D&D 5E Persuade, Intimidate, and Deceive used vs. PCs

[Ovinomancer]

Yep. "You're intimidated" may not be the most evocative narration, but well within a 5e DM's purview.

Okay. Forgive me for being confused, but I wrote my original response to this statement of yours:

Another not too closely related sub-topic: 5e's basic example of play, what I consider it's core resolution system in a technical sense, is player driven. Player declares an action, the DM narrates the results of the action. Earlier I asked if an NPC intimidating a player really fit that. Now I'll go out on a limb and say that it doesn't. Rather, the player will do something that will lead to an interaction with an NPC, that might involve the NPC trying to intimidate (or deceive or whatever) and the DM would take that into account in narrating the results of the PC's action, including, possibly, a check or opposed check. Just how I'd see it working in 5e.

Not to be too picky, but your above statement doesn't see a good match for your most recent statement. Am I misunderstanding your argument?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not to be too picky, but your above statement doesn't see a good match for your most recent statement. Am I misunderstanding your argument?

Maybe. In your example with the orc, the player declares an action, 'go talk to the orc' (because, y'know orcs are a gregarious lot), and the DM narrates the result: the orc intimidates the PC, shutting down the attempt at talking. Essentially a failure. Seems fine.

My point wasn't that NPCs would never have occasion to intimidate PCs, just that, in the 5e paradigm, it'd generally be in the context of something the player has chosen for the PC to do, and bear on the success/failure of that action.

Actually, that points up another interesting thing about 5e, as compared to other versions of the game: it's not really reasonable for a player to declare a check. In your example, a 3.5 player might have said "I diplomacize the Orc.... six plus thirty-three ...47 diplomacy." But a 5e player should wait for the DM to rule whether - and which - check is called for. That's both a philosophical and a design difference. 3.5 wasn't just player-empowering, but the gap between a trained and untrained skill could be /huge/, so you needed to suit your actions to your build proactively. In 5e, any character has a shot with any check thanks to Bounded Accuracy, so it's OK to 'empower' the DM to call for a check, even if it's not always the one the player may be angling for.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Maybe. In your example with the orc, the player declares an action, 'go talk to the orc' (because, y'know orcs are a gregarious lot), and the DM narrates the result: the orc intimidates the PC, shutting down the attempt at talking. Essentially a failure. Seems fine.

My point wasn't that NPCs would never have occasion to intimidate PCs, just that, in the 5e paradigm, it'd generally be in the context of something the player has chosen for the PC to do, and bear on the success/failure of that action.

That seems... odd to me. I can't put my finger on it, because it's either so vague that any situation can eventually arrive at a player decision that precipitated it (up to and including sitting down at the table to play), or it implies that NPCs should always be reactive to player actions -- they can intimidate a PC, sure, but only if the PC puts themselves into a position for the NPC to intimidate them.

For example, in a recent game, an NPC organization set out to intimidate a player character. The short backstory was that the PC had come into possession of information that would be damaging to this organization. Further, the organization was well known to be of the highly unsavory sort. The PC made contact with a representative of the organization and indicated he has the information and wished to return it, provided sufficient compensation was made. Once word got back to decision makers in the organization, they immediately acted to put the PC in distress by making a not subtle threat against his family (specifically, contact was reestablished through the time honored tactic of having the organization representative waiting as a guest in the character's home, speaking with his family in a friendly way -- trite, but effective). This was a clearly NPC initiated intimidation, and done so because I knew that this organization behaves in this way -- always have an advantage during negotiations is one of their mottos. So, was that a PC initiated confrontation, because the PC did something that caused an unseen and unknowable (at the time) sequence of events that led to the intimidation attempt? If so, it would appear that your criteria for PC initiated could conceivable span multiple sessions, hidden and lying await, to spring up later in a way that isn't clearly connected to the initial impetus. And that's nearly meaningless in deciding if the action is okay by the rules, because then the interpretation is so loose that anything is therefore justifiable (which was my point).

Yet you seemed to be keen on making a statement that only some things are allowable -- that NPCs shouldn't initiate action, be merely reactive. If, however, the reaction isn't clearly linked to the action except in the mind of the DM, then it's a hidden mechanic from the players' perspective and doesn't seem to accomplish the goal you've set.

I don't know, perhaps I'm overthinking this. I appreciate that you're responses are full of 'my way is better' and that you seem genuinely interested in engaging the topic. Thanks for the responses.

 

[Ristamar]

Upon further reflection, since I don't allow NPC social skills to mechanically influence PC actions (e.g. a basic NPC Intimidation check won't cause the target PC to receive a penalty on an attack roll), I feel it's fruitless to tell the PC he's been intimidated. I'd rather describe the fearsome and threatening presence of the NPC and then leave the ball in the player's court to direct the PC's emotional response. However, if I did impose a mechanical penalty, I'd be more apt to directly inform the PC's emotional response.

As an aside, did anyone actually use the Demoralize Opponent option via Intimidate in 3.x? As a Standard action, it only incurred the shaken condition for one round, and you had to be threatening your target in melee combat. It was a woefully suboptimal tactic that served best as a tool for DM's to utilize via overconfident NPCs (that would likely be struck down soon after).

 

[billd91]

From what I've read it's been answered a few times.

Magic is involuntary. The PC has no choice in the matter.

With an interaction the PC can role-play their response. A good role play response could result in inspiration from the DM. But whatever, the PC gets to choose.

That doesn't really answer the debate why should magic be involuntary but responses to some skills be strictly voluntary, particularly if both uses involve overcoming the target's defenses. This topic has generated some heated debate on the Paizo boards around a feat called Antagonize. With that feat, and a sufficient intimidation check, the antagonize draws an attack from his target. It is listed as a mind-affecting effect and the antagonist does need to overcome a DC based on the target's stats that's set at a reasonably high level for a skill check. So it's not like it doesn't overcome defenses in a way similar to a spell. There are some differences - no auto-success nor auto-fail - but it otherwise follows similar principles and offers some choice in how the attack should be made (could be a spell, ranged attack, or melee attack). Yet you'd think the feat were murdering some players' puppies because it's a mind-controlling skill rather than a spell.

Personally, as long as the effect overcomes a reasonably appropriate defense, I don't see why magic and skills need to be so different that a skill can't impose an involuntary effect or even actions. In the debate above, with simple intimidation, if the PCs decided not to do as the intimidating enemy says, fine, but I'm still imposing the shaken status on anything the PCs do contrary to complying for the rest of the duration of the intimidate.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Upon further reflection, since I don't allow NPC social skills to mechanically influence PC actions (e.g. a basic NPC Intimidation check won't cause the target PC to receive a penalty on an attack roll), I feel it's fruitless to tell the PC he's been intimidated. I'd rather describe the fearsome and threatening presence of the NPC and then leave the ball in the player's court to direct the PC's emotional response. However, if I did impose a mechanical penalty, I'd be more apt to directly inform the PC's emotional response.

As an aside, did anyone actually use the Demoralize Opponent option via Intimidate in 3.x? As a Standard action, it only incurred the shaken condition for one round, and you had to be threatening your target in melee combat. It was a completely suboptimal tactic that served best as a tool for DM's to utilize via overconfident NPCs (that would likely be struck down soon after).

Yup, on both sides of the table. I didn't find it suboptimal at all, just specialized.

 

[robus]

That doesn't really answer the debate why should magic be involuntary but responses to some skills be strictly voluntary, particularly if both uses involve overcoming the target's defenses. This topic has generated some heated debate on the Paizo boards around a feat called Antagonize. With that feat, and a sufficient intimidation check, the antagonize draws an attack from his target. It is listed as a mind-affecting effect and the antagonist does need to overcome a DC based on the target's stats that's set at a reasonably high level for a skill check. So it's not like it doesn't overcome defenses in a way similar to a spell. There are some differences - no auto-success nor auto-fail - but it otherwise follows similar principles and offers some choice in how the attack should be made (could be a spell, ranged attack, or melee attack). Yet you'd think the feat were murdering some players' puppies because it's a mind-controlling skill rather than a spell.

Personally, as long as the effect overcomes a reasonably appropriate defense, I don't see why magic and skills need to be so different that a skill can't impose an involuntary effect or even actions. In the debate above, with simple intimidation, if the PCs decided not to do as the intimidating enemy says, fine, but I'm still imposing the shaken status on anything the PCs do contrary to complying for the rest of the duration of the intimidate.

And that's all fine, as Tony Vargas says above, the rules don't preclude that. I, along with others, just prefer that the PC gets to role-play these interactions rather than having an NPC initiate a roll against the PC (outside of combat of course). The PCs are the protagonists in the story after all - if they want to try and get around an intimidating guard in a manner that has an uncertain outcome that's when the dice would come out.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That doesn't really answer the debate why should magic be involuntary but responses to some skills be strictly voluntary, particularly if both uses involve overcoming the target's defenses.

The 'why' is "so that magic will be strictly superior." But that just begs the question. ;P The reasons 'why' a non-magical effect should be allowed to work mechanically are clear: game balance, fairness, consistency, keeping resolution character-focused (even 'realism' from that angle). It's just that no amount of valid game-design reasons can overcome a preference for caster supremacy. For a fairly large proportion of the fanbase, being a fantasy game means ready access to magic, and 'magic' means 'just flatly better than not-magic, no exceptions.' It's not a complicated position, nor is it entirely unintuitive - we know that magic blithely breaks physical laws. We know that technology accomplishes a lot just by following physical laws, so breaking them should let you do literally anything. Conversely, we know how limited medieval technology is compared to modern and how limited human capacity is without technology. So it's almost inescapable to conclude that there must be a vast gulf between what medieval-tech-using mundane characters can do and what magic-users can do, and it only makes sense for the latter to be strictly superior in every imaginable way.

Of course, if you look at the fantasy genre, that's not what's happening. The characters who use magic are there for support and exposition, and the heroes aren't using magic. Magic can't be depended upon (except to advance the plot), and it's very limited in what it actually does (often for no clear reason) and whether it can work in the face of little, very human, things like courage or True Love or Faith.

That seems... odd to me. I can't put my finger on it, because it's either so vague that any situation can eventually arrive at a player decision that precipitated it (up to and including sitting down at the table to play), or it implies that NPCs should always be reactive to player actions -- they can intimidate a PC, sure, but only if the PC puts themselves into a position for the NPC to intimidate them.

More the former, I think. Again, sorry if that's not too deeply insightful or interesting. I'm just trying to map the issue to the system.

When a player attempts intimidation, the system is clear: the DM decides whether the target is intimidated or not or he calls for an intimidate check. When an NPC might intimidate a PC, it's less clear. The action that precipitated the intimidate should come into it somehow.

For example, in a recent game, an NPC organization set out to intimidate a player character... So, was that a PC initiated confrontation, because the PC did something that caused an unseen and unknowable (at the time) sequence of events that led to the intimidation attempt?

Probably not. That's a fairly complex set of things going on, rather than a single resolution.

Yet you seemed to be keen on making a statement that only some things are allowable -- that NPCs shouldn't initiate action, be merely reactive.

When it comes to a specific resolution, yes. But, the point is just that a check will likely only come into it when the PCs initiate something, the rest is just presented by the DM as the PCs interact with his world. So if NPC thugs stop by and harass NPC non-combatants the PC cares about, there's no resolution, the DM just has the victims relate the experience to the PC the first chance they get. That doesn't call for an intimidate check, either vs the NPC (the DM just decides how they react), nor the PC (who wasn't present to be intimidated).

The way I'd think about it is that Intimidate is a CHA check, so it's something you'd use to resolve an interaction. An indirect interaction, like a 'pattern of intimidation' - vandalism, scaring people close to you, leaving severed horse's heads laying about, &c - wouldn't have anything to do with CHA nor even be based on a single NPC's check. It'd just have to play out, because the game has no mechanisms for the whole conflict, the way it has initiative, hps, and the like to resolve a battle as a whole as well as rolls to resolve whether the individual attacks hit or not.

Imagine trying to run a D&D combat without initiative, turns, damage, hps, or conditions, using /just/ attack rolls 'contested' by other attack rolls (not even any AC).
That's the kind challenge presented by trying to use the extant skill system to resolve a complex interaction-based conflict like the one you describe.

I don't know, perhaps I'm overthinking this. I appreciate that you're responses aren't full of 'my way is better' and that you seem genuinely interested in engaging the topic. Thanks for the responses.

It quickly goes from a simple resolution schema to very complex issues, so, no I don't think you're overthinking it, it's worth this kind of examination if it helps us run better games.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Imagine trying to run a D&D combat without initiative, turns, damage, hps, or conditions, using /just/ attack rolls 'contested' by other attack rolls (not even any AC).
That's the kind challenge presented by trying to use the extant skill system to resolve a complex interaction-based conflict like the one you describe.

I followed you until this (and, I'd like to say enjoyed the discussion, even if I wasn't in full agreement with you, I could follow your train of thought well enough). That's not to say I don't understand what you're saying here, but that I was resolving the whole of the situation through a single skill check. To be fully honest, I didn't even make a skill check for this because that particular player is very much involved in roleplaying and the first thing he said as I described him coming home to his father calling, "Miguel, I'm glad you're home, we have a guest!" was, "oh, $%#." But I do have players at my table for whom I would have likely made a skill check during the ensuing conversation with the 'guest', depending on how the conversation went.

But, even that honestly aside, I don't see any reduction involved in having social interactions modeled on skill usages, so long as you don't take complex, multifaceted situations and resolve them with a single skill check. That seems more like your example, where nothing but a single attack roll decides the outcome of a fight, whereas I allow multiple attack rolls, with different strategies, and saving throws, to help direct a scene.

Bottom line, to me, characters are game assets like any other. They follow the same rules. Anything a character can do, something else in the fictional world can do. The wonder of the PCs is what they actually decide to do with that agency, that and the fact that the story at the table features them. That skill checks can be used against PCs is, to me, not even an issue worth worrying about -- I don't see it as a loss of agency at all.

It quickly goes from a simple resolution schema to very complex issues, so, no I don't think you're overthinking it, it's worth this kind of examination if it helps us run better games.

Thanks, I've enjoyed it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I followed you until this (and, I'd like to say enjoyed the discussion, even if I wasn't in full agreement with you, I could follow your train of thought well enough). That's not to say I don't understand what you're saying here, but that I was resolving the whole of the situation through a single skill check. To be fully honest, I didn't even make a skill check for this because that particular player is very much involved in roleplaying and the first thing he said as I described him coming home to his father calling, "Miguel, I'm glad you're home, we have a guest!" was, "oh, $%#."

I didn't quite follow the scenario, I thought this organization was going through a whole campaign of intimidation, not that one of them confronted the character in his father's home.

I don't see any reduction involved in having social interactions modeled on skill usages, so long as you don't take complex, multifaceted situations and resolve them with a single skill check. That seems more like your example, where nothing but a single attack roll decides the outcome of a fight, whereas I allow multiple attack rolls, with different strategies, and saving throws, to help direct a scene.

I don't have a problem with skills or checks coming into it, I'm just noting that they constitute a very limited system compared to what we have for, say, combat or spellcasting. Guess I'm having trouble staying on topic.

Bottom line, to me, characters are game assets like any other. They follow the same rules. Anything a character can do, something else in the fictional world can do. The wonder of the PCs is what they actually decide to do with that agency, that and the fact that the story at the table features them. That skill checks can be used against PCs is, to me, not even an issue worth worrying about -- I don't see it as a loss of agency at all.

That's fair. OTOH, you had a player 'just RP it' instead of rolling. So you can be flexible about it, which is a good attitude for a 5e DM.

Thanks, I've enjoyed it.

My pleasure.