling. In short, social mechanics largely go bye-bye in favour of freeform roleplay.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

People can reasonably run social skills vs. PCs differently. Whilst I usually like rules symmetry, this is one area I'm willing to make an exception and I usually don't use social skills vs. PCs, at least not in a way that would compel them to act in certain way. Now NPC can beat PC's insight with their bluff roll, but this doesn't mean the player needs to believe them, it merely means they didn't discern any obvious signs of lying. But the player is fully free to suspect that the NPC just is a really good liar!