D&D 5E [+] How can 5e best handle role playing outside of combat?

[TheSword]

So, it isn't self explanatory, in that we don't have a good idea of what "to handle" role play outside of combat really means.

If you mean that the game does not fall apart if people engage in a lot of interpersonal social interaction, then yes, the game can handle it.

If you mean that the game actively supports and enables solid social tactical choices... no, it really doesn't.

I expect that disagreement in this thread will largely on that divide - what does it really mean "to handle" the matter?



"+" thread means that it is expected that everyone accepts the basic premise of the thread.

It is hard for us to tell when folks are accepting the basic premise of the thread, when that premise is, as noted above, not well defined. Moreover, the thread title is a "Yes/no" question. Are people not on board with the premise if they answer no? Are they accepting the premise if they answer Yes, that the game handles social interactions perfectly, and therefore no discussion is necessary?

I thought + meant people started essentially positive rather than debating whether the discussion had merit. Etc.

I will clarify the original post though. Hopefully that will help.

 

[Fenris-77]

Not really. Groups checks are for when everyone is trying to do the same thing (everyone rolls the same skill). Skill challenges are for when you want to resolve an encounter with various skill checks, each player making a different skill check, based on hwo their character wants to face the challenge.

That's not precisely the case. Skill challenges can involve different skills, but that notion isn't integral to the mechanic, which is simply to accumulate X success before X failures. A chase for example, could be run with just a series of Athletics checks (to use the 5E skill). Or, alternatively, any number of other skills could come into play depending on player decisions.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, but for some people that is not enough. I played very little of PF2, but that system seems to have way more robust systems for social interaction and exploration. And I think the OP is not talking about roleplaying in the sense of acting like your character, but more about systems that helo gamify social interaction and exploration. In that, I think 3e has more options (and 4e has skill challenges)

Sure, it might not be enough. My point was that 5e offers the most roleplaying support, so it seems odd to me that roleplaying in 5e would be a reason why someone would complain that a prior edition didn't win. The prior edition didn't support it as well.

Inspiration in 5e is bland and boring and so I changed it in my game from something we all regularly forgot, to something the players are excited to have and we now remember.

 

[Ixal]

Have interesting situations for the players to explore, and interesting NPCs for them to interact with, frame situations that intersect with the beliefs, values and fears etc of the characters. It has very little to do with any rules.

Personally I find the idea that you must have detailed and fiddly rules for anything forth doing dumbfounding. I mean have you ever been in a LARP? There often isn't basically any mechanics at all, it is just people talking and acting as their characters. And look at the most famous D&D campaigns in the world, Critical Role. A large swathes of it is just people acting in character and immersing in the world.

And D&D has the exact same support for out of combat activities than a LARP, meaning basically none.
And don't limit it only to social interactions (although you certainly can apply the same reasoning to it). Have a PC learning carpentry to be better at repairing a bridge than others? Already here it gets sketchy as D&D offers no real way to measure how good someone is in carpentry apart from a generic proficency bonus which are tied to your class level with no way to specifically increase it.

The same applies to social interaction. A shy player playing an expert diplomat? "Acting it out" won't let him play out this role at all and the support D&D gives for being a expert diplomat is limited to adding the "everything non combat bonus" to your die roll.

As I said before, many other game systems offer much more support for out of combat activities and even D&D did before 5E pushed the game back down into the dungeon by removing everything else.

 

[Lyxen]

Who reads the DMG? I kid. Sort of. When it comes to social interactions in D&D, the biggest obstacle I find is that some character classes just aren't very good at it. Me? I don't really care whether or not my character is optimized to be good at persuading, deceiving, or otherwise communicating with other sentient beings. I will have my characters engage with NPCs at almost every opportunity because it's just so much fun. But over the years, I have encountered many situations where a player didn't participate in the social aspects of the game, in part, because their character class wasn't built for it. And that's a crying shame. D&D is a class based system that encourages niche protection and a somewhat narrow focus on abilities. And when it comes to social skills, not all classes are equal.

Yes, they are. It's only if you want combat-optimised characters that you have that "unbalance". Any character - I mean absolutely ANY - can have a non-negligible charisma, and there are ways to get social skills for ANY class.

The problem is that if you want a combat-optimised character AND someone that can interact socially, you will have choices to make, too bad, it's the essence of life.

At our table, we run equal opportunity games, which means that a player with low personal charisma and no social skills can run the face of the party if he wants. It means choosing the right character for it, of course, but it is ALWAYS possible. What we don't allow (because it would be unfair to the players above is for a high charisma / smooth talking player to dump his charisma and take zero social skills to use his natural player abilities to take the place of the player above, and that is normal, it's a roleplaying game after all.

And our games have a lot of non-combat situations, so if you plan on participating at more than a basic level, take the character that you need, don't dump your charisma, take at least a few social skills.

Note that this only pertains to interactions with NPCs, you can always try to smooth-talk other players, but at least, in the game world, the characters are recognised, not the player.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It depends on how you handle them I guess. A lot of DMs use the lowest and slowest method where the character with the worst skill level rolls and that is the group result. That method isn't much like a skill challenge.

That's however not how the group check rules actually work.

Not really. Groups checks are for when everyone is trying to do the same thing (everyone rolls the same skill). Skill challenges are for when you want to resolve an encounter with various skill checks, each player making a different skill check, based on hwo their character wants to face the challenge.

I don't think anything in group check rules explicitly requires everyone to use the same skill (though the example is that.) But yeah, they could have elaborated on it.

 

[Lyxen]

Sure, but for some people that is not enough. I played very little of PF2, but that system seems to have way more robust systems for social interaction and exploration.

Yes, out of the 12308293847 pages of incomprehensible jargon that is that game, and if you can sort out the 14423154234098 options that you want out of that mess.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Aren't group checks pretty similar to skill challenges?

I think it's an approximation, trying to fill the need for something that was not the same as skill challenges. The tool is there for when everyone is trying to do the same thing, like sneaking. Due to the high variability of a D20, if you ask a 6 heroes group to do 6 Stealth checks, one of them might fail everytime. Not very fun. So, they have everyone roll, and if half of the group succeeds, everyone succeeds (basically characters are supposed to cooperate to reach a good enough result).

It's less fun to narrate than giving a problem: OK, you defeated the first zombie wave... you've some time before the next one... "we want to repair our airship". OK, you have 10 minutes, you need X successes." Sure, someone might be able to cast Mending 10 times, that's an useful contribution, have 10 successes. But failing that, a character with tool expertise in Weaver's tool (and you're doing enough of those skill checks if players actually consider taking Weaver's tool instead of a skill proficiency at chargen) could sugges that they'll inspect the ballon and patch any fault (OK, reasonable, DC is correct for a success, it takes 3 minutes for each checks)... and if a player really wanted to use Persuasion, no, you can't talk your airship into functioning, sorry, that's a failure (unless it's an elemental airship whose elemental could be talked into exhausting themselves...), but the idea is to let players each suggest what hteir character could contribute to help the repair.

 

[Bolares]

I don't think anything in group check rules explicitly requires everyone to use the same skill (though the example is that.) But yeah, they could have elaborated on it.

I know, but the purposes of them are different. Skill challenges normally take multiple rounds where each player can't repeat the same skill chack twice... there are a lot of differences. The only real thing in common is that the whole group rolls to resolve something.

 

[Fenris-77]

That's however not how the group check rules actually work.


I don't think anything in group check rules explicitly requires everyone to use the same skill (though the example is that.) But yeah, they could have elaborated on it.

I'm aware of the rule, I was just pointing out that it doesn't always get used. RAW it is somewhat like a Skill Challenge in that it measures success against failures to adjudicate group success, but it doesn't have the element of playing out over time that a Skill Challenge does, nor as you mention does it speak to different skills being used.