these are not based on the assumptions of my bad 2e and 3e games. these are based on things said in this very thread... people who said that 2 different declarations can have automatic pass and automatic fail
Way back on like page 16 you told me your process of play:
"that's a great idea, lets roll to see how well it works"
a high roll it works as intended
a low roll it doesn't work as intended
having a better skill increases odds of high
having a bad skill and disadvantage makes odd of bad result more likely.."
And I said that we had the exact same process of play except that you left out a step. The step you left out was "Determine advantage/disadvantage based on the circumstances". And I know you do this because it's come up in your conversation several times. You and I do agree that the players choices can create advantage or disadvantage depending on how good those choices are.
There are two things we disagree about, but only by degree. First, I am more likely to grant advantage or disadvantage than you are although keep in mind my preferred system is 3e so in 3e I have a lot more levers to pull to represent small bonuses or penalties. I'll get into that later in more detail. Second, we disagree on how much the character can make choices on behalf of the player. Your logic is built around, "The character is smart and skilled and they would know better than to do that." I don't disagree completely in that I do agree that the character often knows more about certain things than the player, I just don't believe you can have the character making the choices to the degree you seem to prefer without big tradeoffs in player agency and story reification that I personally feel harm the game more than stretching the idea of "testing character rather than player" as far as you do help.
But again, these are only differences of degree not kind. We are mostly doing the same thing.
For example, you are really concerned about "automatic pass" or "automatic fail" based on adjudication of declared actions. And that happens in my game probably less than many of the games you are happy to play. For example, you mention that you play in a game were the house rule is "If you touch the lava you die." So in that game, all action declarations that result in you touching the lava are automatic fails. No one regardless of circumstances can run across the surface of a lava lake. So you are actually OK with "automatic fails" you just have quirks of when you are OK with them.
I'm really not OK with them at all. One of the goals of my house rules is to remove all absolute statements from the rules and replace them with quantities. So a Fire Giant isn't immune to fire damage, they just reduce damage by 50. It's actually possible to burn a Fire Elemental in my game if you are a good enough pyromancer because my game doesn't have automatic fails, just actions which are impossibly hard for ordinary people but not for heroes with that schtick. With enough diplomacy you can talk an NPC into just about anything, it's just really really hard. And I think if you think about it, there are some diplomacy proposition that normally should be so hard that most people that attempt them couldn't succeed.
It's quite possible in my game to walk up to the BBEG at the end of the adventure, chastise him for his flaws and convince him to commit suicide. I will allow that attempt and give it a chance of success. It's just that the difficulty of that is so high that most characters will fail on even a natural 20, because most people aren't suicidal and don't want to die. Now you say that you don't like the idea of "automatic fails", but I'd guess that if a PC in your party started saying, "I'm go up to the NPC and convince them to commit suicide" you'd make the difficulty that plan higher than normal. And I think with experience with the proposition you'd start coming around to my way of thinking that it's really hard in the general case. You can't walk up to Tiamat as merely a 10th level face and get even a 5% chance on rolling a Nat 20 of making her feel so much remorse that she commits suicide. Yet, it's not an automatic fail in my game.
Are we on the same page? That is do we agree that some plans are more difficult than others? Is it harder to climb a wall of ice than a rough natural wall of stone with many good handholds? Is it harder to climb a wall of ice than a ladder? If we agree about that, then I suggest that social encounters are no different. Some plans and some outcomes are easier than others.
If we don't agree about that then there will be no point in me explaining the details of my procedures in social interactions.
once you have that as the 3 options auto pass/roll check/auto fail you face this issue that again will break my immersion.
So first of all, I'm not sure you are using "immersion" correctly there. I feel more like you mean "suspension of disbelief" and not immersion. Yes, breaking a player's suspension of disbelief will also break their immersion and take them out of the game, but the two concepts are different.
Secondly, I don't have those three options at all. In my game the proposition, "I jump over the Atlantic Ocean" is going to fail for most characters, but they will still roll a check. Most characters will only get a few dozen feet into the Atlantic Ocean and will miss success by a million feet or so, but you do understand that even though they had no chance of success that's not the same as failure by DM fiat. They are just trying to do something that the rules say is really really hard and their character sheet doesn't say, "You can jump better than most gods" because they aren't wearing "700 hundred league boots" or something.
In my game there is only "Roll a Check" and my job as the DM is to assign a difficulty to that check that doesn't break suspension of disbelief and creates a coherent universe where things work basically how you'd imagine they work. If I assign a difficulty to "I jump over the Atlantic Ocean" that gives characters like a 10% chance of doing that, it will break suspension of disbelief.
Are you still following me? So let's deal with the specific example:
the idea of player skill trumping character skill... now if you would ask "how do you calm the queen" and the player says he slaps her like what worked in that old movie the other night and you say 'well i doubt that will work but make your check' then see how the roll goes...
So I regret this example, not because it isn't a valid example but because my intention with this example is to communicate something I though most reasonable people would agree is an unreasonable plan. And you've actually leaned in and suggested that you consider this plan perfectly reasonable. But OK fine, without validating the reasonableness of this as a plan, let's consider the situation:
a) It's possible that the setting is highly sexist and slapping sense into women is something that has a societal expectation around it that is very different than the modern day.
b) On the other hand, it's a Queen we are talking about here that you are potentially publicly embarrassing and who probably has never had a person lay hands on her in her life and who probably has a law that makes it high treason to do so. She maybe had some designated person to hit in the event someone felt she needed punishment.
c) Whatever happens, this is going to big time change the relationship between the PC and the queen. This is for lack of a better word, a very personal moment. The Queen has to decide whether she's going to say, "Off with his head", in a way that consoling her in a much less dramatic fashion wouldn't. She may have to give a special dispensation or even lie on behalf of the character to keep him alive. And she's risking her reputation, her vanity, and even her authority by letting a character get away with this. Not to mention it may hurt and make her angry.
All of that comes down to a plan of action that isn't quite as difficult as "I jump the Atlantic Ocean" but is very difficult. I can tell you right now, if the half-orc barbarian does this they just get executed. The difficulty is higher than they can make even with a Nat 20. But if the super high charisma character with maxed out social skills attempts this at mid to high level, well, she might even like it. Which isn't something I really want to endorse, but again there are no automatic fails and there is a huge difference in getting "hit on" by someone gross and "hit on" by someone who is super attractive and has a super magnetic personality. And there or lots of other considerations here. Like if you are the Queen's trusted female cousin and this is in private, the slapping plan and saying, "Get yourself together. By the Gods you are Her Royal Majesty the Queen. You can't be seen like this.", might work out differently both in terms of difficulty and consequences.
Doesn't that make sense? Doesn't that seem reasonable?
Now I know there is a lot here we haven't addressed. There is too much going on here to address everything. I can imagine a lot of your objections. Yes, especially with a new player, I'm going to first explain to them the rules I am going to use to adjudicate the action and if the action is especially risky and the player doesn't seem to realize that I may decide to try to pass them some information that I think a character in their position would reasonably know in an attempt to not ever have a "gotcha" moment. But if the player is going to play his character those times need to be kept to a minimum, because sooner or later that ends up just with the GM telling the player how to play.
