D&D General "I roll Persuasion."

[Chaosmancer]

I place this under the general category of players hating to lose any control over their character. If they rolled well on a bluff check but I had the PC still act with suspicion, they'd be upset. But if the NPC rolls well, the PCs will still treat the NPC with suspicion.


Oh, certainly. I've had people make persuasive arguments that led to me changing my mind about something, I've been successfully lied to, I've been cheated, and I'm sure all that will happen again. There are, however, limits to what one might accomplish with mere words no matter how much of a golden tongue they possess. You are not going to talk Julius Ceasar out of conquoring Gaul by arguing that it's immoral or asking him to think of the children. You might be able to talk him out of it by presenting him with a richer target or one that would gain him more popularity in Rome.

My general rule for social skills is that they are not mind control. I don't care how skilled you are, you need to understand something about your target in order to persuade them into doing what you want. Ceasar wants to accumulate wealth for the purpose of building his political power, and you're not going to talk him out of attacking Gaul without giving him an alternative that will help him with his goals.

I agree persuasion isn't mind control.

Jonestown: Thousands of people committed mass suicide after leaving their homes, their family, and devoting their lives to the words of a single man. They killed their own children, on his order.

How many Demagogues have turned peaceful nations to war and bloodshed?

Persuasion isn't mind control, but where is the line? At what point is the line between the two?



Someone earlier in the thread mentioned something about how Exalted's system is broken, because the best way to convince someone of something was to follow them, badger them incessantly about doing impossible or stupid things, until you'd finally worn them down enough they'd just say yes to anything. We all know that would actually work in real life, right? If you had someone who you couldn't get away from, you badgered you day in and day out, hour after hour, demanding things of you don't you think eventually (if you didn't snap and attack them) that they would say something that sounded reasonable, sounded like something you could do, and you would want to do it so they would GO AWAY.

I've experienced that, where someone annoyed me to the point that I didn't care what it was they wanted, I would do it just to get them to leave me alone.

You say no PC could convince Caesar not to invade Gaul? Well no mortal man can rip apart an adamantium door... except a raging level 20 barbarian could actually do that. No mortal man could withstand the Chromatic Flames of an Avatar of Tiamat. but a level 20 Rogue is going to walk away without a scorch mark on them.

Player Characters do the impossible, and convincing a man not to attack another nation? It is possible. Won't be easy, shouldn't be easy. But to say it is impossible and the only way to do it is via magic, ignores the vast history of advisors who prevented their rulers from doing exactly that.


Persuasion isn't mind control, I agree, but it is still VERY powerful, especially when wielded by figures of myth and legend, especially when we can see how devastating and terrible it can be in the real world.

 

[jgsugden]

So why set DCs and roll? Just describe the scene. Players who want to play along and act intimidated will do so, others won't.

Now, maybe the players find it a helpful roleplaying cue to use the dice. That's cool. But that is a totally made-up use of the dice, outside the rules of 5e. I have zero problem with things like that. I do have a problem with any argument that this is somehow how 5e is supposed to be played.

The Role of the Dice section of the DMG covers some of your concerns. That shows, to a large extent, how 5E is supposed to be run. And the answer is ... in a way that works for the table. There are a lot of ways to go.

Why do I have the involuntary response of a PC be governed by the dice? For one: Because it creates a more 'realistic' feel. Why? Because involuntary responses are a big part of real world social interactions. Not being able to control every aspect of your response can give a player a lot to go off of in the situation. Honestly, to me, allowing PCs to decide their significant involuntary responses as if they were voluntary choices has too many similarities to allowing players to just decide whether their attacks hit or not without rolling dice.

Further, it also adds more variation and creativity to social engagements. It gives different inputs into the engagement that can alter the dynamics of the conversation and move some PCs into more significant roles. This avoids the trap of the 'one PC is always the face of the group' problems that reduces social encounters to being something that just one player does for an entire campaign.

In the example I provided above, where a tribal marauder leader did something to disgust the players as an intimidation technique I could have them roll dice to see if the PCs had an involuntary response, or I could just ask them how they proceed.

Think about how you'd react as a player if you were just going to decide how you proceed.

Now, think about how you'd react if you wanted to be unaffected, but your PC flinches. And, how you'd proceed if you don't have that involuntary response.

From experience, you get a much wider starting input to a social encounter when you have some more variance in how it starts ... and how it proceeds ... even when that variance only addresses a small element of the engagement (such as the involuntary response). If players decide how to respond, there may be tendencies to always approach these situations in the same way. If you insert variance for involuntary responses, you can create a broader landscape for how the situations proceed. It may thrust some PCs to the front in the conversation when they're the one that holds the stare of the enemy leader during one situation, when another PC may get pulled forward the next time when they don't flinch.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I agree persuasion isn't mind control.

Jonestown: Thousands of people committed mass suicide after leaving their homes, their family, and devoting their lives to the words of a single man. They killed their own children, on his order.

How many Demagogues have turned peaceful nations to war and bloodshed?

Persuasion isn't mind control, but where is the line? At what point is the line between the two?



Someone earlier in the thread mentioned something about how Exalted's system is broken, because the best way to convince someone of something was to follow them, badger them incessantly about doing impossible or stupid things, until you'd finally worn them down enough they'd just say yes to anything. We all know that would actually work in real life, right? If you had someone who you couldn't get away from, you badgered you day in and day out, hour after hour, demanding things of you don't you think eventually (if you didn't snap and attack them) that they would say something that sounded reasonable, sounded like something you could do, and you would want to do it so they would GO AWAY.

I've experienced that, where someone annoyed me to the point that I didn't care what it was they wanted, I would do it just to get them to leave me alone.

You say no PC could convince Caesar not to invade Gaul? Well no mortal man can rip apart an adamantium door... except a raging level 20 barbarian could actually do that. No mortal man could withstand the Chromatic Flames of an Avatar of Tiamat. but a level 20 Rogue is going to walk away without a scorch mark on them.

Player Characters do the impossible, and convincing a man not to attack another nation? It is possible. Won't be easy, shouldn't be easy. But to say it is impossible and the only way to do it is via magic, ignores the vast history of advisors who prevented their rulers from doing exactly that.


Persuasion isn't mind control, I agree, but it is still VERY powerful, especially when wielded by figures of myth and legend, especially when we can see how devastating and terrible it can be in the real world.

Cancer is very powerful in the real world, too, but I don’t really want my dragon-slaying hero to be brought low by a tumor in his pancreas, just because that’s how the DM rolled.

Just because something is realistic doesn’t mean modeling that realism is going to make an RPG more fun.

Edit: conveniently, this is also my response to what @jgsugden posted while I was typing. So nice when it works out like that.

 

[HammerMan]

People were asked to hold a cup of either hot or cold coffee for a moment before answering questions, and had no idea it was part of the experiment. They were then asked a few questions and offered cash for themselves, or a gift certificate for a friend as a thank you gift. Those who held hot coffee were more generous, and chose a gift certificate for a friend, and those who held the cold cup chose to keep the cash. Remarkable such a quick and simple change of sensation affects an impulse like generosity at a primal Can You Change Your Mind by Changing Your Sensations?

With hot coffee, we see a warm heart, Yale researchers find

Our judgment of a person’s character can be influenced by something as simple as the warmth of the drink we hold in our hand.

news.yale.edu

Tony Robbins on TikTok

Unless you PRIME YOURSELF, you're going to be primed by the environment. #tonyrobbins #socialexperiment #coffee #priming

www.tiktok.com

 

[Chaosmancer]

What sort of consequences? If some random stranger is trying to persuade my PC to do something he would never do and my PC loses, what sort of bad thing happens and why?

So what is your PC trying to convince this random NPC of that started the social combat? That will help determine what the consequences of failure is.

If you are asking about an NPC initiating the social combat, that will not happen, that isn't the point of the system.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Cancer is very powerful in the real world, too, but I don’t really want my dragon-slaying hero to be brought low by a tumor in his pancreas, just because that’s how the DM rolled.

Just because something is realistic doesn’t mean modeling that realism is going to make an RPG more fun.

Edit: conveniently, this is also my response to what @jgsugden posted while I was typing. So nice when it works out like that.

Sure, but Disease rules exist in DnD. You character could get Mummy Rot, or Cackle Fever, or whatever Otyughs give you. And if you make a more robust disease rule set, no one is going to say "But diseases aren't that dangerous in the real world, I got the flu once and it wasn't so bad, my character could totally continue no matter what disease they get!"

So why is it when we try to make a more robust system intentionally meant for the PLAYER CHARACTERS to bull-headedly convince someone else of something through social combat, but maybe with consequences IF THEY FAIL, we are constantly being berated by how Persuasion isn't mind control and you can never convince the PCs to ever do something against their will except by magic?

If your position is that you don't think it would be fun to have a social combat system where PCs can force NPCs into specific actions, but failing to do so has consequences, then fine. You don't think it would be fun, no problem. But persuasion is something people seem to treat like it is nothing with any power, when it is the most fundamentally powerful thing in society beyond pure violence.

 

[Maxperson]

So what is your PC trying to convince this random NPC of that started the social combat? That will help determine what the consequences of failure is.

If you are asking about an NPC initiating the social combat, that will not happen, that isn't the point of the system.

That isn't what I'm getting from some of the people posting on the pro-social combat side of things.

 

[Maxperson]

I was the GM. The rules dictated that these things happen as a result of play (when you take Stress in Spire, you risk Fallout; the more Stress you take, the greater the chance and the more severe the Fallout). I included the player in the decision on how the Fallout manifested specifically for his character.

You are right that his agency was preserved in that these are the rules of the game and this is what’s at risk. But his ability to always determine his character’s mental state was not preserved. That’s a different thing than agency.

Those rules were also I presume known to the players and agreed to in advance. Agreement like that renders something that would remove agency in another game okay in the one being agreed to.

So one time I decided a PC I played had a heart attack and died.

Would you say this is as meaningful as when a PC dies in combat or otherwise through play that isn’t entirely up to the player?

I’d say there’s a meaningful enough difference to view them as similar, but distinct.

I don't think there's really an answer to this. Someone might not view one as meaningfully different than the other, you view them as similar, but different, and a third person might see a profound difference.

How I personally view it is similar to how you view it. If I choose to have my PC die holding off a horde of orcs in a narrow ravine so the others can escape, that means more to me than an uncontrolled death, but not so much more that I don't want the risk of uncontrolled death to be gone.

The way those read to me, I see more inference on your part than implication on @Reynard ’s.

How does this "I wouldn't use it for coerced behavior as often..." not imply that he would sometimes use it for coerced behavior?

 

[Reynard]

What sort of consequences? If some random stranger is trying to persuade my PC to do something he would never do and my PC loses, what sort of bad thing happens and why?

Why do you keep bringing this up? Why would this ever happen in an actual game at the table? It's like not wanting a combat system because at any moment 10 dragons could leap out of the sewers and attack your character while shopping for rations. Sure, it could happen, i guess, but when woudl it ever occur?

 

[Maxperson]

Why do you keep bringing this up? Why would this ever happen in an actual game at the table? It's like not wanting a combat system because at any moment 10 dragons could leap out of the sewers and attack your character while shopping for rations. Sure, it could happen, i guess, but when woudl it ever occur?

No. It's like 1 or 2 orcs jumping a 1st level fighter. If the PC can lose, and it's possible for that loss to force him to do something he would never do, then that particular social combat system is crap. If it can't force an outcome like that, then I'm not sure what the point of it is.