D&D 5E Does the "Friends" cantrip need a fix?

[ShadowSeeker]

CASTER BOB pulls something out of a pouch at his waste and smears it on his face. Suddenly, he seems to exude an air of trustworthiness. He rushes towards THE GUARD and starts waving his arms agitatedly.

CASTER BOB
Oh my god! A little kid just fell into that well! You've gotta help him! Quick! I think he's already drowning!

The guard looks at Caster Bob with some suspicion, but finds him strangely convincing. Still he holds his ground.

GUARD
Well, I don't know, sir. I'm supposed to be holding this post. It's not really my job to look after these stupid kids.

CASTER BOB
He's drowning! There's nobody else nearby! And here, let me give you this rope! Please!

The guard looks towards the well, and finds Caster Bob's urgency contagious. He throws down his halberd, grabs the rope, and launches himself towards the well.

GUARD
I am coming to save you, child!

The guard descends into the well for about 15 seconds (3 combat rounds, 45 feet, if the well is deep enough).

GUARD
Wait a minute, something here is terribly wrong. Alarm!

Meanwhile, 150 feet away (3 combat rounds, dashing), a group of 6 heavily armed adventurers race towards the Big Unprotected Magic Thing in the center of the square.

I think that would all fit on a script page.

This is a good situation that illustrates my problems with "Friends". A would never use "Friends" if I were caster Bob. Here is why:

Without Friends:
Charisma Check succeeds: I get in unchallenged.
Charisma Check fails: Guard doesn't leave his post. I can try another tactic.

With Friends: advantage on Check
Charisma Check succeeds: I get in, but alarm is sounded. If this was the goal I could just surprise attack him 6 to 1 and kill him off and then get it a round later.
Charisma Check fails: Guard doesn't leave his post but becomes hostile. The guard at least would send me away and would confront me if he sees me again.

Of course, the player doesn't have to come up with all that. All he has to say is, "I'm going to try to convince the guard to climb into the well to pull out a fallen child." At which point I, as the DM would say, "Ok, give me a persuasion check of 17, with advantage. Since you have +5 on persuasion, you'll need a 12 or more on one of the two d20s." (I wouldn't say that last part actually, but just for illustration.)

This is where our personal playstyle seems to differ. Our group always act out any kind of attempts to negotiate or deceive someone.

 

[redrick]

This is a good situation that illustrates my problems with "Friends". A would never use "Friends" if I were caster Bob. Here is why:

Without Friends:
Charisma Check succeeds: I get in unchallenged.
Charisma Check fails: Guard doesn't leave his post. I can try another tactic.

With Friends: advantage on Check
Charisma Check succeeds: I get in, but alarm is sounded. If this was the goal I could just surprise attack him 6 to 1 and kill him off and then get it a round later.
Charisma Check fails: Guard doesn't leave his post but becomes hostile. The guard at least would send me away and would confront me if he sees me again.


This is where our personal playstyle seems to differ. Our group always act out any kind of attempts to negotiate or deceive someone.

Yeah, I was mainly just illustrating how much interaction can easily fit into a minute. Friends is obviously going to be most useful where a time limit is already being imposed externally, or where plan B is either combat or a hasty retreat either way. So, if it's either sweet talk the guard or fight through the gate, why not give sweet talking the guard a chance before taking the risk of fighting through the gate?

As far as playstyle, sure, I'd usually try to act out the scene with the player, but I'm not going to judge the outcome based on how effectively the player can deliver a 60 second pitch. That's what the check is for. The player can definitely improve the probabilities through role-play (mainly through indicated preparation or adequately indicated intentions). For me, I want the players to take time role-playing and describing what they do, not how they do it. (They're welcome to describe the how, but don't think I'm going to give you advantage or a lower DC because you describe exactly how you hold your body and the tenor of your voice.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, it is multiple sentences. Which is mostly what I'm trying to illustrate. Pick up a page from a script and see how much gets covered in one page. It's a lot more than one quick exchange.

Now time your players talking to each other, and see how surprised you are how long it takes them to decide whether to go left or right at the fork in the tunnel.

A minute-long discussion isn't very long unless both sides of the conversation are scripted.

(Smuggling a wagon through a check-point is a particularly good example of where you really want that to happen with One Quick Interaction, because the longer you spend at that check-point, the more likely the guard is going to want to see what's in the back of that wagon.)

So you get a forty-five second head start (assuming your dialogue takes only fifteen seconds from initiation to permission grant) before the alert gets sounded. That's not much improvement over just busting through the checkpoint by overrunning the guard. You'd probably be better off in this situation eschewing Friends entirely and relying on regular persuasion.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That's what the Dash action represents. AD&D had additional options for running even faster than a double speed, and if someone in 5E wanted to do that I'd steal those rules: you can go to 3x speed with a Strength (Athletics) DC 10 check every round, or 4x speed with two Strength (Athletics) DC 12 checks per round, or 5x speed with three Strength (Athletics) DC 14 checks per round, etc. Once you fail one you have to stop and walk it off (maybe gain a temporary level of exhaustion).

(You may think it sounds crazy to allow a PC a chance of running 15 mph for six seconds just by making three DC 14 checks, but if you stop and think about it, high school kids do that all the time. Is there anything wrong with allowing a 5th level fighter with Str 18 a 50% chance of running as fast as a high school kid for a few seconds at a time? No, there is not.)

No, I don´t believe it is crazy...

just watched a marathon and the winner run 42km in just above 2 hours... which is about 20km/h for 2 hours... so i find it crazy that 60ft per 6 seconds or 10ft per second... which is just about 10km/h is the maximum per rules....

if you however think about how fast you are with 20kg of bags on your shoulders it does not seem that crazy anymore...

So I think your DC are more than appropriate for a run with a backpack on your shoulders and maybe even armor on. If you try it without armor and encumbrance, I believe it should not even have a DC...

(I still have a problem with animals that can only run quite slow, even with base speeds of 50ft or so... I really would have liked it, if the run action had been featured in the optional DM chapter where you can find tumble, overrun etc.)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Another point about cantrips: they are generally something you're choosing because you are going to get value out of them regularly. If a cantrip only works in oddball niche situations it isn't following the design pattern and fails as a cantrip.

 

[Coredump]

Another point about cantrips: they are generally something you're choosing because you are going to get value out of them regularly. If a cantrip only works in oddball niche situations it isn't following the design pattern and fails as a cantrip.

I disagree with your premise. Aside from damage cantrips (and even some of those) most cantrips are niche spells. Or of very limiited potential benefit.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I disagree with your premise. Aside from damage cantrips (and even some of those) most cantrips are niche spells. Or of very limiited potential benefit.

All I can say is that when I look at the lists of cantrips I see 32 spells that I would use regularly without having to build a character around them. I see 3 spells that are way too situational to get regularly use: blade ward, truestrike, and friends. I guess friends is better than the other two, in that you can get regular use out of it if part of your character concept is "I want to constantly offend people and make new enemies."

Needless to say, I think all three of those cantrips fail.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

All I can say is that when I look at the lists of cantrips I see 32 spells that I would use regularly without having to build a character around them. I see 3 spells that are way too situational to get regularly use: blade ward, truestrike, and friends. I guess friends is better than the other two, in that you can get regular use out of it if part of your character concept is "I want to constantly offend people and make new enemies."

Blade Ward definitely has a role for chokepoint defenders and such. It's better than Dodge against things with high to-hit bonuses, and can therefore give your party twice as many rounds of attack at the cost of your own action. I've built characters who take it; haven't yet used it because they haven't gone up against anything tough enough to need it.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Blade Ward can be useful. At least as a DM I've used it frequently on sorcerer NPC's with Quicken spell to extend their lifespan while still pumping out other spells. Same w Eldritch Knights. It's niche, but it does serve a purpose.

True Strike is essentially worthless save for circumstances where another attack isn't possibly or takes longer than one action to initiate (shooting a siege weapon or an arrow of slaying). Friends is closer to True Strike in terms of worthlessness.

 

[redrick]

Now time your players talking to each other, and see how surprised you are how long it takes them to decide whether to go left or right at the fork in the tunnel.

A minute-long discussion isn't very long unless both sides of the conversation are scripted.

So you get a forty-five second head start (assuming your dialogue takes only fifteen seconds from initiation to permission grant) before the alert gets sounded. That's not much improvement over just busting through the checkpoint by overrunning the guard. You'd probably be better off in this situation eschewing Friends entirely and relying on regular persuasion.[/COLOR]

Since it takes a group of players at least half an hour to get through a 30 second combat, I don't put a whole lot of stock in table time as a measure of game time. Furthermore, I believe that, if you gave the professional actor at our table 30 seconds to improv an interaction with an NPC who is being magically suggested (even slightly), she could accomplish quite a bit. This is where the Charisma and the proficiency come in. And, of course, the check.

In the case of the wagon, that's a 45 second head start until the guard knows that something is wrong. He doesn't immediately know what is wrong. He knows that the person driving that wagon magically suggested something to him, but he doesn't know what's in the wagon. So there is more lead time for the guard to figure out what actually happened and communicate that to somebody else. Guards are standing ready to defend a checkpoint, but it might take them longer to deal with a threat that has already passed. These are crucial rounds (8 or more) during which the players can be doing all sorts of things. If I were planning this break-in on the fly, I would say that, as soon as we got through the checkpoint, we would turn a corner and ditch the wagon. The driver would ditch his disguise. Now, once the guard has managed to figure out what's happened, communicated that to somebody else, sounded the alarm and sent somebody to investigate the wagon, the characters are a block away, trying to blend in with the crowd. Sounds like a fun action sequence to me.

Alternatively, if the characters bum-rushed the checkpoint, they will be under fire before they even reach it. Even if they do successfully barrel through with their wagon and animals intact, there are now a number of guards who know exactly what they are chasing after. Guards beyond the checkpoint (if there are any) have already been alerted and streaming out weapons drawn. This has gone from an infiltration scene to a storming scene.

I feel like you're needlessly applying a level of hyper-realism to one aspect of game time in order to shoot down potential uses of this cantrip. If you really can't imagine an interaction fitting into one minute, just amend the cantrip to last as long as a short interaction, saying that 30 seconds after the interaction is completed, the character will catch on to the magical suggestion. Or just extend the duration to 2 minutes. That keeps the spirit of the cantrip intact — short interactions — but allows you to maintain your idea of verisimilitude for the game. That's a totally legit thing to do — adjust the mechanics so that the intended outcome fits within your understanding of the rest of your world mechanics.