D&D General Charisma Checks gone Horribly Wrong - Can you Relate?

[soviet]

Stating action and intent is roleplay! What you enjoy is acting it out. I personally would rather play at the table where all players all welcome to play whatever character they want. We have thin nerds play barbarians why not let play shy nerds eloquent bards without them forcing to actually try to be eloquent.

I'd rather just have a fun and engaging game. If the only way to accommodate people who literally cannot pretend to have a conversation is to reduce all game play to dice rolls, I am happy just to not play with such people.

What I always find hilarious but also a bit weird if somebody is acting out a scene really good and have convincing arguments - than rolling a nat 1 on persuasion. If a table gets pulled out of the narrative by that I recommend to roll first and than act it out. Or I try to let the nat 1 not mean that the pc actually stumbled over their words, but that the NPC just reacts completely different than excpected.

Don't play bad systems, I agree. But yes a good performance should aid or replace the dice roll, and a failure can be about the NPC's choice of how they react or some other circumstances rather than because the PC messed up.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

i'd rather rely on social skill checks with a chance of players zero effort roll-playing than straight up ignore what characters are built for and use RP to decide everything above table, what's that you say? the 5 CHA barbarian managed to run rings around the conversation against a professional negotiator because jack at the table has the gift of gab and managed to convince the GM? awful!

edit: this doesn;t mean i wouldn't be grateful for an improved social system that is less swingy and inconsistent.

I am pretty much in agreement with you - to my mind, it does a disservice to PCs that have specialized in social skills if someone can just RP really well and not have to roll.

And honestly, even the suavest person sometimes just says the wrong thing, or the listener takes it the wrong way. Sometimes being too glib can raise people's hackles. It happens in real life all the time.