D&D 5E What is a Social challenge, anyways?

[cranberry]

combat or social combat optimizers still won't be able to dictate the King handing over their kingdom, regardless of how good their 'stats' are.

I certainly hope that WoTC will take optimizers into consideration when writing the social rules to prevent such behavior.

 

[Staffan]

It isn't really "exciting" until the end approaches, then combat becomes exciting if the outcome is close enough to be in doubt.

You never cheered over a crit, even if it didn't come close to finishing the fight? Even if the ending isn't near, I find that each roll has a bit of the thrill of uncertainty which makes it exciting. Not SUPER exciting, but a little thrill.

That doesn't mean I don't think D&D combat could stand some improvements when it comes to using abilities tactically for even more excitement, particularly on the monster side of things, but there's still excitement there.

When a single roll is called for, the situation doesn't have too much weight. Where multiple rolls are called for, it does. Combat has a lot of weight (ultimately possible death and the end of the adventure for a PC), as where social rolls don't carry the same weight. If one option fails, others can often be attempted because "failure" in an ability check doesn't necessarily mean the "end".

This is very much one of those places where mechanics and adventure design meld a bit, but there are certainly places where a failed ability/skill check can, if not derail things entirely, at least make things a lot harder. You can't climb over the wall. You don't get past the guard without fighting him. The Duke won't help you. You don't find the secret door. In a well-designed adventure, these would lead to other approaches, but that's not always the case.

Consider the other d20 roll--the saving throw. When the stakes are higher, a series of rolls is used (often at least two, and many times three or more, even each round for a minute until the save succeeds or the effect ends).

And that's a fairly recent addition to how D&D works. Save or suck was the norm for a very long time, and some spells still have that today even if others have gotten softened (e.g. hold person or flesh to stone).

Now, consider an exploration challenge, something like making a Strength (Athletics) check to climb a cliff face. There is a very poor structure to resolve this except (by design) that it is "up to the DM". Do you make a single check? A series of checks? After all, depending on the height of the fall, you might be killed, right? If you don't make the DC, do you fall or just fail to make process? When do you fall? And so forth...

In something like the Troubleshooters, the cliff face itself probably wouldn't be a challenge. It would be one of the things that make up a larger challenge, such as "get to the hideout atop the mountain". This would probably be a skill challenge using Agility (for climbing), Endurance (even where there are paths going up a mountain is hard work), Sneak (to avoid detection by patrols), and Survival (because wilderness stuff).

 

[robus]

Not to derail this thread but it is disappointing to still see people talk about players rolling dice before being asked by the DM (bypassing the action adjudication step), and then expecting the DM to reward them. Rolling without the stakes being set is just asking for chaos.

”Ooh DM, I just rolled a nat-20, now the king has to do what I want… right? Right?!”

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

One of the things I do with social encounters, which I think is supported by the current rules, is ask the players what they are trying to say. If there is an army on the way to attack your village and your asking for help from the orc tribe, they player might say something like "I make a speech about how the army will turn on the orcs after taking our village" they don't have to give the actual speech, that in itself would be enough for a roll. They might add to it to try for advantage, perhaps trade and a treaty in a valley in the mountains that sets boundaries between the village and the orc tribe in exchange for their help.

I have thought of doing something like skill challenges, but tend to stick to something simple. Make your case, roll with advantage/disadvantage, Charisma may or may not be useful (the orc tribe might value strength so a warrior adds strength instead if Charisma bonus to the check).

You could probably make quite a robust social system, but then I honestly think role-playing, however you do it, and a simple roll is better.

Right, so you are dealing here with INTENT, and explicating (at some level of detail) what you are doing as a PC, and this would be, for example, a perfectly cromulent declaration in a PbtA game (whether it would trigger a move or not may depend on the game and other factors). What happens next is going to be pretty much up to the GM, do they want to 'drill down' into it more? The player gave a fairly high level description, maybe it involved a short trip to a meeting spot, and then speaking, and negotiating, etc. Maybe that's it, and the GM says "OK, the orcs see the logic of your proposal, their warband joins you." He might drill in "well, some of the orcs think allying with you weak humans is a bad move." Now you have to prove to them you are not weak", and pretty soon in here some moves will get triggered, some dice will roll, etc. However, its not like that system really calls it 'social system' or any other sort of system. Its just sort of "what happens next, happens." You do what you say you do, and stuff happens, modulus dice. You could even drill in further and play out a fight with an orc champion.

Now, maybe at the most ideal level, 5e's social system is kinda supposed to work in a similar way. I think if you are principled as a GM it is fairly likely to work OK. I think it maybe isn't as facile with the transitioning to different scales. One thing I'd like to see in such a system would be that it isn't really a 'system' at all, like PbtAs where the notion of a subsystem is modestly foreign (though not impossible to do).

 

[James Gasik]

How do we know this? Aragorn persuaded Faramir to hand over his kingdom.

So in our world, people can be persuaded to do many things not in their best interest. But I've noticed at the gaming table, nobody wants to feel "tricked". This extends not only to fast-talking characters, but even to things such as illusions; if I cast a spell to summon a d̶e̶m̶o̶n̶ Tanar'ri, the critter appears and everything is fine. If I dare to make an illusion of the same, suddenly everyone is instantly making checks or actions to directly interact with it, and acting like "well, that can't possibly be real, it's totally sus!".

This even extends to stealth mechanics; it's totally possible to avoid being spotted on open ground or to sneak up behind someone, but not in D&D! They'll see you!

 

[James Gasik]

It kind of feels like the honorable steward formally recognizing someone with both a blood claim to the throne and support from lots of folks whose opinion the steward values (support about them as a person and for their claim) is a bit different than a random bard walking up and convincing a monarch to just abdicate after a pleasant conversation?

Yeah but if Strider had rolled a 1 on his Charisma check, it would have gone quite a bit differently, I'll wager.

 

[James Gasik]

I certainly hope that WoTC will take optimizers into consideration when writing the social rules to prevent such behavior.

That's a slippery slope, however; set DC's with optimizers in mind, and then you have to optimize in order to accomplish anything.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The funny thing is that for many combat isn't very exciting in the attack roll (the d20) by itself. It is fairly well established that most PC will hit 65% of the time (+/-5%). It is actually somewhat predictable, which is why creating encounters to a particular difficulty isn't too hard. What makes combat exciting is when those chances drop significantly and hitting becomes rarer OR when the low stakes pile up enough that further loss (or gain) becomes more meaningful. When you have 50 hp, 5 damage isn't a big deal; but when you are down to 10 hp, 5 damage suddenly becomes much more meaningful.

Because the stakes are (at least potentially) life or death, a single roll would be more exciting simply because the point of failure would likely be ultimate--ending the game for that PC in all likelihood.

How important does "talking your way past the guard" become? Is it life or death? Not likely. If talking doesn't work, intimidating might, failing that direct force or finding some other elusive way (sneaking or another path) works typically.

So, in essence, it can be like combat. First "attack" is Charisma (Persuasion) to "talk your way by the guard." If that fails (a miss), you attack with Charisma (Intimidation), then perhaps (failing that as well) leave and try Dexterity (Stealth). Most combat in 5E is often resolved in 2-4 rounds, so those would be your three "rounds" for the social challenge. The greatest difference is at any point, success can "end the social combat" with victory for the PC. Failure at all stages would be tantamount to defeat in the social combat (with the PC being arrested perhaps?).

Many 5E threads have talked about the problem with the swinginess of the d20 when it comes to ability checks because of it's single-roll resolution system, but what I think often people fail to understand is that "failure" in one roll doesn't necessarily mean failure in the social encounter. We know failing an ability check could represent "success at a cost or with a setback" or simply failure to make progress, in which case you can try again.

[In my own game, when you fail at an ability check (or repeated saving throw), the DC increases by 1. If the DC gets to a point where even a natural 20 fails, you fail. There are no further attempts and no success at a failure possible. If at any point, you fail by 1 or 2, then it could be success at a cost or with a setback.]

You can elaborate further on the first "attack" of Charisma (Persuasion) in the example above by implementing a 3-strikes policy, similar to death saves. Something like if you win three contested checks against the guard, you talk your way past. If the guard wins, you have to try a new tactic (such as Intimidation), with the chance of another win by getting three successes before three failures. You could even implement a natural 20 counts as "critical" and is an automatic win, while a 1 could count as two failures (a la the death save concept).

BUT the issue (IMO anyway) with things like this is it is just a bunch of dice rolls. I would prefer players role-play the social encounters, and leave the "roll-playing" to the combat. Yes, you could expand features to enhance these rolls just like we do in combat if you wanted to, and then you can spend an hour on a social challenge instead of a combat encounter and award XP for it as well.

You have essentially fully articulated one of the more solid sets of points arguing for the use of 4e-style Skill Challenges here! I mean, really, lock stock and barrel. Its just a better version of EXACTLY this! I want to get into the X, there's a guard. OK, I try to sweet talk him, I try to scare him, I try to sneak past him. I mean, the situation is a tad simple for most SCs, probably a bit more of whatever is going on will be part of it, but for a complexity 1 (4 successes before 3 failures) 'get past the guards' is not an absurd scope.

The rules regulate how many dice you will need to throw (no temptations to let the PCs try some other variation of whatever just failed because what we REALLY want is to see what happens beyond here). Its all up front, and things just go pretty much exactly as you described.

 

[James Gasik]

You have essentially fully articulated one of the more solid sets of points arguing for the use of 4e-style Skill Challenges here! I mean, really, lock stock and barrel. Its just a better version of EXACTLY this! I want to get into the X, there's a guard. OK, I try to sweet talk him, I try to scare him, I try to sneak past him. I mean, the situation is a tad simple for most SCs, probably a bit more of whatever is going on will be part of it, but for a complexity 1 (4 successes before 3 failures) 'get past the guards' is not an absurd scope.

The rules regulate how many dice you will need to throw (no temptations to let the PCs try some other variation of whatever just failed because what we REALLY want is to see what happens beyond here). Its all up front, and things just go pretty much exactly as you described.

I think one problem with using Skill Challenges in social encounters is that it is a little strange for a whole party to walk up on a guy and start making different rolls. I'm thinking of all those episodes of the A-Team where Hannibal gives Face some impossible task, and Templeton goes off and does it alone (though occasionally he uses an assistant to sell the bit).

It's kind of like the classic thief scenario of dealing with a trap; we expect the thief to do all his investigation and MacGyvering solo, though it's perfectly reasonable to design a trap where the whole party can get involved (off the top of my head, the National Treasure movies have a few setpieces along these lines).

There was a huge downside to skill challenges as well, though I wonder if I shouldn't talk about that in the 4e thread, but eh, I'm typing at the moment.

Skill challenges were intended for all the players to get involved, but there are occasions where a character can offer nothing to the proceedings, and in fact, due to mediocre numbers, is more of an anchor to the party than being of any benefit!

 

[Hussar]

Wouldn’t then the solution to your problem with skill challenges simply be to be less exacting about the requirements and allow players to opt out of SCs when it makes sense?

Or, alternatively use a collective dc? So talking past the guards requires a total DC of 60 (say) and the group makes various checks and you just total up all the rolls? This the expert helps more than the skill less guy but you all are collectively working towards the goal.

So a simple pass 4 before 3 SC would be a dc 40 or 50 check. Tweak the numbers as needed and then modify rolls based on player input. Maybe a particularly good idea scores an automatic 20 plus bonuses. Things like that.