D&D General Social Pillar Mechanics: Where do you stand?

[Scott Christian]

I honestly don't see how it can be improved, and I don't mean that from a ruleset standpoint. I mean, D&D tries to leave things open. There are skills that cover certain social encounters, but the DM can let the players act it out if need be. The DM can even take the middle ground and let the players come up with a clever idea or act it out well, and then give them advantage.

These three pathways are what D&D is all about.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I honestly don't see how it can be improved, and I don't mean that from a ruleset standpoint. I mean, D&D tries to leave things open. There are skills that cover certain social encounters, but the DM can let the players act it out if need be. The DM can even take the middle ground and let the players come up with a clever idea or act it out well, and then give them advantage.

These three pathways are what D&D is all about.

But there is no framework here at all. The system really does not even have rules for social encounters.

Frankly the closest things to concise social encounter rules is the charm spell, because at least that thing is pretty predictable in what it allows you to do.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But there is no framework here at all. The system really does not even have rules for social encounters.

Frankly the closest things to concise social encounter rules is the charm spell, because at least that thing is pretty predictable in what it allows you to do.

Have you read the DMG?

 

[Reynard]

Have you read the DMG?

Of course not. No one has. The book is a hoax.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Have you read the DMG?

I remember it being very vague and there being pretty much no mechanics that interact with it aside from skill checks.

Like intimidation. What does it even do?

 

[Voadam]

I remember it being very vague and there being pretty much no mechanics that interact with it aside from skill checks.

Like intimidation. What does it even do?

Page 244, Social interaction - an optional structured system about starting attitudes and changing attitudes, determining characteristics of those you are interacting with, and more in-depth results for a social result based on the charisma check and the attitude of the target.

 

[Voadam]

Just because you have a system in place doesn't mean you stop using the fundamental rule that if the outcome is certain, you don't need to roll. If the PCs saved the life of the King's heir, you wouldn't expect they would have to roll either.

Yes, if it is absolutely certain you don't roll in 5e. If there is any possible uncertainty you do roll though, and there you can get a big mismatch of what seems natural in the circumstance and what the mechanics of a Charisma class with expertise and some way to get advantage can do fairly regularly on the dice end.

This would also circle back to roleplay being able to avoid the mechanics, either the socially inept player flubbing their charming PC's persuasion and not getting a roll, or the mechanically socially not oriented PC player smooth talking their way around any dice rolls.

 

[Scott Christian]

But there is no framework here at all. The system really does not even have rules for social encounters.

Frankly the closest things to concise social encounter rules is the charm spell, because at least that thing is pretty predictable in what it allows you to do.

To start, 4 out of 18 of the skills, approximately 22%, are there to help build suspense into social encounters. The DMG also offers advice and alternatives. With these two things, you should be able to create almost any suspenseful social encounter you want.

 

[Hex08]

Bards, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks in 5e all benefit directly in combat from high charisma, most from maxxing it out as their primary stat. They will all be monster-stomping machines just like all 5e PC classes are. Whether a character throws their skill selection into persuasion versus arcana is not usually a big deal.

I'm not really familiar with 5E I can't speak to that, I stopped playing D&D with the release of 4E and moved to Pathfinder and only play the first edition of it. In 3.x/Pathfinder skills can be a big deal and if I dumped a bunch off skill points into Bluff, Diplomacy and/or Intimidate then bought the feat Skill Focus to increase at least one of those and had to roleplay all social encounters and never got to roll I would, rightfully, be aggravated.

I guess this becomes the issue with a thread not related to a specific edition of D&D, we end up talking about different games.

 

[Hex08]

That seems easy to imagine. A player roleplays out trying to be persuasive and to improve an attitude and tells completely inappropriate jokes that are actually infuriatingly insulting but rolls well to change the attitude to friendlier, say even despite having disadvantage on a hard target.

The DM then after the roll is supposed to change their roleplay to act as if the PC was cool in some way and not offensive and actually improve the NPCs attitude in response to the jokes and roleplay out that improved attitude.

One way to avoid this is to say that when the PC roleplayed their insults, they blew it, the insults meant no chance of success so no roll on their 20 Charisma expertise persuasion instead of a straight roll or disadvantage or a difficult DC. If you allow a roll though and their character expertise to shine, you can get this kind of incongruity of mechanical result and what feels right and try to use that as a guide on future roleplaying.

This all falls apart if you have a player who isn't socially competent to begin with or isn't particularly charismatic or persuasive. I have a player in my group who embodies all of that and another who isn't very creative and often falls on his face when making up "fake" conversations on the fly. They may say inappropriate things when roleplaying a conversation (especially the first player) or not know where to take the conversation after it starts (usually the second player) so I give them the option of skipping the social bit of roleplaying and have them tell me what it is they are trying to do and, if appropriate, tell them what the NPC is trying to do or at least their attitude and have them roll. If they want to give the roleplaying of the conversation a try I let them but I don't hold their shortcomings against them, I will guide them through what may be a faux pas and still have them roll to more accurately reflect the abilities of the character, not the player. For those who make for compelling roleplaying I will usually give a bonus to the rolls needed.

The rare times I get to play rather than run a game my favorite parts of the game are the in-game social aspects and I have a lot of experience as both a DM and player. Not everyone in my group, and I imagine others, does. To force those with less experience or skill to rely on player/DM conversations to resolve in-game social situations seems inherently unfair. Also, as I mentioned up thread (depending on the version of D&D you are playing) if you are playing a character who may be built to be more socially competent than the player and to force them to rely on their own skills rather than the characters also seems unfair.