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

[Greenstone.Walker]

The best practice would be, that the DM fairly determines, how the approach of the players, so how and what they say, would change the DC.

I do it the other way around. The DC is fixed, the players have to identify things that their characters can do to improve the odds, just like when they are hitting foes with weapons and spells.

For example: I've decided that getting into the Duke's keep is a difficult task, that the guards are all reasonably competant, that the walls are tough and the doors well locked. So, DC 20.

Roll, try to get 20.

If they have some forged documents they found, that's good for advantage.
If they did some research and try to sway the guard with inside knowledge (spear pfishing), advantage.
If they steal an invitation from a legitimate guest, automatic success.
If they do a background check on the guards and find one they can blackmail, automatic success.
If they just waltz up to the game with no prior research of planning and try to bluff the guard, roll at normal.
If they waltz up to the gate and immediately cast a spell, automatic failure (and probably a fight).

In other words, the GM presents an obstacle and difficulty and it's up to the players to choose how to overcome it.

 

[pemerton]

Because you can just set a DC 15 to all Guards to bribe and tell the players that's the DC for that because that would make the game stale and boring.

Yet both Classic Traveller and Apocalypse World do just this, and neither produces stale or boring play as a result!

 

[hawkeyefan]

It Is determined by the DM like everything else in the game.

Well, not everything. I mean, most games use some amount of material that’s prepared… monster stats, locations, traps, entire settings. I know all of that can potentially be changed if needed, but it’s still a starting point.

It is not really different from "this lock is has a 16 dc to pick".

Except that most often, no matter how I describe my approach to picking a lock, the DC will remain fixed. Players shouldn’t expect auto-success or auto-failure in most cases based on their description of the action. That’s a pretty big difference.

Also, people don't generally consider lock picking or trap disarming boring. A lot of times, they’re edge of your seat situations.

Only that the DC is more flexible based on the interaction the PCs are having with that NPC.
It is more complex, but also very subjective, because especially with smaller NPCs, the DM has to make up the Wants, Needs and personality traits of the NPC on the Spot. Like will this Guard be bribed? Is that Guard a bribable guard or a rare honest Guard?

You know what’s a good way to determine that so that the GM isn’t deciding everything? The dice!

And to feel fair to.the players, such traits should, if possible, be telegraphed how the NPC is portrayed be the DM.

This I absolutely agree with. I’ve played with GMs who treat every single NPC antagonist as some uber-devoted and loyal paragon in service to their cause or their lord.

But making an NPC actionable by the players is important, I think. They should be able to suss some info out, or at least try to, and leverage that. To me, far better if I’ve made an Insight check and so I know this guard isn’t open to a bribe, but is open to the idea of justice. I fI then tailor my plea to him accordingly, then I do so with advantage. Dice rolls, but not boring. Also, not done without narrating my approach. I don’t know why a dice roll has to happen in a vacuum.

That what makes social interactions complex. Because you can just set a DC 15 to all Guards to bribe and tell the players that's the DC for that because that would make the game stale and boring.

Why? I do this kind of thing all the time. I consider the location and then I think of its strongest defense, and its weakness. Then I decide what DCs to give those two ends, and anything else is in the middle. If the players have gathered some information on the location, they’ll know that the castle guards are very unlikely to be bribed, but are very scrupulous and may be convinced their master is in the wrong (or whatever the situation is). So bribery has a DC of 20 and appeals to justice or righteousness or good have a DC 13. That kind of approach makes the mechanics support the fictional situation.

If a roll doesn’t go the PCs way, that doesn’t have to mean they did a poor job of appealing to a guard’s good nature, it may mean they ran into one of the few SOB guards. No dissonance at all.

I start with a general idea, and then let the players’ actions and the dice determine the details.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, not everything. I mean, most games use some amount of material that’s prepared… monster stats, locations, traps, entire settings. I know all of that can potentially be changed if needed, but it’s still a starting point.



Except that most often, no matter how I describe my approach to picking a lock, the DC will remain fixed. Players shouldn’t expect auto-success or auto-failure in most cases based on their description of the action. That’s a pretty big difference.

Also, people don't generally consider lock picking or trap disarming boring. A lot of times, they’re edge of your seat situations.



You know what’s a good way to determine that so that the GM isn’t deciding everything? The dice!



This I absolutely agree with. I’ve played with GMs who treat every single NPC antagonist as some uber-devoted and loyal paragon in service to their cause or their lord.

But making an NPC actionable by the players is important, I think. They should be able to suss some info out, or at least try to, and leverage that. To me, far better if I’ve made an Insight check and so I know this guard isn’t open to a bribe, but is open to the idea of justice. I fI then tailor my plea to him accordingly, then I do so with advantage. Dice rolls, but not boring. Also, not done without narrating my approach. I don’t know why a dice roll has to happen in a vacuum.



Why? I do this kind of thing all the time. I consider the location and then I think of its strongest defense, and its weakness. Then I decide what DCs to give those two ends, and anything else is in the middle. If the players have gathered some information on the location, they’ll know that the castle guards are very unlikely to be bribed, but are very scrupulous and may be convinced their master is in the wrong (or whatever the situation is). So bribery has a DC of 20 and appeals to justice or righteousness or good have a DC 13. That kind of approach makes the mechanics support the fictional situation.

If a roll doesn’t go the PCs way, that doesn’t have to mean they did a poor job of appealing to a guard’s good nature, it may mean they ran into one of the few SOB guards. No dissonance at all.

I start with a general idea, and then let the players’ actions and the dice determine the details.

There's a key point in here. Dice mechanics, traditionally, have been LARGELY a way to give the illusion of greater depth to a situation. That is, there are a vast array of factors you do not know about any given situation in an RPG, in fact probably MOST of the really salient ones! You roll dice. Its just a simple way of saying "well, the wall might be slippery, or it might be dry, or crumbly, or have convenient cracks, I don't know, roll and see!" Likewise with social situations, did the guard wake up with a bad stomach today? Maybe he tells you to piss off no matter what.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

There's a key point in here. Dice mechanics, traditionally, have been LARGELY a way to give the illusion of greater depth to a situation. That is, there are a vast array of factors you do not know about any given situation in an RPG, in fact probably MOST of the really salient ones! You roll dice. Its just a simple way of saying "well, the wall might be slippery, or it might be dry, or crumbly, or have convenient cracks, I don't know, roll and see!" Likewise with social situations, did the guard wake up with a bad stomach today? Maybe he tells you to piss off no matter what.

Interesting. This is the opposite of our table. As in step one of the 5e How to Play cycle, the DM describes the environment - which includes describing the wall. The wall is already slippery (or dry/crumbly/conveniently cracked) and that is the potential challenge for the PCs. If I've described the wall as slippery, the players then describe what their PCs are doing about it and, depending on their approach to the goal of climbing the slippery wall, I will set a DC accordingly (or grant auto-success or declare auto-failure). We don't retroactively design the environment around dice rolls at our table.

 

[clearstream]

The best practice would be, that the DM fairly determines, how the approach of the players, so how and what they say, would change the DC.

My main feeling about this approach is that where one is following it, it ought to apply to all ability checks. Offering a consistent principle that what the player describes their character doing is an input into the DC.

Following on from my comment above, another approach is to say that what the player describes their character doing is an input into the consequences. I'd refer you to DMG237 and DMG242 for context here.

I'll use your examples, quoted again here for context

"Hello Mr. Merchant, I as the rescuer of the town would like a discount"
"Roll a persuasion check"
"20"
"He gives you 10% off"

"I would like the Merchant to give me a discount".
"Roll a persuasion check."
"5 - so my characters says: Hey stupid Shopkeeper, I'm the hero of this city, give me a discount!"
"He doesn't give you a discount."

To reframe these examples under the suggested alternative approach

"Hello Mr. Merchant, I as the rescuer of the town would like a discount"
"Roll a persuasion check"
"20"
"He thanks you for all that you have done, gives you 10% off, and would be proud to have you join his family for dinner."

The player's description in the above has been taken as an input into the consequences. In this case introducing the possibility that the merchant will become an admirer... perhaps a patron.

Or, if the player takes another tack

"My characters says: Hey stupid Shopkeeper, I'm the hero of this city, give me a discount!"
"Roll a persuasion check."
"5"
"He doesn't give you a discount, mutters something about arrogance and who asked you anyway, and it turns out there's none of whatever you wanted in stock."

The player's description in the above has been taken as an input into the consequences. In this case introducing the possibility that the merchant will take offence... perhaps opposing characters.

Contrast with

"Hello Mr. Merchant, I as the rescuer of the town would like a discount"
"Roll a persuasion check" DM has DC 10 in mind.
"20"
"He thanks you 10% off"

"My characters says: Hey stupid Shopkeeper, I'm the hero of this city, give me a discount!"
"Roll a persuasion check." DM has DC 15 in mind.
"5"
"He doesn't give you a discount."

Which could be nearer to your practice. I'm not sure that it is better to take description as input to consequences than difficulty, but I would say that if using the rules in DMG 237 doing so makes it easier to invent consequences that have fidelity your fiction.

As an aside, the rules on Social Interaction DMG245 do seem to fit the input-to-consequences approach better than the input-to-difficulty approach. In that, the scale the roll indexes is based on what players achieve in their approach (what attitude they end up rolling against.) As you might see, I have taken the first approach to shift an indifferent merchant to friendly, and the second approach to shift that same merchant to hostile.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting. This is the opposite of our table. As in step one of the 5e How to Play cycle, the DM describes the environment - which includes describing the wall. The wall is already slippery (or dry/crumbly/conveniently cracked) and that is the potential challenge for the PCs. If I've described the wall as slippery, the players then describe what their PCs are doing about it and, depending on their approach to the goal of climbing the slippery wall, I will set a DC accordingly (or grant auto-success or declare auto-failure). We don't retroactively design the environment around dice rolls at our table.

But nobody knows what all the relevant factors even ARE, let alone has determined their values. This is even more so for social situations, which are vastly more complex and harder to parameterize.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

But nobody knows what all the relevant factors even ARE, let alone has determined their values. This is even more so for social situations, which are vastly more complex and harder to parameterize.

Not sure I follow exactly.

In a social situation, a DM assigns an NPC a starting attitude (Friendly, Indifferent, or Hostile) and also gives the NPC a bond, ideal, and/or flaw. Those are the relevant factors. The DM knows what they are from their game prep. The players can discover them through game play.

The PCs can try to figure out those characteristics of the NPC through interaction with said NPC - perhaps a Wisdom(Insight) check is called for by the DM or perhaps magic is used in some way or perhaps it is just plain obvious. The PCs can then use that info to try to get what they want. Does it need to be more complex than that? Or am I misunderstanding your point?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

The best practice would be, that the DM fairly determines, how the approach of the players, so how and what they say, would change the DC. So you need to be aware as the DM, that social interaction can't really be resolved like combat, that it is different than other approaches. Because social interaction is a dialogue. It is two or more people talking. It is a quick back and forth that you don't want to interrupt like in combat. You need the action declaration and action description (how the declared acrion looks in the outcome) in one go and not split it like in combat or you kill the dialogue.

See, I'm not sure I agree with this. Because, the problem I have with this is that how does the DM "fairly determine" things? Most often, IMO, in practice, the "fairly determine" part is usually the problem.

And the other problem becomes:

Hello Mr. Merchant, I as the rescuer of the town would like a discount"
"Roll a persuasion check"
"5"
"He doesn't care. No discount."

or conversely,

My characters says: Hey stupid Shopkeeper, I'm the hero of this city, give me a discount!
"Roll a persuasion check"
"20"
"He gives you 10% off"

In other words, there is a huge disconnect between what the player is saying and the results. Like I said, I would much rather a system where nothing is determined by a single check - getting a discount isn't just a single die roll but a series of checks requiring the player to actually narrate as he goes. And, while the initial statement, "I want to get a discount" is just a statement of the goal, not actually any different than "I want to damage this monster". The die rolls, back and forth, direct the conversation while the player provides the script.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Interesting. This is the opposite of our table. As in step one of the 5e How to Play cycle, the DM describes the environment - which includes describing the wall. The wall is already slippery (or dry/crumbly/conveniently cracked) and that is the potential challenge for the PCs. If I've described the wall as slippery, the players then describe what their PCs are doing about it and, depending on their approach to the goal of climbing the slippery wall, I will set a DC accordingly (or grant auto-success or declare auto-failure). We don't retroactively design the environment around dice rolls at our table.

I think I'm not describing this adequately. There is no 'retroactive design', it is simply impossible to detail every factor over the entirety of the play area such that you can actually state precisely how an action would play out (even assuming we are able to make such determinations even WITH such information). Thus instead we simply assume that there are various factors, helpful and not helpful, which will contribute to success or failure. The toss of the dice is simply a way to determine the weight of such factors, a bad roll indicating something like a more than usually slippery wall, or a good one indicating sufficient hand holds to achieve success. Likewise with social situation, maybe the guy you are trying to convince had a nice dinner, and he's amenable to giving you a discount, etc. This is in keeping with the way fortune is used in wargames, where it could represent some minor advantage which allows your battalion to push back the other guy's battalion. Its not 'luck', nor even necessarily 'skill', but 'fortune'.